The teachings of Madhyamaka have been the basis of Tibetan Buddhist thought and practice since the eighth century. After the twelfth century, Tibetan scholars distinguished two branches of Madhyamaka: Autonomist and Consequentialist. What distinctions in Madhyamaka thought and practice did twelfth century Tibetan scholars make to differentiate these two branches? This article focuses upon a newly identified twelfth century Tibetan manuscript on Madhyamaka from the Collected Works of the Kadampas: Khu lo tsā ba’s Treatise. Khu lo tsā ba, also known (...) as Khu ston Mdo sde ’bar, was a contemporary of Jayānanda and Pa tshab Lo tsā ba Nyi ma grags and instrumental for the revitalized reception of Madhyamaka in twelfth century Tibet. Khu lo tsā ba’s Treatise outlines a multifaceted understanding of Madhyamaka as the work solely focuses upon the distinctions between Autonomist and Consequentialist Mādhyamikas. The paper outlines the structure and content of the Treatise and identifies six topics that the author emphasizes to distinguish Autonomist and Consequentialist branches of Madhyamaka. Based on an overview of these topics, the paper concludes that the Autonomist/Consequentialist distinction of Madhyamaka was already well developed in twelfth century Tibet and involved a differential of systems that encompassed much more than distinct styles of logical proof. (shrink)

Although Atiśa is famous for his journey to Tibet and his teaching there, his teachings of Madhyamaka are not extensively commented upon in the works of known and extant indigenous Tibetan scholars. Atiśa’s Madhyamaka thought, if even discussed, is minimally acknowledged in recent modern scholarly overviews or sourcebooks on Indian Buddhist thought. The following annotated translation provides a late eleventh century Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka teaching on the two realities attributed to Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna entitled A General Explanation of, and Framework for Understanding, (...) the Two Realities. The text furnishes an exposition of the Middle Way thought of Nāgārjuna based on an exegesis of conventional reality and ultimate reality within the framework of Mahāyāna path structures found in texts attributed to Maitreyanātha. The General Explanation fills an important gap in the historical knowledge of Madhyamaka teachings in eleventh century India and Tibet. The text presents a Madhyamaka teaching brought to Tibet by Atiśa and provides previously unknown evidence for the type of pure Madhyamaka teachings that circulated among the communities of early followers of Atiśa. These teachings were disseminated before the rise of the early Bka’-gdams-pa monastery of Gsang-phu ne’u-thog and its debating traditions that, particularly beginning in the twelfth century, placed emphasis on the merger of Madhyamaka and Epistemology. (shrink)

An earlier article (Apple, J Indian Philos 41(3): 263–329, 2013) identified for the first time a brief Tibetan commentary to Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna’s (982–1054 c.e.) well-known “Entry to the Two Realities” (Satyadvayāvatāra) and provided an annotated translation of the work. This article provides an annotated diplomatic edition of the Tibetan commentary. The manuscript of the commentary is a facsimile reprint located in the recently published “Collected Works of the Bka’-gdams-pas” (bka’ gdams gsung ’bum). The early Tibetan commentary to Atiśa’s Satyadvayāvatāra provides (...) direct textual evidence of the beginnings of scholasticism in Tibet and offers an early perspective on the formative developments in the intellectual history of Tibetan Madhyamaka. (shrink)