The Buddha achieved enlightenment at the age of thirty-five under the Bodhi tree near the town of Gaya. It is said that he remained there for seven weeks before setting out for the Deer Park in Sarnath, where he first turned the wheel of doctrine (dharmacakra, chos kyi khor lo). From that time until he passed away at the age of eighty, he traveled through the Gangetic plain of northern India teaching doctrines appropriate to the interests and capacities of his listeners. Thus, unlike Jesus, whose ministry lasted for perhaps three years, the Buddha taught for forty-five, leaving a large body of teachings. As a result of disagreements that arose in the Buddhist community, shortly after his death, as to how the teachings were to be interpreted, the various schools of Buddhist tenets (siddhānta, grub mtha’) were established.
With the rise of the Mahāyāna some four hundred years after the death of the Buddha, a large corpus of literature known as the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras (prajñāpāramitāsūtra, shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i mdo) was gradually introduced into the canon. These texts were not accepted as the word of the Buddha by the Hīnayāna schools, for the most part, but were studied and explicated by philosophers such as Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga, giving rise to the Mahāyāna schools of Mādhyamika and Yogācāra.
Based on the idea that the Buddha taught different things to different people in accordance with their capacities, it is the Mahāyāna position that the Buddha set forth the basic positions of all the various schools of tenets. Later, these positions were expanded into fully developed philosophical systems by the thinkers who have come to be known as the founders of those systems. Thus, it is held that the Buddha taught the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā, stong pa nyid) in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. His teachings were then elaborated upon and developed into the Mādhyamika system by Nāgārjuna, who is considered its founder. The Tibetan word for “founder” in this context is shing-da-sol-jay (shing rta srol ’byed), which means “opener of the chariotway.” The Buddha’s initial teaching of the doctrines of the various schools is likened to someone’s clearing a new path or blazing a trail. The founders of the individual schools systematized those teachings as someone would expand the path into a roadway, smooth and wide enough for a chariot to traverse.1
The Svātantrika School
In the sixth century a fork developed in the Mādhyamika chariotway constructed by Nāgārjuna, foreshadowing the formation of two subschools within Mādhyamika—Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika. The documentary evidence for this split is found in the commentaries to Nāgārjuna’s most famous work, the Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way Called “Wisdom” (Prajñānāmamūlamadhyamakakārikā). There were eight Indian commentaries to the Treatise on the Middle Way, four of which are not preserved in Tibetan translation, those of Devaśarman, Guṇamati, Guṇaśrī, and Sthiramati. The four commentaries available from the Tibetan are that by Buddhapālita, known simply as the Buddhapālita Commentary (Buddhapālitavṛtti), Bhāvaviveka’s Lamp for (Nāgārjuna’s) Wisdom (Prajñāpradīpa), Candrakīrti’s Clear Words (Prasannapadā), and a commentary called Akutobhayā. This last work is traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna but is generally considered not to be his work because it is not quoted by any of the other commentators and because it cites one of Nāgārjuna’s disciples, Āryadeva.2 In his commentary to the Treatise on the Middle Way, Buddhapālita presented many of his arguments in terms of consequences (prasaṅga, thal ’gyur), logical statements put in terms of the opponent’s assertions in order to reveal to the opponent the fallacy of his position. In the Lamp for (Nāgārjuna’s) “Wisdom”, Bhāvaviveka criticized Buddhapālita’s use of consequences, insisting that the Mādhyamika’s own position must finally be stated in the form of an autonomous syllogism (svatantraprayoga, rang rgyud kyi sbyor ba). Subsequently, Candrakīrti came to Buddhapālita’s defense in his Clear Words, arguing that the faults ascribed by Bhāvaviveka were not entailed by Buddhapālita and that the use of autonomous syllogisms is unsuitable for Mādhyamikas, thereby rejecting Bhāvaviveka’s position. The philosophical implications of the use of syllogisms and consequences is analyzed in chapter 2 of this work.
Although Buddhapālita was the first to use consequences in explaining the meaning of Nāgārjuna’s text, he is not considered to be the founder of the Prāsaṅgika (Consequentialist) branch of Mādhyamika. In order to be considered the founder of a system, one must consciously prove the validity of the approach of that system and distinguish it from that of rival systems. For this reason, Candrakīrti is held to be the founder of the Prāsaṅgika school. Similarly, Bhāvaviveka is considered to be the founder of the Svātantrika (Autonomy) school, even though he was preceded by Devaśarman, who presented the Svātantrika position in his commentary to the Treatise on the Middle Way.3
In the eighth century, the great scholar Śāntarakṣita founded a school that supported the general Svātantrika position but disagreed with Bhāvaviveka on a number of important points. Because Śāntarakṣita’s school incorporated certain doctrines of the Yogācāra system, it is known as Yogācāra-Svātantrika-Mādhyamika, whereas Bhāvaviveka’s school is known as Sautrāntika-Svātantrika-Mādhyamika. During the reign of King Tri-song-day-dzen (Khri-srong-lde-btsan, 740-c. 798), Śāntarakṣita was invited to Tibet, where he was instrumental in the establishment of the first monastery in Tibet at Sam-ye (bSam-yas) and the ordination of the first Tibetan monks in 767.4 After the death of Śāntarakṣita, his foremost student, Kamalaśīla, was invited to Tibet to defend the Mādhyamika approach to the path against the arguments of a Northern Ch’an monk known as Ho-shang Mo-ho-yen. Kamalaśīla presented his position in three texts, each entitled the Stages of Meditation (Bhāvanākrama), and was declared the victor in the controversy that has come to be known as the Council of Lhasa (792-94).5
As Mādhyamikas, the Svātantrikas propound a middle way free from the extremes of true existence and utter non-existence. They assert that phenomena do not truly exist or ultimately exist but that they exist conventionally, with impermanent phenomena arising in dependence on causes and conditions and capable of performing functions. The unique meaning of the middle way in the Mādhyamika school is discussed in chapter 1.
That which distinguishes the Svātantrikas from the other branch of Mādhyamika, the Prāsaṅgikas, is their assertion that phenomena exist in and of themselves conventionally. For the Svātantrikas, if things did not exist by way of their own character (svalakṣaṇa, rang mtshan) conventionally, they would not exist at all; the Svātantrikas insist on the objective autonomy of phenomena on the conventional level although they refute that phenomena exist by way of their own character ultimately. Things appear to our senses to exist from their own side, and the Svātantrikas assert that such is their conventional mode of being. The Prāsaṅgikas, on the other hand, take a more radical position, holding that things do not exist by way of their own character even conventionally, but rather that phenomena are merely designated by terminology and thought. The fundamental question dividing the Svātantrikas and Prāsaṅgikas is where to draw the line between the hypostatization of phenomena and nihilism. How tenuous can the existence of phenomena be without their disappearing into nothingness? What degree of objective status is required for phenomena to exist?
The Svātantrikas contend that phenomena exist from their own side but that that mode of existence must be posited by the consciousness to which it appears. If phenomena lacked this objective mode of subsistence, this existence by way of their own character, functionality would be impossible and they would cease to exist. They assert that phenomena do not ultimately exist and thereby avoid the extreme of permanence (śaśvatānta, rtag mtha’). They assert that phenomena are established from their own side conventionally and thereby avoid the extreme of annihilation (ucchedānta, chad mtha’).
The Prāsaṅgikas say that the Svātantrikas go too far, superimposing a false nature on phenomena. They agree with the Svātantrikas that things appear to exist inherently but, unlike the Svātantrikas, they argue that this is a false appearance. Whereas the Svātantrikas hold that the objective existence of phenomena is gained through appearing to consciousnesses, the Prāsaṅgikas contend that such an objective mode of being does not exist even conventionally; phenomena are merely designated by terms and thought consciousnesses. The Prāsaṅgikas are able to reject the inherent existence asserted by the Svātantrikas while maintaining the viability of conventions. For the Prāsaṅgikas, the conventional nature of phenomena is more conditional, more designated, more provisional, than that propounded by the Svātantrikas. The sources and implications of the Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika views are explored in chapter 2.
It is essential to bear in mind that the Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika schools are, above all, religious systems and that their assertions on the nature of phenomena, therefore, have religious implications in terms of practice of the path to enlightenment, a state beyond all suffering. Here, Frederick Streng’s definition of religion as “a means of ultimate transformation” is appropriate.6 All of the refutations and proofs put forth by the Mādhyamikas have as their final purpose the identification of the exact nature of the misconception which is the cause of all suffering and the subsequent destruction of that misconception. The Svātantrikas hold that the conception of true existence is the root cause of the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra, ’khor ba) but that one may gain liberation from rebirth by realizing the coarser selflessness of the person (pudgalanairātmya, gang zag gi bdag med), without having understood the emptiness of true existence (*satyasat, bden par yod pa) of phenomena. Bhāvaviveka thus differentiates between the root of cyclic existence and the final root of cyclic existence, the former being the conception of a self of persons and the latter being the conception of true existence.
The Prāsaṅgikas argue that the selflessness of persons and phenomena as identified by the Svātantrikas are superficial and that understanding of them does not result in liberation. Rather, one must understand the more subtle emptiness of inherent existence (svabhāva, rang bzhin) of persons and phenomena as presented only in the Prāsaṅgika system in order to destroy the ignorance that is the cause of all suffering, the ignorance that conceives of persons and phenomena to exist inherently. The meaning of self and selflessness in Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika is pursued in chapter 3.
In order for the ignorance that is the root cause of suffering to be destroyed, it must first be identified and the object of that ignorance delineated. Bhāvaviveka and Kamalaśīla go to some length to identify how phenomena are conceived to exist by the ignorant mind. They identify the meaning of ultimate existence (paramārthasat, don dam par yod pa) and true existence (*satyasat, bden par yod pa), the objects of negation in the Svātantrika system. The structure of their arguments, with special reference to the metaphor of the magician’s illusion, is analyzed in chapter 4.
For the Mādhyamikas, the mere absence of what they identify as the object of negation is the final nature of reality. For the Svātantrikas, this reality is the emptiness of true existence and must be understood by all those who seek the ultimate transformation called Buddhahood. Emptiness is the sacred, the realization of which bestows the supreme good. It can, with qualification, be compared to Otto’s category of “the holy.” For Otto, however, reasoning has no part in the experience of the holy, where, he says, “coercion by proof and demonstration and the mistaken application of logical and juridicial processes should be excluded.”7 The non-conceptual, non-rational numinous cannot be approached with conceptuality and reason for “mysticism has nothing to do with ‘reason’ and ‘rationality.’ ”8 In the Mādhyamika system, emptiness is a hidden phenomenon (parokṣa, lkog gyur) which means that it cannot be known without first relying on inference and reason. Reasoning thus becomes the fundamental conduit to the holy, the initial passageway to the experience of the sacred. It is not surprising, then, that the Svātantrikas lay great emphasis on the process of reasoning, proving with great care and precision that phenomena do not ultimately exist. It is their position that the rational human mind, properly directed, has the capacity to destroy all misconception, thereby making all suffering impossible. The reasonings employed by the Svātantrikas are explored in chapter 5.
The Mādhyamikas divide all objects of knowledge into two categories, ultimate truths (paramārthasatya, don dam bden pa) and conventional truths (saṃvṛtisatya, kun rdzob bden pa). Ultimate truths are emptiness; conventional truths are everything else that exists. Ultimate truths are ultimate in the sense that they are objects of the highest consciousness, the wisdom directly realizing emptiness, and truths because they exist as they appear. Conventional truths, literally “truths for a concealer,” are true only for an ignorant consciousness that obscures or conceals the nature of reality. This is not to imply that the division of objects of knowledge into ultimate and conventional truths is a classification of the objects of experience into the sacred and profane. If by the sacred one means those objects of religious practice that are worthy of respect or veneration, then many conventional truths, such as the Buddha, his doctrine, and the wisdom consciousness that knows emptiness are to be classed as the sacred. The various divisions of the two truths are considered in chapter 6.
The tenets described above are shared by both branches of the Svātantrika school, Sautrāntika-Svātantrika and Yogācāra-Svātantrika. However, the two subschools disagree on several significant issues, most of which arise out of their encounter with the doctrine of mind-only taught in the Yogācāra school. The Yogācārins assert that objects and the consciousnesses apprending them are the same substantial entity (dravya, rdzas); in other words, they assert that external objects do not exist. The school founded by Bhāvaviveka is called Sautrāntika-Svātantrika because it asserts, like the Sautrāntika school, that the objects apprehended by sense consciousnesses are external objects that are composed of minute particles. However, unlike the Sautrāntikas, they do not assert that external objects are truly existent and are ultimate truths. Bhāvaviveka emphatically rejects the Yogācārin assertion that external objects do not exist, devoting the fifth chapter of his Blaze of Reasoning (Tarkajvālā) to a lengthy refutation of that position.9 He argues that the assertion that objects are of the nature of consciousness is both logically untenable and contradicts the word of the Buddha. He does not even concede the existence of statements in the canon that ostensibly support the Yogācārin position, explaining that passages such as the statement in the Sutra on the Ten Grounds (Daśabhūmikasūtra) that, “these three realms are mind only” were made not to indicate that external objects do not exist but that there is no agent other than the mind.10 The Prāsaṅgikas assert that the Buddha taught the doctrine of mind-only in other passages to those disciples who were temporarily unable to understand the Mādhyamika view, but Bhāvaviveka takes the more extreme position that the Buddha never taught that objects are of the nature of consciousness and that all of the statements which seem to suggest that can be explained to mean something else.11
Śāntarakṣita’s Yogācāra-Svātantrika school takes a far more accommodating view of the Yogācārin doctrine of the non-existence of external objects. His school is so named because it asserts, like the Yogācārins, that the objects of the senses are of the nature of consciousness. However, unlike the Yogācārins, they do not assert that consciousnesses truly exist. Śāntarakṣita thus integrates the teaching of mind-only into the Mādhyamika system, creating a confluence of the two main streams of Mahāyāna philosophy. The resulting Yogācāra-Svātantrika school represents the final major development of Buddhist philosophy in India. He writes in his Ornament for the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra):
The non-existence of external objects should be known
Through relying on mind-only.
[Then] relying on this [Mādhyamika] mode, it should be known
That this [mind] too is completely selfless.12
Śāntarakṣita sees the penetration of reality as a process that must proceed in definite stages. One first realizes that the person lacks substantial existence (dravyasat, rdzas yod) in the sense of self-sufficiency (rang rkya thub pa), that is, one understands the selflessness of the person as set forth in the Hīnayāna systems. One then turns one’s attention to the objects of sense experience and comes to realize that these objects that appear to be distant and cut off from the consciousnesses apprehending them are in fact of the nature of consciousness, like the objects in a dream. This, for Śāntarakṣita, is the selflessness understood by the Yogācārins. It is at this point that one analyzes the mode of being of the consciousness of which sense objects are the same nature, employing Mādhyamika reasoning to discover that even consciousness does not ultimately exist.13 Although Śāntarakṣita is considered the founder of Yogācāra-Svātantrika, the view of the school described above seems to have been current at the time of Bhāvaviveka. This is suggested by a statement by Bhāvaviveka, who, with characteristic polemic, states that accepting the Yogācāra view and then using Mādhyamika reasoning to reject the true existence of the mind is like a fool’s intentionally wallowing in mud to get dirty so that he can then wash himself and become clean; it would have been better had he never gotten dirty in the first place.14
The Literature
The Svātantrika school has received little attention from Western Buddhologists. Writing in 1962, Edward Conze noted that, “We still have no clear idea of Bhāvaviveka’s Svātantrika system. ... Likewise we continue to be puzzled by the teachings and affiliations of the Yogācāra-Mādhyamikas.”15 David Seyfort Ruegg noted in 1967,
The other schools of Madhyamaka have so far been somewhat neglected. Thus the Svātantrikas—who, unlike the Prāsaṅgikas, employ an independent ‘inference’ (svatantraanumāna) or syllogism (prayoga) to establish the statements of the Madhyamaka—are only beginning to receive the systematic attention they deserve.16
Perhaps the most easily identifiable reason for the neglect of the Svātantrikas is that the greater portion of their works is not preserved in Sanskrit. The primary texts delineating the Sautrāntika-Svātantrika school are Bhāvaviveka’s Essence of the Middle Way (Madhyamakahṛdaya) and its autocommentary, the Blaze of Reasoning (Tarkajvālā). These texts not only provide a detailed presentation of Bhāvaviveka’s own system but also include expositions and critiques of the major Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical schools of India in Bhāvaviveka’s day. It is as an encyclopedia of other systems rather than as an exposition of Bhāvaviveka’s own Sautrāntika-Svātantrika school that the Essence of the Middlle Way and the Blaze of Reasoning have been valued by modern scholars. Bhāvaviveka’s terse commentary to Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Middle Way and the voluminous subcommentary by Avalokitavrata are also important sources for the understanding of Svātantrika, especially when studied with the Prāsaṅgika commentaries of Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti. The other text of central importance attributed to the Sautrāntika-Svātantrika17 is Jñānagarbha’s Differentiation of the Two Truths (Satyadvayavibhaṅga), renowned as one of “the three [texts] illuminating Svātantrika” (rang rgyud shar gsum). With the exception of a portion of the Essence of the Middle Way, all of these texts have been lost in the original Sanskrit, and only one chapter of Bhāvaviveka’s commentary to the Treatise on the Middle Way and fractions of four chapters of the Essence of the Middle Way and Blaze of Reasoning (discussed below) have been rendered into a Western language from the Tibetan translations.
The Yogācāra-Svātantrika traditionally is said to be set forth in *Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament for the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra) and Kamalaśīla’s Illumination of the Middle Way (Madhyamakāloka), the other two texts illuminating Svātantrika. Neither Śāntarakṣita’s autocommentary to the Ornament for the Middle Way nor Kamalasila’s Illumination of the Middle Way has been translated. Śāntarakṣita’s massive encyclopedia of Indian philosophy, the Compendium of Principles (Tattvasamgraha) is a critical survey of Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools and does not explicitly elucidate Śāntarakṣita’s own system. Thus, its translation by Ganganatha Jha18 does not contribute directly to our understanding of Svātantrika.
By far the most extensive study of the Svātantrika school took place in Tibet. The two chief figures of the Yogācāra-Svātantrika subschool, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, played a central role in the first dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century. During this early period, many Tibetan scholars adopted the Svātantrika view, whose influence seems to have carried over into the period of the second dissemination during the eleventh century, for it is reported that Atīśa, himself a Prāsaṅgika, lectured on Bhāvaviveka’s Blaze of Reasoning on numerous occasions.19 However, with the translation of the works of Candrakīrti by Ba-tsap-nyi-ma-drak (Pa-tshab-nyi-ma-grags, 1055-1158?) and Jayānanda, the Prāsaṅgika view began to spread. From this time on, the Prāsaṅgika view continued to gain currency, with the works of Candrakīrti being highly valued by some of the most illustrious scholars of the most creative period in Tibetan thought (1100-1500), including Mar-ba (Mar-pa, 1012-1096), Sa-gya (Sa-skya) Paṇḍita (1182-1251), Bu-dön (Bu-ston, 1290-1364), Ren-da-wa (Red-mda’-ba, 1349-1412), and Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419).
The primacy of the Prāsaṅgika view was firmly established for the Tibetan tradition by Tsong-kha-pa, the founder of the Ge-luk (dGe-lugs) order, in works such as the Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path (Lam rim chen mo), the Essence of the Good Explanations (Legs bshad snying po), and the Great Commentary on (Candrakīrti’s) “Supplement” (’Jug dik chen mo). In these works he presents both the central issues and most intricate points of the Prāsaṅgika school with a precision and style unmatched in Buddhist literature. Thus, it can be said that from the time of Tsong-kha-pa, if not before, the Prāsaṅgika school was the dominant philosophical system in Tibet. It is not the case, as A. K. Warder claims, that Śāntarakṣita’s “philosophy has formed the basic theoretical outlook of the Buddhist in that country [Tibet]” since the eighth century.20
One of the great contributions made by the Tibetans to the study of Buddhist philosophy has been their tenets (siddhānta, grub mtha’) texts, surveys of the Indian philosophical systems. Some of the early attempts to present an overview of Buddhist philosophy in a single work are the Ga-dam (bKa’ gdams) scholar Ü-ba-lo-sel’s (dBus-pa-blo-gsal) Treasury Explaining Tenets (Grub pa’i mtha’ rnam par bshad pa’i mdzod), the first Dalai Lama, Gen-dun-drup’s (dGe-’den-grub, 1391-1475) Ship Entering the Ocean of Tenets (Grub mtha’ rgya mtshor ’jug pa’i gru rdzings), the Nying-ma (rNying-ma) scholar Long-chen-rap-jam’s (kLong-chen-rab-’byams, 1308-1363) Treasury of Tenets (Grub mtha’ mdzod), and the Sa-gya (Sa-skya) translator Dak-tsang’s (sTag-tshang, born 1405) Freedom from Extremes Through Understanding All Tenets (Grub mtha’ kun shes nas mtha’ bral grub pa). However, the best known of the doxographies are those of two later Ge-luk scholars, Jam-yang-shay-ba’s (’Jam-dbyangs-bzhad-pa, 1648-1721) Great Exposition of Tenets (Grub mtha’ chen mo) and Jang-gya’s (lCang-skya-rol-pa’i-rdo-rje, 1717-1786) Presentation of Tenets (Grub pa’i mtha’i rnam par bzhag pa). These two works seek to present an accurate overview of the schools of Indian philosophy, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. With extensive citation of Indian texts, they survey the central issues of each system. Beyond this, they attempt to situate the schools in a hierarchical order from bottom to top, beginning among the Buddhist schools with the Vaibhāṣikas and then proceeding to the Sautrāntikas, Cittamātrins (Yogācārins), Svātantrikas, and Prāsaṅgikas. They rely heavily on the perspective of Tsong-kha-pa, often appealing to his statement on a particular point as the final word. At other times, they lift lengthy sections from his writings without citation
In the dominant Ge-luk order, these tenet texts provide an important medium for the study of the Svātantrika school. Traditionally, the most advanced study of Buddhist philosophy took place in one of six colleges in the three great monasteries located in the vicinity of Lhasa—Dre-bung (’Bras-spungs), Gan-den (dGa’-ldan), and Se-ra (Se-ra). Each college, both in Tibet and in the Ge-luk monasteries relocated in India since 1959, has its own curriculum that includes a survey of tenets. Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya’s expositions of tenets are the most extensive and sophisticated of all such surveys and thus have been studied by scholars of all six colleges, although they are formally associated with Go-mang (sGo-mang) College of Dre-bung monastery. For most Ge-luk scholars, knowledge of Svātantrika would come, thus, through literature of this genre, in conjunction with the study of textbooks on the structure of the path to enlightenment based on the Yogācāra-Svātantrika Haribhadra’s commentaries to Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realization (Abhisa-mayālaṃkāra); it would be a rare scholar who had devoted extensive effort to the study of the original Svātantrika texts in Tibetan translation.
The chief educational technique in the Ge-luk monastic universities is a stylized form of logical debate in which the student is expected to be able to defend the positions of the various Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical systems. Thus, although Prāsaṅgika rather than Svātantrika is regarded as the highest system of philosophy, with the result that all Ge-luk-bas consider themselves to be Prāsaṅgikas, a monk’s scholarship and intellectual acumen is judged in part by his ability to present the Svātantrika position accurately and defend it against criticisms that might be leveled by a Prāsaṅgika. Therefore, both in the context of writing texts, such as Jang-gya’s Presentation of Tenets, and in the debating courtyard, the ability to present accurately a view that is not one’s own is valued highly. Thus, although Svātantrika is seen as only the penultimate system, a Ge-luk-ba must be able to present it clearly and defend it in debate.
Because of the unique perspective (to be discussed below) provided by the Tibetan tenet genre, the Svātantrika chapter of Jang-gya’s Presentation of Tenets has been translated in its entirety and forms the second part of this study. Jang-gya’s exposition of the Svātantrika school is, in part, a compilation of Tsong-kha-pa’s statements concerning the school, drawn from a number of different works. Tsong-kha-pa never wrote a systematic presentation of the Svātantrika school; his only work devoted solely to the Svātantrika view is his Notes on (Śāntarakṣita’s) “Ornament for the Middle Way” (dbU ma rgyan zin bris). However, he devoted important sections of his major works, such as his commentaries to Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Middle Way and Candrakīrti’s Supplement to the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatāra), the Essence of the Good Explanations, and the Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path, to discussions of the Svātantrika positions and the differences between Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika. These are Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya’s main sources. However, their studies are not merely paraphrases of Tsong-kha-pa. For example, Jang-gya’s extensive sections on Bhāvaviveka’s refutation of Yogācāra and on the reasoning of the lack of being one or many are original studies displaying considerable research in the Indian sources. Jang-gya’s fundamental concern with the pivotal issues in the Svātantrika school makes this chapter of his Presentation of Tenets the most valuable study of Svātantrika in Tibetan literature.
Purpose and Scope
In order to assess the place of this study, it is worthwhile to survey earlier treatments of Svātantrika in the West. Because Candrakīrti’s Clear Words is presented in Sanskrit, it is the best known of the commentaries to Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Middle Way. In the first chapter of that text Candrakīrti defends Buddhapālita and attacks Bhāvaviveka. This chapter has until recently been the major source for the Svātantrika position, albeit presented in the words of its most strident critic. The dispute between Candrakīrti and Bhāvaviveka on the question of consequences (prasaṅga) and syllogisms (prayoga) has been brought to light in the West through the work of Stcherbatsky,21 Kajivama,22 Hopkins,23 and Thurman.24
In 1932, Louis de La Vallée Poussin translated a text attributed to Bhāvaviveka that is not preserved in Tibetan, the Jewel in Hand (Chang-chung-lun).25 N. A. Sastri restored the text into Sanskrit and wrote a summary of its contents.26 Sastri also translated a short work by Bhāvaviveka, the Condensed Meaning of the Middle Way (Madhyamakārthasaṃgraha).27 With the discovery of a partial Sanskrit manuscript in 1936, Bhāvaviveka’s Essence of the Middle Way became available to Sanskritists and a number of chapters have been translated, most of them dealing with non-Buddhist schools.28
In view of the wide range of original Tibetan literature on Svātantrika, it is interesting that one brief exposition of the school, drawn from the Precious Garland of Tenets (Grub mtha’ rin chen ’phreng pa) by the eighteenth-century Ge-luk scholar Gon-chok-jik-may-wang-bo (dKon-mchog-’jigs-med-dbang-po, 1728-1791) has been translated into English three times.29
It is clear, therefore, that previous research on Svātantrika in the West has been limited to selected studies of isolated topics.30 The one Tibetan exposition of the school that has been translated is so brief as to form merely a sketch. The purpose of the present study is thus first to provide a more comprehensive and detailed presentation of the Svātantrika school as a whole, dwelling at length on a number of central issues. This purpose is fulfilled in part by the translation of the Svātantrika chapter of Jang-gya’s Presentation of Tenets. From the time that Candrakīrti sought to distinguish the view of Buddhapālita and himself from that of Bhāvaviveka, the difference between Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika has been an important one for the history of Buddhist thought. Therefore, this study seeks to establish what the two schools have in common as Mādhyamikas and to identify the fundamental questions on which they part company. These are the topics of the first three chapters.
As a school of Buddhism, the Svātantrikas assert that ignorance is the source of all suffering; a basic misconception about the way things exist is the root cause of all desire, pride, hatred, and jealousy. They also hold that through the use of reason and introspection, this misconception can be destroyed, making suffering impossible. Hence, the identification of this misconception and the implementation of the means of destroying it are of primary importance. The Svātantrikas offer a unique interpretation of the fundamental misconception, and this is described in chapter 4. Chapter 5 is the first extensive treatment of one of the reasonings that the Svātantrikas found most effective in destroying the conception of true existence, the reasoning of the lack of being one or many.31
This study is thus intended to fill a gap in our understanding not only of Svātantrika and its relationship to Prāsaṅgika but also of the fundamental issues of one of the most creative periods in Indian thought. The Svātantrika school is important not only because Bhāvaviveka’s criticism of Buddhapālita provided Candrakīrti with the occasion to delineate the Prāsaṅgika position. The nature and cause of suffering, the identification of the final nature of phenomena, the status of external objects, and the means by which the truth can be known are perennial problems in the history of philosophy and religion, and all of these problems are major ones for the Svātantrika-Mādhyamikas. Their unique way of posing these problems and the solutions they put forth bear our consideration.
First, however, it is essential to identify a conundrum that faces the researcher of Svātantrika: To what extent may we accurately speak of a Svātantrika “system” or “school”? Because the Tibetan terms rang rgyud pa and thal ‘gyur ba have for so long been Sanskritized in Western literature as Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika, the conclusion is sometimes drawn that these terms appear in Indian literature as the names of branches of Mādhyamika. They do not. The terms translated as Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika were coined by Tibetan scholars, probably in the late eleventh or early twelfth century, following the translation into Tibetan of Candrakīrti’s works by Ba-tsap-nyi-ma-drak and the Kashmiri paṇḍiṭa Jayānanda. In his Essence of the Good Explanations, Tsong-kha-pa notes that none of the great Svātantrika masters—Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśila—found any difference between the selflessness (nairātmya, bdag med) of their own system and that of the system of Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti;32 that is, the difference between Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika that Tsong-kha-pa and his followers go to such lengths to unfold was by no means evident to such people as Bhāvaviveka, Avalokitavrata, Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, and Kamalaśīla. This should give us pause. If the protagonists in the development of Mādhyamika thought in India saw themselves as simply Mādhyamikas, the question must be raised of the efficacy of the retrospective designation Svātantrika to what may not have been a self-conscious “system.” Were individual subschools of Mādhyamika that were not present in name nonetheless present in fact?
The most detailed and “systematic” presentations of Svātantrika appear in the doxographies by the two Ge-luk scholars already mentioned, Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya. In these works, they have assumed the formidable task of identifying the shared assertions of those Indian thinkers whom we have come to refer to as Svātantrikas. In studies replete with quotations from the Indian sources, they have sought to assemble the views of the “Svātantrikas” on the central issues of Buddhist thought: the nature of the world, the two truths, the status of external objects, the causes of suffering, the structure of the path to liberation, and the nature of enlightenment. The value of their work for the student of Buddhist thought cannot be overestimated. As David Seyfort Ruegg has noted in reference to the Tibetan Mādhyamikas:
They thus combine close adherence to the traditions and lines of thought established by their predecessors in India with the production of very valuable contributions of their own in the area of textual exegesis and philosophical hermeneutics as well as in the domain of philosophical and meditative theory and practice.33
Despite this importance, however, the question arises whether the works of Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya are accurate portrayals of what they refer to as the Svātantrika system (lugs). To approach it, it is essential to identify their purposes and perspectives. In order to accomplish this, it is perhaps useful to adopt two terms employed by the anthropologist.
In his prodigious study Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior,34 Kenneth Pike identifies two standpoints for the description of human behavior, which he labels the emic and etic viewpoints.
The etic viewpoint studies behavior as from the outside of a particular system, and as an essential initial approach to an alien system. The emic viewpoint results from studying behavior as from inside the system.35
Pike goes on to provide a list of differences between the two approaches, two of which are of interest here. The first difference is that etic analyses employ criteria alien to the system under consideration, whereas an emic analyses provide an internal or “insider’s” view, making use of criteria obtained from the system under consideration. Theoretically, then, the etic approach should be valid for the analysis and description of several cultures; the emic approach, on the other hand, should be valid only for the culture from which it arose. A second difference noted by Pike concerns the problem of non-integration versus integration:
The etic view does not require that every unit be viewed as part of a larger setting. The emic view, however, insists that every unit be seen as somehow distributed and functioning within a larger structural unit and setting, in a hierarchy of units and hierarchy of settings as units.36
Which approach was taken by Tibetan scholars such as Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya in their description of Indian Buddhism? Their approach can easily be judged as etic, since they were separated by significant distances in language, culture, place, and time; Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya wrote a millennium after the authors whose views they sought to represent. It is important to note, however, that Pike defines the etic viewpoint as studying behavior “as from outside of a particular system,” and the emic as resulting “from studying behavior as from inside the system” (emphasis added). Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya clearly saw themselves as writing from within the system and, despite being removed by the factors just mentioned, they indeed stood within the Mādhyamika tradition, a continuum of study and practice that flowed unbroken from India to the snowy land of Tibet. Ruegg notes that:
there is no evidence to indicate that they have understood their task to be to set themselves off from their Mādhyamika predecessors in India. On the contrary, they have very clearly striven to penetrate, explain, and put into practice the understanding of Buddhism achieved by Nāgārjuna and his disciples up to Abhayākāragupta and Sakya Paṇḍita; to their interpretations they regularly refer, and also defer in a not uncritical manner37
The Ge-luk doxographers did not see themselves as imposing an artificial division on Mādhyamika that was utterly absent in India. There was a precedent in India for identifying trends within Mādhyamika and for ranking one thinker’s works above another’s.38 Atīśa says in his Introduction to the Two Truths (Satyadvayāvatāra, 14-16ab):
The wise master Bhavva [Bhāvaviveka] said
That it is clearly stated in scripture
That [emptiness] is not understood
By either a conceptual or non-conceptual consciousness.
Through whom, then, should one realize emptiness?
Candrakīrti, student of Nāgārjuna,
Prophesied by the Tathāgatha,
And who saw the true reality.
One should realize the true reality
Through instructions transmitted from him.39
Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya thus felt themselves to be fully consonant with the Indian tradition while at the same time seeking to affirm the interpretations of Tsong-kha-pa, for although Tsong-kha-pa did not himself compose a chronicle of tenets, his works provide much of the basis of the great Ge-luk doxographies. One of Tsong-kha-pa’s great contributions to Buddhist thought was his systematization of the Indian materials he had before him, in the arenas of theory and praxis, of sutra and trantra. Nevertheless, the heavy reliance of his great work on the practice of the path, The Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Byang chub lam rim chen mo), on two late Indian works, Atīśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradīpa) with its autocommentary (Bodhimārgapradīpapañjikā) and Kamalaśīla’s three Stages of Meditation (Bhāvanākrama), again suggests the strong sense of tradition that characterizes his work and that of his followers. Yet this is not to imply that Tsong-kha-pa was not, in many respects, an innovator, or that these innovations are discernible only from our etic perspective. Tsong-kha-pa was both praised and criticized for his innovations by Tibetan scholars of his age.40
The Ge-luk approach, then, must be judged as essentially emic, and, as such, it displays the characteristics suggested by Pike. The emic approach provides a view from inside the system; in this case, the system is not the Svātantrika but rather, that of Indo-Tibetan thought in general. The Ge-luk authors Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya continue in the tradition of Bhāvaviveka’s Blaze of Reasoning and Śāntarakṣita’s Compendium of Principles in composing texts that seek to bring together summaries of the doctrines of the major schools of Indian philosophy. A crucial difference is that Bhāvaviveka and Śāntarakṣita were, for the most part, writing about their contemporaries, whereas Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya were writing a thousand years after the demise in India of most of the schools they discuss. Their task, then, is of a fundamentally different character from that of their Indian precursors; Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya, especially in their work on Svātantrika, were forced to construct a Svātantrika system from the sources before them and, hence, the view of Svātantrika that they present is synthetic.
Because the criteria employed by Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya to describe and analyze the writings of the Svātantrika masters are emic, their concerns are those of the Buddhist; more accurately, they are those of the Ge-luk scholar-monk. They consequently deal almost exclusively with points of doctrine, paying little attention to historical factors that may have contributed to the development of that doctrine. Their perspective can be viewed as both diachronic and synchronic—diachronic in the sense that they were able to look back from their Himalayan vantage point over the development of Buddhist thought in India. However, although they were aware of much of the chronology of Indian Buddhism and of the various lineages of teaching, their primary sources were the translated śāstras of the Indian masters. Hence, their view was also synchronic because all they had to work from were the texts, texts which, for the Tibetan scholar-monk, assume something of a timeless quality. To expect Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya to provide the type of analysis and to ask the questions of the modern scholar is to misunderstand their perspective.
The purpose of the Tibetan doxographers also diverges from that of the modern student of Buddhist thought. Pike has noted that a second difference between the emic and the etic is that the emic requires that every element under consideration be integrated into and function within a larger whole, whereas the etic does not. This distinction is especially clear in the case of the Ge-luk curriculum in which the study of Buddhist tenets is much more than an academic enterprise. The Ge-luk doxographers rank the schools of Indian Buddhism in a hierarchy and study them from bottom to top, beginning with Vaibhāṣika and ending with Mādhyamika, dealing first with Svātantrika and finally with what they consider to be the final system, Prāsaṅgika. As will be discussed in chapter 4, the study of tenets in this manner has a strong pedagogic and even soteriological value, with the assertions of one school serving as a propaedeutic for the next. The doctrines of Svātantrika are thus seen as an integral part of a larger whole, surpassing Vaibhasika, Sautrāntika, and Yogācāra in sophistication and subtlety and, hypothetically, able to defeat them all, while being outshone by Prāsaṅgika. This approach contributes further to a synthetic portrayal of the various schools because the assertions that receive the greatest attention are those which are important within this hierarchical rubric; issues that do not fall under one of the doxographical categories are not emphasized.
To fully understand a given language or culture, Pike argues, both the emic and the etic approaches must be employed; the use of one approach to the exclusion of the other results in a flat, rather than three dimensional image of the subject. And so it is with the study of Svātantrika. To conclude that the image of Svātantrika created by the Ge-luk doxographers is complete, obviating the independent study of their Indian sources, would be a serious error. On the other hand, to ignore the insights provided by authors such as Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya would be to overlook a most valuable resource. As Ruegg has noted, “with a view to both translation and exegesis Tibetan scholars developed remarkable philological and interpretative methods that could well justify us in regarding them as Indologists avant la lettre.”41 The Tibetan layout of Svātantrika provides a starting point for the study of the Indian masters. Rather than attempting to construct a view of Svātantrika out of nothing, we would probably do better to use the Ge-luk presentation as a grid to be laid across the Indian texts, facilitating the discovery of points of congruence and deviation. This grid should be employed, however, with full recognition that it is itself a construct, developed a millennium after the fact. With this caveat, the Ge-luk doxographers can be used to full advantage, providing a spotlight on arenas of Buddhist thought that otherwise would remain obscured in darkness.
It is safe to say that what we call the Svātantrika school was not as coherent, self-conscious, or monolithic as the Ge-luk authors suggest. It must be recalled that we are considering a period of several centuries of Indian thought populated by philosophers who thought of themselves as Mādhyamikas or simply Buddhists, responding to developments and innovations in a fluid intellectual environment. There were indeed different lines of teaching that were internally consistent, but to infer from this the existence of a Svātantrika creed to which allegiance was sworn is to misunderstand the intention of the Tibetan doxographers. The presentations of the Svātantrika schools developed by the Ge-luk-bas represent a development of Mādhyamika thought. For our understanding of Svātantrika they should be regarded as more than simply heuristic, less than strictly apodictic. They are the reconstruction of a school long dead.
The Svātantrika school described by Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya is a representation, not that of an eyewitness photographer but that of a portrait painter of a later age, perhaps impressionistic, painted in broad strokes here and intricate detail there, the pentimento of Indian Svātantrika lying below the Tibetan pigments, vaguely visible. The historical accuracy of the Tibetan portrait remains to be discerned; that the portrait is a masterpiece is not in question.
My purpose in undertaking this study is to present a tradition of intepretation—specifically, the Ge-luk interpretation of some of the central issues addressed by the Svātantrika-Mādhyamika school, issues such as the nature of ignorance, the role of reasoning in overcoming that ignorance, the meaning of emptiness, and the two truths—the ultimate and conventional. Because Ge-luk literature—beginning with Tsong-kha-pa and continuing through Jam-yang-shay-ba, Jang-gya, and beyond—provides the most detailed analysis of the difference between Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika, their positions will be treated at some length. The Ge-luk order has its own development over several centuries and is itself not monolithic; controversies sometimes occurred on important points of Mādhyamika doctrine. These will be noted.
There are many topics with which this study deals only briefly, or not at all. The Svātantrika response to the doctrine of mind-only and the Yogācāra school—Bhāvaviveka’s strident critique and Santa-raksita’s appropriation, the structure of the path to enlightenment as presented by Haribhadra, and the hermeneutics of Svātantrika are touched upon in the translation section. Other studies essential to our understanding of Svātantrika, including the translation and careful exegesis of the first three chapters of Bhāvaviveka’s Blaze of Reasoning, of Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament for the Middle Way with its commentaries, and of Kamalaśīla’s Illumination of the Middle Way, remain desiderata.
In my comments on the preceding pages, I have attempted to indicate the value of the siddhānta literature of Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya while, at the same time, suggesting how their approach differs from our own. The Ge-luk presentation of Svātantrika is a valuable starting point for the study of the Indian school, and my purpose in writing this book is to provide that starting point to the Western student of Buddhism. What I will attempt to present here are some of the major concerns of the Svātantrika school as understood by the Ge-luk doxographers. When I say in the following chapters that the “Svātantrika position” is this or that, all of the qualifications and caveats expressed above should be kept in mind. This study, then, should not be viewed as comprehensive, nor as the final word on Svātantrika, but as a preliminary study, an attempt to outline the Ge-luk tradition of interpretation of Svātantrika, a grid through which the works of the Indian masters may usefully be viewed.
Sources and Methods
In the study of the Svātantrika school, eight strata of source material are available to the researcher. In chronological order, the first level is that of the statements attributed to the Buddha, appearing for the most part in the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras, that provide the canonical basis for the Mādhyamika school. Those statements were interpreted by Nāgārjuna, the founder of Mādhyamika, whose works constitute the second level. Third are the writings of the systematizers of Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamika, the central figures of Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika—Buddhapālita, Candrakīrti, Bhāvaviveka, Śāntarakṣita, and Jñānagarbha. On the fourth level are the Indian commentators on those authors’ works; their explanations are often invaluable for unpacking terse pronouncements of the root texts. In this category are writers such as Avalokitavrata, Kamalaśīla, and Jayānanda. The first four levels occur in Indian literature, lost for the most part in the original Sanskrit but preserved in Tibetan translations.
The next four strata have their origin in Tibet. The first is the writings of Tsong-kha-pa. For the Ge-luk-bas, this is also the most important of the Tibetan levels; just as the Indian writers cite a statement by the Buddha or, among the Mādhyamikas, by Nāgārjuna, as scriptural support for their arguments, so the Ge-luk writers appeal to the works of Tsong-kha-pa. It was his careful scrutiny of the writings of all the authors mentioned above that resulted in the detailed presentation of Mādhyamika that is the hallmark of the Ge-luk curriculum.
The sixth level is that of the tenet literature, represented most notably by the works of Jam-yang-shay-ba and Jang-gya, texts that offer a systematic presentation of the schools of Buddhist philosophy. The seventh level is comprised of Tibetan works that are devoted to a more specific and extensive study of a particular topic. In his category fall such works as Den-dar-hla-ram-ba’s (bsTan-dar-lha-ram-pa, born 1759) Presentation of the Lack of Being One or Many (gCig du bral gyi mam gzhag) and Nga-wang-bel-den’s (Ngag-dbang-dpal-ldan, born 1797) Explanation of the Meaning of “Conventional” and “Ultimate” in the Four Tenet Systems (Grub mtha’ gzhi’i lugs kyi kun rdzob dang don dam pa’i don mam par bshad pa).
The eighth and final level of potential sources is traditionally not committed to paper. This is the oral commentary of the Tibetan scholar. None of the Tibetan texts described above is intended to be complete in and of itself; in the traditional Tibetan curriculum these texts serve as lecture notes for the teacher, who expands on and raises questions about points in the text. The texts are often written in such a terse style that certain passages would be incomprehensible without the benefit of a skilled scholar’s explanation. In addition to unravelling seemingly intractable problems, the best Tibetan scholars have the ability to bring together problems that are ostensibly unrelated to reveal illuminating conjunctions.
In the preparation of this study, all eight strata were excavated, to varying depths. Using the sixth and eight levels as a basis, I went on to examine the works of Tsong-kha-pa, the writings of the Svātantrika masters and Nāgārjuna, and occasionally their sutra sources. Den-dar-hla-ram-ba’s exposition of the reasoning of the lack of being one or many proved to be a most valuable source for unfolding the intricacies of that proof. However, I found myself in moments of difficulty returning again and again to Tsong-kha-pa, especially, to his Essence of the Good Explanations and Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path, for both concise and incisive answers to the most difficult problems. His works became the pivot, providing an explanation of the Indian texts and the source for the Tibetan studies.