Absence Deferred, Presence Realized

In the postscript to his biography of Sakyamuni, The Sun of Faith, Taranatha identifies the Precious Banner Sutra as a good source for a distinctly Mahayana telling of the Buddha’s life and liberation. While in agreement with his assessment, the present essay reads the sutra as a source of the Buddha’s literary life in a sense different from what Taranatha seems to have had in mind. Interested less in what the sutra can tell us about Sakyamuni’s life in narrated time and more in how the sutra enables and invites readers to envision Sakyamuni as being made present through the Dharma, this essay uses narratological method to show how the sutra constitutes itself as a source of the Buddha Sakyamuni’s life and liberative activities in the reading present.