Dharmamitra
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Dharmamitra(356 - 442)
Dharmamitra ［曇摩蜜多・曇無蜜多］ (356–442) (Skt; Jpn Dommamitta or Dommumitta): A monk from Kashmir in ancient India who translated Buddhist sutras into Chinese. He entered the Buddhist Order while young and traveled through various kingdoms to pursue study of the sutras. He dedicated himself to the practice of meditation and, passing through Kucha and Tun-huang, went to China in 424, where he exhorted people to practice meditation. In 433 he went to Chien-k’ang, the capital of the Liu Sung dynasty, and in 435 founded Ting-lin-shang-ssu temple, where he lived. He converted the empress and crown prince of the Liu Sung dynasty. His works include The Secret Essentials of Meditation and Chinese translations of the Universal Worthy Sutra and the Meditation on Bodhisattva Space Treasury Sutra. (Source Accessed July 15, 2021)
On the topic of this person
Rong-zom-pa's Discourses on Buddhology
The present study looks into the investigation of buddhology1—that is, conceptions of Buddhahood found in various traditional Buddhist systems and scriptures—by the eleventh-century rNying-ma author and translator Rong-zom Choskyi-bzang-po (henceforth Rong-zom-pa). The bulk of attention will be devoted to his work titled Sangs rgyas kyi sa chen mo (henceforth Sangs sa chen mo) (An Extended [Exposition on] the Stage of a Buddha). This treatise—the only known Tibetan (and, as far as I am aware, indeed pan-Indian) work of its kind on buddhology—discusses its subject at length, focusing on the controversy about whether gnosis exists—on the conventional level—at the stage of a buddha.2 My attention was first drawn to this controversy when I was working on my Master's thesis, titled "The Life and Works of Rong-zom Paṇḍita," for which I critically edited and translated Mi-pham-rgya mtsho's (1846–1912) Rang zorn gsung 'bum dkar chag me tog phreng ba (Garland of Flowers: A Catalogue to Rong-zom's Collected Works), and prepared a detailed catalogue of Rongzom-pa's three-volume collected works.3 In his catalogue, Mi-pham devotes an entire passage to this issue, with the aim of refuting what he believed to be the wrongly held view that Rong-zom-pa denied the existence of gnosis at the stage of a buddha. Any denial of the existence of gnosis had obviously been difficult to digest by most Tibetan scholars, and the prevailing position in Tibet was and still is that a buddha does possess gnosis. Mi-pham attempts to interpret Rong-zom-pa's statements in which he unquestionably maintains that gnosis does not exist at the stage of a buddha as only referring to gnosis that had been generated on the path but not to gnosis as such, for Rong-zom-pa, Mi-pham argues, is an expounder of rDzogs-chen, a system in which what is called 'self-occurring gnosis' (rang byung gi ye shes: svayaṃbhūjñāna) features prominently. Nonetheless, from my examination of Rong-zom-pa's discussions of the whole issue, it has become evident that he did indeed deny the existence of any cognitive element whatsoever at the stage of a buddha, the sole constituent of Buddhahood being for him the purified dharmadhātu. Although he alludes to self-occurring gnosis on numerous occasions in his works, there is a salient difference between his and Mi-pham's understanding of the term: for Mi-pham self-occurring gnosis is something cognitive, whereas for Rong-zom-pa, who equates it with the dharmadhātu, it is not. Rong-zom-pa, however, does not deny that a buddha's gnosis, as mere appearance, manifests to those who have not yet attained release and thus have not yet eliminated all their delusions. A buddha, on the other hand, whose delusions have been completely exhausted, does not possess such gnosis. This position of Rong-zom-pa's does not seem to be an exceptional case. It can be shown in fact that numerous, if not the majority, of Indian Madhyamaka scholars of the eleventh century took a position similar to that of Rong-zom-pa. Furthermore, several works of early bKa'-gdams scholars that have come to light recently show that Rong-zom-pa was not the only Tibetan of his time to hold such a view. It thus appears that while the latter was indeed current among Tibetan scholars of the eleventh century, for a variety of reasons it was soon superseded by the less radical position which allows for the existence of some kind of cognitive element. (Almogi, preface, 13–14)
Notes
- Following Paul Harrison, I employ the term 'buddhology' (written in lower case) to refer to theories on and conceptions of the nature of a "buddha" (i.e., Buddhahood), while reserving 'Buddhology' (capitalized) for an alternative designation for Buddhist Studies. See Harrison 1995, p. 24, n. 4.
- In the present study I differentiate between a buddha (i.e., written in lower case and italicized), a title referring to any unspecified awakened person, and Buddha (i.e., written in roman and capitalized), a title referring to Śākyamuni Buddha or any other particular awakened person. (The same convention has been employed in the case of other titles: for example, bodhisattva versus Bodhisattva.) This differentiation is particularly important for the discussion of buddhology, or conceptions of Buddhahood, since some such conceptions (particularly the earlier ones) are clearly only associated with the person of the historical Buddha, while others, which commonly represent later developments in which a plurality of buddhas is affirmed, concern all awakened persons. To be sure, often there is no clear-cut borderline. In such cases I have employed both forms as alternatives.
- A considerably revised and enlarged version of the thesis is currently under preparation for publication in the near future.
Almogi, Orna. Rong-zom-pa's Discourses on Buddhology: A Study of Various Conceptions of Buddhahood in Indian Sources with Special Reference to the Controversy Surrounding the Existence of Gnosis (jñāna: ye shes) as Presented by the Eleventh-Century Tibetan Scholar Rong-zom Chos-kyi-bzang-po. Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series 24. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2009.
Almogi, Orna. Rong-zom-pa's Discourses on Buddhology: A Study of Various Conceptions of Buddhahood in Indian Sources with Special Reference to the Controversy Surrounding the Existence of Gnosis (jñāna: ye shes) as Presented by the Eleventh-Century Tibetan Scholar Rong-zom Chos-kyi-bzang-po. Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series 24. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2009.;Rong-zom-pa's Discourses on Buddhology;dharmadhātu;prajñā;trikāya;Atiśa;Gro lung pa blo gros 'byung gnas;Jñānacandra;Klong chen pa;Mi pham rgya mtsho;Rong zom chos kyi bzang po;Sgam po pa;Ye shes sde;Dharmamitra;Orna Almogi; Rong-zom-pa's Discourses on Buddhology: A Study of Various Conceptions of Buddhahood in Indian Sources with Special Reference to the Controversy Surrounding the Existence of Gnosis (jñāna: ye shes) as Presented by the Eleventh-Century Tibetan Scholar Rong-zom Chos-kyi-bzang-po;Rong zom chos kyi bzang po;Klong chen pa;Mādhyamikasiṁha
The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā according to Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
In the course of his monumental work on the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras E. Conze has written: 'It is quite a problem how the Dharma-element which is common to all can be regarded as the source of a variety of "lineages" [gotra]'.[1] It has been the endeavour of the present writer in a series of publications starting in 1968 to shed light on this very fundamental and interesting question. An article in the Festschrift dedicated to the late E. Frauwallner was devoted to the interconnexion between the single, unique and undifferentiated dharmadhātu, the naturally existent spiritual element or germ (prakṛtisthaṃ gotram) and the variously conditioned psycho-spiritual categories (gotra)[2] recognized by the Buddhist texts as explained by Ārya Vimuktisena (ca. 500 ?) and his successor Bhadanta Vimuktisena in their commentaries on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra (i. 37-39), which they correlate with the topics of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.[3] And shortly afterwards there followed a more detailed study of this question as it relates to the notion of the tathāgatagarbha or buddha-nature in La théorie du tathāgatagarbha et du gotra: Études sur ta sotériologie et la gnoséologie du bouddhisme (Paris, 1969) and Le traité du tathāgatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub (Paris, 1973). In the last publications Haribhadra's commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitā were discussed, and the importance of the doctrine of the One Vehicle (ekayāna), was taken up at some length not only from the point of view of soteriology but also from that of gnoseology
Between the two Vimuktisenas and Haribhadra (fl. c. 750-800) on the one side and the Tibetan exegetes on the other there lived a number of important Indian commentators whose work could be only briefly touched on in the Théorie. Amongst the most important of these later Indian masters of the Prajñāpāramitā are Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta, both of whom have been reckoned by Buddhist doxographers as being, for certain systematic reasons, close to the Svātantrika-Mādhyamika school, and Ratnākaraśānti (first half of the 11th century), a Vijñānavādin (of the Alīkākāravāda branch) who appears to have undertaken a harmonization of the Vijñānavāda and the Madhyamaka in the manner of the synthesizing movements especially characteristic of later Buddhist thought in India.
One of Ratnākaraśānti's main works on the Prajñāpāramitā—the Sārottamā (or Sāratamā ?), a Pañjikā on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, which until recently was known only by its Tibetan version in the Bstan 'gyur—has now been recovered in an incomplete Sanskrit manuscript. Since the promised publication of this text is awaited with keenest interest by students of this literature, his work must be left for another occasion.[4] The present paper will therefore consider the discussions by Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta of the relation between the gotra, the dharmadhātu, the ekayāna, and the tathāgatagarbha. (Ruegg, "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā," 283–284)
In the course of his monumental work on the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras E. Conze has written: 'It is quite a problem how the Dharma-element which is common to all can be regarded as the source of a variety of "lineages" [gotra]'.[1] It has been the endeavour of the present writer in a series of publications starting in 1968 to shed light on this very fundamental and interesting question. An article in the Festschrift dedicated to the late E. Frauwallner was devoted to the interconnexion between the single, unique and undifferentiated dharmadhātu, the naturally existent spiritual element or germ (prakṛtisthaṃ gotram) and the variously conditioned psycho-spiritual categories (gotra)[2] recognized by the Buddhist texts as explained by Ārya Vimuktisena (ca. 500 ?) and his successor Bhadanta Vimuktisena in their commentaries on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra (i. 37-39), which they correlate with the topics of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā.[3] And shortly afterwards there followed a more detailed study of this question as it relates to the notion of the tathāgatagarbha or buddha-nature in La théorie du tathāgatagarbha et du gotra: Études sur ta sotériologie et la gnoséologie du bouddhisme (Paris, 1969) and Le traité du tathāgatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub (Paris, 1973). In the last publications Haribhadra's commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitā were discussed, and the importance of the doctrine of the One Vehicle (ekayāna), was taken up at some length not only from the point of view of soteriology but also from that of gnoseology
Between the two Vimuktisenas and Haribhadra (fl. c. 750-800) on the one side and the Tibetan exegetes on the other there lived a number of important Indian commentators whose work could be only briefly touched on in the Théorie. Amongst the most important of these later Indian masters of the Prajñāpāramitā are Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta, both of whom have been reckoned by Buddhist doxographers as being, for certain systematic reasons, close to the Svātantrika-Mādhyamika school, and Ratnākaraśānti (first half of the 11th century), a Vijñānavādin (of the Alīkākāravāda branch) who appears to have undertaken a harmonization of the Vijñānavāda and the Madhyamaka in the manner of the synthesizing movements especially characteristic of later Buddhist thought in India.
One of Ratnākaraśānti's main works on the Prajñāpāramitā—the Sārottamā (or Sāratamā ?), a Pañjikā on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, which until recently was known only by its Tibetan version in the Bstan 'gyur—has now been recovered in an incomplete Sanskrit manuscript. Since the promised publication of this text is awaited with keenest interest by students of this literature, his work must be left for another occasion.[4] The present paper will therefore consider the discussions by Dharmamitra and Abhayākaragupta of the relation between the gotra, the dharmadhātu, the ekayāna, and the tathāgatagarbha. (Ruegg, "The Gotra, Ekayāna and Tathāgatagarbha Theories of the Prajñāpāramitā," 283–284)
Notes
- E. Conze, The Large Sūtra on Perfect Wisdom (London 1961), p. 105 note 2. References hereunder to the folios of Tibetan translations of Indian texts contained in the Bstan 'gyur relate to the Peking edition as reproduced in the Japanese reprint published by the Tibetan Tripiṭaka Research Institute (Tokyo and Kyoto). Prints of other editions of the Bstan 'gyur were unfortunately unavailable during the writing of the present paper.
- On the meanings of the term gotra, and in particular on the two meanings '(spiritual) element, germ, capacity' and '(spiritual) lineage, class, category' which might be described respectively as the intensional and extensional meanings of the word when the gotra as germ determines the classification of persons possessing it in a gotra as category, see the present writer's article in BSOAS 39 (1976) p. 341sq.
- "Ārya and Bhadanta Vimuktisena on the gotra-theory of the Prajñāpāramitā," Beitriige zur Geistesgeschichte Indiens (Festschrift fur Erich Frauwallner), WZKSO 12-13 (1968/1969), pp. 303–317.
4. Ratnākaraśānti's other work on the subject, a commentary on the AA entitled Śuddhimatī, (or: Śuddhamatī) will be referred to below.
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;ekayāna;gotra;tathāgatagarbha;Abhayākara;Dharmamitra;David Seyfort Ruegg; 
