]> 2026-10-10T16:37:16-04:00 Recent Essays/Post-54 0 en In his commentary on Maitreya's [[Texts/Dharmadharmatāvibhāga|''Distinguishing Phenomena and Their Nature'']], [[People/Mi_pham_rgya_mtsho|Mipam Gyatso]], one of the most polymathic thinkers of nineteenth-century Tibet, explains that scholars differ in the doxographical classification of the five treatises taught by Maitreya as commentarial works on the Buddha's teachings. Some scholars, he reports, considered the five treatises to be parts of a single work, while others refuted such a position, saying that they cannot be coherent parts of a single work, as the five treatises diverge on the issue of whether there is only one vehicle or three vehicles which lead to ultimate liberation. The latter scholars then take the five treatises to be commenting on different turnings of the wheel of Dharma. Among Maitreya's five treatises, some consider the first, the [[Texts/Abhisamayālaṃkāra|''Abhisamayālaṃkāra'']], or ''Ornament of Clear Realization'', and the last, the [[Texts/Ratnagotravibhāga_Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra|''Ratnagotravibhāga'']], or the ''Ultimate Continuum'', to fall within the Mādhyamika system and the middle three to fall under the Cittamātra system. Others maintain that only the ''Sūtrālaṅkāra'', or the ''Ornament of Sūtra'', belongs to the Cittamātra system and the rest to Mādhyamika thought. Still others argue that all the five treatises are fully works of Cittamātra thought or that of Mādhyamika. Against such differences, [[People/Mi_pham_rgya_mtsho|Mipam]] states that it is indisputable that the [[Texts/Abhisamayālaṃkāra|''Ornament of Clear Realization'']] is a commentarial work on the Perfection of Wisdom taught in the middle turning and the [[Texts/Ratnagotravibhāga_Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra|''Ultimate Continuum'']] is clearly a commentary on the definitive teachings of the third turning, which deals with the buddha-nature. These two treatises also agree on the theories of the single spiritual gene and the single vehicle, which accords with the Mādhyamika thought. In contrast to these two, the ''Ornament of Sūtra'' is a commentary on other sūtras, and it clearly presents theories aligned to the Cittamātra thought, such as the acceptance of more than one spiritual gene and vehicle to ultimate liberation. The two treatises, [[Texts/Dharmadharmatāvibhāga|''Distinguishing Phenomena and Their Nature'']] and [[Texts/Madhyāntavibhāga|''Distinguishing the Middle and Extremes'']], deal with the profound and vast aspects of general Mahāyāna thought and therefore cannot be categorized as belonging to either Cittamātra or Mādhyamika thought. They deal with topics which are common to all adherents of Mahāyāna. While [[Texts/Madhyāntavibhāga|''Distinguishing the Middle and Extremes'']] primarily discusses the vast aspects of the Mahāyāna path, [[Texts/Dharmadharmatāvibhāga|''Distinguishing Phenomena and Their Nature'']] discusses the nonconceptual wisdom of the union of the two truths, which is the essence of the Mahāyāna teachings. Because of the profundity of the topics that [[Texts/Dharmadharmatāvibhāga|''Distinguishing Phenomena and Their Nature'']] and the [[Texts/Ratnagotravibhāga_Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra|''Ultimate Continuum'']] deal with, [[People/Mi_pham_rgya_mtsho|Mipam]] reasons that these two treatises are considered to have been protected and thus their texts unavailable until [[People/Maitrīpa|Maitripa]] rediscovered it from a stūpa after seeing a light shining from a crack in it. When Zhama Lotsāwa Senge Gyeltsen translated it, the paṇḍita is said to have only spared one page at a time and advised the translator to strongly cherish it as the text was rare. November 2021, Week 2 2021-12-03T17:29:54Z 2459552.2290972 Mipham's Doxographical Classification of Maitreya's Works 2021-12-03T17:56:51Z 2459552.2478125 2022-04-29T16:06:33Z 2459699.1712153 false Recent Essays/Post-54 Topic of the week/Post-54 0 en Topic of the week/Post-54 REDI 102 en REDI