Abstract
The conflicting positions of the two early eleventh century Yogācāra scholars, Ratnākaraśānti and his critic Jñānaśrīmitra, concerning whether or not consciousness can exist without content (ākāra) are inseparable from their respective understandings of enlightenment. Ratnākaraśānti argues that consciousness can be contentless (nirākāra)—and that, for a buddha, it must be. Mental content can be defeated by reasoning and made to disappear by meditative cultivation, and so it is fundamentally distinct (bheda) from the nature of consciousness, which is never defeated and never ceases. That mental content is thus separable from the nature of consciousness is unimaginable to Jñānaśrīmitra, who argues that all mental content cannot be so defeated, nor can it disappear completely, and who concludes that Ratnākaraśānti’s commitment to this idea can be based on nothing but faith (śraddhā). Contra Jñānaśrīmitra, I will suggest that Ratnākaraśānti’s view is based not only on faith, but is also driven by a certain (often implicit) theory of buddhahood, the implications of which he is committed to working out. Because Ratnākaraśānti’s theory of buddhahood is developed in part in his tantric work, our understanding of his position benefits from our reading it in this context, wherein buddhahood and the most effective techniques for attaining it are explored.
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Abbreviations
JNĀ: Thakur, A. (Ed.) (1987). Jñānaśrīmitranibandhāvali. Patna: Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute.
HT: Hevajra Tantra. In MuĀv. Cf. Snellgrove (1959).
MAU: Ratnākaraśānti. Madhyamakālaṃkāropadeśa. Tibetan translation: dBu ma rgyan gyi man ngag, translated by Śāntibhadra & Śākya ’od. dPe bsdur ma edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. Vol. 78, 3314. Beijing: Krung goʾi Bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1994–2005
MAV/MPS: Ratnākaraśānti. Madhyamakālaṃkāravṛtti-Madhyamapratipatsiddhi. Tibetan translation: dBu ma rgyan gyi ’grel pa dbu ma’i lam grub pa, translated by Śākya ’od. dPe bsdur ma edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. Vol. 78, 3301. Beijing: Krung goʾi Bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1994–2005.
MuĀv: Tripathi, R. S. & Negi, T. S. (Eds.) (2001). Hevajratantram with Muktāvalī Pañjikā of Mahāpaṇḍitācārya Ratnākaraśānti. Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.
PPU: Ratnākaraśānti. Prajñāpāramitopadeśa. Tibetan translation: Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i man ngag, translated by Zhi ba bzang po & ’Gos lhas btsas. dPe bsdur ma edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon. Vol. 78, 3304. Beijing: Krung goʾi Bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang, 1994–2005.
PV: Miyasaka, Y. (Ed.) (1971–1972). Pramāṇavārttika-kārikā (Sanskrit and Tibetan). Acta Indologica, 2, 1–206.
PVin: Steinkellner, E. (Ed.) (2007). Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇaviniścaya, Chapters 1 and 2. Beijing/Vienna: China Tibetology Publishing House/Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.
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Tomlinson, D.K. The Tantric Context of Ratnākaraśānti’s Philosophy of Mind. J Indian Philos 46, 355–372 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-018-9351-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-018-9351-9