In this presentation, I develop and demonstrate a method of reading derived from Mahāyāna sūtras and thebroader ancient South Asian cosmology in which they were initially composed and compiled. The act of“reading” (broadly conceived) is conditioned by cultural, historical, linguistic, and cosmological assumptionsand ideals—about the nature of language and text, but also about the relationship of language and text topersons and their bodies, and to the normative ideals towards which they aspire. Different “cosmologies ofreading” assume and encourage different interpretive methods. The method I develop here, which has roots inthe sacrificial cosmology that informs the sūtras, challenges any clear-cut boundary between the ostensiblyseparate categories of literature and ritual, text and practice, speech acts and bodily acts. What mightcontemporary scholarly boundaries prevent us from seeing in and about Buddhist literature? And how mightalternative interpretive methods offer critical resources not only for reading Buddhist literature, but also forrecognizing and rethinking cosmologies rooted in European colonialism and universalism?