The fourth of the new websites I have been preparing does not this time come from the backwaters of my own blog, but is a website for the translations of Mike Cross, who has been translating Ven. Aśvaghoṣa’s major texts for the past seven years.
Mike previously worked on a translation of Dogen’s major four-volume work Shōbōgenzō, or The True Dharma-Eye Treasury with his teacher Gudo Nishijima (download from here).
The present site contains his work on Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, both biographical works of the Ven. Aśvaghoṣa, that go well beyond biography and became standard repositories of the Buddha’s wisdom.
The virtue of Mike’s work is in uncovering the deeper and sometimes hidden meanings contained in Aśvaghoṣa’s multi-layered verse and providing a deeper understanding of the texts from a practice stand-point.
Mike provides an introduction to each of the 32 chapters and a running commentary on the translations which digs up the gold that would remain hidden on a superficial reading.