Recension of
Bhāvanākrama of Kamalaśīla (3 of 3)
The third and briefest of the Bhāvanākrama is devoted especially to the topics of śamatha and vipaśyanā, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalaśīla argues that analysis (vicāra) into the lack of self (ātman) in both persons (pudgala) and phenomena (dharma) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing śamatha and vipaśyanā. (Source: "Bhāvanākrama." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 112–13. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
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Reviews
Review of Minor Buddhist Texts, Part III: Third Bhāvanākrama by Giuseppe Tucci
Akira Yuyama's review of Tucci's edition offers important scholarly observations about both the strengths and limitations of this long-awaited publication. While welcoming Tucci's critical edition of the Third Bhāvanākrama based on the Leningrad manuscript, Yuyama raises concerns about unclear editorial practices, particularly Tucci's mysterious reference to a possible second manuscript that is never identified or used in the apparatus. The reviewer criticizes Tucci's failure to provide complete textual variants between the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions, and suggests that including pagination from the more widely accessible Peking edition (in addition to the Derge) would have made the work more useful to scholars. Yuyama also questions the value of reconstructing entire lost Sanskrit texts from Tibetan translations, arguing that it is more philologically sound to simply note technical terms attested in other Indic sources. Despite these methodological critiques, Yuyama demonstrates the edition's scholarly value by providing detailed philological corrections and emphasizing the importance of identifying the numerous canonical quotations that appear throughout Kamalaśīla's text, a task requiring collaborative effort from specialists in various fields.
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