The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub): Situating the Yuthok Heart Essence (G.yu thog snying thig) in Literature and History

This essay examines historical and contemporary connections between Buddhist and medical traditions through a study of the Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub) practice and the Yuthok Heart Essence (G.yu thog snying thig) anthology. Accomplishing Medicine is an esoteric Buddhist yogic and contemplative exercise focused on several levels of “alchemical” transformation. The article will trace the acquisition of this practice from India by Tibetan medical figures and its assimilation into medical practice. It will propose that this alchemical practice forms the central nexus of connection between Tibetan medicine and the Buddhist Nyingma tradition, and that this little-studied link is not a marginal feature of Tibetan medicine but rather one that has had a significant shaping factor on each tradition throughout history.     

Self-Awareness (<Emphasis Type="Italic">svasaṃvedana</Emphasis>) in Dignāga’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pramāṇasamuccaya</Emphasis> and -<Emphasis Type="Italic">vṛtti</Emphasis>: A Close Reading

The concept of “self-awareness” (svasaṃvedana) enters Buddhist epistemological discourse in the Pramāṇasamuccaya and -vṛtti by Dignāga (ca. 480–540), the founder of the Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition. Though some of the key passages have already been dealt with in various publications, no attempt has been made to comprehensively examine all of them as a whole. A close reading is here proposed to make up for this deficit. In connection with a particularly difficult passage (PS(V) 1.8cd-10) that presents the means of valid cognition and its result (pramāṇa/pramāṇaphala), a new interpretation is suggested, inspired by the commentary of Jinendrabuddhi. This interpretation highlights an aspect of selfawareness that has hitherto not been claimed for Dignāga: self-awareness offers essentially subjective access to one’s own mental states and factors.     

Brahmā: An Early and Ultimately Doomed Attempt at a Brahmanical Synthesis

In this paper, I argue that, by comparing certain passages from the early Buddhist sūtras and the Mahābhārata, we can find evidence of a late- to post-Vedic “Brahmanical synthesis,” centered on the conception of Brahmā as both supreme Creator God and ultimate goal for transcending saṃsāra, that for the most part did not become a part of the Brahmanical synthesis or syntheses that came to constitute classical Hinduism. By comparing the Buddhist response to this early conception of Brahmā with the way in which Brahmā is treated in certain sectarian portions of the Mahābhārata, I then argue further that the Buddhist critique of Brahmā as supreme deity was in part conceded by the Brahmanical tradition, and sectarian accounts of supreme godhead sought to reconcile pravṛtti and nivṛtti values more subtly than the crude juxtaposition offered by the earlier Brahmanical synthesis offered by Brahmā. The result was that Brahmā was relegated to an inferior position as a fully saṃsāric demiurge, a narrative found first in certain parts of the Mahābhārata and then continued throughout most of the Purāṇas.     

Mipam’s Middle Way Through Yogācāra and Prāsaṅgika

In Tibet, the negative dialectics of Madhyamaka are typically identified with Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Nāgārjuna, and systematic epistemology is associated with Dharmakīrti. These two figures are also held to be authoritative commentators on a univocal doctrine of Buddhism. Despite Candrakīrti’s explicit criticism of Buddhist epistemologists in his Prasannapadā, Buddhists in Tibet have integrated the theories of Candrakīrti and Dharmakīrti in unique ways. Within this integration, there is a tension between the epistemological system-building on the one hand, and “deconstructive” negative dialectics on the other. The integration of an epistemological system within Madhyamaka is an important part of Mipam’s (’ju mi pham rgya mtsho, 1846–1912) philosophical edifice, and is an important part of understanding the place of Yogācāra in his tradition. This paper explores the way that Mipam preserves a meaningful Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika distinction while claiming both Yogācāra and Prāsaṅgika as legitimate expressions of Madhyamaka. Mipam represents Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka as a discourse that emphasizes what transcends conceptuality. As such, he portrays Prāsaṅgika as a radical discourse of denial. Since the mind cannot conceive the “content” of nonconceptual meditative equipoise, Prāsaṅgika, as the representative discourse of meditative equipoise, negates any formulation of that state. In contrast, he positions Yogācāra as a discourse that situates the nonconceptual within a systematic (conceptual) structure. Rather than a discourse that re-presents the nonconceptual by enacting it (like Prāsaṅgika), the discourse of Yogācāra represents the nonconceptual within an overarching system, a system (unlike Prāsaṅgika) that distinguishes between the conceptual and the nonconceptual.     

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 buddha-nature 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.     

The Conceit of Self-Loathing

This article explores the psychological intricacies of the Theravādin interpretation of the “conceit of inferiority” (omāna), which is considered to be one of the standard types of pride or conceit (māna). Considering oneself inferior involves an inflated and contrived construction of oneself, akin to other varieties of conceit. Yet (omāna) is a curious form of pride, involving as it does much selfabasement, and even loathing and despising of oneself. Drawing primarily on Abhidhamma canonical and commentarial texts, the article investigates how this conceit illuminates subtle forms of self-affirmation, the affective aspects of selfassessment, and the socially determined dimensions of self-knowledge. The article also offers some comparative considerations with ideals of humility in western traditions.     

Knowledge of Brahman as a solution to fear in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa/Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James suggests that the human experience of a fundamental and existential uneasiness can be found at the core of most religious traditions, and that these traditions constiute essentially a proposed solution to this uneasiness. The present investigation focuses upon the notion of uneasiness, particularly fear, and its solution in the early Hindu tradition. Through a close examination of textual expressions of both desire and fear from the R̥gveda, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, it is proposed that “liberation” in the early Upaniṣadic period, or at least the precursor to the traditional notion of liberation, actually meant freedom from fear, rather than freedom from karma or saṁs̥ra. The Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad suggests that the origin of duality is desire, and duality necessarily results in fear. By relinquishing the sorts of desires so frequently expressed in the earlier vedic literature, together with an understanding of the essentially non-dual relationship between the ātman and brahman, a state of complete freedom from fear (abhaya) may be achieved.     

Authority in Early Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka

This paper examines the role of pramāṇa in Jayānanda’s commentary to Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra. As the only extant Indian commentary on any of Candrakīrti’s works (available only in Tibetan translation), written in the twelfth century when Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Madhyamaka first became widely valued, Jayānanda’s Madhyamakāvatāraṭīkā is crucial to our understanding of early Prāsaṅgika thought. In the portions of his text examined here, Jayānanda offers a pointed critique of both svatantra inferences and the broader Buddhist epistemological movement. In developing this critique, he cites at length Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā treatment of svatantra, and so comes to comment on the locus classicus for the Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika distinction. For Jayānanda, svatantra inferences are emblematic of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti epistemological tradition, which asserts an unwarranted validity to human cognition. As such, Nāgārjuna’s philosophy admits neither svatantra inference, nor pramāṇa (as “valid cognition”) more generally. Instead, Jayānanda argues for Nāgārjuna’s “authority” (pramāṇa) as our prime means for knowing reality. Jayānanda’s account of authority offers a helpful counterbalance to the current trend of portraying Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka as a form of skepticism.     

Retrieving the Hidden Meaning: Jain Commentarial Techniques and the Art of Memory

One of the peculiar characteristics of the vast body of Jain commentarial literature is the primacy given to artha, meaning, over sūtra, the root text itself. It is the task of the commentator—or, in a pedagogical context, the teacher—to retrieve and explain a text’s true, hidden meaning, which often appears to stretch and even contradict its apparent meaning. This article examines the interpretive processes in one of the most important Jain commentaries on monastic discipline, the Bṛhatkalpabhāṣya attributed to the sixth-century CE Śvetāmbara Jain exegete Saṅghadāsa. An examination of passages where the commentator claims to uncover the real—but sometimes less-than-apparent—meaning of monastic rules enables us to detect the interpretive moves involved and the underlying assumptions about the nature of text and the work of commentary. I argue that this commentarial tradition presupposes particular practices of memory, and a degree of internalizing the traditional hermeneutical methods, on the part of a monastic practitioner who wants to understand the text correctly and live according to its true meaning.     

Two Investigations on the Madhyamakakārikās and the Vigrahavyāvartanī

Purpose of the article is to provide support for the contention that two fundamental treatises representing the teaching of Madhyamaka, viz. the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās and the Vigrahavyāvartanī, were designed to establish and justify a metaphysical tenet claiming that no particulars of any kind can exist on some level of final analysis and that this was the only primary concern of those works. Whereas the former text is in the first place dedicated to providing proofs of the central metaphysical thesis the major objective of the second treatise lies in a defense of the claim against possible objections. A correlate of this view regarding the content of those two works is on the one hand that the philosophy of the founder of the Madhyamaka-school essentially consists in a metaphysical teaching implying a radical rejection of a stance propagated in earlier Buddhist schools according to which objects of ordinary experience could be reduced to or explained by the existence of other sorts of particulars that can be theoretically postulated. On the other hand the exegesis advocated in the article implies that theorems pertaining to the nature of language or the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality are not at all a predominant issue in the pertinent texts and presumably were not a major matter of concern of early Madhyamaka in general. Accordingly matters pertaining to questions of semantics attain relevance at best in the form of objective consequences which the metaphysical doctrine might entail. The paper focuses on the second chapter of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās as well as the segment of the Vigrahavyāvartanī which deals with the first major problem, represented by the verses 1–4 and 21–29. The reason is that a detailed and thoroughgoing investigation of these two textual passages is suited to disprove a contention voiced by Western scholars who suppose that the teaching of the founder of Madhyamaka embodies a particular claim pertaining to the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality.     

A South Indian ?ākta Anthropogon?: An Annotated Translation of Selections from Mahe?varānanda’s Mahārthama?jarīparimala, gāthās 19 and 20

This article represents the first of a projected series of annotated translations of the Mahārthama?jarīparimala of Maheśvarānanda, a Śaiva Śākta author active in Cidambaram around the turn of the fourteenth century of the Common Era. The present translation includes excerpts from the text’s presentation of two of the levels of reality (tattvas), puruṣa and prakṛti. These two tattvas, the apex of the older Sāṃkhya scheme incorporated centuries earlier by the Śaivas, provide for Maheśvarānanda the centerpiece and climax of his understanding of the structure of the Śaiva cosmos. Fundamental to the rhetoric of Maheśvarānanda’s idiosyncratic presentation is his reliance upon a simultaneous strategy of integration and distinction of his argument within the wider world of Śaiva doctrinal common sense. He seeks to integrate the characteristic meditative structure of his Krama or Mahārtha system within a theological framework shared by all Śaiva theists. It can be seen that Maheśvarānanda’s interpretation of the junction between these two reality levels delineates a picture of what it is to be a human being, equipped with an inner life and a personality. The article also reviews the quality of the published editions of the Mahārthama?jarī, discusses its textual history, and offers a number of suggested emendations to the passages translated.     

Breaking the Circle. Dharmakīrti’s Response to the Charge of Circularity Against the Apoha Theory and its Tibetan Adaptation

This paper examines the Buddhist’s answer to one of the most famous (and more intuitive) objections against the semantic theory of “exclusion” (apoha), namely, the charge of circularity. If the understanding of X is not reached positively, but X is understood via the exclusion of non-X, the Buddhist nominalist is facing a problem of circularity, for the understanding of X would depend on that of non-X, which, in turn, depends on that of X. I distinguish in this paper two strategies aiming at “breaking the circle”: (i) conceding the precedence of a positive understanding of X, from which a negative understanding (i.e., the understanding of “non-X”) is derived by contrast, and (ii) denying any precedence by proposing a simultaneous understanding of both X and non-X. I consider how these two options are articulated respectively by Dharmakīrti in his Pramāṇavārttika cum Svavṛtti and by one of his Tibetan interpreters, Sa skya Paṇḍita, and examine the requirements for their workability. I suggest that Sa skya Paṇḍita’s motivation to opt for an alternative solution has to do with his criticism of notions shared by his Tibetan predecessors, an outline of which is given in Appendix 1. In Appendix 2, I present the surprising use of the charge of circularity by an early Tibetan logician against his coreligionists.     

An Early Bka’-gdams-pa Madhyamaka Work Attributed to Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna

Although Ati?a is famous for his journey to Tibet and his teaching there, his teachings of Madhyamaka are not extensively commented upon in the works of known and extant indigenous Tibetan scholars. Ati?a’s Madhyamaka thought, if even discussed, is minimally acknowledged in recent modern scholarly overviews or sourcebooks on Indian Buddhist thought. The following annotated translation provides a late eleventh century Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka teaching on the two realities (satyadvaya) attributed to Ati?a Dīpa?kara?rījñāna (982–1054 c.e.) entitled A General Explanation of, and Framework for Understanding, the Two Realities (bden gnyis spyi bshad dang/ bden gnyis ’jog tshul). The text furnishes an exposition of the Middle Way (madhyamaka) thought of Nāgārjuna based on an exegesis of conventional reality and ultimate reality within the framework of Mahāyāna path structures found in texts attributed to Maitreyanātha. The General Explanation fills an important gap in the historical knowledge of Madhyamaka teachings in eleventh century India and Tibet. The text presents a Madhyamaka teaching brought to Tibet by Ati?a and provides previously unknown evidence for the type of pure Madhyamaka teachings that circulated among the communities of early followers of Ati?a. These teachings were disseminated before the rise of the early Bka’-gdams-pa monastery of Gsang-phu ne’u-thog and its debating traditions that, particularly beginning in the twelfth century, placed emphasis on the merger of Madhyamaka and Epistemology (pramā?a).     

Some Further Comments on the First Section of the Vigrahavyāvartanī

The publication deals with topics concerning the interpretation of the Vigrahavyāvartanī in as much as they are relevant for the understanding of (early) Madhyamaka-philosophy in general. A major part of the article is dedicated to a critical assessment of a number of views which have been propagated recently in a paper by Sharma (In: Nagoya studies in Indian culture and Buddhism, Saṃbhāṣā, 2011). A primary goal of the present investigation consists in substantiating the claim that early Madhyamaka represents a metaphysical teaching which stands in sharp contrast not only to stances of common sense but also to tenets propagated in Buddhist dogmatics.