Semantic search
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.cultivate their experience by practicing the two phases of meditation, and in this way, achieve our own enlightenment.
Today’s teachings are based on the mind treasure of His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, one of the great masters of the Nyingma, the Ancient Ones. They are called The Dakini Heart Essence (Khandro Thuk Thik) and within this cycle, the particular text he is teaching is the foundational practices or ngondro. The text is entitled Restoring Benefit and Happiness: Liturgy of the Foundational Practices of the Profound Path of The Dakini Heart Essence. In Boise, Idaho, last year, Rinpoche taught this text up to the point of receiving the four empowerments in the guru yoga section. Now he will start from there and pick up the thread.The Buddha’s statement “all that is conditioned'"`UNIQ--ref-00003ED5-QINU`"' is impermanent!”'"`UNIQ--ref-00003ED6-QINU`"' 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.'"`UNIQ--ref-00003ED7-QINU`"'
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.
The point of the exploration in general is to facilitate access to the insights of Tibetan Buddhist masters as they are formulated within the framework of a philosophical discussion. A characteristic feature of their statements is that they are not based on intellectual speculation, but on meditative experience.
Here, we will be concerned mainly with the interpretation of statements pertaining to this issue in two Indian śāstras, the Ratnagotravibhāga and the Madhyāntavibhāga, both attributed to Maitreya. However, as we will see, some of our Tibetan authors also draw on Indian works on Buddhist logic, epistemology, and ontology such as Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa, and Asaṅga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya. The latter texts were studied in the monastic colleges of Tibet in the form of simplified manuals that constitute their own literary genre known as “Collected Topics” (Bsdus grwa) and “Classifications of Mind” (blo rigs).'"`UNIQ--ref-00003ED8-QINU`"'
In Buddhism, a mind conditioned by “actions” (karmasaṃkleśa) and “defilements” (kleśasaṃkleśa) is by definition a changeable mind—or one could even say—an unstable mind. As different mental factors make their appearance in our minds, our mental states change. Over the course of a day, an ordinary mind experiences many different mental states or factors caused by various defilements. But what should we think about the ultimate nature of the mind?
The mind or mental state in which the ultimate nature of mind is experienced, is considered the goal of the Buddhist path. It is called the enlightened mind, the true nature that is revealed when kleśa (“defilements”) and karma have subsided. This observation leaves us with two fundamental questions: Is this ultimate nature also described as conditioned and impermanent? Second, if this is the case, why is ultimate nature described in such a way? I will return to these questions below.
In order to introduce the selected Tibetan authors and their works, it may be helpful to reiterate that the so-called “Empty in itself'"`UNIQ--ref-00003ED9-QINU`"'-Empty of other”'"`UNIQ--ref-00003EDA-QINU`"' distinction that arose in Tibet is based on different interpretations of the nature of the mind or the so called “buddha-nature.” These interpretations stem from different readings of the seminal text for the presentation of the buddha-nature, the Ratnagotravibhāga (hereafter abbreviated as RGV). The Buddha nature teachings are traditionally associated with the so-called third turning of the wheel of the Dharma, which the “Empty of other” proponents as well as other thinkers assert to be the highest level of the Buddhist teachings, following the division of the Buddha’s teachings provided in the seventh chapter of the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra into three stages or wheels of doctrine, the first two being classified as provisional and the third and final stage as definitive.'"`UNIQ--ref-00003EDB-QINU`"'
In the RGV the nature of the mind is described in a way that lends itself to various interpretations. More than fifty commentaries'"`UNIQ--ref-00003EDC-QINU`"' were written in Tibet based on this śāstra. Some were composed by authors classified as proponents of the “Empty in itself” philosophy and others by proponents of the “Empty of other” philosophy. The latter were often accused of interpreting the RGV’s statements too literally, taking the true nature of the mind to be a truly existent entity which was anathema to the Madhyamaka teachings based on the so-called second turning of the wheel of the Dharma. There was also the question of the qualities attributed to buddha-nature. If it contains qualities (as the RGV says it does) how can it be empty at the same time? The ontological status of the nature of the mind vis-à-vis the nature of emptiness is a central topic much discussed in the Tibetan tradition.
In this article, I will focus on explanations by selected authors, some of which have been classified as proponents of the “empty of other” philosophy. It is by now generally accepted that their works have been underrepresented, if not misrepresented, within the Tibetan scholastic tradition, partly as a consequence of the political persecution of the Jonang school. (Burchardi, "How Can a Momentary and Conditioned Mind Be Integral to Gzhan Stong?, 55–57)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.
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?
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 here.)
A monk asked Zhaozhou: ‘‘Does a dog have buddha-nature?’’ Zhaozhou replied: ‘‘No.’’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Notes
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.
- 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.
- Hu-jan nien-ch'i, ming wei wu-mingc
- Suddenly a thought rose; this is called ignorance
This idea has baffled many modern scholars as it has traditionally charmed many a Far Eastern Buddhist. What is meant by "suddenly"? What constitutes "thought"? The most recent translator of the AFM, Yoshito Hakeda, has appended this remark to the passage:
- There has been much discussion on the meaning of hu-jan in connection with the origin of ignorance, mainly on the basis of interpretations proposed by Fa-tsang,d (1) that ignorance alone becomes the source of defiled states of being. It is the subtlest; no other state of being can be the origin of this. It is therefore said in the text that ignorance emerges suddenly. (2) Commenting on a quotation from a sūtra, he says "suddenly" means "beginninglessly," since the passage quoted makes clear that there is no other state of being prior to the state of ignorance. (3) The word "suddenly" is not used from the stand point of time, but is used to account for the emergence of ignorance without any instance of inception.
- . . . A monk of Minge China, glosses "suddenly" as pu-chüeh,f which may mean "unconsciously" or "without being aware of the reason."
- . . . If hu-jan is a translation of a Sanskrit word, the original word asasmāt may be posited. Akasmāt means "without reason" or "accidentally."'"`UNIQ--ref-00000DE3-QINU`"'
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).
Great is the power of memory, exceeding great, O my God—an inner chamber large and boundless (penetrale amplum et infinitum)! Who has plumbed its depths? Yet it is a poer of mine, and apertains unto my nature; nor do I myself grasp all that I am (nec ego ipse capio totum, quod sum). . . . A great admiration rises upon me; astonishment seizes me. And men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the extent of the ocean, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves (et reliquunt se ipsos).
This concern with the memoria, and its function in the human mind, was to be one of the most important spiritual legacies Augustine would leave to the Latin, and especially monastic, Middle Ages. In fact, it would be possible to say without much exaggeration that the entire history of monastic spirituality in the Latin Middle Ages (at least until approximately A.D. 1200) is the record of the development of understanding of the power of memoria. A central reason for this is that memoria was described as a faculty that worked by recalling the human person to the knowledge and intuition that they were created in the image and likeness of God. Thus the words of Genesis 1:26–27 stand at the beginning of an entire spiritual tradition: "God said let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves. . . . God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." Augustine frequently exhorts himself, as in Confessions 7.10, to "return to myself" (redite ad memet ipsum). This was also the continual refrain of the Cistercian author of the twelfth century, William of St. Thierry, in his Golden Epistle, and it serves as one of the themes on which he builds this work. William's treatise, folloing in the path of Augustine, is a call to discover the image and likeness of God in the individual person.
The contributions to this volume were presented at the gzhan stong panel organized by Klaus-Dieter Mathes (University of Vienna) at the Twelfth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in Vancouver, Canada, in August 2010. Its full name was "The History of the Rang stong/Gzhan stong Distinction from its Beginning through the Ris-med Movement." The contributors were, besides the organizer, Karl Brunnhölzl (Tsadra Foundation), Anne Burchardi (The University of Copenhagen and The Royal Library of Denmark), Douglas Duckworth (Temple University), David Higgins (University of Vienna), Yaroslav Komarovski (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Tsering Wangchuk (University of San Francisco). It is regretted that Karl Brunnhölzl and Douglas Duckworth were unable to include their work in the present publication. (Mathes, introduction, 4–5)
Notes:
- See Brunnhölzl’s Prajñāpāramitā, Indian "gzhan stong pas," and the Beginning of Tibetan gzhan stong; and Mathes’s "Tāranātha's ‘Twenty-One Differences with Regard to the Profound Meaning’—Comparing the Views of the Two gŹan stoṅ Masters Dol po pa and Śākya mchog ldan," and "The gzhan stong Model of Reality. Some More Material on Its Origin, Transmission, and Interpretation."
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.
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)
Notes
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.As a summary of the Trikāya doctrine this is, of course, oversimplified. 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.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000196-QINU`"' 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.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000197-QINU`"' 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,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000198-QINU`"' 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-conccpt and the idea that a bodhisattva'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'"`UNIQ--ref-00000199-QINU`"' (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'"`UNIQ--ref-0000019A-QINU`"' 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 Pali sources, what one scholar has called the "primitive triad," i.e., pūti- or cātur-mahābhūtika-kāya, mano-maya-kāya, and dhamma-kāya.'"`UNIQ--ref-0000019B-QINU`"' 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)
Read more here . . .
The earliest masters of this period who quote or refer to the RGV are Maitrīpa (1007/1010-?), Jñānaśrīmitra (ca. 980–1030), and Ratnākaraśānti (late 10th to early 11th century).'"`UNIQ--ref-00000002-QINU`"' Maitrīpa was the common disciple of Jñānaśrīmitra and Ratnākaraśānti, and, according to a story in Tibetan documents, rediscovered a Sanskrit manuscript of the RGV in a stūpa in Magadha.
If this rediscovery story is a historical event, Jñānaśrīmitra and Ratnākaraśānti would have received the teaching of the RGV from their common disciple Maitrīpa; but we have no concrete witness to corroborate it.
Maitrīpa’s knowledge of the RGV is attested by a quotation of RGV II. 61b in his Pañcatathāgatamudrāvivaraṇa; he introduces a Nirākāravijñānavādin’s propounding the arising of the Dharmakāya from the Saṃbhogakāya and Nirmāṇakāya, but does not discuss Buddha-nature.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000003-QINU`"' In contrast to Maitrīpa, who does not discuss Buddha-nature, we find extensive discussions of the topic in compositions of Jñānaśrīmitra and Ratnākaraśānti.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000004-QINU`"' In the present paper, I shall focus on quotations from the RGV in Jñānaśrīmitra’s Sākārasiddhiśāstra and Sākārasaṃgrahasūtra, and on his understanding of the RGV, so as to shed light on the reception of the RGV in the early 11th century. (Kano, introductory remarks, 7–8)
This paper will examine Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita’s doxography, considering the way in which he attempts to demonstrate that the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness is ultimate within the Buddhist doctrinal history originating from India. According to Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita, the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness is said to have been the intent of the Last Tuming of the Wheel of the Dharma which is of definitive meaning, teaches the Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha), and, as pointed out by Duckworth, "accords with the Great Perfection"'"`UNIQ--ref-00003500-QINU`"' (rdzogs chen). Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita’s gzhang stong view is explicitly taught in the following doxographical texts: the Bde gshegs snying po'i rgyan, the Grub mtha'i rnam gzhag nges don dgongs gsal, the Rton pa bzhi ldan gyi gtam, the first chapter of the Rnying ma rgyud 'bum dkar chag lha'i rnga bo che,'"`UNIQ--ref-00003501-QINU`"' and the Sangs rgyas gnyis pa'i dgongs pa'i rgyan,'"`UNIQ--ref-00003502-QINU`"' which is Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita's commentary on the Gsang sngags lam gyi rim pa sal ba'i sgron me, a gter ma of Nyang ral Nyi ma 'od zer (1124/1136-1192/1204).
This paper will also suggest that Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita should be recognized as a forerunner of the ris med movement in Khams, as supported by the following facts: his view on the Great Madhyamaka of other-emptiness embraces the major practice lineages (sgrub brgyud)—Jo nang pa, Bka' brgyud pa, Sa skya pa, early Dge lugs pa, Rnying ma pa, and Zhi byed—within a single overriding intent of the Buddha’s teachings;'"`UNIQ--ref-00003503-QINU`"' Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita as the teacher of Zhe chen dbon sprul ’Gyur med mthu stobs rnam rgyal, also known as Zhe chen Mahāpaṇḍita (b. 1787), who was a gzhan stong pa,'"`UNIQ--ref-00003504-QINU`"' and who in tum was the teacher of the three masters Kong sprul (1813-99), Mkhyen brtse'i dbang po (1820–2), and Dpal sprul (1808-87).'"`UNIQ--ref-00003505-QINU`"' Dge rtse Mahāpaṇḍita’s Legs bshad gser gyi thur ma, which is his response to the Lta ba'i gsung mgur by Lcang skya Rol pa'i rdo rje (1717-86),'"`UNIQ--ref-00003506-QINU`"' would hint at the seeds of the ris med movement which grew up among the three schools, the Sa skya, Bka' brgyud, and Rnying ma.'"`UNIQ--ref-00003507-QINU`"' With this paper, then, I hope to add to our understanding of the practice lineages of Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka. (Makidono, introduction, 77–80)
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)
English Translation:
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.
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)
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.
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.
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)
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.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. (Read more here)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. (Read more here)