Making and Remaking the Ultimate in Early Tibetan Readings of Śāntideva

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Influence and Reception of Śāntideva's Works in India and Beyond

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvtāra has long been celebrated, alongside Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra, for its explication of emptiness from the Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka viewpoint, set within a broader presentation of the Mahāyāna path structure. While the features that these two texts share - and, indeed, the features of Prāsaṅgika itself- have been oft-debated in the history of Tibetan Madhyamaka, we have good textual and doctrinal evidence for associating them. One compelling reason is Śāntideva's declaration that "the ultimate is not a referent of awareness,"[1] a claim that echoes Candrakīrti's statement that the ultimate "is ineffable and just not a referent of consciousness."[2] Further, in explication of Śāntideva's assertion, Prajñākaramati's (c. 950-1030) commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra quotes the Madhyamakāvatāra four times, linking these two texts' views on this central Madhyamaka doctrine.[3]
       The kind of ultimate suggested in these passages, an ultimate that transcends thought and language, would prove to be a stumbling block for those early Tibetan Mādhyamikas with strong commitments to the Buddhist epistemological tradition. Logic-minded Mādhyamikas, particularly those connected with gSaṅ phu Ne'u thog Monastery, tended to reject Candrakīrti's philosophy following its spread in Central Tibet around the year 1100, in large part because of its perceived difficulties in explaining how one realizes an ultimate that transcends human intellect.[4] In contrast, the Bodhicaryāvatāra, having long since been translated, retranslated, and commented upon, was universally acclaimed, making an accounting of its views incumbent upon any author. Rather than accept or reject Śāntideva's seemingly transcendent ultimate and the host of problems attendant on this view, early bKa' gdams pa scholars found a variety of ways to interpret it. How one interpreted Śāntideva's ultimate, whether aligning with Candrakīrti's transcendent portrayal or with gSaṅ phu's logic-based model, in turn became a dividing line for a series of categories of Madhyamaka, including the well-known Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika divide.
       The authority of the Bodhicaryāvatāra was forged at gSaṅ phu by the monastery's intellectual founder, rṄog Blo ldan ses rab (1059-1109), who is credited with establishing the final version of the Tibetan translation of the text. The colophon of the Tibetan translation states that the text was first translated from a Kashmiri exemplar by Ka ba dpal brtsegs (prior to 840), then was revised in accordance with a central Indian exemplar and its (unnamed) commentary by Rin chen bzaṅ po (958-1055) and Shākya blo gros (eleventh century). Finally, rṄog - apparently on the basis of no new manuscripts or commentaries, but under the guidance of his Kashmiri teacher Sumatikīrti - corrected and finalized the text.[5] Despite the credit given to rṄog, early Tibetan commentaries reveal a variety of readings of the root text, suggesting that it circulated in many forms during this period and not just in rṄog's "finalized" version. [6]
      rṄog is known to have written both a commentary and a topical outline on the Bodhicaryāvatāra.[7] The text likewise figured prominently at gSaṅ phu in the generations following rṄog, as a series of scholars in teacher-to-student relationship composed commentaries on it: rṄog's student rGya dmar pa Byaṅ chub grags; rGya: dmar pa's student Phya pa Chos kyi seṅ ge; and Phya pa's student gTsaṅ nag pa brTson 'grus seṅ ge. [8] To these we may add the commentary of the second Sa skya pa hierarch, bSod nams rtse mo (1142-1182), which according to its colophon relates the comments of his teacher Phya pa and also occasionally cites rṄog's commentary.[9] These four generations of commentaries allow us to see the evolution of gSaṅ phu exegesis, revealing a variety of ways to accommodate and even champion the transcendent ultimate found in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, while at the same time holding to gSaṅ phu's emphasis on inferential logic. These early commentators' solutions to the problems attendant upon Śāntideva's ultimate took the shape of two interrelated discussions of the nature of ultimate truth and of the cognitive processes involved with realizing it. These in turn gave rise to distinct Madhyamaka categories to classify views on each. (Vose, preliminary remarks, 285–88)

Notes

Stanza IX.2c; La Vallée Poussin, Prajñākaramati's Commentary (1905), 352: buddher agocaras tattvaṃ.
La Vallée Poussin, Madhyamakāvatāra, 109,2-3: don dam pa'i bden pa bstan par 'dod pas de ni brjod du med pa'i phyir daṅ śes pa'i yul ma yin pa ñid kyi phyir dṅos su bstan par mi nus pas.
Prajñākaramati cites Madhyamakāvatāra VI.23, 25, 28, and 29 in his comments to Bodhicaryāvatāra IX.2; La Vallee Poussin, Prajñākaramati's Commentary (1905), 353, 361, and 366.
Candrakīrti's twelfth-century ascension and the debates it touched off in Tibet are treated in Vose, Resurrecting Candrakīrti.
This information is drawn from the colophon to the Tibetan translation found in the bsTan 'gyur; sDe dge edition, vol. ya, 40a5-7.
Just what constitutes rṄog's finalized translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is difficult to pinpoint. Akira Saito has analyzed Bu ston's suspicion that the version of the Bodhicaryāvatāra available to him (which he included in his bsTan 'gyur collection) contains unwarranted "emendations" made by gTsaṅ nag pa; see Saito, "Bu ston on the sPyod 'jug," 79-85. In one example, which he takes to be representative, Saito (p. 84) suggests that "the alteration [of rṄog's translation] appears to have been made with rather careless consultation of the old translation(s)." A thorough evaluation of this textual conundrum will require an examination of the Bodhicaryāvatāra stanzas embedded in the various Indian and Tibetan commentaries, as compared to the stanzas preserved in the bsTan 'gyur editions and in the Dunhuang manuscript (Stein 628) edited in Saito, A Study of the Dun-huang Recension. My initial investigation shows that gTsaṅ nag pa's commentary offers readings of the Bodhicaryāvatāra stanzas that accord with the stanzas preserved in the bsTan 'gyur but not with those found in the Dunhuang version (in cases where the bsTan 'gyur edition and Dunhuang version disagree). If gTsaṅ nag pa was indeed Bu ston's culprit, he does not seem to have been utilizing a translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra related to the Dunhuang version.
For an overview of rṄog's compositions, see Kano, rNgog Blo-ldan-shes-rab's Summary, 125-128 and Kramer, The Great Translator. Fragments of rṄog's commentary are cited in bSod nams rtse mo's commentary (discussed below); the whereabouts of the complete commentary remain unknown. I thank Kazuo Kano for alerting me to his discovery in Lhasa of rṄog's sPyod 'jug gi bsdus don, a "topical outline" of Śāntideva's text, which he is now preparing for publication.
The available texts are rGya dmar pa Byaṅ chub grags's Byaṅ chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa'i tshig don gsal bar bśad pa; Phya pa's sPyod 'jug bsdus don, a topical outline (Phya pa's full commentary is not presently known); and gTsaṅ nag pa brTson 'grus seṅ ge's sPyod 'jug gi rnam bśad.
bSod nams rtse mo, sPyod pa la 'jug pa'i 'grel pa. In the colophon (515.2,4-6), we read: "Indeed, the Commentary composed by the lord (btsun pa) is exceedingly clear. However, ... I write this for the ease of realization of myself and those like me. For the sake of easy realization even of the wisdom chapter, the spiritual friend bSod nams rtse mo clearly arranged (ñe bar sbyar) this from the concise (tshig bsdus, "a summary") and difficult to understand (go dka' ba) Explanation of Engaging in the Bodhisattva's Practices composed by the monk Chos kyi seṅ ge." In including bSod nams rtse mo's commentary in this discussion of early bKa' gdams pa commentaries, I do not intend to portray him as a bKa' gdams pa, but rather take his attribution of "arranging" his teacher's comments on the Bodhicaryāvatāra as rendering his comments germane to this investigation. As will be seen, his comments would prove to be more faithful to Phya pa's views than those of another of Phya pa's students, gTsaṅ nag pa. Even still, the subtle criticism implicit in calling Phya pa's summary "difficult to understand" may suggest a certain distance between teacher and student that we would be unlikely to see in later master-to-disciple relationships within the established orders of Tibet.

Citation

Vose, Kevin. "Making and Remaking the Ultimate in Early Tibetan Readings of Śāntideva." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 32, no. 1/2 (2009): 285-318. https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3144387&journal_code=JIABS&download=yes.

Interconnections

Works related to this item

1 Scholarship on

Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Bodhicaryāvatāra [बोधिचर्यावतार]. byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa [བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ།]. [The Way of the Bodhisattva]. Tengyur, RKTST 3216 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3216&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.