Texts/Madhyāntavibhāga

Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā

དབུས་དང་མཐའ་རྣམ་པར་འབྱེད་པའི་ཚིག་ལེའུར་བྱས་པ།

dbus dang mtha' rnam par 'byed pa'i tshig le'ur byas pa

辯中邊論頌

Bian zhong bian lun song

D4021   ·  T1601

SOURCE TEXT

In Sanskrit, “Differentiation of the Middle Way and the Extremes”; one of the Five Dharma Treatises of Maitreya (byams chos sde lnga) said to have been presented to Asaṅga by the bodhisattva Maitreya in the Tuṣita heaven. Written in verse, it is one of the most important Yogācāra delineations of the three natures (trisvabhāva), especially as they figure in the path to enlightenment, where the obstacles created by the imaginary (parikalpita) are overcome ultimately by the antidote of the consummate (pariniṣpanna). The “middle way” exposed here is that of the Yogācāra, and is different from that of Nāgārjuna, although the names of the two extremes to be avoided—the extreme of permanence (śāśvatānta) and the extreme of annihilation (ucchedānta)—are the same. Here the extreme of permanence is the existence of external objects, the imaginary nature (parikalpitasvabhāva). The extreme of annihilation would seem to include Nāgārjuna’s emptiness of intrinsic nature (svabhāva). The middle way entails upholding the existence of consciousness (vijñāna) as the dependent nature (paratantrasvabhāva) and the existence of the consummate nature (pariniṣpannasvabhāva). The work is divided into five chapters, which consider the three natures, the various forms of obstruction to be abandoned on the path, the ultimate truth according to Yogācāra, the means of cultivating the antidotes to the defilements, and the activity of the Mahāyāna path. (Source: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, p. 489)

---

Read the text: Tibetan

Access this text online

Adarsha
Buddhist Digital Resource Center
Buddhist Digital Resource Center
Buddhist Digital Resource Center
The AIBS Buddhist Canons Research Database
Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages
Asian Classics Input Project
Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association
SAT Daizōkyō Text Database
Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon

Philosophical positions of this text

Text Metadata

Other Titles	~ Madhyāntavibhaṅga ~ Madhyāntavibhaṅgakārikā ~ dbus mtha' rnam 'byed
Text exists in	~ Tibetan ~ Chinese ~ Korean
Canonical Genre	~ Tengyur · Sūtra · sems tsam · Cittamātra