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Publié par
Date de parution
01 décembre 2011
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438439112
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
01 décembre 2011
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438439112
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Visions of Unity
The Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden's New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka
Yaroslav Komarovski
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles
Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Komarovski, Yaroslav.
Visions of unity : the golden pandita Shakya Chokden's new interpretation of yogacara and madhyamaka / Yaroslav Komarovski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3909-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Sakya-mchog-ldan, Gser-mdog Pan-chen, 1428–1507. 2. Yogacara (Buddhism) 3. Madhyamaka (Buddhism) I. Title.
BQ7471.K66 2011
294.3'92—dc22 2011005362
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Tables
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Acknowledgments
I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who directly or indirectly helped bring this book project to completion. First and foremost, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Shakya Chokden himself. Although this remarkable thinker lived five centuries ago, his life and ideas have been the focus of my research for more than twelve years, providing continuing inspiration for my own life and thinking.
I am also highly indebted to all those who provided me with the intellectual background and skills indispensable for this project: the late Khenchen ( mkhan chen ) Künga Wangchuk ( kun dga' dbang phyug ) and my other teachers at Dzongsar Institute for Advanced Studies of Buddhist Philosophy and Research in Bir, India, with whom I spent several years studying teachings of the Sakya tradition; Khenpo ( mkhan po ) Tsewang Sönam ( tshe dbang bsod nams ) at Pelyül Chökhor Ling ( dpal yul chos 'khor gling ) in Bir, under whose guidance I explored teachings of the Nyingma tradition as well as various interpretations of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra; the late Lopzang Gyamtso ( blo bzang rgya mtsho ) and other teachers at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, who for six years taught me Buddhist philosophy, logic, epistemology, and other subjects of traditional Tibetan scholarship; and the late Khetsün Zangpo Rinpoché ( mkhas btsun bzang po rin po che ), the late Kirti Tsenzhap Rinpoché ( kirti mtshan zhabs rin po che ), the late Khenchen Tupten Özer ( thub bstan 'od zer ), and other teachers with whom I studied Buddhist tantric systems. It is only due to the training under these and other outstanding scholars that my studies of Buddhism eventually resulted in a modest understanding and deep appreciation of the richness, complexity, and interconnectedness of the multiple elements comprising the Buddhist universe, inspiring my lasting interest in the thought of Shakya Chokden, thought which embodies those qualities.
I am extremely grateful to my instructors at the University of Virginia, and especially Professors Jeffrey Hopkins and David Germano—my graduate advisors during the coursework and dissertation research on the writings of Shakya Chokden—who provided me with the intellectual stimulation, challenges, and advice that proved indispensable for transforming my long-term interest in the writings of Shakya Chokden into a work of academic research.
I also strongly benefited from discussing Shakya Chokden's ideas and other topics pertinent to this manuscript with Anne Burchardi, Dr. Alberto Todeschini, Khenpo Ngakwang Dorjé ( ngag dbang rdo rje ), Dr. Cyrus Stearns, Professor Kevin Vose, Professor José Cabezón, and other fellow scholars and friends whose skills and knowledge greatly helped me strengthen the manuscript.
I am also very thankful to Professor Beata Grant and my colleagues at the Washington University in St. Louis where I continued my research as a Mellon postdoctoral fellow, as well as my current colleagues at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who provided me with support and advice during the final stages of my work on this book.
Last, but not least, I want to thank all those who helped me with proofreading and polishing the manuscript at its different stages, especially Scott Leigh who carefully read its final version and offered many helpful suggestions on how to improve its style and readability.
If there are any benefits and virtues in this study, I want to dedicate them to my teachers, to a deeper understanding of the treasure trove of Buddhist thought, and to an increasing awareness and lasting preservation of the Tibetan culture.
Introduction
During the long history of growth, transformation, and spread of Buddhist traditions across various cultures of Asia, their followers developed a wide variety of worldviews, contemplative techniques, and ritual practices. Of special interest are the diversity of Buddhist ideas about reality and the methods of incorporating those ideas in contemplative practice. For centuries Buddhists have been exploring and contesting such fundamental issues as the nature of reality, the means of accessing it, the connection between its intellectual understanding and direct realization, the ways of its articulation, and the relationship between its realization and other elements of Buddhist thought and practice.
As Buddhism grew and diversified, Buddhists articulated multiple theories of reality and the contemplative techniques intended to achieve its realization. Those theories saturate the voluminous philosophical and contemplative literature that originated in South Asia and was later translated into Chinese, Tibetan, and other languages. They also play a crucial role in numerous systems and traditions that have continuously been evolving in Buddhist cultures until the present day. In contrast to early followers of the Buddha, subsequent generations of Buddhist thinkers faced the additional problem of organizing the theories of reality inherited from their predecessors, selectively matching them with the views of specific traditions, lineages, and schools with which they increasingly came to identify themselves. As a result, in the growing and expanding Buddhist world, the questions of accessing, realizing, and articulating reality were rarely limited to the philosophical, contemplative, or soteriological dimensions of Buddhism. In the Tibetan cultural area—as well as elsewhere—they came to be intricately linked with such issues as sectarian identity, faithfulness to one's lineage, and the struggle for power in religious and political spheres.
The process of organizing, interpreting, transforming, and refining the Mahāyāna systems of thought and practice inherited by Tibetans from their Indian predecessors played a crucial role in the formation of the distinctively Tibetan form of Buddhism. This process started during the last centuries of the first millennium, and gained momentum during the first half of the second. By the fifteenth century, Tibetan thinkers were almost universally addressing the questions of the nature of reality and its realization in terms of Yogācāra ( rnal 'byor spyod pa, Yogic Practice), Madhyamaka ( dbu ma, Middle), and several tantric systems of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The general tendency was to valorize Madhyamaka, showing its superiority over Yogācāra while retaining epistemological ideas developed by Yogācāra thinkers and matching the Madhyamaka view of reality with that of Buddhist tantras that came to be unquestionably treated as the highest teachings of the Buddha. By the fifteenth century, many Tibetan traditions had produced distinctive interpretive approaches to reality that came to be accepted as standard. Challenging those positions, or articulating views that appeared to run contrary to them, was tantamount to challenging the very traditions that produced those positions and consequently enmeshing oneself in inter- and intrasectarian controversies. Nevertheless, one would also hear powerful alternative voices whose messages were clearly received by contemporaries, and whose echoes are still resounding today.
This book brings back to light one such voice—that of the seminal Tibetan thinker Serdok Penchen Shakya Chokden 1 ( gser mdog paṇ chen shākya mchog ldan , 1428–1507), a thinker who occupies a special place in the intellectual history of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Working during one of the most formative but least explored periods in Tibetan history, he was deeply involved in the inter- and intrasectarian polemics of his time, and articulated a startlingly new reconsideration of the core areas of Buddhist thought and practice, in particular Yogācāra and Madhyamaka.
While this study focuses on Shakya Chokden's unique interpretation of the nature and relationship of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, it goes beyond that. Shakya Chokden's thought provides an invaluable base to challenge and expand our understanding of such seminal topics as epistemology, contemplative practice, the relationship between intellectual study and meditative experience, and other key questions that occupy contemporary scholarship on Buddhism and religion in general. The interpretive strategies he offers are particularly valuable when applied to rival positions on reality and its contemplation held by Buddhist thinkers. 2 Exploring his ideas in the context of these and related topics, this study seeks to enrich our understanding of the religious life of fifteenth-century Tibet,