Abhayākara
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འཇིགས་མེད་འབྱུང་གནས་སྦས་པ་
Abhayākaragupta(11th century - circa 1125)
Indian tantric Buddhist master who was born into a brāhmaṇa family in either Orissa or northeast India near Bengal. Sources vary regarding his dates of birth and death, although most agree that he was a contemporary of the Pāla king Rāmapāla, who began his reign during the final quarter of the eleventh century. Abhayākaragupta became a Buddhist monk in response to a prophetic vision and trained extensively in the esoteric practices of tantra, while nevertheless maintaining his monastic discipline (vinaya). Abhayākaragupta was active at the monastic university of Vikramaśīla in Bihar and became renowned as both a scholar and a teacher. He was a prolific author, composing treatises in numerous fields of Buddhist doctrine, including monastic discipline and philosophy as well as tantric ritual practice and iconography. Many Sanskrit manuscripts of his works have been preserved in India, Nepal, and Tibet, and his writings were influential both in India and among Newari Buddhists in Nepal. Translations of his works into Tibetan were begun under his supervision, and more than two dozen are preserved in the Tibetan canon. To date, Abhayākaragupta’s writings best known in the West are his treatises on tantric iconography, the Vajrãvalī and Niṣpannayogāvalī, and his syncretistic abhidharma treatise Munimatãlaṃkāra. (Source: "Abhayākaragupta." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 2. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
On the topic of this person
A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b
Tomabechi, Tōru, and Kazuo Kano. "A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b." Tantric Studies 1 (2008): 22–44.
Tomabechi, Tōru, and Kazuo Kano. "A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b." Tantric Studies 1 (2008): 22–44.
Tomabechi, Tōru, and Kazuo Kano. "A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b." Tantric Studies 1 (2008): 22–44.;A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b;A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b;Abhayākara;Textual study;Tōru Tomabechi; Kazuo Kano
Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka
Kano, Kazuo, and Xuezhu Li . "Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka." [In Japanese with English Summary.] Mikkyō Bunka [Journal of Esoteric Buddhism] 238 (2017): 7–27.
Kano, Kazuo, and Xuezhu Li . "Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka." [In Japanese with English Summary.] Mikkyō Bunka [Journal of Esoteric Buddhism] 238 (2017): 7–27.
Kano, Kazuo, and Xuezhu Li . "Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka." [In Japanese with English Summary.] Mikkyō Bunka [Journal of Esoteric Buddhism] 238 (2017): 7–27.;Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka;Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka;Textual study;Abhayākara;Abhayākaragupta;འཇིགས་མེད་འབྱུང་གནས་སྦས་པ་;'jigs med 'byung gnas sbas pa;a b+ha yA ka ra gup+ta;'jigs med 'byung;paN+Di ta a b+ha yA ka ra gup+ta;ཨ་བྷ་ཡཱ་ཀ་ར་གུཔྟ་;འཇིགས་མེད་འབྱུང་གནས་;པཎྜི་ཏ་ཨ་བྷ་ཡཱ་ཀ་ར་གུཔྟ་;Abhayākara;Paṇḍita Abhayākaragupta; Kazuo Kano;Xuezhu Li
Kazuo Kano at the 2019 Tathāgatagarbha Symposium
Kazuo Kano discusses the term tathāgatagarbha and its appearance in tantric scriptures and commentaries composed by Indic authors and shows how and for what purposes this term has been integrated into tantric contexts. In terms of precursors to the tantric usages, he notes mentions such as that found in the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, in which practitioners are taught to think of themselves as a stūpa—that is, a reliquary that contains a buddha within it and as such are objects of worship. As for Indian authors, he discusses the views of Ratnākaraśānti as representative of the Yogācāra school and the notion of the three vehicles (triyāna), and he discusses Abhayākaragupta as representative of the Madhyamaka school and the notion of a single vehicle (ekayāna). Some brief mention is also made of Kamalaśīla, who represents a synthesis of the two schools.
Kano, Kazuo. "Examples of the Term tathāgatagarbha Appearing in Indic Tantric Literature." Paper presented at the University of Vienna Symposium, Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia, Vienna, Austria, July 2019. Video, 42:13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIVDu1Ig7H8.
Kano, Kazuo. "Examples of the Term tathāgatagarbha Appearing in Indic Tantric Literature." Paper presented at the University of Vienna Symposium, Tathāgatagarbha Across Asia, Vienna, Austria, July 2019. Video, 42:13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIVDu1Ig7H8.;Kazuo Kano at the 2019 Tathāgatagarbha Symposium;Vajrayana;tathāgatagarbha;Ratnākaraśānti;Yogācāra;Abhayākara;Madhyamaka;triyāna;ekayāna;Terminology;Kazuo Kano;Examples of the Term tathāgatagarbha Appearing in Indic Tantric Literature
The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta
Ruegg, David Seyfort. "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta." In Prajñāpāramitā and Related Systems, edited by Lewis Lancaster, 283–312. Berkeley: University of California, 1977.
Ruegg, David Seyfort. "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta." In Prajñāpāramitā and Related Systems, edited by Lewis Lancaster, 283–312. Berkeley: University of California, 1977.
Ruegg, David Seyfort. "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta." In Prajñāpāramitā and Related Systems, edited by Lewis Lancaster, 283–312. Berkeley: University of California, 1977.;The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta;The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta;ekayāna;gotra;tathāgatagarbha;Abhayākara;Dharmamitra;David Seyfort Ruegg; 
Philosophical positions of this person
Is buddha-nature equated with emptiness or alayavijnana?
Madhyamaka
Kano, K., Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, p. 109; he cites Ruegg for this, and agrees.
Are there one or three vehicles on the path to buddhahood?
1
Kano, K., Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, p. 110.
What is Buddha-nature?
Tathāgatagarbha as the Emptiness That is a Non-implicative Negation (without enlightened qualities)
More specifically he asserts that buddha-nature is equivalent to the selflessness of the dharmatā. This is not exactly the same as buddha-nature = emptiness. Kano explains that this is a precursor to that position. Kano, K., Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, p. 111 et passim.
Does the author advocate the Svatantrika or Prasangika view of emptiness?
Svātantrika (རང་རྒྱུད་)
Kano, K., Buddha-Nature and Emptiness, p. 109: he cites Khedrubje for this designation.
Other names
- ཨ་བྷ་ཡཱ་ཀ་ར་གུཔྟ་ · other names (Tibetan)
- འཇིགས་མེད་འབྱུང་གནས་ · other names (Tibetan)
- པཎྜི་ཏ་ཨ་བྷ་ཡཱ་ཀ་ར་གུཔྟ་ · other names (Tibetan)
- a b+ha yA ka ra gup+ta · other names (Wylie)
- 'jigs med 'byung · other names (Wylie)
- paN+Di ta a b+ha yA ka ra gup+ta · other names (Wylie)
- Abhayākara · other names
- Paṇḍita Abhayākaragupta · other names
Affiliations & relations
- Suvarṇadvīpa Dharmakīrti · student
