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No abstract given. Here is the first relevant paragraph:<br><br>
From ancient times, the origin of "''tathāgata''", which has been usually translated as 如 來 (one who comes thus), is not unknown. This has been used as the title of Buddha, chiefly in Buddhism from the start.<br> Now, I will consider the meaning of "''tathāgata''" in the ''Abhisamayālaṃkārālokā Prajñāpāramitā-vyākhyā'' of Haribhadra (ed. by Wogihara) (W.). This includes the ''Aṣṭasāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra'' (''As.''), Maitreya's ''Abhisamayālaṃkāraśāstra-kārikā'' (''A.'') which is a summary of the ''Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra'' (''P.''), and Haribhadra's commentary which is based on the ''P.'' and the ''As.'' Accordingly at first, I point out sentences of "''tathāgata''", which I think as the etymological explanations, and then survey the character of it. (Mano, "'Tathāgata' in Haribhadra's Commentary," 22) +
''Hongaku shisō'', the idea that all beings are "inherently" enlightened, is an almost universal assumption in the Japanese Buddhist tradition. This idea also played an important role in the indigenization of Buddhism in Japan and in the development of the syncretistic religious ethos that underlies Japanese society. Through most of Japanese history, the idea of the inherent enlightenment (including non-sentient beings such as plants and rocks—which expanded to include assumptions such as the non-differentiation between "indigenous" kami and the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the transcendence of all dualities (including good and evil) as an ideal—was pervasive and unquestioned in much of Japanese religious activity and thought. Recently some Japanese Buddhist scholars, notably Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shirō of the Sōtō Zen sect [at] Komazawa University, have questioned the legitimacy of this ethos, claiming that it is antithetical to basic Buddhist ideas such as ''anātman'' ("no-self"), and that it is the source of many social problems in Japan. They call for a conscious recognition and rejection of this ethos, and a return to "true Buddhism." After presenting a brief outline of the history and significance of these ideas in Japan, Hakamaya and Matsumoto's critique is explained and examined. Some of the academic and social reactions to this critique are also explored. +
Articles/'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Commentary on the Dharmatā Chapter of the Dharmadharmatāvibhāgakārikās +
'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's (1392-1481) commentary on the second chapter of the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā'' (RGVV) is introduced by a detailed explanation of the ''dharmatā'' chapter in the ''Dharmadharmatāvibhāgakārikās'' (DhDhVK). This is, according to gZhon nu dpal, because the detailed presentation of ''āśrayaparivŗtti'' in the DhDhV is a commentary on the ''bodhi'' chapter of the RGV. In both texts, ''āśrayaparivŗtti'' refers to a positively described ultimate which is revealed by removing adventitious stains. Whereas in the RGV this is the Buddha-element (or ''tathāgatagarbha'') with its inseparable qualities, it is the ''dharmatā'', suchness or natural luminosity (''prakŗtiprabhāsvaratā'') in the ''Dharmadharmatāvibhāgavŗtti'' (DhDhVV). This luminosity is compared to primordially pure space, gold and water which must have their adventitious stains removed before they can be discovered. From this gZhon nu dpal concludes that the DhDhVV belongs to the Madhyamaka tradition. Consequently, the typical Yogācāra negation of external objects is taken as referring to the latters' non-existence in terms of ''svabhāva''.<br> What makes gZhon nu dpal's DhDhV-commentary so interesting is his ''mahāmudrā'' interpretation of a central topic in the DhDhV, i.e., the abandonment of all "mentally created characteristic signs" (''nimittas''). The latter practice plays a crucial role in the cultivation of non-conceptual wisdom, which is taken as the cause or the foundation of ''āśrayaparivŗtti'' in the DhDhV. Based on Sahajavajra's (11th century) ''Tattvadaśakaţīkā'' gZhon nu dpal explains that the ''nimittas'' are abandoned by directly realizing their natural luminosity which amounts to a direct or non-conceptual experience of their true nature. To be sure, while the usual Mahāyāna approach involves an initial analysis of the ''nimittas'', namely, an analytic meditation which eventually turns into non-conceptual abiding in the same way as a fire kindled from rubbing pieces of wood bums the pieces of wood themselves (gZhon nu dpal explains this on the basis of Kamalaśīla's commentary on the ''Nirvikalpapraveśadhāraņī''), ''mahāmudrā'' pith-instructions enable a meditation of direct perceptions right from the beginning. In view of the fact that such direct perceptions of emptiness (or ''dharmatā'' in this context here) usually start from the first Bodhisattva-level onwards, gZhon nu dpal also tries to show that the four yogas of ''mahāmudrā'' are in accordance with the four ''prayogas'' of the DhDhV. It should be noted that such a ''mahāmudrā'' interpretation must have already existed in India, as can be seen from Jñānakīrti's (10th/11th-century) ''Tattvāvatāra'', in which a not-specifically-Tantric form of ''mahāmudrā'' practice is related with the traditional fourfold Mahāyāna meditation by equating "Mahāyāna" in ''Lańkāvatārasūtra'' X.257d with ''mahāmudrā''. The ''pādas'' X.257cd "A yogin who is established in a state without appearances sees Mahāyāna" thus mean that one finally sees or realizes ''mahāmudrā''.<br> To sum up, the DhDhV plays an important role for gZhon nu dpal in that it provides a canonical basis for his ''mahāmudrā'' tradition, and by showing that the ''dharmatā'' portion of the DhDhV is a commentary on the second chapter of the RGV, gZhon nu dpal skillfully links his ''mahāmudrā'' interpretation to the standard Indian work on Buddha-nature, and thus to a concept which considerably facilitated the bridging of the Sūtras with the Tantras. ([https://www.researchgate.net/publication/29770680_Gos_Lo_tsa_ba_gZhon_nu_dpal's_Commentary_on_the_Dharmata_Chapter_of_the_Dharmadharmatavibhagakarikas Source Accessed April 1, 2020])
Articles/'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā (Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos kyi 'grel bshad de kho na nyid rab tu gsal ba'i me long)-Review by Hugon +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
This book contains a critical edition of a Tibetan commentary composed by 'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal (1392-1481) on the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā''. The ''Ratnagotravibhāga'', attributed to Maitreya, and its ''vyākhyā'', attributed to Asaṅga, are of special significance in Buddhism for the discussion of the 'buddha-nature' (''tathāgatagarbha''), i.e. the idea that the nature of a buddha is inherent in every human being. gZhon nu dpal's commentary (hereafter: ZhP), which has never been published before, provides an account on this issue which is imposing both in view of its size as well as its historical and philosophical importance. Mathes' edition thus provides an important and valuable contribution to future studies on the subject.<br> The edition proper (pp. 1-576) is preceded by a brief introduction (pp. ix–xvii) which, besides editorial remarks, deals with gZhon nu dpal's life and education on the basis of an unpublished biography by his disciple Zhwa dmar Chos kyi grags pa (1453-1524), and of the ''bKa' gdams chos 'byung'' of Las chen Kun dga' rgyal mtshan (b. 1440), another of his disciples.[1] This information adds to the preliminary observations by Mathes in an article entitled '"Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Extensive Commentary on and Study of the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā" (Mathes 2002)[2], which gives a more detailed biographical account and discusses the position that gZhon nu dpal holds in ZhP.<br> 'Gos Lo tsā ba Yid bzang rtse ba gZhon nu dpal is well known to Tibetologists for his work entitled ''The Blue Annals'' (''Deb ther sngon po''), composed a few years earlier than ZhP.[3] This mine of biographical, bibliographical and historical information already gives us an idea of the mastery that this remarkable scholar had of all fields of Buddhist studies. Mathes' introduction informs us of the key elements of gZhon nu dpal's thorough education in all the major religious traditions with the most important masters of the time, such as Tsong kha pa (1357-1419), the Fifth Karmapa De bzhin gshegs pa (1384-1415), the rNying ma pa teacher sGrol ma ba Sangs rgyas rin chen (1350-1430), or the Sa skya master Rong ston Shes bya kun rig (1367-1449). gZhon nu dpal distinguishes himself by his open-minded and non-sectarian approach, which is reflected in his ZhP, where he combines the commentarial tradition of rNgog Blo ldan shes rab (1059-1109) with sGam po pa's (1079- 1153) "Great Seal" (''mahāmudrā'') interpretation. The introduction also deals with the circumstances of the redaction of ZhP — composed in 1473 as gZhon nu dpal was nearly blind and had to dictate his work from memory over a period of four months — and of the carving of the printing blocks as described in the colophon. Mathes notes that gZhon nu dpal obviously had access to the Sanskrit original of the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā'' as he frequently discusses Sanskrit words from this text and occasionally mentions or (politely) criticizes the existing translation by rNgog Lo tsä ba Bio ldan shes rab, which is the one found in the canon (sDe dge ''bsTan 'gyur'' 4024–4025).[4] Mathes (p.xv) also mentions a translation by Nag tsho Lo tsā ba which gZhon nu dpal occasionally discusses, but gives no specifics about this translator.[5] By comparing the quotations of the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā'' in ZhP with the Sanskrit text (edited by E.H. Johnston)[6] and the Tibetan translation found in the canon (edited by Z. Nakamura on the basis of Sde dge, Narthang and Peking ''bsTan 'gyur'')[7], Mathes establishes that gZhon nu dpal's version, in several cases, better fits the original (p. xiv).
[https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=ast-002%3A2006%3A60%3A%3A248#252 Read more here . . .]
<h5>Notes</h5>
#Other bigraphical sources mentioned in Mathes 2002:80 (see n.2) include the ''Kaṃ tshang brgyud pa rin po che'i rnam thar'' of Situ and 'Be lo, the ''Gangs can mkhas grub rim byon ming mdzod'', and Khetsun Sangpo's ''Bibliographical Dictionary''.
#Published in: ''Religion and Secular Culture in Tibet'', Tibetan Studies II, PIATS 2000, ed. by H. Blezer with the assistance of A. Zadoks. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library Vol. 2/2. Leiden: Brill, pp. 79-96.
#For a translation of this work, see George N. Roerich, ''The Blue Annals'', reprint Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass [First ed. Calcutta, 1949; second ed. Delhi, 1976; reprints Delhi, 1978, 1988, 1995, 1996].
#Mathes (p.xv n.44) gives two references of such passages in ZhP; in the first one, gZhon nu dpal says that rNgog Blo ldan shes rab's translation is "somewhat incorrect" (''cung zad mi legs te'') (ZhP 94,4).
#It is most probably Nag (')tsho Lo tsä ba Tshul khrims rgyal ba (1011-1064), who was a student of Atisa. According to gZhon nu dpal's ''Blue Annals'' (''Deb ther sngon po''), Nag tsho Lo tsā ba and Atiśa were asked by rNgog Byang chub 'byung gnas of Yer pa to translate Asaṅga's commentary on the ''Mahāyāna-Uttaratantra'', i.e. the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā''. See George N. Roerich, op. cit., p. 259. In ZhP 4,19-20, gZhon nu dpal refers to a translation by Dīpaṃkara and Nag tsho. A discussion of Nag tsho's translation appears for instance in ZhP 482,16.
#The ''Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra'', Patna, 1950: The Bihar Research Society.
#''Zōwa-taiyaku Kukyōichijōhōshōron-kenkyū'', Tokyo, 1967: Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan.
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>’Gos Lo-tsa-ba gZhon-nu-dpal (1392-1481) was one of the most brilliant scholars in Tibet and is famous for his religious history, the ''Blue Annals'' {''Deb thersngon po''). He is also known as a translator (''lo tsa ba'') and for his contributions to Buddhist doctrine and philosophy. However, except for the ''Blue Annals'' his own work has not been available until now. For this reason this first publication of a doctrinal commentary, ''Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma’i bstan bcos kyi ’grel bshad de kho na nyid rab tu gsal ba’i me long'' (''ZhP''), is most welcome. In this commentary he presents a unique interpretation of the teaching of the Buddha-nature (''tathagatagarbha'') in the ''Ratnagotravibhaga/vyakhya'' (''RGV/V'') following the ''mahāmudrā'' tradition. Of more than fifty commentaries on the ''RGV'' known to have been written in Tibet, the ''ZhP'' is one of the most extensive and remarkable.<br> The editor, Klaus-Dieter Mathes, has previously contributed to the study of the Tibetan hermeneutical traditions of Yogācāra works such as the ''Dharmadharmatāvibhāga''. He has already published a survey of this ''RGV'' commentary (p. xviii), and has also studied this commentary for his Habilitation, currently being prepared for publication (p. xi). In the introduction to the book under review, Mathes presents a brief biography of gZhon-nu-dpal and sketches his general philosophical position (pp. ix-xi). He then discusses the sources on which his edition is based (pp. xi-xiv), selected particular features of the ''ZhP'' (pp. xiv-xv), and his editorial method (pp. xv-xvi), ending with technical notes (pp. xvi-xvii) and bibliography (pp. xviii-xix).<br> The main part of this book consists of a critical edition of the ''ZhP'' in 576 pages, based on a manuscript in ''dbu-med'' script (A) and a block print (B). The block print was completed in 1479, soon after the composition of the ''ZhP'' in 1473 (pp. xii-xiii). Regarding the relationship between the manuscript and block print, Mathes states: "This leaves us with the probable case that A and B share a common source" (p. xii). As to the editorial method, he states, "My editing policy has been to compare gZhon nu dpal’s quotations with the Derge and Peking editions of the Kanjur and Tanjur, but to leave the original reading wherever possible." He also states, "Unusual or wrong spellings have been adapted to the usage of modern Tibetan," and he provides a list of emended spellings (pp. xv-xvi). Mathes has thus "corrected" the old orthography found in the two manuscripts into modern spellings. Though this allows a smoother reading for modern Tibetan readers, it might have been better to retain as much as possible the spellings current in the late fifteenth century, if they can be identified as such. (Kano, "Review of '''Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā''," 143)<br><br>
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064310?seq=1 Read more here . . .]
Articles/'Gos Lo tsā ba gZhon nu dpal's Extensive Commentary on and Study of the Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
In this paper I present some preliminary observations on 'Gos Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal's (1392-1481) commentary on the ''Ratnagotravibhāgavyākhyā'', which I am editing and evaluating as a part of my habilitation project. Three years ago I gained access to a photocopy of a 698-folio-long handwritten ''dbu med'' version of this text.[1] Like the Indian ''vyākhyā'', the commentary is divided into five chapters. Their headings are listed together with the folio numbers on a cover page, which bears the seal of the Zhva dmar pa and assigns the letter ''ha'' to the volume containing Gzhon nu dpal's commentary. It is thus reasonable to assume that the original was kept in the library of the Shamarpas in Yangpacan, probably already from the time of the famous Fourth Shamarpa Chos kyi grags pa (1453-1524), who was a disciple of Gzhon nu dpal. After the war with Prithivi Narayan Shah in 1792, Yangpacan was seized by the Gelug government and the text found its way to Drepung, where many other Kagyu texts were kept. Recently I received a photocopy of a Yangpacan block-print from Tibet with the same text on 463 folios. This could be the text described by A khu ching Shes rab rgya mtsho as having 461 folios.[2] The numbering starts anew with each chapter; thus a small calculation mistake could explain the difference of two folios. (Mathes, introductory remarks, 79)
<h5>Notes</h5>
#'Gos ''Lo tsā ba'' Gzhon nu dpal: ''Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos kyi 'grel bshad de kho na nyid rab tu gsal ba'i me long'', 698 fols. (''dbu med''), unpublished.
#See Lokesh Chandra (1963.1:523.11341), l am indebted to B. Quessel, British Library, for this reference. +
A
Articles/A Clue to the Authorship of the Awakening of Faith: "Śikṣānanda's" Redaction of the Word "Nien" +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The text, ''Ta-ch'eng ch'i-hsin lun''<sup>f</sup> (The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna, henceforth abbreviated as AFM), has been the center of a long controversy in the field of Buddhist studies. It has been suspected by Mochizuki Shinkō<sup>g</sup>[1] and others to be a Chinese fabrication, while Tokiwa Daijō and others defend its alleged Indian origin. The present short article will not review the past and present scholarship on the AFM or bring in my own studies on the matter.[2] It will be devoted to one tiny but crucial issue: the fate of a key concept in the two "translations"—Paramārtha's original (AFM) and Śikṣānanda's version (AFMS for short). The concept is ''nien'' and ''wu-nien''. To state the conclusion here so as to simplify our discussion: the ''nien'' complex, in my opinion, cannot be understood without reference to a pre-Buddhist (Han Chinese) usage of the term. It is foreign or jarring enough to the person responsible for the AFMS that it has been systematically modified or outright substituted so as to bring the AFM in line with the Yogācāra (Wei-shih,<sup>i</sup> Vijñaptimātratā) philosophy. By showing the sinitic character of the ''nien'' ideology, its centrality in the AFM, and the redaction of it by the AFMS, we can come one step closer to resolving the long controversy over the authorship of the AFM. From the limited evidence in this one short study, it would appear that the AFM was authored in China and the AFMS was a conscious redaction of the AFM in China (or Korea?[3]) to bring this work into line with the demands of Hsüan-tsang's<sup>j</sup> Wei-shih philosophy.<br> We will begin with a survey of modern Sanskritists' attempts at identifying ''nien'' and why such attempts have ultimately failed. Then we will look at a similar attempt by the AFMS to edit off the ''nien'' ideology and how by so doing it violated the integrity of the original AFM message. The sinitic meaning of the term ''nien'' and ''wu-nien'' will be demonstrated with precedents in Han thought, usages in the Six Dynasties and in Ch'an.<sup>k</sup> I will conclude with a word on why AFMS was produced. (Lai, "A Clue to the Authorship of the ''Awakening of Faith''," 34–35)
<h5>Notes</h5>
#Mochizuki, ''Daijo kishinron no kenkyu<sup>cn</sup> (Kyoto, 1922).
#Ongoing project since my dissertation (Harvard, 1975).
#Mochizuki suggests Korea because of the discovery of the AFMS in Korea.
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>The term ' ''ārambaṇa'' ' is one of the technical terms unique to Buddhism. Being equivalent to Pali ' ''ārammaṇa'' ' and Cl. Skt. ' ''ālambana'' ' it is usually used in the sense of 'basis of cognition' or 'sense-object', e.g. ''rūpa'' as ''ārambaṇa'' of ''cakṣurvijñāna'', or ''dharma'' as that of ''manovijñāna''. The usual equivalent to this term in Tibetan and Chinese language is ' ''dmigs pa'' ' and '所 縁', respectively.<br> What I am going to examine here is whether or not the same meaning mentioned above can be applied to this term used in the Ratnagotravibhāga (RGV), I, 9.<br><br>
[https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ibk1952/10/2/10_2_757/_pdf/-char/en Read more here . . .] +
Articles/A Comparative Study of Taehyŏn, Wŏnhyo, and Fazangs’ Views on Ālayavijñāna and Tathāgatagarbha +
The concept of ''ālayavijñāna'' has been accepted in East Asia by either demonstrating its association to ''tathāgatagarbha'' or negating it, since Bodhiruci (fl. 508-35) introduced it by translating the ''Daśabhūmikasūtra-śāstra''. It was in this context that the ''Awakening of Faith'' (C. ''Dasheng qixin lun'' 大乘起信論) drew East Asian Buddhist scholiasts’ attention. The central message of the ''Awakening of Faith'' that ''tathāgatagarbha'' is synthesized to ''ālayavijñāna'' in neither-identical-nor-different condition is directly associated to the contemporary issue of how ''ālayavijñāna'' serves as the basis of sentient being’s enlightenment. Silla Yogācāra exegete Taehyŏn 大賢 (ca. 8th century) is one of the East Asian monks who noted the ''Awakening of Faith'' and articulates the relationship between ''tathāgatagarbha'' and ''ālayavijñāna'' in the ''Taesŭng kisillon naeŭi yak t’amgi'' 大乘起信論內義略探記, his commentary of the ''Awakening of Faith''. This article explores Taehyŏn’s views on ''ālayavijñāna'' and ''tathāgatagarbha'' in his commentary of the ''Awakening of Faith'' in comparison to those of other exegetes, such as Wŏnhyo 元曉 (617–686) and Fazang 法藏 (643–712). This article seeks to demonstrate on the basis of this examination that there were distinct doctrinal positions on the ''tathāgatagarbha'' of the ''Awakening of Faith'', which are also associated to their understandings of consciousness system. +
Articles/A Critical Edition and Translation of a Text Fragment from Abhayākaragupta's Āmnāyamañjarī: Göttingen, Cod.ms.sanscr.259b +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
An encyclopedic author active during the reign of King Rāmapāla (ca. 1084–1126/1077–
ca. 1119) of the Pāla Dynasty, Abhayākaragupta is renowned for his erudition in a vast range of subjects in Buddhism.[1] His expertise is especially prominent in, though not limited to, the area of Tantric Buddhism, as attested by the well-known "Garland Trilogy" (''phreng ba skor gsum''), i.e. his three major works on Tantric ritual (''Vajrāvalī'', ''Jyotirmañjarī'', and ''Niṣpannayogāvalī''), which exercised a great influence on the Buddhism of the later period in Nepal and Tibet.<br> The Peking bsTan 'gyur includes twenty-six works ascribed to Abhayākaragupta, of which twenty-three are in the domain of Tantra; the other three deal with non-Tantric Buddhism.[2] Though most of these works are only available through Tibetan translation, some important texts of Abhayākaragupta are preserved in Sanskrit. The following works in Sanskrit have hitherto been edited: ''Niṣpannayogāvalī''; ''Vajrāvalī''; ''Jyotimañjarī''; ''Ucchuṣmajambhalasādhana''; ''Svādhiṣṭhānakramopadeśa''.[3] In addition, Sanskrit manuscripts are known to exist of the ''Pañcakramatātparyapañjikā Kramakaumudī'', ''Kālacakrāvatāra'', and ''Abhayapaddhati''.[4] According to some recent information, furthermore, Sanskrit manuscripts of the ''Āmnāyamañjarī'', ''Munimatālaṅkāra'' and ''Madhyamakamañjarī''[5] have been discovered in Tibet [6]<br> The ''Amnāyamañjarī'', which may be called the magnum opus of Abhayākaragupta, is a commentary on the ''Saṃpuṭodbhavatantra'' and an encyclopedic compendium of Indian Tantric Buddhism. According to Bühnemann, Abhayākaragupta undertook the composition of the ''Amnāyamañjarī'' before 1101 or 1108 C.E. (twenty-fifth regnal year of Rāmapāla) and completed it in 1113 or 1120 C.E (thirty-seventh year of Rāmapāla). As has been remarked,[7] the ''Saṃpuṭodbhavatantra'', though traditionally considered to be an Explanatory Tantra (''vyākhyātantra'') of the ''Hevajra'' and ''Saṃvara'' cycles, integrates many doctrinal and ritual elements adopted from several heterogeneous textual traditions such as that of the ''Guhyasamāja''. Because of this "ecumenical" character of the ''Saṃpuṭodbhavatantra'', the ''Amnāyamañjarī'' as its commentary also encompasses a great variety of subjects relating to the doctrine and ritual of Tantric Buddhism. The ''Amnāyamañjarī'' is referred to several times by Abhayākaragupta himself in his other works, such as the ''Munimatālaṅkāra'',
''Abhayapaddhati'', ''Pañcakramatātparyapañjikā'', and ''Vajrāvalī''.[8] In turn, the ''Āmnāyamañjarī''
refers to his other works [9]<br> Though, as remarked above, the existence of a presumably complete Sanskrit manuscript of the ''Āmnāyamañjarī'' has been reported, it still remains inaccessible to us. However, a single folio fragment of this text has been recently identified in the collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in Göttingen. In this paper, we describe this manuscript fragment and present a critical edition and an annotated translation of the text contained in it. We also include as appendices an edition of the corresponding part of the Tibetan translation as well as parallel passages found in Kamalanātha's ''Ratnāvalī'' and Abhayākaragupta's ''Abhayapaddhati''. (Tomabechi and Kano, Abhayākaragupta and the ''Āmnāyamañjarī'', 22–23)<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
#For the dates and works of Abhayākaragupta, see Erb 1997: 27–29: Bühnemann and Tachikawa 1991: Bühnemann 1992.<br>
#For bibliographical information on these works, see Bühnemann 1992: 123–125.<br>
#The ''Svādhiṣṭhānakramopadeśa'' (or ''Dvibhujasaṃvaropadeśa'') was edited by Okuyama (1993).<br>
#The Centre for Tantric Studies at University of Hamburg is currently working on a joint project to the ''Abhayapaddhati'' in collaboration with CTRC (China Tibetology Research Centre). Tomabechi is preparing a critical edition of the ''Kramakaumudī'' based on the manuscript copy preserved at CTRC.<br>
#The latter text is not included in the bsTan 'gyur, but is mentioned by Abhayākaragupta himself in the ''Munimatālaṅkāra'', D 145v6; P 179r8: ''mdor bsdus pa ni kho bos dbu ma'i snye mar phul du byung bar rnam par bshad do; Āmnāyamañjarī'', D 28r1; P 31r2–3: '' 'di'i skye ba dang 'jig pa de dag kyang dbu ma'i snye mar nges par dpyad zin pas'' (P: ''pa'i'') ... ; D 76v7–77r1; P 86v2-3: ''thsad ma gang gis 'di rang bzhin med pa nyid du bsgrub pa de ni bdag cag gis rgyas pa dang bcas par dbu ma'i snye mar nye bar bkod cing; D 162r5–6; P 179v1: bzlog pa kho na las de kho na nyid 'di rnams so zhes dbu ma'i snye mar nges par dpyad zin to (P: ''te''). See also Isoda 1984: 3 n. 14.<br>
#These texts are registered in the (unpublished) catalogue of microfilms kept at the CTRC in Beijing. Tomabechi confirmed the existence of the copies of these manuscripts during his visit to Beijing in May–June 2007.<br>
#Noguchi 1984 and Skorupski 1996: 201.<br>
#See ''Munimatālaṅkāra'', D 89r4; P 93v2, D 218r7; P 287r4, ''Kramakaumudī'', fol. 22v4, 27r1, 53v4. For the ''Abhayapaddhati'' see Bühnemann and Tachikawa 1991: xiv and Bühnemann 1992:123; and for the ''Vajrāvalī'', see Bühnemann and Tachikawa 1991: xvi and Bühnemann 1992: 125.<br>
#''Vajrāvalī'' (in ĀM D 72v3; P 82r2, D 97r1; P 108r7, D 188v7; P 208r5, D 24Or2; P 266v4, D 257v2; P 288r4, D 260r4; P 291r5–6), ''Jyotirmañjarī'' (in ĀM D 24Or2; P 266v3, D 260r3; P 291r4), ''Madhyamakamañjarī'' (in ĀM D 28r1; P 31r2–3, D 76v7-77r1; P 86v2–3, D 162r6; P 179v1; See note 6 above), ''Munimatālaṃkāra'' (in ĀM D 12r3; P 13v3, D 24v5; P 27v2, D 24v6; P 27v4, D 33v4; P 37v1–2, D 41v7–42r1; P 47r2, D 52r1; P 56r6, D 77r1; P 86v3, D 112v5–6); P 125r3, D 174v7; P 193r8, D 225v3; P 249r2, D 270r1–2; P 302v6), ''Abhayapaddhati'' (in ĀM D 77r1; P 86v2, D 209r2; P 229v8), ''Cakrasaṃvarābhisamaya'' (in ĀM D 172v6; P 191r6–7, D 242v3; P 269v7).
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The Sanskrit text, unearthed by Dr. Bailey, contains a passage from which important deductions may be drawn on a vexed question of the history of Buddhist dogma. It falls into two parts, the first of which consists of the opening verses of several works. Two of these, the ''Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra'' and the ''Mūlamadhyamakārikās'', are too well known to need comment, though the copyist distinguishes himself by transposing the authors' names. Of the remainder, the first is from an unnamed work, which I cannot identify but which dealt perhaps with the "false views", and the third is attributed to the ''Mahāyānasamāsa'', a title apparently unknown to the Tibetan and Chinese translations; the application of the epithet ''nirmala'' to ''dharma'' suggests the possibility that it is a work of the Prajñāpāramitā school. The last verse in this part is described as opening the ''Ratnagotravibhāgaśāstra'' of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, that is, the ''Uttaratantra'', the crabbed Tibetan version of which has recently been rendered into English with remarkable skill by Dr. Obermiller in ''Acta Orientalia'', ix. The Chinese translation (Taisho Issaikyo ed., No. 1611) is usually styled the ''Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra'', despite the fact that the title literally translated, as pointed out long ago by Nanjio, is ''Uttaraikayānaratnagotraśāstra'', where ''ekayāna'' should presumably be taken as the translator's interpretation of the significance of the term ''tantra''. According to P. C. Bagchi, ''Le Canon bouddhique en Chine'', p. 249, a Chinese catalogue of A.D. 597 knows an alternative title, of which the first part is ''Ratnagotravibhāga'', in agreement with the roll. The second part of the text is an excerpt of nine verses from the same work, chapter iii, 1-7 and 9, according to Dr. Obermiller, who has amalgamated the two verses, 5 and 6, into one; the copyist has also numbered the verses, but wrongly, treating the ''Śārdūlavikrīḍita'' verse, number 7, as two, by reason of the transcription dividing each ''pāda'' into two parts at the cæsura. (Bailey and Johnson, "A Fragment of the ''Uttaratantra'' in Sanskrit," 76–78)
Buddha-nature theory, the idea that all beings possess in some way the potential for enlightenment, is found in all Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions. First appearing in India around the third or fourth century CE, it spread to China beginning in the fifth century with the translation of the ''Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra'' and other buddha-nature scriptures, where it inspired the concept of original enlightenment, most famously articulated in the ''Awakening of Faith''. Tibetans received the teaching first in the eighth century with the translations of the sūtras, but it only began to have an impact in the eleventh century with the translation of the ''Ratnagotravibhāga''. Conforming to neither Madhyamaka nor Yogācāra, buddha-nature has been incorporated somewhat uneasily into both, although as a positivistic theory of reality it has been more easily accepted by Yogācārin traditions. +
Articles/A Late Proponent of the Jo nang gZhan stong Doctrine: Ngag dbang tshogs gnyis rgya mtsho (1880–1940) +
Although the doctrines and leading early figures of the Jonang tradition have been the focus of increasing scholarly attention over the past thirty years, much has yet to be written about developments in the tradition during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The goal of this paper is to shed light on this later period by focusing on one particular Jo nang thinker, Ngag dbang tshogs gnyis rgya mtsho (1880-1940). In order to contextualize his distinctive view and style, I will begin by sketching the historical evolution of the Jo nang tradition across Central and Eastern Tibet, and by providing some biographical and doctrinal information about Tshogs gnyis rgya mtsho’s main teacher, ’Ba’ mda’ Thub bstan dge legs rgya mtsho (1844-1904). +
This article introduces two studies by classical Tibetan Buddhist scholars that explain the range of meanings of the term ''zhentong''. The two texts—one by Pema Bidza (twentieth century), the other by Tāranātha (1575–1634)—are analytical studies that summarize and compare the various views of previous scholars who wrote on zhentong. Such interpretive studies are valuable in that they present us with different ways of interpreting the heterogeneous material classified under the rubric "zhentong." They also suggest ways of contextualizing the different levels of discourse found within this material. +
Articles/A Luminous Transcendence of Views: The Thirty Apophatic Topics in dPal dbyangs's Thugs kyi sgron ma +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
The constructed nostalgia of the later Great Perfection, or rDzogs chen, tradition gazes backward temporally and geographically toward eighth-century India, reminiscing an era in which the subcontinent is thought to have served as generous benefactor of Dharma gifts to the fledging Buddhist empire of Tibet. Insistence on the familiar Buddhist requirements for true transmission—authenticity and legitimacy founded in lineage and longevity—certainly inspired many of its textual "revelations" beginning in the eleventh century. Many of those nostalgic constructions of rNying ma history have been well documented by modern scholars.<br> It would be rash to assert, however, that despite all those imaginings, there were no historical primordia of the Great Perfection in the preceding centuries. The textual roots of the Mind Series (''sems sde'') texts are testament to these early stirrings, as are the Dunhuang manuscripts identified by Sam van Schaik as expressing a form of “Tibetan Zen.”[1] A third seed was planted via the Tibetan Mahāyoga tantra tradition, and within it, germinations of Great Perfection gnoseology, observable prominently in the ninth-century works of dPal dbyangs, who in some colophons and later histories is designated gNyan dPal dbyangs. His works include six canonical verse texts retrospectively entitled ''sGron ma drug'', or ''Six Lamps'',[2] and the ''rDo rje sems dpa’ zhus lan'' (''Vajrasattva Questions and Answers'') catechism found at Dunhuang in three manuscript copies. I have discussed these texts and their most likely Indian inspirations elsewhere. Here, I highlight a particular text within the ''Six Lamps'', his ''Thugs kyi sgron ma'' (''Lamp of the Mind''), as intending to establish, quite early on, a standard set of topics we see well developed in systemizations of the early Great Perfection tradition a few centuries later, and perhaps even before that, in Mind Series texts such as those attributed to Mañjuśrīmitra like the ''Byang chub kyi sems rdo la gser zhun'' and the ''Byang chub sems bsgom pa''.[3]<br> Of all dPal dbyangs’s texts, the ''Thugs kyi sgron ma'' is the ideological, linguistic, and practical hinge to his Mayājāla corpus as a whole, linking the other five of the ''Six Lamps'' texts and providing convincing evidence for accepting those ''Six Lamps'' as a collection, as well as offering insight to the later interpretations of his catechism. The ''Thugs kyi sgron ma'' displays dPal dbyangs’s full range of presentation. It includes, on the one hand, dPal dbyangs’s direct recommendations to Mahāyoga tantra, and on the other hand, his depictions of the realization of reality as utterly unstructured, unmediated, and transcendent of any dichotomization or reification, using the apophatic language sprinkled throughout the rest of the ''Six Lamps'' texts. Thus, by emphasizing these two elements—the transgressive and the transcendent—within a single text, the ''Thugs kyi sgron ma'' may have served as a valuable field guide to early Tibetan Mahāyoga and at least to some degree as a useful strategic plan for the cultivation of something more sustainable and vibrant on Tibetan soil, the Great Perfection. As I hope to show, dPal dbyangs’s very deliberate indexing of these topics appears to have been intended to standardize them as interpretive categories even while undercutting the value of reliance upon them as such, redefining Mahāyoga tantra as it found its earliest shape in Tibet. (Takahashi, introductory remarks, 159–60)
<h5>Notes</h5>
#Sam van Schaik, “The Early Days of the Great Perfection,” ''Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies'' 27.1: 167 and 201.
#''The Six Lamps'' texts are as follows: ''The Lamp of the Mind'' (''Thugs kyi sgron ma''), ''The Lamp of the Correct View'' (''lTa ba yang dag sgron ma''), ''The Lamp Illuminating the Extremes'' (''mTha'i mun sel sgron ma''), ''The Lamp of Method and Wisdom'' (''Thabs shes sgron ma''), ''The Lamp of the Method of Meditation'' (''bsGom thabs kyi sgron ma''), and ''The Lamp of the Precious View'' (''lTa ba rin chen sgron ma''). These are P5918, P5919, P5920, P5921, P5922, and P5923, respectively. There are other ''Lamp'' collections in both Nyingma and Bön traditions, usually comprising four or six texts. The most prominent example of these is from the Bönpo Great Perfection lineage, the ''sGron ma drug gi gdams pa''. See Christopher Hatchell's "Advice on the Six Lamps" in ''Naked Seeing: The Great Perfection, the Wheel of Time, and Visionary Buddhism in Renaissance Tibet'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), and Jean-Luc Achard’s English translation in the ''Six Lamps: Secret Dzogchen Instructions of the Bön Tradition'' (Boston: Wisdom, 2017).
#See Namkhai Norbu and Kennard Lipman’s ''Primordial Experience: An Introduction to rDzogs-chen Meditation'' (Boston: Shambhala, 2001). Karen Liljenberg has discovered parallel passages to dPal dbyangs’s ''Lamp'' text the ''Thabs shes sgron ma'' in the ''rTse mo byung rgyal'', a text she has identified as belonging to the ''sems sde'' corpus the ''Sems sde lung chen po bco brgyad''. Karen Liljenberg, “A Critical Study of the Thirteen Later Translations of the Dzogchen Mind Series” (doctoral dissertation, SOAS, 2012), 57-60. I suspect there are further discoveries to be made of such borrowings between early Tibetan Mahāyoga texts and those of the early Mind Series. See also Liljenberg's paper elsewhere in this issue.
This essay deals with how the Sanskrit term ''tathāgatagarbha'' is used in the Mahāyāna text to which it gave its name, the ''Tathāgatagarbhasūtra''. Whether the ''Tathāgatagarbhasūtra'' is the oldest text in which the term appears or not, the particular way in which it is applied there documents that the authors created or made use of it while associating it with many diverse aspects, less in a philosophical or ''abhidharma''-like way but rather in a loose and associative style, opening the door to incorporate the different connotations described metaphorically in the sūtra. The rich illustrations found in the sūtra help us understand the early context in which the
term was coined and took shape. It will become evident that it is impossible to reduce the genesis and meaning of the term ''tathāgatagarbha'' by way of a monoexplanatory model. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
=====A Philosophy of Plants=====
The philosopher Tomonobu Imamichi (1922–2012) pointed out that most Japanese family crests are based on plant designs, indicating that, compared with cultures that employ dragons and eagles, or lions and tigers in their heraldry, Japanese cultural patterns show a strong tendency toward adaptability and harmony. Plants survive not as individuals but by species adaptation. This means that they grow where their seed randomly falls, existing within a pattern of dramatic change as their branches and leaves grow. Imamichi wrote, "In the very workings of their life, plants are a reiteration of elegant beauty as they bud, bloom, fall, proliferate, fruit, and change color, all within an intense yet inconspicuous struggle for life" (''Tōyō no bigaku'' [Aesthetics of the East], TBS Britannica, 1980). Plants take root in that space where their seed falls and form a community with other plants. They maintain harmony with their surroundings and continually transform themselves, adapting to changes in their environment. As Imamichi stated, the workings of their life are inconspicuous, but there is no doubt a severity of struggle to survive and flourish.<br>
=====Are Plants and Trees Nonsentient?=====
Mahayana Buddhism in general does not consider trees and plants to be capable of sensation and, with the exception of the Lotus and Śūraṅgama sutras, does not hesitate to place them on a par with tiles and stones. For example, the Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra (Sutra of the Great Accumulation of Treasures) says, "Plants and trees, tiles and stones, like shadows, are not sentient" (Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra, 78, Discourse to Pūrṇa, 17.2.4). Why is this so?<br> The geographer Yutaka Sakaguchi reports that recent research has shown that from the middle of the third century to around the sixth or seventh century the world experienced severe climate change in the form of cooling, drier conditions (see "Kako ichiman sanzennen no kikō no henka to jinrui no rekishi" [Climate change and the history of human beings
during the past thirteen thousand years], ''Kōza, bunmei to kankyō, 6: Rekishi to kikō'' [Lecture series, 6, Civilization and the environment: History and climate] [Asakura Shoten, 1995 (revised edition, 2008)], 1–11). The Mahayana sutras, with their prohibition of meat eating, were compiled at this time. Why this prohibition was added to the small simple meals demanded by asceticism can thus be explained in ecoreligious terms. In all probability, the acceptance of ascetic behavior in relation to food and the rejection of meat by religious practitioners and the societies that supported them derived from severe and long-term food shortages. At such a time, rather than rearing pigs and other animals on plant food and then eating their meat, many more human lives could be sustained by a considerably lesser volume by eating vegetable foodstuffs directly. "Hence, in order to keep both monks and lay followers free from what was deemed unnecessary inconvenience and qualms, the sentience of plants was, by and large, ignored [in the precept against the taking of life]" (Lambert Schmithausen, ''Buddhism and Nature: The Lecture Delivered on the Occasion of the EXPO 1990'' [International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1991], 7).<br>
=====Plants and the Lotus Sutra=====
Chapter 5 of the Lotus Sutra, "The Parable of the Herbs," likens the teachings of the Buddha benefiting all beings equally to the rain that falls on all trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses, enabling them to grow and blossom, producing fruits. This chapter was to have an important influence on the Chinese Tiantai and Japanese Tendai schools of Buddhism. Whereas the Chinese Huayan school held that plants are not sentient and cannot achieve enlightenment, in commentaries such as Fazang's (643–712) ''Huayanjing tanxuanji'' (Records of the search for the profundities of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra), Tiantai scholars advocated plants' capability of attaining buddhahood. This must have been because of the image presented in "The Parable of the Herbs." (Read the entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here])
No abstract given. Here is the appendix in full:<br><br>
Common throughout the De bźin bśegs pa’i sñiṅ po’i mdo (Tathāgatagarbha sūtra) of the Lang Kanjur are several features which are generally assumed to be archaic, such as the ''ya btags'' in all words beginning with ''m''- followed by the vowel ''i'' or ''e'' (e.g. ''myi'', ''myed'', etc.), the usage of the ''da drag'', the ''tsheg'' placed before ''śad'', the ''mtha’ rten ’a'' (e.g. ''dpe’ ''), occasionally a reversed ''gi gu'', ''la''(''s'') (''b'')''stsogs pa'' for ''la sogs pa'', the omission of genitive particles and, in the verses, the reading '' ’i'' instead of ''yi'' ('' ’i'' counting as a full syllable).<br> The version of the ''sūtra'' represents the canonical transmission (and not the translation found in the “Kanjur from Bathang”).[85] Stemmatically, the text in the Lang Kanjur is very close to the three Phug brag versions of the ''sūtra'', which have been shown to derive from one and the same archetype.[86] It shares mistakes with this archetype. In other instances it is, however, free of the secondary readings found in all three of the Phug brag versions. In all the cases where Phug brag shares a
mistake with the representatives of the Tshal pa-line, the Kanjur version from Dolpo also has this secondary reading. Its use for establishing the stemma of the canonical versions of the De bźin gśegs pa’i sñiṅ po’i mdo is therefore restricted primarily to evaluating the readings of the Phug brag Kanjur in the instances where Phug brag deviates from the Tshal pa-transmission. In all the cases where the Chinese translations of the ''sūtra'' could be used to decide on the originality of a reading in the Tibetan, it turned out that whenever the variant in the Lang Kanjur was identical with the one of Tshal pa as against Phug brag, the latter variant was secondary. (Zimmermann, appendix, 104–5)
<h5>Notes</h5>
85. For more details on this paracanonical translation see Zimmermann 1998.<br>86. See Zimmermann 2002: 173–177.
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
By the 12th century at least nine commentaries on The ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' had been written in Tibet, of which apparently only one has been preserved and reproduced. In the following two centuries at least 16 ''RGV'' commentaries were composed, of which ten, perhaps more, have been preserved. In the 15th and 16th centuries it seems that only eight ''RGV'' commentaries were written, of which at least five have been preserved. Only two commentaries were written in the 17th and 18th centuries, one of which has been preserved and in the 19th and 20th centuries seven ''RGV'' commentaries were written, all of which are preserved.
Here 45 Tibetan commentaries on the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (''RGV''), better known in Tibet as the ''Mahayanūttaratantrāśāstra'', ''Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma bstan bcos'' or ''Rgyud bla ma'' are introduced as an attempt at charting all Tibetan ''RGV'' commentaries. A short presentation of their authors and their bibliographical references are given. The listing is in chronological order and the key data are provided in a chart in the appendix representing the result of research into various catalogues, hand lists and other accounts. It is my hope that some of those texts, which here are listed as lost, eventually will turn out to have been preserved. [1]
<h5>Notes</h5>
#Since ''Tathāgatagarbha'' in its various interpretations appear in a wide variety of literary compositions, the delimiting factor for compiling this list has been Tibetan commentaries that in their title explicitly state that they are commentaries on ''Ratnagotravibhāga''. (Burchardi, preliminary remarks, 1) +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The reign of the King Ṭhi-sroṅ-deu-tsen (Khri-sroṅ-Idehu-btsan, VII century) represents a period of the greatest importance in the early history of Tibet in general and of the spread of Buddhism in that country in particular. The activity of the great Śāntirakṣita ("Ācārya Bodhisattva") and of Padma-sambhava. the selection of the first seven Buddhist monks of Tibetan origin (''sad-mi mi bdun''), the foundation of numerous sites of Buddhist learning in Tibet, and the intense literary activity of the Tibetan learned translators (''lo-tsa-ba'')—Pal-tseg (dPal-brtsegs) and others by whom a great number of Buddhist canonical and scientific works were rendered into Tibetan,—all this has been described by Bu-ston in his History of Buddhism and in other Tibetan historical works<br> There is, however, one subject relating to the spread of Buddhism in Ṭhi-sroṅ-deu-tsen's reign, to which the Tibetan historian devotes his special attention and on which he dwells in detail. This is the strife between two parties into which the Buddhists of Tibet were at that time split. One of these parties consisted of the pupils and followers of Ācārya Śāntirakṣita who professed that form of Mahāyāna Buddhism which was generally acknowledged in India and Nepal, ''viz''. the teaching of the Path to Enlightenment through the practice of meditation connected with the dialectical analysis peculiar to the Mādhyamika school of the Buddhists and with the practice of the six Transcendental Virtues (''pāramitā'').<br> The leader of the other party was a Chinese teacher (''hwa-śaṅ'' or ''ho-shang'') known by the Sanskrit name Mahāyānadeva, who preached a doctrine of complete quietism and inactivity. According to him every kind of religious practice, the meditative exercises and all virtuous deeds as well were completely useless and even undesirable: the liberation from the bonds of phenomenal existence was to be attained merely through the complete cessation of every kind of thought and mental activity,—by abiding perpetually in a state analogous to sleep. Bu-ston[1] relates how this party grew very powerful and found numerous adherents among the Tibetans, how the followers of Śāntirakṣita suffered oppression from it, and how the king who was an adherent of Śāntirakṣita's system, invited Śāntirakṣita's pupil, the teacher Kamalaśīla in order to refute the incorrect teachings of the Chinese party. The dispute between Kamalaśīla and the Chinese Ho-shang in which the latter was defeated is described by Bu-ston[2] in detail. We read that the leading men of the two parties[3] assembled in the presence of the king, that the Ho-shang was the first to speak in favour of his theory of quietism and inactivity and was answered by Kamalaśīla who demonstrated all the absurdity of the theses maintained by the Ho-shang and showed that the teachings of such a kind were in conflict with the main principles of Buddhism and were conducive to the depreciation and rejection of the most essential features of the Buddhist Path to Enlightenment. We read further on how the chief adherents of Kamalaśīla[4] likewise refuted the theories of the Ho-shang, how the latter and his party acknowledged themselves vanquished and were expelled from Tibet by order of the king who prescribed to follow henceforth the Buddhist doctrines that were generally admitted,—the teaching of the six Virtues as regards religious practice and the Mādhvamika system of Nāgārjuna as regards the theory.[5]<br> Thus the influence of the Chinese Ho-shang’s teachings over the minds of the Tibetans suffered a complete defeat and with it perhaps some political influence of China.[6] This is certainly a most important event in the history of Tibetan Buddhism which has been duly appreciated by Bu-ston. It is therefore quite natural that we should be interested in finding out the sources of Bu-ston's historical record. But the text of Bu-ston's History which, as a rule, contains references to the works on the foundation of which it has been compiled, does not give us any information here. At the first glance the account of the controversy looks like the reproduction of an oral tradition and there is nothing that could make us conjecture the presence of a literary work upon which the record could have been founded- The following will show that it has now become possible to trace out this work, to compare with it the account given by Bu-ston and to ascertain its historical importance. (Obermiller, "A Sanskrit MS. from Tibet," 1–3)
[https://ia801608.us.archive.org/2/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.277506/2015.277506.1105_W_O_text.pdf Read more here . . .]
<h5>Notes</h5>
#Cf. my ''Translation'', Vol. II. p. 192
#''Ibid'': pp. 192, 193.
#Known by the Chinese names Tön-mün (sTon-mun, the party of the Ho-shong) and Tsen-min (rTsen-min, the adherents of Kamalaśīla).
#Śrīghoṣa (Tib. dpal-dbyaṅs) and Jñānendra (Tib, Ye-śes-dbaṅ-po).
#Henceforth the Mādhyamika has become the predominant school in Tibet.
#Kamalaśīla was subsequently murdered by the Ho-shang's adherents.
Articles/A Second Tibetan Translation of the Tathāgatagarbhasūtra in the Newark Manuscript Kanjur from Bathang: A Translation of the Early Period (snga dar) +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
Among the Tibetan Collection of the Newark Museum in Newark (New Jersey) there is an incomplete manuscript Kanjur from Bathang in Khams (East Tibet). In spite of the fact that this
Kanjur was already donated to the museum as early as 1920 it is surprising that it has only recently become the object of a scholarly treatment of some length.[1] In his critical edition of the ''Mahāsūtras'' (cp. n. 1), Peter Skilling has used internal criteria to prove that the Bathang Kanjur is affiliated to neither the ''Tshal pa'' lineage nor to the ''Them spangs ma'' lineage of textual transmission. Its independent character can also be ascertained by external kanjurological
criteria: the collection of the texts, its grouping and its order within the volumes are unique. It becomes, therefore, very plausible that "the Newark Kanjur belongs to an old and independent textual transmission that predates the compilation of the ''Tshal pa'' and ''Them spangs ma'' collections."[2]<br> Contained in the ''ta'' volume of the sūtra section (''mdo bsde ta'') of this Kanjur is the ''Tathāgatagarbhasūtra'' (''TGS'').[3] In the process of editing the Tibetan text of this important Mahāyāna work, of which no Indic copies have come down to us, I used most of the available, historically relevant Kanjurs.[4] Among these 13 versions alone the ''TGS'' found in this Kanjur from Bathang represents a different, second translation (''Bth''). As the existence of two independent Tibetan translations of the same Indic text are of rare occurrence, this study intends to throw light on the differences between the two Tibetan texts, to describe the particular features of ''Bth'' and finally to classify it within the history of Tibetan translation activities. (Zimmermann, introductory remarks, 33–35)<br><br>
[https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/zimmermann/tohoku-gakkai-1998-tathagatagarbha.pdf Read more here . . .]<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
#For a description of the Kanjur cp. Eleanor Olson, ''Catalogue of the Newark Museum Tibetan Collection'', Vol. III, Newark 1971, p. 114, dating it to the 16th century; the most detailed analysis of the 23 volumes of the Kanjur can be found in Peter Skilling's unpublished article ''Kanjur Manuscripts in the Newark Museum: A Preliminary Report'', Nandapurī 1995; the only study including some texts of this Kanjur in a textcritical edition is Peter Skilling's (ed.) ''Mahāsūtras: Great Discourses of the Buddha'', Vol. I: Texts, Oxford 1994 (The Pali Text Society, Sacred Books of the Buddhists Vol. XLIV).
#Skilling, ''Kanjur Manuscripts''. . . . , p. 4.
#Vol. ''ta'', folios 245b1–258a8. The title at the beginning of the volume reads ''de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po zhes bya ba'i mdo' ''. The title at the beginning of the sūtra itself runs: ''de bzhin gshyes <pa'i> snying po zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo''. It seems remarkable that the Tibetan equivalent for Skt. ''ārya'', '' 'phags pa'', does not appear in the titles of the Bathang translation whereas it is common to all the other major Kanjurs. The spelling ''mdo bsde'' can be found "consistently on all tags" (Skilling, ''Kanjur Manuscripts''. . . , p. 6, n. 16).
#The critical edition of the ''TGS'' is part of a Ph.D. thesis to be submitted at the University of Hamburg. The collation comprises the versions of the ''TGS'' as contained in the Kanjurs from Berlin, Derge, Lithang, London, Narthang, Peking (Ōtani reprint), Phug brag (three versions), Stog, Tabo (fragmentary) and Tokyo (Toyo Bunko) compared with the two Chinese translations. ''Bth'' will be appended as a diplomatic edition.
This article concerns the Indian ''tathāgatagarbha'' literature: Mahāyānist works, produced no later than the early fifth century, which assert that all sentient beings possess already the qualities of a Buddha. Early works of this tradition—perhaps even the earliest that are available to us—explain possession of the ''tathāgatagarbha'' to constitute the existence of the self (''ātman''). These sources, foremost the ''Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra'', show evidence that their authors faced strong opposition from audiences committed to the more conventional Buddhist doctrine of ''anātman'', but contend defensively that the ''ātman'' that they teach is nothing like any notion of selfhood found in non-Buddhist religious traditions.<br> With reference to two of these '' 'ātmavādin’ '' ''tathāgatagarbha'' works, I present evidence that authors of this tradition used the idea of a Buddhist doctrine of the self to undermine non-Buddhist accounts of liberation: not only describing them as deficient, but as having been created (''nirmita'') by the Buddha himself. Such claims expand the boundaries of the Buddha’s sphere of influence, after the description of his activities found in the ''Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra'': a clear influence upon these ''tathāgatagarbha'' sources. Other Mahāyānist literature of an ‘ekayānist’ orientation used this strategy also: i.e. that any teaching regarding liberation from ''saṃsāra'' finds its origin in the activities of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, but has its definitive expression in the Buddhist dharma. The ''tathāgatagarbha'' presented as a Buddhist doctrine of the self can hence be understood as a complement to a certain understanding of the Mahāyāna, here the archetype of all paths that claim to deliver an end to ''saṃsāra'', and to an account of the Buddha as the architect of all ostensibly non-Buddhist accounts of liberation. +
Buddhanature, or tathagatagarbha: some say it is not Buddhist, some say it is quintessentially so. I do not want to push either judgment upon you; there is more than one way to be a Buddhist! Instead, I want to provide a roundup of some formative buddhanature texts and allow you to see what is unique about them, in the hope that you might explore these fascinating works for yourself.
In the texts outlined below, we see innovative steps taken away from the philosophical preoccupation with emptiness (sunyata) and not-self (anatman) with which much early Buddhist scholasticism was concerned, with a focus instead on a type of liberative phenomenology that allows us to uncover our “true” nature and realize liberation. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/a-short-guide-to-key-buddhanature-texts/ Read more here]) +
Articles/A Study of the Early-Stage Translations of Foxing 佛性 in Chinese Buddhism: The Da Banniepan Jing 大般涅槃經 Trans. Dharmakṣema and the Da Fangdeng Rulaizang Jing 大方等如來藏經 Trans. Buddhabhadra +
The ''Da fangdeng rulaizang jing'' 大方等如來藏經 (Skt. ''Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra''), translated by Buddhabhadra 佛陀跋陀羅 (358–429) is one of the early Chinese Buddhist canon texts where the term ''foxing'' 佛性 (Jp. ''busshō''; Buddha-nature) is clearly used to express Buddha-nature. However, the term ''foxing'' cannot be confirmed in other extant translations of the ''Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra''. Another early text in the Chinese Buddhist canon, the ''Da banniepan jing'' 大般涅槃經 (Skt. ''Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra''), translated by Dharmakṣema 曇無讖 (385?–433), also used the term ''foxing'', which cannot be correspondingly confirmed in the surviving Sanskrit fragments of this scripture. Some significant differences in ''foxing'' between the Sanskrit fragments and Dharmakṣema's translation of this sutra belong to the
first twelve fascicles of Dharmakṣema's translation completed under his collaborators' support when he had not mastered the Chinese language. It is very likely that Faxian 法顯 (337–422) translated a version of the ''Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra'' that featured ''buddhadhātu'' as ''foxing''. Buddhabhadra, in the same period, translated a version of the ''Tathāgatagarbha-sūtra'', in which he favoured the term ''foxing'' over a literal translation of the Sanskrit. As another contemporary monk with these two, Dharmakṣema translated the ''Mahāparinirvāṇa-mahāsūtra'', going further than Faxian by using the term ''foxing'' regularly. These texts influenced the Dilun monastic tradition 地論宗. Among these, the term ''foxing'' and its Sinicism explanations played the most significant role, influencing the whole of the Chinese and even East Asian Buddhist thought. +
In this paper, historical materials are employed to point the reader toward scriptural sources for the tathāgatagarbha traditions of India and Tibet, including their relationship with theories of the mind-basis-of-all (kun gzhi rnam shes, ālayavijñāna). In addition, three primary tathāgatagarbha traditions in Tibet are described and compared: those of the Jo-nang-bas following Döl-bo-ba Shay-rap-gyel-tsen (dol bo pa shes rab rgyal mtshan, 1292–1361), the Sa-ḡyas following Bu-don (bu ston, 1290–1364), and the Ge-luk-don following Dzong-ka-ba (tsong kha pa, 1357–1419). Doctrines concerning the basic constituent (khams, dhātu) and three buddha bodies are examined insofar as these doctrines shed light on theories of tathāgatagarbha. Since Dzong-ka-ba extensively refuted the Jo-nang position─often called Other Emptiness (gzhan stong)─in his Treatise Differentiating Interpretable and Definitive Meanings: The Essence of Eloquence (drang ba dang nges pa'i don rnam par phye ba'i bstan bcos legs bshad snying po) and other works on the philosophical view of emptiness, this paper examines Dzong-ka-ba's discussion and critique of the Jo-nang Other Emptiness. Ten specific criticisms of Other Emptiness made by Dzong-ka-ba and his followers are compared with presentations of Other Emptiness by Jo-nang authors. Two Jo-nang texts recently translated by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins are employed in this comparison: Döl-bo-ba Śhay-rap-gyel-tsen’s Mountain Doctrine, Ocean of Definitive Meanings (ri chos nges don rgya mtsho) and Tāranātha’s Essence of Other Emptiness (gzhan stong snying po). These comparisons show that Dzong-ka-ba's critique does not always accurately reflect the Jo-nang philosophical view. +
No abstract given. The following are the first relevant paragraphs. Japanese characters following the transliteration for names and works are unavailable.<br><br>
La question n'est pas nouvelle; plusieurs fois déjà elle a été étudiée, et diverses solutions lui ont été données. Kern, dans son ''Histoire du bouddhisme dans l'Inde'' (<sup>1</sup>), rejetant l'opinion communément admise en Extrême-Orient, plaça Vasubandhu au VI<sup>e</sup> siècle de notre ère. Buhler (<sup>2</sup>) essaya vainement de le ramener au IV<sup>e</sup> : la thèse de Kern conserva la faveur des indianistes. En 1890, M. Sylvain Lévi, dans son remarquable ouvrage sur ''Le théâtre indien'' (<sup>3</sup>), tentait d'établir que la période d'activité de Vasubandhu couvrait toute la première moitié du VI<sup>e</sup> siècle ; et dans une note sur ''La date de Vasubandhu'' (<sup>4</sup>), il la reportait même jusqu'au milieu et à la fin de ce siècle. Depuis lors à diverses reprises, notamment dans ses ''Donations religieuses des rois de Valabhī'' (<sup>5</sup>) et dans ses ''Notes chinoises sur l'Inde parues ici même'' (<sup>6</sup>), il s'est efforcé d'étayer sa thèse de nouvelles considérations. M. Takakusu Junjirō, après avoir proposé les limites de 450–550 pour l'« àge moyen » (<sup>7</sup>) dans lequel Yi-tsing range Vasubandhu et Asaṅga, essaya ensuite de les préciser davantage en ce qui concerne le premier et d'établir qu'il avait vécu de 420 à 500 environ de notre ère (<sup>8</sup>). En 1908, M. Wogihara (<sup>9</sup>) démontrait en détail ce que les anciens catalogues chinois du Tripiṭaka, ''Nei tien lou'', ''K'ai-yuan lou'', etc., des écrivains comme Touen-louen des T'ang dans son ''Yeou-kia louen ki'' (<sup>1</sup>), еt M. Nanjio Bunyu (<sup>2</sup>) avaient déjà dit sommairement, à savoir qu'un ouvrage d'Asaṅga, le ''Yogācāryabhūmi çāstra'' (<sup>3</sup>), avait été partiellement traduit en chinois par Dharmarakṣa entre 414 et 421, soit dès le commencement du V<sup>e</sup> siècle (<sup>4</sup>).<br>
Enfin dans l'introduction de sa traduction du ''Mahāyāna-Sutrālaṃkāra'' (<sup>5</sup>) parue en 1911, M. S. Lévi, abandonnant sa première opinion, écrit à propos d'Asaṅga : « Son activité couvre toute la première moitié du V<sup>e</sup> siècle, en débordant de part et d'autre sur les deux extrémités de cette période. » C'est peutêtre un peu long, car si Asaṅga a vécu soixante-quinze ans, les documents à notre connaissance nous disent qu'il chercha sa voie un certain temps. N'oublions pas d'ailleurs que le ''Yogācāryabhūmi çāstra'', l'œuvre maîtresse d'Asaṅga, est de dimensions considérables: la traduction chinoise compte 100 ''kiuan''. Son importance dogmatique n'est pas moindre. Il est l'expression d'une pensée maîtresse d'elle-mème, qui a dépassé la période des incertitudes et des tàtonnements. Il est assez peu vraisemblable, mème sans tenir compte des indications données par Paramārtha dans sa vie de Vasubandhu, qu'il ait été écrit par un tout jeune homme. En tout cas, quelque différence d'àge qu'on veuille admettre entre Asaṅga et Vasubandhu, — et il faut tenir compte de l'existence d'un troisième frère, Viriñcivatsa (<sup>6</sup>) — celui-ci, bien qu'il ait vécu quatre-vingts ans, n'aurait pu, dans ces conditions, dépasser ni mème atteindre la fin du V<sup>e</sup> siècle.<br>
D'une manière générale, il semble que dans les études qui ont porté sur ce sujet, quelques documents aient été ignorés et que d'autres aient été délibérément écartés de la discussion comme douteux. En bonne logique, ce simple doute qui ne parait pas avoir jamais été sérieusement éclairci, suffirait à enlever toute sécurité aux conclusions que l'on a cru pouvoir formuler sans en tenir compte, ou si l'on préfère, elles ne sauraient ètre que provisoires tant que la menace qu'il laisse planer sur elles n'a pas été définitivement écartée. La question me parait donc devoir ètre reprise, les documents déclarés douteux soumis à un nouvel examen, et mis en œuvre aussi ceux qui n'ont pas encore été utilisés. Je n'ai pas d'ailleurs la prétention d'ètre complet. C'est à peu près uniquement à la première série, (missing characters), du Supplément du Tripiṭaka de Kyōto, œuvres hindoues et chinoises, que sont empruntés les textes qu'on trouvera au cours de cette étude. Les quelque 700 fascicules déjà parus de cette admirable publication, d'une importance capitale pour les études bouddhiques, en contiennent sans doute d'autres encore, qu'une recherche plus approfondie et plus complète ferait découvrir. Je n'ai pu que feuilleter les œuvres qui m'ont paru devoir ètre les plus intéressantes pour mon sujet par leur date, leur auteur ou leur genre. (Péri, preliminary remarks, 339–41)<br><br>
[https://www.persee.fr/doc/befeo_0336-1519_1911_num_11_1_2695 Read more here . . .]
<h5>Notes</h5>
1. T. II, p. 414; ''Annales du Musée Guimet'', t. XI, p. 450; il parle principalement d'Asaṅga, et se basant sur la date de l'avènement de Çīladitya (610, propose les dates de 485 à 560. C'est évidemment à cet ouvrage que la ''Chronology of India'' de Mrs. Mabel Duff les emprunte, et non au ''Buddhismus'' de Vassilieff, auquel elle renvoie. Celui-ci ne dit rien de tel; si je ne me trompe, il donne seulement la date bouddhiste de 900 ans, dont je parlerai plus loin.<br>
2. ''Die indischen Inschriften und das Alter der indischen Kunst-Poesie'', dans ''Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften'', Wien, 1890, p. 79 sqq.<br>
3. Cf. I, 165, et II, 35.<br>
4. ''Journal Asiatique'', 1890, II, p. 552–553.<br>
5. ''Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes-Etudes''. Sciences religieuses, vol. VII. ''Etudes de critique et d'histoire'', p. 97.<br>
6. ''La date de Candragomin. BEFEO'', III (1903), 47-49.<br>
7. ''A Record of the Buddhist religion.... by I-tsing'', p. VIII.<br>
8. ''La Sāṃkhyakārikā étudiée à la lumière de sa version chinoise, BEFEO'', IV (1904), p. 37-56; et ''A study of Paramārtha's life of Vasubandhu and the date of Vasubandhu'', dans ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'', 1905.<br>
9. ''Asaṅga's Bodhisattvabhūmi, ein dogmatischer Text der Nordbuddhisten'', Leipzig. B. E. F. E.-O. T. XI. —22.<br>
1. Grand ouvrage en 48 k., publié dans le supplément au Tripiṭaka de Kyoto, 1<sup>re</sup>
série, boites LXXV, fasc. 4 et 5, et LXXVI, fasc. 1 à 4. Le passage cité se trouve boite LXXV, fasc. 4, p. 308.<br>
2. Cf. Nanjio, ''Catalogue'', n<sup>os</sup> 1083, 1086, etc.<br>
3. Nanjio, ''Catalogue''. n<sup>o</sup> 1170.<br>
4. Le canon chinois contient sept ou huit traductions partielles de cet ouvrage, faites à des époques parfois très voisines les unes des autres, sous des titres différents ; encore n'avons-nous pas toutes celles qui le furent: le ''K'ai-yuan lou'', k. 12, en cite une dizaine pour le mème texte. Le fait qu'il en existait des extraits si nombreux, assez différents pour que des contemporains les traduisissent séparément à quelques années de distance, permet de croire qu'un intervalle assez long sépare la composition de l'ouvrage des premières traductions d'extraits faites en Chine.<br>
5. B. E. H. E. Sciences historiques et philologiques, fasc. 190, p. *2.<br>
6. (Characters not available). Watters, ''On Yuan Chwang's travels'', I, p. 210, propos Bilindibhava qui paraît inadmissible. ''Bilindi'' est inconnu, tandis que ''viriñci'' est employé dans la composition de plusieurs noms ; ''bhava'' ne concorde pas avec le sens de « fils, enfant », que Paramārtha attribue aux deux dernières syllabes et qu'il expose avec beaucoup de précision, représente d'ailleurs un mot à ancienne finale dentale; quant à (missing character), c'est sùrement ici une simple faute de copiste, très fréquente du reste pour (missing character).
This is a compilation of several sources that speak about buddha-nature. These include:
Pabhassara Sutta<br>
Kevaddha Sutta<br>
Nibbana Sutta<br>
Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra<br>
Samdhinirmochana Sutra<br>
Mahaparinirvana Sutra<br>
Shrimaladevi Sutra <br>
Tathagatagarbha Sutra <br>
Lankavatara Sutra<br>
Bodhidharma’s Breakthrough Sermon<br>
Sengcan’s Song of the Trusting Mind<br>
Hongren’s Treatise on the Supreme Vehicle<br>
Huineng’s Platform Sutra<br>
Yongjia’s Song of Realizing the Way<br>
Shitou’s Record<br>
Shitou’s Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage <br>
Dongshan’s Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi <br>
Caoshan’s Verse<br>
Guishan’s Record<br>
Mazu’s Record<br>
Baizhang’s Record<br>
Huangbo’s Transmission of Mind <br>
Linji’s Record<br>
Nanquan’s Record<br>
Changsha’s Record <br>
Yunmen’s Record <br>
Yuanwu’s Letters <br>
Hongzhi’s Record<br>
Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye<br>
Ejo’s Absorption in the Treasury of Light<br>
Keizan’s Transmission of Light<br>
32nd Ancestor Hongren<br>
34th Ancestor Qingyuan<br>
38th Ancestor Dongshan <br>
40th Ancestor Dongan <br>
46th Ancestor Tanxia<br>
49th Ancestor Xuedou<br>
52nd Ancestor Dogen<br>
53rd Ancestor Ejo <br>
Chinul’s Complete Sudden Attainment of Buddhahood<br>
Chinul’s Secrets of Cultivating the Mind<br>
Bassui’s One Mind<br>
Bankei’s Record<br>
Hakuin’s Four Cognitions<br>
Menzan’s Self-Enjoyment Samadhi<br>
Shunryu Suzuki’s Mind Waves (from "Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind")<br>
Shunryu Suzuki’s Resuming Big Mind (from "Not Always So")<br>
Padmasambhava’s Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness<br>
Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s Clarifying the Natural State<br>
Karma Chagmey’s Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen<br>
Jamgon Mipham’s Lamp that Dispels Darkness +
The following preface was added by Aurel Stein to Appendix F, which was prepared for this publication by A. F. Rudolf Hoernle:
[NOTE. The materials embodied in this list were received in a final form from Dr. Hoernle. early in 1918. The typed press copy prepared from them was after his death in November of that year checked with the original under the kind supervision of Dr. F. W. Thomas.
Owing to various reasons difficulty was experienced about verifying the exact reading of all extracts quoted by Dr. Hoernle from particular MSS., mainly in Khotanese language. It being thus impossible to assure in this respect the degree of accuracy which that most painstaking collaborator would have aimed at, I have thought it advisable to reduce the reproduction of such quotations within narrow limits. For convenient reference by future students the original Inventory ' slips' as received from Dr. Hoernle's hand, as well as a typed copy of them, have been deposited at the India Office Library.—A. STEIN.]<br><br>
[http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/VIII-5-B2-9/V-3/page/0402.html.en Read more here . . .] +
B
Articles/Beings, Non-Beings, and Buddhas: Contrasting Notions of Tathāgatagarbha in the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta and *Mahābherī Sūtra +
This article concerns a little studied text of the Mahāyānist ''tathāgatagarbha'' literature, namely the *''Mahābherī Sūtra'', and its relation to other Indian texts which advance forms of ''tathāgatagarbha'' doctrine. Its focus will be the contrast between the content of this ''sūtra'' and the only other text of the ''tathāgatagarbha'' tradition which discusses a particular issue: the unchanging mass of existing sentient beings, without the possibility of any decrease or increase in their number. This is an issue addressed also by the ''Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta'', which I shall argue presents a more sophisticated and likely later consideration, both of this matter and of ''tathāgatagarbha'' doctrine, than that exhibited by the *''Mahābherī Sūtra''. Though it is not clear that either text knew of the other, their different treatments of how one should understand the nature and number of existing sentient beings casts light on their respective places in two distinct strains—one very likely older than the other—of Indian ''tathāgatagarbha'' thought. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>Buddhism has a profound and thoroughly developed set of teachings on human being. One might well argue that the question of human being is the question ''par excellence'' with which the Buddhist tradition as a whole struggles. According to the traditional account, for example, the point of departure for the Buddha's own search, discoveries, and teachings was the dilemma of the human condition. Moreover, vast numbers of Buddhist texts speak out of or address human experience as such, consciously focusing upon it as the source of both question and answer. Nonetheless, many questions a modern Westerner asks as a matter of course about human being are not directly addressed in the Buddhist texts. There are of course important reasons for this. Our concept of and assumptions about human individuality are profoundly different from Buddhist views of the same. Our two worlds of discourse about the value and meaning of finite bodily existence, the course of history, the meaning of suffering, and the nature of possible human greatness are set up on entirely different foundations. Thus, for a contemporary Westerner to ask the question "What is a person? What is a human being?" of a Buddhist text is to set oneself up to receive an answer that does not satisfy the intent of the question. Yet, while Buddhist views and assumptions differ so markedly from our own, Buddhist texts reveal in their own way a preoccupation with the human condition as intent as that of our own hyperindividualistic, anthropocentric culture.<br> With such a shared fixation, it is inevitable that persons on both sides of the cultural boundaries will attempt to gain light from the other side on this subject, despite the incommensurability of each other's questions and answers. The present essay is one such attempt: not an East-West comparison, but an effort to address a Buddhist text from the perspective of cross-cultural philosophy (still, despite the name, a thoroughly Western enterprise) . Herein I will engage in dialogue the ''Buddha Nature Treatise'' (Chinese: ''Fo Hsing Lun''<sup>a</sup>; hereafter, ''BNT''), a text representative of the Buddha nature tradition that contains an extensive discussion of the concept of Buddha nature, a crucial component, if not the most crucial component, of the East Asian Buddhist concept of human being. I will attempt to wrest from the text answers to two categories of questions-it s view of the ontological nature of human being and its view of the existential status of human beings. In the course of the discussion I will ask such questions as: What roles do individuality and freedom play in the view of human being portrayed in this text? What value, if any, does an individual human personality possess? Is there anything of value in human history? Clearly, the text itself does not speak in these terms; these are the questions of a twentieth-century, philosophically inclined American. In order to bridge the cultural gap, I will first give a summary account of the text's concept of Buddha nature in its own terms and in its own format. Then, acknowledging that the text itself neither speaks this language nor shares my concerns, I will put my questions to the text and attempt to extract from the text its implications for the subject of my concern. In other words, I cannot claim that the author of the ''BNT'' does make the statements I will give as responses to my questions about human being, but I do claim that these views are implicit in and follow from the statements he does make about Buddha nature. Granting that human freedom requires us to expect the unexpected, nonetheless, I believe that if the author of the ''BNT'' were here today and could engage in dialogue with me, as long as my interlocutor remained consistent, something close to the views I will articulate in the course of this essay would emerge. (King, "Buddha Nature and the Concept of Person," 151–52)
Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche explained how we can attain the state of the omniscient mind at the 14th Kopan Course in 1981. This is an edited excerpt from Lecture 3, Section One of the course. [https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/chapter/section-one-lectures-1-5 Click here] to read more. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs
To understand what is meant by “Buddha Nature,” we can look at the story of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. The first turning of the Dharma wheel is the four noble truths: that discontent arises from grasping the ever-changing phenomena of body and mind as “me,” and that freedom from this discontent is revealed through the path of not grasping anything as truly me. The
four noble truths is a kind of deconstruction method. However, in this first turning, all the different elements that we can deconstruct this person into really do exist. Earth, wind, fire and water, for example: those kind of physical elements, when you break them down into their smallest bits, are indestructible elemental energies or physical matter, atoms. Early Buddhists, who were first turning exponents, had this kind of theory—that the world is made up of atoms—several centuries B.C., long before modern scientists discovered atoms. We don’t really exist as independent “persons”; we are a conglomeration of all this stuff that we think is a real “me,” but if we look closely, we only find atoms. This turning of the Dharma wheel was only the first.
Read more [https://kokyohenkel.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/7/4/127410773/buddha_nature.pdf here] +
Articles/Buddha in the Storehouse: Mi bskyod rdo rje on the Relationship between Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna +
This paper addresses the age-old question of how buddha nature (''tathāgatagarbha'') relates to Yogācāra psychology, focusing on the Eighth Karma pa Mi bskyod rdo rje’s (1507-1554) responses to this question. In the centuries following the first appearance of ''tathāgatagarbha'' doctrines in India (circa 2nd c. CE), opinions became divided over whether buddha nature should be identified with or distinguished from the Yogācāra idea of a substratum consciousness (''ālayavijñāna''). The topic attracted a great deal of discussion and debate among Buddhist scholars, both within and beyond the borders of India. At stake were a set of specific doctrinal issues as to whether and how the Yogācāra ''ālayavijñāna-vāsanā'' model could be reconciled with [1] buddha nature theory [2] tantric buddha nature proxies such as the unconditioned ground (''gzhi'') and causal continuum (''rgyu rgyud'') [3] Indian and Chinese Buddhist conceptions of an immaculate consciousness (''amalavijñāna'') and [4] certain anti-foundationalist strains of Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy that rejected any transcendental basis of consciousness. The Karma pa’s repeated forays into these contested subject areas reveal time and again his commitment to reconcile two contrasting lines of Buddhist thought and praxis: [1] the affirmative appraisal of the nature of mind and reality emphasized in Yogācāra and ''tathāgatagarbha'' classics, the tantras, and the songs and writings of the Buddhist ''mahāsiddhas'' and [2] the metaphysically disinclined stance of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy that avoided extremes of affirmation and denial, existence and nonexistence. To adequately appreciate his contributions to such issues, I will first sketch in rough strokes the historical evolution of the ''ālayavijñāna'' doctrine and its complex confrontations with ''tathāgatagarbha'' doctrine in India. Against this backdrop, attention will turn to the Karma pa’s contextualist framing of the ''ālayavijñāna-tathāgatagarbha'' relationship in terms of a progressive understanding that begins with differentiation and culminates in unity. His is a view that stresses the need to initially distinguish between conditions of spiritual awakening (such as ''tathāgatagarbha'') and delusion (such as ''ālayavijñāna'') in order to eventually realize their underlying unity (''zung ’jug'') by recognizing buddha nature as an ever-present continuum (''rgyud'') of awareness that is a precondition of the substratum consciousness that derives and deviates from it. In his attempts to strike a balance between traditional differentiation and unity models, we encounter a thinker who was as confident about the mind’s ability to discover its own unborn and nonconceptual nature as he was skeptical about its ability to discover any underlying metaphysical foundation. (Source: [https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3287479&journal_code=JIABS Peeters Online Journals])
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
====Emulating Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva====
'''''The Quest of the Monk Sōō to Practice Revering Buddha-Nature'''''
The "marathon monks" of Japan are one of the iconic images of Japanese Buddhism, familiar to people the world over. These monks walk excruciating mountain circuits on Mount Hiei near Kyoto and Mount Kinpu in Nara Prefecture for a summer retreat of one hundred days. A handful in the posar period have performed the insufferable thousand-day version of this retreat, and also completed additional ascetic practices to gain the title of Great Acarya. Having achieved the humanly impossible, they are sometimes referred to as living buddhas.<br> Hagiographic sources tell us that the founder of this practice, the Tendai monk Sōō (831-918), was motivated to seek enlightenment when as a novice monk he studied the part of the Lotus Sutra that tells the story of Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva. Sōō set his heart on emulating Never Disrespectful's way of practice, walking about making obeisances to other people as future buddhas. Unfortunately, Sōō's responsibilities to look after his teacher, and the daily task of going into the mountains to harvest anise-tree leaves for the offerings at the monastery's central hall, prevented him from dedicating himself solely to the reverence of other people's buddha-nature. According to tradition, however, Sōō's daily forays into the mountain became the origin of today's marathon-monk practice, in which ascetic monks revere the shrines of Buddhist deities and places where Japanese divinities abide in the mountains. It is often said that the marathon monk's true object of reverence is the buddha-nature of the natural world.<br> The Lotus Sutra's Never Disrespectful Bodhisattva is an archetype of respect for the inherent dignity of sentient beings. As told in chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra, one time in the past there was a monk who did not practice by chanting sutras but instead went around making obeisance to every person he met, telling them, "I would never dare to disrespect you, because surely you are all to become buddhas!" As the reader can probably anticipate, the Lotus Sutra tells us that Never Disrespectful was oftentimes ridiculed, even physically attacked, but he bore it all patiently and through this practice not only purified his mind and body but also transformed the hearts and minds of the people around him. The Lotus Sutra tells us that performing this practice leads to quickly attaining the Buddha Way. (Scarangello, "Buddha-Nature (1)," 28-29) (Read entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here])
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
In the last installment of this column we explored the concept of buddha-nature—its meaning, the Lotus Sutra's teaching of revering buddha-nature, and how Buddhists can reveal the buddha-nature of themselves and others by demonstrating respect for people and discovering their goodness. This time we will consider another way of realizing buddha-nature that is inspired by the stories of the Lotus Sutra. Rissho Kosei-kai members speak of awakening to buddha-nature as attaining the conviction that both oneself and others are, in the allegorical language of the Lotus Sutra, "children of the Buddha." Rev. Nikkyo Niwano, the founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, held that feelings of worthlessness thwarted people's ability to improve their own lives and brought them much suffering, and for this reason he employed the sutra's allegory of the parent-child relationship to help people see themselves as future buddhas and heirs to all the qualities that the Buddha Shakyamuni possessed. The belief that living beings are children of the Buddha also encourages the appreciation of all human life. As members of the human family, all people are our brothers and sisters, possessing the same inherent dignity and human potential as the Buddha. Today some people may not be entirely comfortable with the gendered language of the Lotus Sutra's allegory, but a close reading of the text can open pathways to an understanding appropriate to contemporary society and twenty-first century social norms. (Scarangello, "Buddha-Nature (2)," 35) (Read the entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW19_Spring.pdf here]) +
Articles/Buddha-Nature and Personality as the Ground of Ethics: A Metaethical Dialogue between Dōgen and Berdyaev +
This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue by bringing together the teachings of Zen Master Dōgen and the Russian Christian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. This dialogue discusses a metaethical question: What is the foundation of ethical practice? I aim to show that Dōgen's idea of "buddha-nature" and Berdyaev's idea of "personality" can be understood as the foundations of ethical practice in ways that are similar and mutually clarifying in their total affirmation of human temporal existence. We begin by discussing the general contours of Dōgen's practice-realization and Berdyaev's creative ethics, and then proceed to a comparative examination of the foundation of ethics found in Dōgen's notion of Buddha-nature and Berdyaev's notion of personality. The comparison considers four facets of Buddha-nature and personality: being, time, nothingness, and impermanence. First, we show how both thinkers consider the ground of ethics to be something inseparable from the entire being of an individual and the being of all existence as a whole. This refutes the tendency to see the foundation of goodness as a mere fragment of human existence or as restricted to particular existents. Second, we show how both thinkers consider this foundation to be manifest not merely in the future or the past, but in every moment seen as a whole in itself. Third, we examine the collision between this immanent foundation and individuality, and show how the non-substantiality of Buddha-nature and God make room for creative and individual expressions of authenticity. Finally, we consider the problem of impermanence, and show how the ground of ethics is not an escape from impermanence but an acceptance and embracing of this impermanence as the ground of the efficacy and dynamism of ethical practice. (Source: [https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/budhi/article/view/3 Budhi]) +
The topic on what the compound ''tathāgata-garbha'' means has indeed a long history of research in the !eld of Mahāyāna Buddhism. However, despite a good number of studies so far executed on this topic, it is most unfortunate for us to recognize that the above question remains unsolved. The present paper, therefore, tries again to solve the question through an analytical inquiry into the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (RGV) in rather a wide perspective. +
This article begins with a reflection on why medieval Chinese Buddhist thought has not been more conspicuous in recent comparative work on Buddhism and Western philosophy. The Japanese proponents of "Critical Buddhism" (''hihan bukkyō'' 批判仏教), Matsumoto Shirō 松本史朗 and Hakamaya Noriaki 袴谷憲昭, would see this neglect as merited since, in their view, East Asian Buddhism in general, and Chinese Chan in particular, is philosophically crippled owing to its embrace of ''tathāgatagarbha'' and buddha-nature thought. Indeed, Matsumoto singles out Shenhui 荷澤神會 (670-762), one of the architects of the Southern School of Chan, as an example of the early Chan advocacy of buddha-nature doctrine.<br> This article is not concerned with whether buddha-nature and ''tathāgatagarbha'' thought is actually deleterious to critical philosophical work. Rather, the concern is to demonstrate that, far from embracing buddha-nature doctrine, the eighth-century founders of Southern Chan had serious concerns with it. Evidence for this is found in: (1) the writings of Shenhui, notably in his opposition to the doctrine of the "buddha-nature of insentient objects" (''wuqing foxing'' 無情佛性); and (2) the ''Platform Scripture of the Sixth Patriarch'' (''Liuzu tanjing'' 六祖壇經), particularly in the variant versions of Huineng's famous "enlightenment verse." Thus the Southern School may be viewed as a forerunner of the Critical Buddhist anti-''dhātuvāda'' polemics. The article closes with comments on the ongoing problems Chinese Buddhist exegetes had in marrying the metaphysical monism of Yogācāra and ''tathāgatagarbha'' teachings with the anti-foundationalist thrust of Madhyamaka and ''Prajñāpāramitā'' literature. +
Buddhist traditions express our potential for awakening in diverse ways: natural luminous mind; suchness; nondual awareness; basic goodness; ''dharmakaya''; the unity of emptiness, self-existing wakefulness; unconfined capacity; and so forth, all under the rubric of "buddhanature" (''tathagatagarbha''). Mahayana Buddhists understand this dimension of our mind to be an innate source of joy, compassion, courage, and wisdom. It is always operative and always available. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhanature-beyond-mere-concept/ Read more here]) +
The primary aim of this article is to outline the Buddhist idea of a pure, luminous mind. First, the conception of a “luminous mind” (''pabhassara citta'') from the Pāḷi Nikāyas is considered. Two functions ascribed to this idea are examined: its soteriological role, i.e. pure mind as a enlightenment-enabling factor, and its role as a “link” between consecutive ''saṃsāric'' existences. Next comes the examination of the Theravāda idea of ''bhavaṅga'', which is seen as being related to the pure mind in its diachronic function. Main part of the article deals with combining the notion of a pure mind with Mahāyāna Buddhism by showing the role of the “innate mind” (''cittaprakṛti'') in tathāgatagarbha tradition. +
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This essay is an investigation into the concept of insentient things possessing Buddha-nature with a focus on [[Jingxi Zhanran]]’s thoughts. In the history of Chinese Buddhism, Zhanran was not the originator of such a concept; however, he was the first Tiantai thinker to advocate this idea. He strongly argues that according to the Tiantai Perfect Teaching, Buddha-nature certainly extends to insentient things, which refers to inanimate objects without a nervous system, i.e., tangible or formless nonliving existents. This essay therefore aims at revealing this intent of Zhanran by exploring his argument of insentient things’ Buddha-nature. For Zhanran, the key quality of Buddha-nature is all-pervasiveness, and thus naturally, not only animate beings but also inanimate things are imbued with Buddha-nature. According to the principle of mutual inclusion, each dharma realm includes the other nine realms. Also, because body and land are mutually identical, the bodies and lands of Buddhas are interfused with those of the dwellers in the other nine realms. Thus, the inanimate lands also have Buddhanature. Lastly, mutual inclusion reveals a two-way relationship between the sentient and the insentient, thereby giving the possibility of reversing the positions of the subjective observer and the objective phenomenon. As such, it is conducive to my conclusion that insentient things can also take up an active role on the path of Buddhahood, as Zhanran contends that they inherently possess the threefold Buddha-nature. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
Critical Buddhism was inevitable. That it was given voice by prominent Japanese scholars noted for their work in non-East Asian Buddhism was also inevitable. That it has provoked strong, even hostile, reactions was inevitable as well. Inevitable means that the causes and conditions that gave rise to Critical Buddhism can be analyzed and understood to show that it has a context, a history, and a necessity. Critical Buddhism is necessary. Thinking about what arises through causes and conditions, especially in terms of how that impacts on cultural and social realities, is a principal component of both Critical Buddhism and Buddhism properly practiced.<br> This essay will examine some—but certainly not all—of the factors that have contributed to Critical Buddhism. Some arguments and observations will be offered that, while not retellings from the writings of the Critical Buddhists, run parallel to them. These parallels, which I offer as supplements, recast some of their arguments and focus on issues and areas germane to their undertaking. After discussing the inevitability of Critical Buddhism in the context of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhist scholarship, I will turn to some of the events that took place in China during the seventh and eighth centuries that were decisive for the prevalence in East Asia of the type(s) of Buddhism they criticize. This will be followed by a critique of what has happened to the notion of enlightenment in East Asian Buddhism, particularly in the Ch’an and Zen traditions, with reference to the problem of ''hongaku'' (original enlightenment) and the authority of lineage transmission. Then, stepping back into a wider context, I will suggest that, far from being the idiosyncratic, misguided departure depicted by its detractors, Critical Buddhism is the inevitable revisiting of a theme that has been central to Buddhism since its onset. All the above points concern inevitabilities: the trajectory and accomplishments of Japanese scholarship in this century coupled with the crisis of Buddhism in the modern world; the decisive historical events that have established a pervasive ideological underpinning in East Asian Buddhism that Matsumoto and Hakamaya have labeled ''dhātu-vāda'', combined with the exclusion of other, counteracting Buddhist tendencies found elsewhere in the Buddhist world, such as Buddhist logic; the undermining of certain foundational Buddhist notions, such as enlightenment, as a result of or in tandem with the growth of ''dhātu-vāda'' ideology; the persistent self-criticism and self-reevaluation that Buddhism has subjected itself to, often glorifying the critique and the critics (Nāgārjuna being the most famous example)—all these points have made it inevitable that Critical Buddhism appear today in Japan (and elsewhere). Finally, while examining an aspect of Matsumoto’s critique of ''The Record of Lin-chi'', I will suggest some tactical distinctions that should be considered by those critical of Critical Buddhism (Lusthaus, "Critical Buddhism and Returning to the Sources," 30–31)
Articles/Critical Edition of the Sanskrit Text of the Munimatālaṃkāra Chapter 1 (fol. 58r5–59v4): Passages on Caturāryasatya and Trisvabhāva Borrowed from Kamalaśīla's Madhyamakāloka +
The ''Munimatālaṃkāra'' of Abhayākaragupta (composed 1113) is an encyclopedic overview of the entire system of non-tantric Buddhist doctrines and practices. Recently the existence of a Sanskrit manuscript was reported by Li Xuezhu (China Tibetology Center), and the textual study of the ''Munimatālaṃkāra'' is drastically evolving. The present paper is a part of results of our on-going project that deals with a critical edition of the Sanskrit text of the ''Munimatālaṃkāra''. In the text portion edited in this paper, Abhayākaragupta establishes the Four Truths of Noble ones and the Three Characteristics by borrowing passages from Kamalaśīla’s ''Madhyamakāloka'', which still lacks a Sanskrit original. We can recover parts of the Sanskrit original of the ''Madhyamakāloka'' on the basis of the Sanskrit text of the ''Munimatālaṃkāra''. The Appendix provides ''Bodhicittavivaraṇa'' verses 51, 67, 68, 88–93, and 108 cited in the newly available Sanskrit-Tibetan bilingual manuscript of Abhayākaragupta’s ''Āmnāyamañjarī''. +
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No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
Valley sounds are the long, broad<br> tongue.<br>Mountain colors are not other than<br> the unconditioned body.<br>Eighty-four thousand verses are<br> heard through the night.<br>What can I say about this in the<br> future?<br><br>
This poem is almost a thousand years old. It was presented to a Chinese Zen master by a follower, Su Shi, who went on to become one of China's greatest poets. In Zen these four lines are considered to be Su's enlightenment verse. In addition to being a poet, Su Shi (1037–1101) was a statesman, an essayist, a painter, and a calligrapher. He practiced Zen as a layperson, not a monk, receiving instruction from Donglin Changcong, a leading master. In China, Su is still honored as one of "the four greats" in several fields, including cooking.<br> Let’s take a look at the poem, using the above translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi (''Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Shōbō Genzō'' [Shambhala, 2012], 86)<br> ''Valley sounds are the long, broad tongue''. "Valley sounds" are the sounds of a stream.<br> "Long, broad tongue" refers to the Buddha and his teachings, known as the Dharma. Restated unpoetically: natural phenomena such as streams are capable of expressing the highest truth. (Read entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here]) +
Articles/Does a Dog See into Its Buddha-Nature? Re-posing the Question of Animality-Humanity in Zen Buddhism +
Using as his point of departure the well-known koan that asks whether or not a dog has Buddha-nature, Bret Davis traces the background of this question in his demonstration of the complexity of the relation between humans and animals as conceived during the development of East Asian Buddhism. In his analysis, he argues that on the one hand, Buddha-nature becomes ever more inclusive in this history, while on the other, it tends to remain firmly, albeit somewhat paradoxically, anthropocentric with regard to the capacity to "realize" this spiritual inclusivity. The issue arising from this analysis in Davis' chapter, "Does a Dog See Into its Buddha-Nature? Re-posing the Question of Animality in Zen Buddhism," is whether only humans have the potential to "see into" their Buddha-nature. His project throughout is to show how the question of animality is inseparable from the question of humanity, and how it emerges continuously and in various intertwined ways for those who inherit the weave of Buddhist texts and contexts for thought and practice. (Jones, ''Buddha Nature and Animality'', 9) +
In "The Way of the Dialetheist: Contradictions in Buddhism," Yasuo Deguchi, Jay Garfield, and Graham Priest (hereafter DGP) claimed that in certain parts of the Buddhist tradition contradictions are to be accepted as literally true. I shall confine my remarks to the case of Indian Madhyamaka, more specifically the Madhyamaka of the ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' of Nāgārjuna (''MMK'') and its four extant Indian commentaries. About East Asian Buddhism I am not qualified to speak. The DGB thesis might also be thought to apply to Indian Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha thought, but those cases would require separate treatment. What I shall claim is that the Madhyamaka of Nāgārjuna and his commentators is best interpreted as rejecting the claim that a contradiction might be true. More recently DGP seem to have conceded that the interpretation of Madhyamaka that I favor is "orthodox" while their own is "heretical." So apparently we do not disagree as to which interpretation was more commonly accepted in the tradition. There remains a disagreement as to which is the more philosophically defensible. In defending the view I favor I shall be engaging in a considerable amount of textual exegesis, for which I feel I should apologize in advance. What I seek to show is not only that no Madhyamika accepted the dialetheist view that contradictory statements can be true, but also that their position makes good philosophical sense when understood within the confines of classical logic. My working assumption (which I believe I share with DGP) is that the Madhyamikas under discussion were astute philosophers who were well aware of the further implications of the methods they used. Given this assumption, textual exegesis becomes an important component in the investigation of the question at issue between us. +
Articles/Does a Table Have Buddha-Nature? A Moment of Yes and No. Answer! But Not in Words or Signs! A Response to Mark Siderits +
Siderits argues that Nāgārjuna is not committed to the paradoxical claim that emptiness is the lack of intrinsic nature and that it is the intrinsic nature of all things, on the ground that the apparently paradoxical claims Nāgārjuna makes are simply admonitions to recuse oneself from the project of ontology. We argue that to recuse oneself from that project is to do ontology and so is no route out of paradox. We dispute Siderits' reading of several crucial passages, demonstrating that his readings are unattested in the commentarial literature and that they are implausible. Siderits argues on the basis of these readings that Candrakīrti and Nāgārjuna are not committed to paradoxes. We show that more plausible readings that are better attested in the commentarial literature do so commit them. Siderits and we agree that the ultimate nature of reality is to lack any ultimate nature. He thinks that this is consistent; we think that it is paradoxical. +
Articles/Dolpopa and Gyaltsab Debate Tathāgatagarbha: Two Distinct Interpretations of Buddha-Nature in Tibet +
Buddhists have discussed the concept of enlightenment since the time of the Buddha, but the notion that all sentient beings have buddha-nature is found in Mahāyāna Buddhism. For the Mahāyāna thinkers, one of the crucial questions at the center of how all beings can achieve enlightenment is this apparent paradox: frailty, ignorance, and delusions presumably exist concomitantly with buddha-nature in all sentient beings. This article provides a brief survey of the textual history of the buddha-nature literature followed by an in-depth discussion of buddha-nature in the terms set out by two influential Tibetan thinkers, Dolpopa and Gyaltsab; the debate between these thinkers is set in relation to extant discourses of Buddhist ontology, epistemology, and enlightenment within the Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition. +
This article provides an introduction to Dzogchen. Dzogchen refers to an integrated set of texts, practices, philosophical perspectives, and theories of subjectivity unique to the most esoteric Buddhist and Bon traditions of Tibet. The philosophical core of Dzogchen is its emphasis on experiencing mind-nature and understanding its relationship to ordinary mental states. To be fully and nonconceptually aware of one's nature is called open presence. Dzogchen philosophy elaborates the issues and conundrums raised by this core tenet. Among Tibet's Buddhist traditions, it is only Nyingma, the most ancient school, that explicitly takes Dzogchen as its esoteric tradition. Both Nyingma and Bon see Dzogchen as the highest in a ninefold system known as the Nine Vehicles. ([https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195328998-e-24 Source Accessed July 24, 2020]) +
Roger Jackson reviews ''Heart of the Great Perfection: Dudjom Lingpa’s Visions of the Great Perfection, Vol. 1'', by B. Alan Wallace. +
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Articles/Eight Folios from a Sanskrit Manuscript of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya from Ngor Monastery +
The Sanskrit text of the ''Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya'' (abbr. MSABh) was published for the first time by Sylvain Levi in 1907. This ''editio princeps'' was prepared based on a paper manuscript (NGMPP Reel No. A114/1; siglum Ns) written in Nepal in Samvat 798 (A.D. 1677 or 1678). All other Sanskrit manuscripts of MSABh from the Kathmandu Valley so far reported have been identified as apographs of this single manuscript. A single manuscript dating from the 17th century is, however, not sufficient in itself to base the editing of a text composed before the 5th century on. Other witnesses, namely, older Sanskrit manuscripts belonging to other transmission lines separate from that of Ns, can therefore be expected to help improve upon the ''editio princeps''.<br> The present paper offers just such crucial material: eight folios from a Sanskrit manuscript of MSABh from Tibet. This is the first part of a series of studies dealing with the subject. +
Emerson wrote with excitement of his discovery of "God-within" in his poem "Gnothi Seauton": "There doth sit the Infinite embosomed in a man." He furthermore preached in his sermon "The Genuine Man" that "the essential man" dwells in the innermost soul, and that this indwelling essential self is a higher self, God's image, and "Reason." The doctrine of "Buddha-womb," tathāgatagarbha meaning "essence of self" or "Buddha-nature," buddhadātu meaning "true self," is an important teaching in Mahāyāna Buddhism, which affirms that each sentient being contains the indwelling potency for attaining Buddhahood and enlightenment. This notion is explained when referring to the boundless, nurturing, sustaining, and deathless Self of the Buddha. The affinities between Emersonian Transcendentalism and Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially Zen, have often been pointed out. In this article the comparison between Emerson's "God-within" and Mahāyāna Buddhism's "Buddha-womb" or "Buddha-nature" will be examined. +
In this teaching a student asks Gyatrul Rinpoche for advice on understanding buddhanature. This transcription contains Gyatrul Rinpoche's advice on how we can we know buddhanature for ourselves and trust that we have buddhanature. +
The ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (abbr. ''RGV'') was very likely composed around the 4th or 5th century in India. But traces of the ''RGV'' fell into obscurity after the late 6th century, and again begin to appear after the early 11th century. The teaching relating to the RGV was transmitted from India to Tibet mainly via two routes: one from Vikramaśīla through Atiśa (ca. 982–1054) and the other from Kashmir through Sajjana, rNgog Blo-ldan-shes-rab (ca. 1059–1109) and others. rNgog is one of the most influential masters who established exegetical traditions of the ''RGV'' in Tibet, and his understanding of the ''RGV'' is strongly influenced by the Kashmiri tradition, for he studied it in Kashmir. In this regard, the Kashmiri tradition of the ''RGV'' is crucial to learn the foundation of the Tibetan development of the ''RGV'''s exegesis. Fortunately, we have some materials to learn about how Kashmiri Buddhists understood the ''RGV'', but they have not been systematically studied in this regard. I have focused on Sajjana's ''Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa'' in my previous paper in 2015, and in the present paper, I shall extend the range of target to wider context in Kashmir tradition in 11th to 12th century focusing on works by Sajjana, Mahājana, Amṛtākara, and Jayānanda. (Kano, "Exegeses", 1) +
“If you believe there is a thing called mind, it is just a thought. If you believe there is no thing called mind, it’s just another thought. Your natural state, free of any kind of thought is buddhanature.” Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche gives a teaching on the existence and nonexistence of mind. +
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No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
For over thirty years I have been encountering a motif or set of motifs in Japanese culture that is, outside of folklore and the children's story, virtually unheard of in European literature. Japanese literature and theater are rife with stories in which the protagonists are not human but are, rather, plants, trees, animals, or supernatural beings. For many Westerners, such tales seem indicative of some kind of arrested development in the Japanese psyche, as if their culture had failed to become modern or, worse, "grow up."<br> When I ask my Japanese colleagues about this, most see no problem at all: both Shinto and Buddhism acknowledge that sentience can exist across a broad spectrum of life, from the simplest organic structures to supernatural entities that, though invisible, may direct our lives in ways we still don’t understand. Arguably, the Japanese themselves feel a kinship with these other entities to a degree that many people in Europe or North America do not, though such a sensibility is common among indigenous peoples around the world. As unique as they are, human beings do not occupy any God-given, privileged place in this scheme. Th e word animism is brought out to explain much of this, though the term itself is vaguely used.<br> I began to realize that a radically different metaphysical construct of the world gives rise to a distinctive poetics and dramaturgy, and that typical EuroAmerican critical tools fail to adequately interpret even Japanese discursive texts, to say nothing of many of their greatest works of poetry, fiction, and drama. (Poulton, "Flowers of Sentience," 20) (Read the entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here]) +
In this article, I hope to suggest (1) a fertile ground for human rights and social ethics within Japanese intellectual history and (2) a possible angle for connecting Dōgen's ethical views with his views on private religious practice. I begin with a review of the attempts to found the notion of rights within Buddhism. I focus on two well-argued attempts: Damien Keown's foundation of rights on the Four Noble Truths and individual soteriology and Jay Garfield's foundation of rights on the compassionate drive to liberate others. I then fuse these two approaches in a single concept: Buddha-nature. I analyze Dōgen's own view on the practice-realization of Buddha-nature, and the equation of Buddha-nature with being, time, emptiness, and impermanence. I end with tentative suggestions concerning how Dōgen's particular view on Buddha-nature might affect any social ethics or view of rights that is founded on it. +
Kazuo Kano, an assistant professor at Koyasan University in Japan, joins forces with Kengo Harimoto, of the NGMCP in Hamburg, to present an early manuscript fragment of an otherwise unknown commentary on the ''Tattvasaṅgraha'' of Śāntarakṣita. Identified some twenty years [ago] by Prof. Kazunobu Matsuda, the well-known ‘manuscript-hunter’, this fragment has never before been studied in detail or published. Here Harimoto and Kano edit and translate the first of two surviving folios, with material which they show to be important for our understanding of the history of the Sāṃkhya system. (Isaacson, editorial, 1) +
Articles/From the Three Natures to the Two Natures: On a Fluid Approach to the Two Versions of Other-Emptiness from Fifteenth-Century Tibet +
In recent years there has been a surge of scholarly interest in diverse systems of Buddhist thought and practice that Tibetan thinkers characterize as “other-emptiness” (''gzhan stong''), contrasting them with systems of “self-emptiness” (''rang stong''). While the theories of such exponents of other emptiness as Dölpopa Sherap Gyeltsen (dol po pa shes rab rgyal mtshan, 1292–1361)1 are relatively well known, those of other Tibetan thinkers are only beginning to receive scholarly attention. This paper addresses one such lesser-known other-emptiness theory that was developed by the seminal Tibetan thinker Serdok Penchen Shakya Chokden (gser mdog paṇ chen shākya mchog ldan, 1428–1507).<br> Shakya Chokden articulated his position on other-emptiness in works written during the last thirty years of his life. In those works he advocated both Alīkākāravāda Yogācāra and Niḥsvabhāvavāda Madhyamaka systems as equally valid forms of Madhyamaka, regarding the former as a system of other-emptiness and the latter as a system of self-emptiness. Instead of approaching the two systems as irreconcilable, he presented them as equally valid and effective, emphasized their respective strengths, and promoted one or the other depending on context and audience. Partly for these reasons, his own philosophical outlook does not neatly fall into the categories of other-emptiness or self-emptiness, and placing him squarely into the camp of “followers of other-emptiness” (''gzhan stong pa'')—as some advocates of later sectarian traditions did—does not do justice to him as a thinker. (Source: [https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/132/ DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln]) +
Articles/Further Folios from the Set of Miscellaneous Texts in Śāradā Palm-leaves from Zha lu Ri phug +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
The present report overviews further findings from the set of miscellaneous texts in Śāradā palm-leaves from Zha lu ri phug. The palm-leaf set was first reported by Kano Kazuo (2008), who utilized nine folios in two photographic images (Sferra Cat. MT 42 II/1& 2) preserved at the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO) in Rome with the help of Francesco Sferra. We have known on the basis of catalogue descriptions that there are further folio images from the same set preserved in other institutes, viz. the China Tibetology Research Center (中国藏学研究中心, CTRC) and the China Ethnic Library (中国民族图书馆, CEL). In other words, the photographic images of the set have been scattered and separately preserved in the three institutes. Ye Shaoyong and Li Xuezhu have independently paid special attention to these materials and researched them.[1]<br>
It was during a lunch break on 2 August 2012 on the occasion of the 5th Beijing International Seminar on Tibetan Studies at CTRC that the present authors (Ye, Li, Kano) met together and became aware of the fact that we were studying folios from one and the same collection. We quickly decided collaboration by unifying each one’s results and sharing all related materials (As for the CTRC material, we share transcription prepared by Li). After collecting the folios together, we have come to know the number of folios of the set as 87 in total, in which 46 folios are found in CTRC images (Sang De Cat. No. 100, [3], [5] = Luo Cat., 136ff., No. 44, [3], [5]) and 41 are found in CEL images (Wang Cat. No.10, 15, 16, 17). The nine leaves in IsIAO images as reported by Kano (2008) overlap with those in CEL (Wang Cat. 10, 16). These folios contain more than fifteen works, most of which are, unfortunately, incomplete, and the remaining folios are yet to be found. There are also folios yet to be identified among the available ones. In the present report, we shall provide a preliminary survey on the Śāradā folios and an update of the report of Kano (2008) by supplying further identifications. (Ye, Li, and Kano, introduction, 30–31)<br><br>
===Notes===
1. See Ye 2012 and Li 2011.
G
One time, a monk asked Chan master Shishuang Qingzhu (807–888), "I heard that buddha-nature is like space; is that correct?" Shishuang replied, "It's present when you sleep; absent when you sit." Similarly, when asked by a monk whether a dog has buddhanature or not, Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) said, "No!" These two examples are like a fish asking another fish, "I heard that fish swim in water. Is that correct? There are such things as fish and water, right?" Ridiculous questions deserve ridiculous answers.
Buddhanature is our true nature, already free from self (Skt. ''atman''), vexations (Skt. ''klesas''), and delusions (Skt. ''avidya''). The personal experience of this freedom is called awakening (Skt. ''bodhi''). Mahayana scriptures have already clarified that buddhanature is present everywhere, in all beings, and have provided many metaphors for it (e.g., spacious and vast like the sky or ocean)—so why ask?
We ask because we are trapped in our narrow, myopic perceptions, seeing only good and bad, joy and sorrow, right and wrong, success and failure, having and lacking, fair and unfair, self and other. The self, or the "me, I, mine," come into being when we are caught up with these perceptions. This is delusion—it vanishes when we personally experience the emptiness of these perceptions—when we see through the veil of these constructs. This is wisdom, awakening. A fish doesn't have to imagine the "water" in swimming—it just swims. It's through swimming that the water is experienced. The important thing is to keep swimming. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Buddha Shakyamuni's first impressions after enlightenment move me every time:
:This peace so profound-this unpolluted, uncreated clear light-this nectar-like dharma I have found: to whomever I may teach it, it would remain enigmatic. So I will stay silent, keeping to the forest. (''Lalitavistara'', Sutra of the Panoramic Play)
What wonder is this that can enchant a mind so unbound into hushed humility?
Hearing the verse as the Buddha's ''doha'', his hymn of realizing buddhanature, is my touchstone for discerning buddhanature-first in his teachings, then my own experience.
To begin, why might the Buddha choose not to teach? Explicit statements about buddhanature are tricky. The unabashed Tibetan ''Shentong'' (Empty of All Else) philosophy; infamous for not shying away from assertion, speaks of "sublime peace," a mystical synergy beyond false binaries of permanent/impermanent, suffering/bliss, self/nonself. An enigma, to be sure. And readily misconstrued. In the reaches of the inexpressible, understanding dawns by degrees.
Sometimes silence is more articulate. The Buddha famously leaves certain questions unanswered. Nor does he mention clear light, enigmas, or buddhanature in his first public discourse, only weeks after invoking his doha. Instead, the Four Truths meet us in what we know all too well: life's sticky sorrow, even amidst its sweetness. The Buddha exhorts us to recognize dukkha, eradicate its origin, and actualize its cessation by relying on the path. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
A member of our incarcerated sangha once mentioned that our presence "smelled like freedom." It brought to mind the following quote from Nichiren Shonin (1222–1282):
:A singing bird in a cage attracts uncaged birds, and the sight of these uncaged birds will make the caged bird want to be free. Likewise, the chanting of ''Odaimoku'' will bring out the Buddha-nature within ourselves.
His comment was an opening to further explore the concept of buddhanature: What was it ''really''? I had learned that buddhanature meant that we all have the seed of buddha within, that we possess the wisdom that illuminates that seed, and that we engage in. the practice that manifests that wisdom. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Buddhism, with its manifold jeweled nets of cause and effect and co-dependent arisings, naturally has various articulations of the concept of buddhanature. Shinnyo-en traces its idea of buddhanature through various threads of Mahayana Buddhism, which comprises a large number of sutras and commentaries. The idea that anyone has the potential to become a buddha is a prominent theme found amongst the schools of Mahayana Buddhism. As it is expressed in a key phrase found in the Mahayana ''Mahaparinirvana Sutra'', often referred to as the ''Nirvana Sutra'': "All sentient beings have a buddha-nature."
In Sanskrit, the language in which the ''Mahaparinirvana Sutra'' was most likely first written, the word for buddhanature is ''buddha-dhatu''. "Dhatu" conveys a sense of essence or quality, indicating that "buddhaness" is the true essence or quality of all beings, and as a result, all beings possess the possibility of becoming a buddha. It is a very optimistic approach to the nature of humanity. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Sunrays slanted through the overcast sky, and Ganges River dolphins swam playfully beside us. From time to time, the shiny gray bulk of a hippopotamus emerged from the water's surface. It was the winter of 1999, and the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche (1913-2015), was conducting his annual fish release. I was part of a team of twelve of Rinpoche's disciples who worked for ten days to release 94,600 pounds of live fish into the mouth of the Ganges River near Kolkata. The fish were mostly farmed silver carp destined for fish markets across West Bengal,
where they would face gruesome, untimely deaths.
Each day, twenty trucks arrived in the parking lot. The fish were weighed, dumped into fifty-five-gallon plastic buckets, and hauled on bicycle-drawn wagons to the top of the steps of the Barrackpore Gandhi Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi. From there, we carried the sloshing buckets down the steps, past an assortment of Hindu devotees bathing in the holy Ganges River, and heaved the buckets onto wooden boats. We added a splash of dharma medicine to each bucket and clamped the lids down to keep the frenzied, thrashing fish from leaping out. "Chalo! Chalo!" we shouted to the boatmen, "''Let's go!''"
All day long, they motored us out to the middle of the river, where Rinpoche sat on an anchored boat reciting aspiration prayers and blowing a white conch shell. As the haunting sound of the Dharma resounded across the water, awakening all beings from the sleep of ignorance, we tipped the fish over the sides of the boats to freedom. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
Mind is originally free from all fixed reference points—in Zen it is said that "mind cannot be grasped." At the same time, mind is luminously clear and aware—as one saying goes, "everyone is radiant light, but when looked for it can't be found." This empty clarity of mind is naturally and effortlessly compassionate when facing suffering, since self and other are nondual. The ungraspable, luminous, compassionate nature of ordinary awareness itself is called buddhanature.
One time during sesshin, an intensive Zen retreat, a sense of openness and ease arose, and I went to check it out with my teacher, Tenshin Anderson Roshi. I asked, "What if there's some peace in the midst of all this suffering?" He asked me to tell him about the experience, which I did. We were walking slowly down the path during one of the breaks. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked, and he asked, "Can anything touch it?"
The question surprised me, and I began to investigate. If an experience is any kind of object known by mind, it can be touched by ideas of good and bad, it can be grasped or rejected, it will arise and cease. Awareness itself, the empty space of buddhanature, cannot be touched by anything since it is not an experience that comes and goes. The unchanging empty space of awareness can intimately host all experiences, but is not itself affected by any of them. By looking deeply into this question as the retreat continued, confidence in the untouchable peace of ever-present buddhanature arose. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/glimpses-of-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
This paper discusses syntheses forged in Tibet among the doctrines of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and buddha-nature (''tathāgatagarbha''). Buddha-nature is a distinctively Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine, taking a place along side of the Yogācāra doctrine of the basic consciousness (''ālayavijñāna'') and the universal emptiness (''śūnyatā'') of Madhyamaka. As a fundamental ground of reality, buddha-nature comes to be identified with a positive side of emptiness (in the case of Madhyamaka) and is assimilated with the basic consciousness (in the case of Yogācāra) as well. As the intrinsic purity of mind, buddha-nature also plays a causal role as the potential for complete awakening.
Buddha-nature comes to shape a Madhyamaka interpretation of emptiness in a positive light in a way that parallels its place in a Yogācāra interpretation (as a positive foundation of mind and reality). Buddha-nature supplements a Yogācāra theory of mind and reality by offering a positive alternative to a theory of consciousness that otherwise functions simply as the distorted cognitive structure of suffering. It thus is not only the potential for an awakened mind, but the cognitive content of awakening, too.
In Tibet we see the interpretation of buddha-nature converge with Mahāyāna doctrines in structurally parallel ways. Paired with buddha-nature, the doctrine of emptiness in Madhyamaka pivots from a “self-empty” lack of intrinsic nature to an “other-empty,” pure ground that remains. In narratives of disclosure characteristic of the doctrine of buddha-nature, we also see parallel shifts in the foundations of Yogācāra, as grounds of distortion like the basic consciousness, the dependent nature, and self-awareness are reinscribed into a causal story that takes place within a pure, gnostic ground. +
Although Tsongkhapa did not author a commentary on the ''Ultimate Continuum'', his main student and successor at his main seat of Ganden, Gyaltsap Je Darma Rinchen, composed an elaborate commentary on the ''Ultimate Continuum''. The commentary, filling 230 folios, was composed at Nenying temple at the request of Gungru Gyaltsen Zangpo and others after Gyaltsap had received teachings on it from both Rendawa and Tsongkha. One Tagtsel Kharkhap Dhondup Kunga served as the scribe for this voluminous and meticulous commentary, in which Gyaltsap carries out a relentless critique of the theory that buddha-nature is inherently endowed with qualities of the Buddha or that it is an absolute eternal reality empty only of other adventitious conventional phenomena. +
H
The realization of one's buddhanature is made possible only through an awakening to our limitations and inherent human imperfections. This paradoxical relationship is central to understanding the experience of awakening taught by Shinran Shonin ( 1173–1263 ), founder of Jodo Shinshu, or Shin Buddhism, the largest school of Buddhism in Japan and one of the oldest in America.
Shinran famously declared in the ''Tannisho'' (''A Record in Lament of Divergences'') that "hell is decidedly my abode whatever I do." This brutally honest assessment of himself and the human condition is a hallmark of Shrinran's thought; he posits awakening as a twofold awareness of one's own karmic evil (lack of buddhanature within oneself) and the working of the Buddha's great compassion, which embraces unconditionally enabling our enlightenment. Shinran's realization of his true inner self, which he perceived to be the exact opposite of an enlightened being, leads to his humbling confession of how he does not see the existence of buddhanature within himself, and yet, simultaneously awakens him to the activity of Amida Buddha's Primal Vow, which is inconceivably directed to him. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/hope-for-the-hopeless/ Read more here]) +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The question of ever-present change must be as old as the discipline of philosophy itself. The notion of constant flux attributed to Heraclitus (c. 535-c. 475 BC) and known as "''panta rhei''" was largely forgotten in the later development of Greek thought, but in India the notion of universal flux developed from around the sixth century BCE onward and inspired different philosophical systems, among them the Buddhist philosophy.
The Buddha’s statement "all that is conditioned[1] is impermanent!"[2] is known as one of The "Four Seals," the cornerstone of all Buddhist traditions. In Buddhist logic this seal became the basis for the equation: "Whatever is conditioned is impermanent and whatever is impermanent is conditioned. Whatever is not conditioned is not impermanent and whatever is not impermanent is not conditioned."
In Buddhism, the doctrine of the impermanence of conditioned entities is interwoven with the doctrine of causality. The fact that an entity is conditioned by previous causes and moments makes it subject to impermanence. The doctrine of impermanence was further refined into the doctrine of momentariness. This doctrine postulates a process of momentary arising and cessation on the micro level that happens so fast that it is perceived as a continuity.[3]
The following presentation will highlight different definitions and classifications of what the terms ''conditioned'' and ''impermanent'' might mean for a number of selected Tibetan Buddhist masters in their interpretations of the true nature of the mind. Their literary works are invariably based, directly or indirectly, upon Indian Buddhist ''śāstras'' translated into Tibetan.
<h5>Notes</h5>
#S. ''saṃskṛta'', T. ''<i>’</i>du byas'' or ''<i>’</i>du byed''.
#S. ''anitya'', T. ''mi rtag pa''.
#See Stcherbatsky’s ''Buddhist Logic'', von Rospatt’s ''The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness'', and Dreyfus’s ''Recognizing Reality'' for a detailed treatment of the Buddhist notions of impermanence and momentariness.
According to traditional biographies, Gautama Buddha had a special relationship with trees. He was born among trees in Lumbini Grove, when his mother went into premature labor. As a child, while sitting under a tree and watching his father plow a field as part of a religious ceremony, he naturally fell into a meditative trance. Later, when he left home on his spiritual quest, he went into the forest, where he studied with two teachers, later engaged in ascetic practices, and then meditated by himself under a tree, where he awakened. Afterward he continued to spend most of his time outdoors, often teaching under trees and eventually dying between two trees.<br> Unsurprisingly, the Buddha often expressed his appreciation of trees and other plants. According to one story in the Vinaya monastic code, a tree spirit appeared to him and complained that a monk had chopped down its tree. In response, the Buddha prohibited monastics from damaging trees or bushes, including cutting off limbs, picking flowers, or even plucking green leaves. One wonders what he would say about our casual destruction of whole ecosystems today.<br> We may also wonder about the larger pattern: why religious founders so often experience their spiritual transformation by leaving human society and going into the wilderness by themselves. Following his baptism, Jesus went into the desert, where he fasted for forty days and nights. Mohammed's revelations occurred when he retreated into a cave, where the archangel Gabriel appeared to him. The ''Khaggavisana Sutta'' (Rhinoceros Horn Sutra), one of the earliest in the
Pali canon, encourages monks to wander alone in the forest, like a rhinoceros. Milarepa lived and practiced in a cave by himself for many years, as did many Tibetan yogis after him. Today, in contrast, most of us meditate inside buildings with screened windows, which insulate us from insects, the hot sun, and chilling winds. There are many advantages to this, of course, but is something significant also lost?<br> Although we normally relate to nature in a utilitarian way, the natural world is an interdependent community of living beings that invites us into a different kind of relationship. The implication is that withdrawing into it, especially by oneself, can disrupt our usual ways of seeing and open us up to an alternative experience. Does that also point to why we enjoy being in nature so much? We find it healing, even when we don't understand why or how, but clearly it has something to do with the fact that the natural world offers us a temporary escape from our instrumentalized lives. (Read the entire article [https://rk-world.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/DW18_7-12.pdf here].)
The concept of buddhanature (''bussho''), as interchangeable with ''tathagatagarbha'' (womb or embryo of ''tathagata''; "one who has thus come," an epithet of the Buddha), arose in Mahayana Buddhism after Nagarjuna (second to third century CE) and before Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century CE). Sutras from this period are considered middle Mahayana sutras. Before the development of the Mahayana, people generally did not believe they could become buddhas, but some Mahayana Buddhists began to teach that any one of us can become a bodhisattva—a buddha-to-be—if we arouse ''bodhicitta'' (awakening mind), take bodhisattva vows, receive bodhisattva precepts, and practice the six paramitas (generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and wisdom).
However, probably because they observed themselves and the conditions of the samsaric world—in which so many are self-centered, competitive, in conflict, and have hatred for each other—they needed to instill some faith that buddhahood was within reach. Even if the people of the world were deluded, their minds defiled with the three poisons, they could eventually reach buddhahood if they continued to practice the Buddha's teachings.
They developed the concept of buddhanature—that is, the pure undefiled mind as the essential self-nature, hidden and covered as it may be thanks to our deluded, discriminative minds. According to those middle Mahayana sutras, buddhanature is permanent, without change, whether in deluded living beings or in enlightened buddhas. It continues to exist, life after life, until buddhahood is reached, no matter how long it might take. Some people criticized this theory, arguing that buddhanature sounded like ''atman,'' the permanent self that Shakyamuni had negated.
In India, others argued that all living beings have buddhanature, or that some do, but that especially deluded people, called ''icchantika'', lacked it. In the later part of the ''Nirvana Sutra'' (second century CE), it is said that all living beings, without exception, have buddhanature. This idea heavily influenced almost all traditions of Chinese Buddhism. Some Chinese Buddhists, including the ancestors of today’s Zen practitioners, further maintained that not only sentient beings but also nonsentient beings, have buddhanature. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/how-insentient-beings-expound-dharma/ Read more here])
No abstract given. Below are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>A monk asked Zhaozhou: ‘‘Does a dog have buddha-nature?’’ Zhaozhou replied: ‘‘No.’’<br><br>
This pithy exchange between an unidentified Buddhist monk and the Tang dynasty Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen (778–897) is perhaps the best-known example of a Chan ''gong’an'', or ‘"public case." Although the passage occurs in a collection of Zhaozhou's sayings supposedly compiled by his disciples, its notoriety is due to a Song dynasty master, Wumen Huikai (1183–1260), who placed this exchange at the beginning of his famous ''gong’an'' collection, ''Gateless Barrier of the Chan Tradition'' (''Chanzong wumen guan'', 1228).[1] Wumen’s compilation, consisting of forty-four such exchanges and anecdotes accompanied by Wumen’s comments, is one of the most important works of Chan literature. And as the first case in Wumen’s collection, "Zhaozhou’s dog" became the single most influential ''gong’an'' in the Chinese Chan, Korean Son, and Japanese Zen traditions. It is often the first and sometimes the only ''gong’an'' assigned to monks, and many traditional commentators claim, following Wumen’s lead, that this single ''gong’an'' holds the key to all others.<br> Wumen’s work was neither the earliest nor the most comprehensive compilation of Chan cases. Indeed, the ''Gateless Barrier'' is relatively short and straightforward in comparison to two earlier collections, the ''Blue Cliff Record of Chan Master Foguo Yuanwu'' (''Foguo Yuanwu Chanshi Biyan lu''), published in 1128, and the ''Congrong Hermitage Record of the Commentaries by Old Wansong on the Case and Verse [Collection] by Reverend Jue of Tiantong [Mountain]'' (''Wansong laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu''), published in 1224. The cases that
make up these texts are each based on an individual anecdote, verbal exchange, or quandary known as the ''benze'' (original edict), to which has been added comments in prose and verse brushed by later masters. Whereas the ''Gateless Barrier'' contains forty-four such anecdotes accompanied by a brief comment and verse by Wumen, the ''Blue Cliff Record'' and ''Congrong Hermitage Record'' each contain one hundred cases including several layers of appended judgments, verses, and interlinear glosses. (The same "original edict" may appear in two or more collections, but the exegesis will invariably differ. More will be said about the structure of these
collections below.) Many more ''gong’an'' collections gained currency in China, and the Chan tradition would come to speak of seventeen hundred authoritative cases (although this number was probably not meant to be taken literally). By the end of the Song the ''gong’an'' had assumed a central role in the ideological, literary, and institutional identity of the Chan school.<br> Popular books on Chan and Zen Buddhism present ''gong’an'' as intentionally incoherent or meaningless. They are, it is claimed, illogical paradoxes or unsolvable riddles intended to frustrate and short-circuit the intellect in order to quell
thought and bring the practitioner to enlightenment. This understanding of ''gong’an'' is allied with a view of Chan as an iconoclastic and anti-intellectual tradition that rejects scripture, doctrine, philosophy, and indeed all forms of conceptual understanding in favor of unmediated or "pure" experience. ''Gong’an'' are intended, according to this view, not to communicate ideas so much as to induce a transformative experience. To grasp at the literal meaning of a Chan case is to
miss its point.<br> Recently scholars have begun to question the instrumental view of Chan that underlies this approach to Chan cases, arguing that it is based on a misreading of the historical and ethnographic record.[2] Chan ranks among the most ritualistic forms of Buddhist monasticism, and a master’s enlightenment is constituted within a prescribed set of institutional and ritual forms.[3] Moreover, the notion that Chan is designed to induce a nonconceptual or pure experience can be traced in part to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese intellectuals such as D. T. Suzuki and Nishida Kitarō, who were culling from Western sources, notably William James.[4] The notion that Chan is anti-intellectual and repudiates "words and letters" is belied by the fact that the Chan tradition produced the largest literary corpus of any Buddhist school in East Asia.[5] This corpus consists in large part of "recorded sayings" (''yulu'') and "records of the transmission of the flame" (''chuandenglu'') texts—texts recounting the careers and teachings of past patriarchs from which the original edicts were drawn.<br> Scholars now appreciate that Chan is more complex than early apologists and enthusiasts cared to admit; it is no longer possible to reduce Chan practice and Chan literature to a mere means intended to engender a singular and ineffable
spiritual experience. Accordingly, scholars of Chan ''gong’an'' have begun to attend to the institutional context and literary history of the genre,[6] and one scholar has devoted an entire monograph to the folkloric themes that appear in a single case.[7] Be that as it may, little progress has been made in deciphering the doctrinal and exegetical intent of Chan ''gong’an''; it would appear that scholars remain reluctant to treat ''gong’an'' as a form of exegesis at all. This reluctance may be due to the enduring legacy of an earlier apologetic mystification of the ''gong’an'' literature. The primary objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that such reluctance is misguided and that it is indeed possible to recover the original meaning and doctrinal purport of at least some of the cases. The task is not easy, however, as the cases are philosophically subtle and hermeneutically sophisticated, and the authors of the collections delighted in obscure allusions, clever puns, and deft wordplay. (Sharf, "How to Think with Chan ''Gong’an''," 205–7)<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
My thanks to Charlotte Furth and Elizabeth Horton Sharf for their comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter and to Ling Hon Lam for his meticulous
editorial attention.<br>
#T 2005:48.292c20–24. The exchange is also featured in case no. 18 of the ''Wansong Laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrongan lu'', T 2004:48.238b21–39a28. Textual details concerning Zhaozhou’s recorded sayings (''Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi yulu'') will be found below.
#Faure, ''The Rhetoric of Immediacy'' and ''Chan Insights and Oversights''; Foulk, "Myth, Ritual, and Monastic Practice"; Sharf, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," "Whose Zen?" and "Experience."
#Foulk and Sharf, "On the Ritual Use"; Sharf, "Ritual."
#Sharf, "Whose Zen?"
#On the sometimes controversial place of literary endeavors in the Song monastic institution, see esp. Gimello, "Mārga and Culture"; and Keyworth, "Transmitting the Lamp," 281–324.
#See esp. Heine and Wright, eds., ''The Kōan''.
#Heine, ''Shifting Shape''.
Articles/Hōshōron miroku chosaku setsu no kagen nendai saikō: Tonkō bonbun dankan IOL Khot S 5 to Pelliot 2740 no setsugō fukugen to nendai suitei +
It was reported by H. W. Bailey that a Khotanese-hybrid Sanskrit manuscript fragment from Dunhuang, IOL Khot S5 (abbr. S5) verso side, quotes verses from the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (abbr. RGV) and attributes them to Maitreya. S5 is the earliest text hitherto known that ascribes the authorship of the RGV to Maitreya. While Bailey dates the S5 verso side to the period between the end of the 8th century and the 11th century, we can now further specify the date of composition as some time between the first half of the 9th century and the 11th century. Our rationale for this more specific ''terminus post quem'' is that the Chinese version of the ''Aparimitāyurjñānadhāraṇī'' (無量寿宗要経) written on the recto side of S5 is likely one of the numerous copies of the sūtra produced during (or shortly after) the reign of king Khri gtsug lde btsan, that is, during the first half of the 9th century. This fact is attested by two witnesses: Pelliot Tibétain 999 and the colophon of S5 recto side. There is also another Dunhuang Sanskrit fragment (Pelliot Chinois 2740) which quotes the RGV, and it is identified as the missing part of S5: the text of Pelliot 2740 recto precisely supplies the missing portion of S5 recto, and the two fragments are very similar in terms of size, material, and scripts. (Source: [https://www.academia.edu/5417315/_Dating_the_Earliest_Source_that_Attributes_the_Ratnagotravibh%C4%81ga_to_Maitreya_Sanskrit_Fragments_IOL_Khot_S_5_and_Pelliot_2740_from_Dunhuang_Indogaku_Bukkyogaku_Kenkyu_60-2_2012_._pp._168-174_in_Japanese_ Academia.edu]) +
I
No abstract given. Here is the first relevant paragraph: <br><br>
I have been able to trace a hitherto unidentified quotation in the ''Ratnagotravibhāga(vrtti)'' (''RGV(V)'') to the ''Tathāgatagarbhasūtra'' (''TGS''). The sentence in question occurs in the ''RGV(V)'' in the context of the explanation of the three ''svabhāvas'' of the ''dhātu'', viz., ''dharmakāya'', ''tathatā'' and ''gotra'', the three key terms of verses 1.27-28, which constitute the central section of the ''RGVV''. The quotation is part of the commentary on the third aspect, i.e., ''gotra'', and is placed after the last of the three interpretations of the compound ''tathāgatagarbha''. In this context the ''dhātu'' of living beings, i.e., their buddha essence, has
just been declared to mean "cause" (''hetu'').<br><br>
[http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/publication/aririab.html Read the rest of this article in Vol. 3 of the Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology . . .] +
Articles/In Defense of His Guru: Dratsepa's Rebuttal to the Challenges Articulated by the Proponents of the Other-Emptiness Doctrine +
The buddha-nature literature has a significant place within the Indian Mahāyāna tradition and Tibetan Buddhism. While it is usually included in the so-called Last Wheel of the Buddha’s teachings, many Tibetan thinkers began to cast doubts about the textual significance of buddha-nature discourse in fourteenth century Tibet. In this article, I will examine one particular case where there is apparent tension between multiple Tibetan masters over the importance of buddhanature teachings. This paper primarily analyzes Dratsepa’s commentary to the ''Ornament'' (''mdzes rgyan'') written by his teacher, Buton. Dratsepa construes the ''Ornament'' as a work critiquing Dolpopa’s interpretation of the buddha-nature literature. He levels a barrage of criticisms against Dolpopa by referring to Indian śāstras and sūtras that are equally important to both of them, and also by tracing his own assessment of the tathāgata-essence teachings to early Tibetan scholars. In contradistinction to Dolpopa’s claims, Dratsepa offers several nuanced readings of the buddha-nature literature and complicates the notion of what it means to have tathāgata-essence, what a definitive or provisional meaning entails, and the relationship between the Middle Wheel and the Last Wheel teachings. In brief, Dratsepa’s text sheds light on one of the earliest discourses on the tension between self-emptiness and other-emptiness presentations. +
Articles/Is "Buddha-Nature" Buddhist? Doctrinal Tensions in the Srimala Sutra: An Early Tathagatagarbha Text +
Recent controversies in Japanese Buddhist scholarship have focused upon the Mahayana notion of a "Buddha nature" within all sentient beings and whether or not the concept is compatible with traditional Buddhist teachings such as ''anātman'' (no-abiding-self). This controversy is not only relevant to Far Eastern Buddhism, for which the notion of a Buddha-nature is a central doctrinal theme, but also for the roots of this tradition in those Indian Mahāyāna ''sūtras'' which utilised the notion of ''tathāgatagarbha'' (Buddha-embryo or Buddha womb). One of the earliest Buddhist texts to discuss this notion is the ''Queen Śrīmālā Sūtra'' (''Śrīmālādevīsūtra''), which appears to display a transitional and revisionist attitude towards traditional Mahāyāna doctrines such as emptiness (''śūnyatā'') and no-abiding-self (''anātman''). These and related issues are examined as they occur in the ''Śrīmālā Sūtra'' and as they might relate to the issue of the place of Buddha-nature thought within the Buddhist tradition. Finally some concluding remarks are made about the quest for "true" Buddhism. +
Modern exponents of mindfulness meditation promote the therapeutic effects of “bare attention”—a sort of non-judgmental, non-discursive attending to the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. This approach to Buddhist meditation can be traced to Burmese Buddhist reform movements of the first half of the 20th century, and is arguably at odds with more traditional Theravāda Buddhist doctrine and meditative practices. But the cultivation of present-centered awareness is not without precedent in Buddhist history; similar innovations arose in medieval Chinese Zen (Chan) and Tibetan Dzogchen. These movements have several things in common. In each case the reforms were, in part, attempts to render Buddhist practice and insight accessible to laypersons unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy and/or unwilling to adopt a renunciatory lifestyle. In addition, these movements all promised astonishingly quick results. And finally, the innovations in practice were met with suspicion and criticism from traditional Buddhist quarters. Those interested in the therapeutic effects of mindfulness and bare attention are often not aware of the existence, much less the content, of the controversies surrounding these practices in Asian Buddhist history. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>In this chapter I examine some medieval Buddhist doctrines that, at least on the surface, seem similarly strange and implausible. Indeed, some of the Buddhist notions to be examined below were perplexing to audiences in their own day, much as discussions of brain transplants are perplexing to us today. On the Indian side, I will begin with the notion of ''nirodha-samāpatti'', a meditative state akin to a vegetative coma in which all consciousness has ceased. I will then turn to a class of beings known as “beings without conception” (''asaṃjñika-sattvāḥ''), denizens of a celestial realm who are devoid of sentience, thought, and consciousness. In both cases, an insentient state seems to be followed by (or gives rise to) a sentient state, which poses serious challenges to the classical Buddhist understanding of karma. On the Chinese side, we will consider the debate over the buddha-nature of insentient objects—can an insentient thing such as a wall or roof tile attain buddhahood and preach the dharma? This doctrine too could be (and was) seen as a threat to the coherence of Buddhist teachings.<br> Modern scholars tend to approach such doctrines as the products of intelligent but misguided scholastics struggling to make sense of the universe, all the while hobbled by the dictates of tradition, scripture, and a prescientific understanding of the cosmos. They are the proverbial schoolmen calculating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But I would suggest another perspective. Such theories, I argue, serve as frames of reference for pondering issues of personal identity, ethical responsibility, sentience, and death. Given that we ourselves are still far from clarity on these issues, and given that we too devise fanciful thought experiments to help gain a conceptual toehold, perhaps it is time to look afresh at what the Buddhists might have been up to.[11] (Sharf, preamble, 144–45)
<h5>Notes</h5>
11. For an articulate defense of Buddhist scholasticism, along different lines, see Paul John Griffiths, “Scholasticism: The Possible Recovery of an Intellectual Practice,” in ''Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives'', ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 201–35.
There have been several attempts of late to read Yogācāra through the lens of Western phenomenology. I approach the issue through a reading of the ''Cheng weishi lun'' (''Treatise on the Perfection of Consciousness Only''), a seventh-century Chinese compilation that preserves the voices of multiple Indian commentators on Vasubandhu’s ''Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā'' (''Thirty Verses on Consciousness''). Specifically, I focus on the "five omnipresent mental factors" (''pañcasarvatraga'', Chin. ''wu bianxing xinsuo'') and the “four aspects” (Chin. ''sifen'') of cognition. These two topics seem ripe, at least on the surface, for phenomenological analysis, particularly as the latter topic includes a discussion of “self-awareness” (''svasaṃvedana'', ''svasaṃvitti'', Chin. ''zizheng''). Yet we find that the ''Cheng weishi lun'' account has little in common with the tradition associated with Husserl and his heirs. The categories and modes of analysis in the ''Cheng weishi lun'' do not emerge from or aver to a systematic reflection on the nature of “lived experience” so much as they are focused on subliminal processes and metaphysical entities that belong to the domain of the noumenal. In my conclusion I suggest that the later ''pramāṇa'' tradition associated with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti—a tradition that profoundly influenced later Yogācāra exegesis in Tibet—did indeed take a “phenomenological turn.” But my comparison shows that both traditions falter when it comes to relating conceptual content to non-conceptual experience, and thus there is reason to be skeptical about claims that phenomenology is epistemologically grounded in how the world presents itself first-personally. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:
The Trikāya doctrine of Buddhism, i.e., the doctrine that the Buddha has three "bodies," is notorious for its complexities. Attributed to the Yogācāra, but regarded as typical of the Mahāyāna in general, it is customarily cited in books on Buddhism in terms of the triad ''dharma-kāya'', ''saṃbhoga-kāya'' (or ''saṃbhogika-kāya'') and ''nirmāṇa-kāya'' (or ''nairmāṇika-kāya''). Taking these in ascending order of abstraction, the ''nirmāṇa-kāya'', usually translated "apparitional body," "phantom body," "transformation body," etc., is the physical manifestation of Buddhahood, the ordinary perishable human form, as exemplified by the "historical Buddha," Siddhartha Gautama. The ''saṃbhoga-kāya'' ("body of bliss," "reward body," "enjoyment body," etc.) is a more exalted and splendid manifestation of the enlightened personality, still in the realm of form, but visible only to bodhisattvas, those of advanced spiritual capabili-ties. By contrast, the ''dharma-kāya'' ("''Dharma''-body," "Body of Truth," "Cosmic Body," "Absolute Body," etc.) is both formless and imperishable, representing the identification of the Buddha with the truth which he revealed, or with reality itself. As such the ''dharma-kāya'' is often linked with various terms for reality, such as ''dharmatā'', ''dharma-dhātu'', and so on, and has even been regarded as a kind of Buddhist absolute, or at least at one with it.[2] In this light the ''dharma-kāya'' is understood as the primal "source" or "ground" from which the other two types of bodies emanate.[3] While many scholars are content to describe this in purely abstract terms, others impute personal characteristics to it;[4] and at least one writer has gone so far as to compare it to the Christian idea of Godhead.[5]
As a summary of the Trikāya doctrine this is, of course, over-simplified. We are dealing here with a complex theory which underwent many accretions and refinements, as Buddhists continued down through the centuries to speculate on the nature of Buddhahood, on the nature of reality, and on the relationship between them.[6] It is hardly surprising, then, that attempts to plot the course of such arcane speculations have not always been entirely successful in reaching a clear consensus, although the arguments advanced, even in recent writing on the subject, do tend to follow similar lines. A good example of this is the authoritative treatment by Nagao, "On the Theory of Buddha-body (''Buddha-kāya'')" first published in English in 1973.[7] Generally Nagao distinguishes three phases: an initial one-body theory, a two-body theory, and the three-body theory elaborated by the Yogācāras. According to him (p. 104), the two-body theory (i.e., ''rūpa-kāya'' and ''dharma-kāya'') "became stabilized in a variety of earlier sūtras,[8] and in early Mahāyāna sūtras, the ''Prajñāpāramitā'', the ''Saddharmapuṇḍarīka'', and so forth. The ''rūpa-kāya'' is the Buddha seen in a human body, while the ''dharma-kāya'' is the Buddha's personality seen in the dharma or dharma-nature." Elsewhere (pp. 106-7) Nagao states that the two-body theory was the one held "until the time of the ''Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra'' and the time of Nāgārjuna," even though the raw materials for the third body, the ''saṃbhoga-kāya'', were also to hand before the time of Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, as a consequence of the ''bodhisattva''-concept and the idea that a ''bodhisattva''<i>'</i>s performance of meritorious actions produced a body which was their manifest "reward." Nagao's article contains many valuable observations, but, as we shall see, some of its assertions are rather too imprecise, both chronologically and philosophically, to be of much use in unravelling the early development of the doctrine at issue. Another recent treatment of the subject by Makransky (1989) also describes certain features of the putative earlier two-body theory before the Yogācāras remodelled it (see esp. pp. 51-53), and distinguishes it sharply from the previous Mainstream[9] (in this case, Sarvāstivādin) formulations. This analysis, too, is open to question in certain respects, as I shall show. In these and other articles on the subject[10] there is a general tendency to postulate a one-body/two-body/three-body progression, in terms of which a single personality is divided into a physical and a "spiritual" body, and then the physical body is further split in two, yielding the final complement of three. Some writers, however, point to the existence of three bodies even in the Pāli sources, what one scholar has called the "primitive triad," i.e., ''pūti''- or ''cātur-mahābhūtika-kāya'', ''mano-maya-kāya'', and ''dhamma-kāya''.[11] The first is the corruptible physical body formed out of the four elements, while the second is the mind-made body with which the Buddha visits the celestial realms (believed by some to be a forerunner of the ''saṃbhoga-kāya''); the third is the so-called "''Dhamma''-body." Now, although both these ways of approaching the subject—the assumption of a linear process, and the belief that the Pāli Canon contains an embryonic Trikāya schema—raise certain difficulties, I do not propose in this paper to discuss the evolution of the Trikāya theory in its entirety, since that would be a mammoth undertaking. What I wish to do is address one aspect of it only, viz., the early development of the idea of ''dharma-kāya'', in the hope that clarifying this will open the way to a better understanding of Mahāyāna buddhology as a whole. (Harrison, introduction, 44–46)
<h5>Notes</h5>
#(From the title) A preliminary version of this paper was presented at Berkeley and at the 10th Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies in Paris in July, 1991. I wish to thank all those friends and colleagues who either heard or read this first draft and made helpful comments on it, in particular Rolf Giebel, Richard Gombrich, Kevin Lee, Jan Nattier, David Seyfort Ruegg, Lambert Schmithausen, Gregory Schopen and Jonathan Silk.
#See, e.g., Murti 1955: 284-287.
#See, e.g., Reynolds and Hallisey 1987: 330-331.
#See, e.g., Murti 1955: 285: "The Dharmakāya is still a Person, and innumerable merits and powers etc. are ascribed to him."
#See Suzuki 1930: 308-338. Suzuki's discussion of the whole subject has a distinctly "theological" flavour (see especially pp. 308, 310), to which we shall return later.
#For example, sometimes the ''dharma-kāya'' is also referred to as the ''svābhāvika-kāya'' or "essential body," sometimes this latter is said to constitute a fourth body. The dispute over this issue is the focus of the article by John Makransky (1989).
#This article was reprinted with inconsequential changes in Nagao 1991: 103-122. All citations are from this later version.
#Presumably Nagao means Mainstream Buddhist scriptures here. "Mainstream Buddhism" is the term I employ to refer to non-Mahāyāna Buddhism, in preference to the other terms in current use, none of which is totally satisfactory. "Theravāda" is patently inaccurate and anachronistic, "Hīnayāna" is pejorative and potentially offensive, "Śrāvakayāna" is more subtly pejorative, and also makes it hard to place the Pratyeka-buddhayāna (whatever that was), while "Nikāya" or "Sectarian Buddhism," although neutral, are historically misleading, given the fact that the Mahāyāna was a pan-Buddhist movement running across Nikāya or Vinaya school/ordination lineage boundaries. This means that monks and nuns converted to the Mahāyāna continued to belong also to the Nikāya in which they had been ordained, to uphold its Vinaya, and so on. However, they remained in the minority, at least in India. The term "Mainstream" reflects this situation.
#See above, n. 8.
#Other valuable recent contributions are by Kajiyama (1984/1989) and Williams (1989: 167-184). The lengthy discussion by Dutt (1977: 141-177) cannot be recommended. For an excellent survey of earlier scholarly work on this question and of the Buddhist sources themselves, see de La Vallee Poussin 1929: 762-813.
#See Lancaster 1968: 92; see also de La Vallee Poussin 1929: 764.
J
In this conversation with ''Buddhadharma'', the Insight Meditation Society cofounder applies the "harmonized understanding" approach championed in his book ''One Dharma'' to the idea of buddhanature. In the end, it's not about who's right or wrong about it. It's about what leads us to less clinging.
BUDDHADHARMA: Thanks for talking with us, Joseph. We're hoping you might talk about buddanature from your unique perspective as a Buddhist primarily trained in Theravada, but then in other modes, too. JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN: It's not a term that I've come across a lot in early Buddhist teachings; it seems to come about more in Mahayana and in Vajrayana. And so it would be helpful to find a common definition that would make sense in terms of early Buddhism. Basically, the Pali texts talk about the enlightened mind, free of defilements. That would, I think, be a good cross-tradition term.
In ''One Dharma'', you list some of the names for the ultimate freedom that buddhanature represents: the unconditioned, dharmakaya, the unborn, pure heart, mind essence, nature of mind, ultimate bodhicitta, nirvana. Some of those terms are used more often in the later traditions. I think a popular understanding of some of the later traditions is that we're already enlightened, and we simply have to realize it. That might imply that it's more accessible than it actually is. Whether we phrase it in terms of "we're already enlightened and we just need to realize it," or "we're not yet enlightened and we have to get there," the task is formidable. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/joseph-goldstein-its-not-either-or/ Read more here]) +
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No abstract given. Here is the first relevant paragraph:<br><br>
Du III au VII siècle de notre ère, selon la chronologie la plus souvent admise, la pensée bouddhique en Inde a trouvé une expression particulièrement brillante dans l'école dite du Vijñānavāda «doctrine de la connaissance». Les premiers ouvrages ressortissant à cette école en tant que telle peuvent être datés du début du Ill siècle. Au cours de ce siècle et du suivant, elle constitue peu à peu ses thèses, notamment à travers les ouvrages de Maitreya-nātha, d'Asaṅga et de Vasubandhu l'ancien. Je désignerai les développements de cette période sous le nom de Vijñānavāda ancien. Au V siècle, Vasubandhu le jeune cherche à fixer et à synthétiser la doctrine; ses travaux ouvrent la période de ce que j'ai appelé le Vijñānavāda classique, caractérisée par une abondante littérature de commentaires qu'illustrent en particulier les noms de Sthiramati, Dharmapāla et Hiuan-tsang. Le present exposé s'attachera à retracer brièvement l'histoire du Vijñānavāda, puis à exposer la doctrine classique. (May, "La philosophie bouddhique idéaliste," 265)<br><br>
English Translation:<br><br>
From the third to the seventh century AD, according to the most commonly accepted chronology, Buddhist thought in India found a particularly brilliant expression in the school known as the Vijñānavāda "doctrine of knowledge". The first works coming out of this school as such can be dated to the beginning of the 11th century. During this century and the following, it gradually built up its theses, notably through the works of Maitreya-nātha, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu the Elder. I will designate the developments of this period under the name of ancient Vijñānavāda. In the fifth century, Vasubandhu the Younger sought to fix and synthesize the doctrine; his works open the period of what I have called the classical Vijñānavāda, characterized by an abundant literature of commentaries that illustrate in particular the names of Sthiramati, Dharmapāla and Hiuan-tsang. This presentation will focus on briefly recounting the history of Vijñānavāda, then explaining classical doctrine.
It’s surprisingly easy to achieve lasting happiness — we just have to understand our own basic nature. The hard part, says Mingyur Rinpoche, is getting over our bad habit of seeking happiness in transient experiences. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra consists of ten chapters, named respectively —(1) Rāvaṇādhyeṣaṇā parivarta, (2) Sarvadharmasamuccaya parivarta, (3) Anityatā parivarta, (4) Abhisamaya parivarta, (5) Tathāgata - nityānityatva, (6) Kṣaṇika parivarta, (7) Nairmāṇika parivarta, (8) Māṃsabhakṣaṇa parivarta, (9) Dhāraṇīparivarta, and (10) the Parisamāpti parivarta, which bears no special name.<br> Throughout the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra the speaker is Buddha himself. The first chapter of the book is addressed to Rāvaṇa, while the person spoken to in the remaining nine chapters is Mahāmati. Rāvaṇa prayed to Buddha for the solution of two questions, viz. : (1) what is the distinction between ''dharma'' and ''adharma'', and (2) how could one pass beyond both ''dharma'' and ''adharma''? Buddha’s answers to these questions form the subject-matter of the first chapter. Thereafter 108 questions were asked by Mahāmati, and
Buddha’s answers to these questions form the topics of the remaining nine chapters. (Vidyābhūṣaṇa, para 10–11, 833)<br><br>
[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.70554/page/n863/mode/2up Read more here . . .] +
Articles/Lost in Translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and Its Modern Readings +
The ''Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith'', an indigenous Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (''foxing''), buddha bodies (''foshen''), and one mind (''yixin''), among others, served from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The ''Treatise'' is putatively attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghoṣa, and its current Chinese version was traditionally conceived of as a translation from an original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however, many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the textual history of the ''Treatise''. Even if the specific circumstances of its creation are still largely unknown, the view that the ''Treatise'' is an original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English translations. After examining the early textual history of the two existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters, an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society. +
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No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
The present paper provides an annotated translation of Sajjana’s ''Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa'' along with a reading text of this Sanskrit work (a critical edition of which is under preparation for publication). I started to work on this text in 2005 when I received a copy of a photographic image of a manuscript containing it from Professor Jikidō Takasaki. I published a study dealing with this manuscript in 2006 (Kano 2006b) and provided a critical edition of the Sanskrit text in my doctoral thesis, submitted to Hamburg University in 2006 (Kano 2006a). I also prepared a preliminary annotated translation of this text in 2006 and gave the draft to Karl Brunnhölzl together with my unpublished doctoral thesis.<br> It came as a surprise for me to learn that Brunnhölzl copied and published the draft of my translation under his name in his book ''When the Clouds Part: The Uttaratantra and Its Meditative Tradition as a Bridge between Sūtra and Tantra'' (Boston/London: Snow Lion, 2014), pp. 461–472. Brunnhölzl (p. 1121, n. 1718) says in his book: “All topical headings are inserted by the translator (corresponding to my outline above). Though my translation sometimes differs from Kano’s, I am indebted to both his translation and his Sanskrit edition of the text with critical apparatus (Kano 2006, 513–35), which in turn owe much to Profs. Schmithausen and Isaacson as well as Dr. Diwakar Acharya.” The fact is, however, that he has in many cases simply copied my earlier work.<br> Since the translation used by Brunnhölzl was an unpublished draft, my earlier mistakes found their way into his book, inasmuch as that draft was based in turn on an early draft of my Sanskrit edition, which itself contains serious misreadings, especially in verses 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15, along with a number of errors in the interlinear glosses. All his striving to make sense of my misreadings of the Sanskrit have been to no avail; his interpretations and analysis (Brunnhölzl, ''ibid''. pp. 288–300 ) based on these errors need to be fundamentally revised. I have since made improvements to the Sanskrit edition and translation, and this is reflected in the differences between his published translation and the one I offer here.[1] (Kano, preface, 1–2)<br><br>
===Notes===
1. I am grateful for a number of suggestions and improvements of my critical edition of Sajjana's ''Mahāyānottaratantraśāstropadeśa'' to Prof. Harunaga Isaacson, Prof. Diwakar Acharya, Prof. Lambert Schmithausen, Dr. Pascale Hugon, and all participants of a workshop “From Kashmir to Tibet: A set of proto-Śāradā palm leaves and two works on the ''Ratnagotravibhāga''” held on 21. April 2015 at Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Institut für Kultur-und Geistesgeschichte Asiens. I would like to thank to Dr. David Reigle and Mr. Philip Pierce for much valuable information regarding difficult points of the text and English proof-reading of my translation.
Connecting with our buddhanature, our enlightened nature, often feels very far away, like it's not even possible. But it is much closer than we think. For example, when we are suddenly moved to compassion for someone, right then our buddhanature is shining through us. If we tune into ourselves at that moment, we can feel our innate goodness, our unconditioned pure being. Or when someone
looks at us with complete love, we can allow it in and feel the same.
Tonglen, which means taking and sending, is a meditation practice that cultivates unconditional compassion and love. In Tonglen, as we open to our own or others' suffering and allow it to be transformed into compassion, we awaken to the compassion and love that is at the core of who we are. We first bring loving awareness to ourselves, and then we exchange self for others. Taking and sending for ourselves can unearth feelings of self-hatred, low self-worth, deficiency, and unworthiness, among others. As we gradually work through these feelings and open to increased kindness and compassion for ourselves, it helps heal our core wounds and loosens our self-fixation, facilitating a deeper opening into compassion and love. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/meditations-on-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
The approach to cutting our ties to samsara in the Dzogchen and Mahamudra meditation traditions of Vajrayana Buddhism is to allow samsara to manifest and immediately recognize that it is the expression or display of primordial wisdom.
In Dzogchen practice, the most important thing is the recognition of inner space or emptiness. If you can practice this, then whatever phenomena of samsara arise are dissolved into wisdom mind. For this to happen, your recognition of mind nature has to be unwaver-ing. If you can achieve this, then anything that arises in your mind-stream-any emotions, thoughts, likes, dislikes, perceptions of good and bad, and so on-is naturally released without effort.
The problem is, when phenomena arise from confusion and igno-rance, they dominate your perception and result in suffering. However, habitual negative emotions like fear can be naturally liberated by allowing them to dissolve into the inner space of mind. You can do this because the essence of these habitual emotions is actually wisdom.
The key point is to let go of the grasping within the emotion and see its true nature. When habitual emotions arise, you neither sup-press nor get caught up in them. You do not get carried away by clinging to self and other. If you just allow the emotion to dissolve, the energy trapped within it is released and blossoms as wisdom. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/recognizing-clarity-a-dzogchen-meditation/ Read more here]) +
The only way to acquire all the great qualities of Enlightenment is to repeat many times the short moment of recognising mind essence.
There is no other method.
One reason for short moments is that, as there is no stability right now, the recognition of awareness doesn't last for more than a brief moment, whether we like it or not.
By practicing many times, we get used to it. (From ''Vajra Speech'', published by Rangjung Yeshe Publications.) ([https://www.lionsroar.com/meditations-on-buddhanature/ Read more here]) +
It was early morning at the turn of the millennium, and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with a sangha friend for a week of rest from our demanding work. On a little shelf on the wall of my bedroom, I had placed a picture of my root teacher, Kalu Rimpoche, which I always traveled with. While I was still in bed, the thoughts began to form: I will brush my teeth, light some incense, and sit. Suddenly, wayward thoughts came through: ''Why do you have to brush your teeth? Why do you need to light incense? Why not just sit?''
From some deeper knowing, I'd realized that all the content in my mind was made up, all based on conventions and determined by the culture I was embedded in. I felt my whole conceptual scaffolding fall down. I was left with a profound openness, without content, yet filled with the deepest peace, wonder, tenderness, and vulnerability. I completely lost all sense of time. For the remainder of that week, I continued to be filled with awe and wonder, unable to do much of what was planned.
On a visit to a pink stone cathedral built by indigenous people, I watched an elderly indigenous man come in to pay respect to the Virgin. He knelt on one knee and bent his whole body forward in a bow of surrender and reverence that seemed to offer everything, with nothing held back. My heart was deeply touched and I recognized how this level of surrender and devotion made a new stage of practice possible. It then took me four years to find my precious Dzogchen teacher.
Dzogchen (Dzogpachempo/Great Perfection/Ati Yoga) is a tradition of teachings within the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Its teachings are centered on the direct recognition of our intrinsic timeless, nonconceptual awareness, which lies beyond the intellect and its frameworks. This is referred to as "The View." This recognition is most often brought about by an accomplished teacher pointing it out to the student. This "pointing out" can happen in many different ways. It may be done through specific instructions, symbols/gestures, or mind-to-mind transmission. We may be instructed to look directly at our mind, noticing that behind the thoughts, there is an empty cognizance that is timeless, pervasive, and lucid. Or the teacher may say a word, make a gesture, or hold an object that suddenly opens the view. It may also happen by being in the presence of a realized teacher whose field of timeless awareness is so powerful that there is a mind-to-mind transmission for students whose devotion opens the door. ([https://www.lionsroar.com/meditations-on-buddhanature/ Read more here])
The Bka’ brgyud lineage tradition of Nā ro pa (c.956-1040), Mar pa lo tsā ba chos kyi blo gros (1002/1012-1097), and Sgam po pa rin chen dpal (1079-1153) is broadly characterized by the transmission tradition of tantric teachings and practices outlined in Nā ro pa’s six doctrines (''nā ro’i chos drug''). This tantric framework along with direct pointing-out instructions (''ngo sprod kyi gdams pa'') to the nature of one’s mind (''sems kyi rang bzhin'') within the context of Mahāmudrā teachings are the primary methods to liberation employed by Bka’ brgyud practitioners. The doctrine of luminosity (''’od gsal ba'') is fundamental to both methods since the nature of one’s mind is pointed out as luminosity and the yogic practice of inducing meditative states where one is able to recognize luminosity is a central doctrine for Nā ro pa’s tantric system, especially during the time of sleep (''gnyid kyi ’od gsal''). These methods eventually become synthesized into a cohesive soteriological program, as exemplified by instructions on merging ignorance (''gti mug'') and luminosity as found within Bka’ brgyud merging (''bsre ba'') literature, the focus of this study. (Source: [https://www.academia.edu/22793746/_Merging_Ignorance_and_Luminosity_in_Early_Bka_brgyud_Bsre_ba_Literature_Zentralasiatische_Studien_44_35_50._2015 Academia.edu]) +
A simple three-word koan. Or just a one-word koan: buddhanature. So deceptively simple, so easy to leave in the realm of concept, yet it penetrates to the very heart of the matter. Here’s Geoffery Shugen Arnold, Sensei, on Case 30 of the Gateless Gate, “Mazu’s ‘Mind is buddha.'” +
The Tibetan teacher Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche offers instruction on key verses from one of the Mahamudra’s seminal texts, A Song for the King by the Indian sage Saraha. +
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>The Chan tradition is renowned as the “meditation” school of East Asia. Indeed, the Chinese term ''chan'' 禪 (Jpn: ''zen'') is an abbreviated transliteration of ''dhyāna'', the Sanskrit term arguably closest to the modern English word “meditation.” Scholars typically date the emergence of this tradition to the early Tang dynasty (618–907), although Chan did not reach institutional maturity until the Song period (960–1279). In time, Chinese Chan spread throughout East Asia, giving birth to the various Zen, Sŏn, and Thiê`n lineages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, respectively. Today these traditions continue to promote, at least in theory, meditation practices, and these have been the subject of considerable scholarly interest.[1]<br> It may then come as a surprise to learn just how little is known about the meditation techniques associated with the “founders” of this tradition—the masters associated with the nascent (or proto-) Chan lineages of the seventh and eighth centuries. It was during this fertile period—which, following scholarly convention, I will call “early Chan”—that the lineage myths, doctrinal innovations, and distinctive rhetorical voice of the Chan, Zen, Sŏn, and Thiê`n schools first emerged. Although hundreds of books and articles have appeared on the textual and doctrinal developments associated with early Chan, relatively little has been written on the distinctive meditation practices, if any, of this movement.<br> This essay emerged from an attempt to answer a seemingly straightforward question: what kinds of meditation techniques were promulgated in early Chan circles? The answer, it turned out, involved historical and philosophical forays into the notion of “mindfulness”—a style of meditation practice that has become popular among Buddhists (and non-Buddhists) around the globe. Accordingly, I will digress briefly to consider the roots of the modern mindfulness movement, and will suggest possible sociological parallels between the rise of the Buddhist mindfulness movement in the twentieth century and the emergence of Chan in the medieval period. (Sharf, "Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan," 933)<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
#The literature is vast; on modern Japanese Zen and Korean Sŏn meditation practice in English see, for example, Buswell 1992, Hori 2000, and Hori 2003. On the history of these practices see Bielefeldt 1988, Buswell 1987, Collcutt 1981, Foulk 1993, and Schlütter 2008.
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br>
<br>
The different philosophies of the Buddhist tradition are chiefly concerned with the understanding of mind, consciousness, and mental states. In Buddhist literature, the relative nature of mental phenomena are described in a rather detailed manner, but more interestingly certain sections contain significant hints pointing to the so-called true nature of the mind and, in particular, how to access it. One of the terms referring to this true nature of mind is ''Buddha-nature'', describing a quality of potential awakening inherent to the mind of everyone.<br>
In ''Mipam on Buddha-Nature'', Douglas S. Duckworth seeks to illustrate the Tibetan contexts in which this so-called Buddha-nature is variously described, conceptualized, and experienced. In doing so, he draws on approximately twenty-eight different Tibetan texts written by Mi pham ('' 'jam mgon mi pham rgya mtsho'', 1846–1912) that he quotes; translating and paraphrasing the quotes in order to discuss their purport in relation to a significant number of interpretations of the issue by earlier Tibetan Buddhist authors, all of which are based on the explanations found in the earlier Indian Buddhist literature. However, the main text selected and translated in full is Mi pham’s ''Bde gshegs snying po’i stong thun chen mo seng ge’i nga ro''. Duckworth also cites later masters commenting on Mi pham’s writings, notably Bötrul (''Bod sprul mdo sngags bstan pa’i nyi ma'', 1898–1959).<br>
His work primarily contributes insight into textual discussions taking place over centuries within the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition and, secondarily, attempts to position the issues discussed within a comparative philosophical dialogue. However, the aim of the book—in the words of its author—is “to provide a holistically-oriented account of Mipham’s view of Buddha-nature” (xvii). Duckworth’s book represents a valuable presentation that seeks to define and summarize the philosophical and ideological views of this significant and influential Tibetan Buddhist master. (Burchardi, Review of ''Mipam on Buddha-Nature'', 734)
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Thanks to several previous studies, the ''Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra'' (''MPNS'') has been proved to shift its central thought from the ''buddhakāya'' idea to the ''tathāgatagarbha/buddhadhātu'' idea. The present author has shown in another paper (Suzuki [1999]) that the movement between the ''buddhakāya'' idea and the ''tathāgatagarbha/buddhadhātu'' idea appears in the larger context including the ''MPNS'', and has extracted this context from the various Mahāyāna ''sūtras'' under the name of the ''Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra''-Group (''MPNS''-G), which consists of the ''Mahāmeghasūtra'' (''MMS''), the ''MPNS'', the ''Aṅgulimālīyasūtra'' (''AMS'') and the ''Mahābherisūtra'' (''MBhS''). While the ''AMS'' is a direct successor of the ''MPNS'', the ''MBhS'' succeeds the ''MPNS'' critically and shifts back its central thought from the ''tathāgatagarbha/buddhadhātu'' idea to the ''buddhakāya'' idea again.<br> The ''MPNS''-G declares or suggests the non-emptiness of the ''tathāgata''. This is reinterpretation of the ''pratītyasamutpāda'' and the ''śūnyatā'' idea, and follows the rule of the historical Buddhist hermeneutics. It is especially worthwhile to note that the ''MBhS'', like the ''Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra'' in the ''Vijñāptimātra'' idea, devaluates the ''śūnyatā'' idea as imperfect. This quite negative attitude toward the ''śūnyatā'' idea does not appear in any other Indian texts on the ''tathāgatagarbha'' idea including the ''MPNS'' and the ''AMS''. Aiming at establishing the theory that every sentient being is able to perform religious efforts and become ''buddha'' on account of the nonemptiness and the eternalness of the ''tathāgata'', the ''MBhS'' must reject any ''sūtra'' concerning the śūnyatā idea as imperfect. Though the ''MPNS'' is a pioneer in reinterpretation of the the ''śúnyatā'' idea, the ''MPNS'' cannot devaluate it perfectly because the ''śūnyatā'' idea is one of the main backgrounds to the ''MPNS''. The ''MBhS'''s decisive attitude toward the ''śūnyatā'' idea devaluation becomes possible by having the ''MPNS'' as its basis. (Source: [https://repository.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/?action=pages_view_main&active_action=repository_view_main_item_detail&item_id=27072&item_no=1&page_id=28&block_id=31 UTokyo Repository])
No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:<br><br>
Prof. Hauer has started a series of studies, chiefly dedicated to the critical investigation of Indian religion.[1] We cannot help being very greateful to him for this, because we must acknowledge that the various aspects of Indian religion are not yet studied as they deserve.<br> I do not need to insist on proving the great importance of this research, which is likely to throw much light on many a problem; chiefly on that of the extent of the influences exercised by the aboriginal element on the evolution of Indian religious thought and Indian civilization in general. The Vedas have a great importance, no doubt,
but it is also true that Indian gods, mythology, practices, theories about sacrifice, etc., are, on the whole, very different from the religious ideas expounded in that famous book. The study of the
last phases of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and of its relation with the Hindu systems proper, will prove of the greatest importance for this kind of research; because it is just in the literature of that period that we find the most important documents of these new conceptions and meet the names of a host of gods, demons and goblins of whom we did not hear before that time.<br> For this reason I think that Prof. Hauer is quite justified in having started his Series with the study of such an important Mahāyāna text as the Laṅkāvatāra, which contains some very interesting allu- sions to the relation between the Buddha and the gods of Hinduism (cf. e.g., p. 192).<br> The first of the papers dedicated to our text is chiefly concerned with the refutation of the Sāṅkhya system contained in the Laṅk., X, 546 ff. This section has been translated by the author, as he thinks that it represents the reply of the Mahāyāna to the new claim of the Sāṅkhya to be the doctrine of salvation (p. 5.). This Sāṅkhya is, according to the A., the new exposition of the system as contained in the Sāṅkhyakārikā of Iśvarakṛṣṇna. The chronology of either text seems to support this view. In fact, this refutation is contained in the tenth Chapter of the Laṅk., which is wanting in the first Chinese translation by Guṇabhadra (443 A.D.), while it is found in the second
translation, made by Bodhiruci in the year 513 A.D. On the other hand, we may suppose that the ''kārikā'' was composed about 450 A.D. That is true, but I do not think we are allowed to infer from this, that there is any interdependence of this kind between the ''kārikā'' and the Xth Chapter of the Laṅk. First of all, the history of the various redactions of this text, represents a very difficult and complex problem. I have compared the three Chinese translations with the Sanskrit original and I already had the opportunity to point out that the text of the Laṅkāvatāra underwent many changes,[1] so that we may safely assume that different redactions of the Laṅk, circulated not only at different times, but also in different places. It is true that the allusion to the Huns, which is found in X, 785, must go back to the first decade of the 7th century A.D., but the fact remains that the Sanskrit text of the Xth Chapter, as it has been handed down to us in the Nepalese manuscripts, looks like a compilation from various sources. Thus it has been enlarged by the insertion of various ''ślokas'' already quoted in the preceding chapters in prose.[2] As a rule, all these double verses cannot be found in the translation of Śikṣānanda. This I say in order to show that the problem of the various strata composing the vulgata of the Laṅk, as well as the other concerning the age to which they must be attributed is a very complex one. They can only be solved by the comparative study of the Tibetan and Chinese translations. Therefore it is evident that the chronology based upon any passage of the present text cannot be relied upon as definitive, until the history of the text has been reconstructed. On the other hand, the refutation of the Sāṅkhya system, as contained in X, 558 ff, is neither one of the earliest, nor one of the best. The refutation of the ''satkāryavāda'' (Sāṅkhya) as well as of the ''asatkāryavāda'' (Vaiśeṣika) forms one of the chief contents of the dogmatical works of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It can be found in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-Śāstra of Nāgārjuna, in the Śataśāstra of Āryadeva, in the Buddhagotraśāstra attributed to Vasubandhu etc.[1] Nor shall we forget that Vasubandhu and
Diṅnāga refuted at length the Sāṅkhya theories in their Paramārthasaptati and Pramāṇasamuccaya respectively. Moreover, as Diṅnāga himself tells us in his commentary upon the Nyāyamukha, he wrote a book exclusively devoted to refuting the Sāṅkhya system. Shen T'ai, a disciple of Yuan Chwang, who commented upon the Nyāyamukha, tells us that this work was a very large one, as it contained six thousand ''ślokas''.<br> Therefore I do not think that this criticism of the Sāṅkhya as contained in the Laṅkāvatāra can really throw much light on the history of the controversy between the two systems. In fact, we must acknowledge that the value of the Laṅkāvatāra, as a philosophical hook, is rather limited, although it is of the highest importance for the history of the evolution of the Mahāyāna Buddhologie and "Erlosungslehre."<br> But I can hardly believe that the passage in question is expressly directed against the Sāṅkhya system. It is only meant to assert the idealistic view which is expounded throughout the book. Kapila, it is true, is referred to by name in the verse X, 558 and in three other places; but Kaṇāda also is quoted in X, 548. . . .<br> But to which school did the Laṅkāvatāra originally belong? It is in general believed that it represents Yogācāra ideas. But, of course, we cannot learn very much from this mere name, because Yogācāra has certainly a very wide meaning. It is also considered as a synonym of Vijñānavāda, and therefore even the ''vijñaptimātratā'' theory of Vasubandhu is put under that same item.<br> In fact, according to the Chinese tradition the book is considered as one of the six ''sūtras'' of the Lakṣaṇa school. But if we read these volumes it will be easy to recognize that, though there are some fundamental notions that can be found all throughout, each text or group of texts presents its own peculiarities.<br><br>
[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.501828/page/n607/mode/2up Read more here . . .]<br><br>
<h5>Notes</h5>
1. J. W. Hauer, Das Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra und das Sāṅkhya (eine vorläufige Skizzeo, Stuttgart, 1927.<br> Id, Die Dhāraṇī im nördlichen Buddhismus und ihre parallelen in der sogennannten Mithrasliturgie. Ibid.<br> Beitrage zur Indischen Sprachwissenschaft und Religionsgeschichte.<br>1. See. my Studio comparative fra le tre versioni cinesi ed il testo sanskrito del i capitolo del Laṅkāvatāra, Memorie della R. Accademia dei Lincei, serie v, vol xviii, fasc, 5; and Una nuova edizione del Laṅkāvatāra in Studi Mahāyanici, Rivista di studi Orientali, vol. X.<br>2. In Studi Mahāyanici, pp. 574 ff., I have given a list of the verses inserted in the text, which have been repeated in the tenth chapter. This fact makes me rather doubtful whether many of the other verses collected there are not taken from some Mahāyāna text belonging to the same current of thought. Prof. Hauer thinks that the first Chapter belongs to the most ancient redaction of the book. I can hardly believe that; in fact, it cannot be found in the translation of Gunabhadra, and it has but very little relation with the rest of the book. On the other hand, I think that the gāthās represent the most ancient nucleus of the book, as it is shown by the numerous Prakritisms that have survived and that the redactors of the present vulgata could not avoid: e.g., desemi, pp. 76, 176, 181; vibhāvento, p. 95 ; vikalpenti, pp. 185 186; nāśenti, p. 190 ; deśyante for deśyamāne, p. 201.<br>1. For other references see Ui’s, Vaiśeṣika philosophy.<br>2. See my English translation of the Nyāyamukha in "''Materiailen zur Kunde des Buddhismus''" edited by Prof. Walleser, Heidelberg, to be published shortly.<br>
Buddhists often talk about suffering, emptiness, interdependence, and other philosophies and practices, but behind all of it is one simple teaching: buddhanature. Buddhism is notoriously complex, and sometimes it seems difficult for people to know where to start. From my perspective, we should always start with buddhanature.
Simple, yet profound, the teachings on buddhanature are relatable for contemporary audiences, but more importantly it is this most fundamental seed that precedes the entire path of Buddhist practice. Buddhanature is what makes Buddhist practice possible. . . .
When Tsadra Foundation decided to launch a series of online resource projects for education about Buddhism, we had many years of translation and publications on the most advanced philosophies and practices of Tibetan Buddhism to draw from. However, instead of focusing on the 84,000 other topics we could have begun with, we started with buddhanature, developing the most complete multimedia resource library on the topic, conducting interviews and supporting conferences, meetings, translation projects, and ongoing writing on the subject. Many people were surprised by the choice of topic, and I in turn was surprised by some of the derisive reactions to the topic as a whole, as if Madhyamaka or Dzogchen were so much higher and more important.
Nothing is more important than your buddhanature. The teachings on it form the basis for Mahamudra, Dzogchen, and the entirety of Tantric practice in any tradition.
While undoubtedly making it easier to connect with people around the world, most of our media these days primarily tells us that we are not good enough, we don't have enough, or that there is something wrong with us, and this has inspired an epidemic of mental distress and self-loathing on a scale never seen before. What if, instead of being told we are not good enough, we were brought up with the knowledge that each one of us is by nature capable of complete freedom from suffering, and that we possess wisdom and compassion on a nearly
unthinkable scale? What if we knew that fundamentally our deepest self is actually a wellspring of goodness and wisdom that is always present?
When I asked my friend Karl Brunnhölzl, a practitioner, scholar, teacher, and master translator of Buddhist texts, what he thought buddhanature is, he said, off the cuff: "Buddhanature is the innate primordial freedom of the mind, which is naturally imbued with wisdom, compassion, power, and bliss."
If we pause a moment and try to unpack that statement, the entirety of Buddhist teachings falls out of it. And if we take issue with it, and say, "yes, but emptiness ... ," the same will occur. The history of Buddhism is filled with debates about what exactly buddhanature means, and it is through investigating its meaning, and the arguments around it, that I have learned so much, and gained so much personally in my own life.
Having spent many years working with Tsadra Foundation on projects that support the balanced study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, I am so pleased that this website is focused on this essential topic. I hope the creation of this website will inspire you to explore these teachings further via the many online resources we at Tsadra have made available here at buddhanature.org.
D. S. Ruegg, in his ''La Théorie du Tathāgatagarbha et du Gotra'' and other works,[1] has mentioned the need for further study of the various Tibetan exegetical traditions involved in the controversies surrounding the ''tathāgata-garbha'' doctrine. He has relied extensively on the exegesis developed by dGe lugs-pa scholars. This paper is an initial attempt to address this need voiced by Ruegg, by presenting the views of a bKa'-brgyud-pa and two rNying-ma-pa scholars. In particular, the focus will be on elucidating how they applied the interpretive devices of ''nītārtha'' (''nges-don'', certain, definitive meaning) and ''neyārtha'' (''drang-don'', indirect meaning which is to be established) to texts dealing with the tathāgatagarbha.[2] One of the basic philosophical problems the Tibetans faced in this regard was the relationship between the concepts of ''sûnyatā'' and ''tathāgatagarbha'' emphasized in the second and third "turnings of the wheel of Dharma" (''dharmacakra-pravartana'') respectively. +
