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Madhyamaka
Mādhyamaka ("middle way" or "centrism"; ; Tibetan: དབུ་མ་པ ; ''dbu ma pa''), otherwise known as Śūnyavāda ("the emptiness doctrine") and Niḥsvabhāvavāda ("the no ''svabhāva'' doctrine"), refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE).Wynne, Alexander (2015) ''Early Buddhist Teaching as Proto-śūnyavāda.'' Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 6. pp. 213-241. The foundational text of the Mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna's '' Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' ("Root Verses on the Middle Way"). More broadly, Mādhyamaka also refers to the ultimate nature of phenomena as well as the non-conceptual realization of ultimate reality that is experienced in meditation. Mādhyamaka thought had a major influence on the subsequent development of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. It is the dominant interpretation of Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism ...
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Śāntarakṣita
(Sanskrit; , 725–788),stanford.eduŚāntarakṣita (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)/ref> whose name translates into English as "protected by the One who is at peace" was an important and influential Indian Buddhist philosopher, particularly for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition . Śāntarakṣita was a philosopher of the Madhyamaka school who studied at Nalanda monastery under Jñānagarbha, and became the founder of Samye, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Śāntarakṣita defended a synthetic philosophy which combined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logico-epistemology of Dharmakirti into a novel Madhyamaka philosophical system .Blumenthal (2018) This philosophical approach is known as ''Yogācāra-Mādhyamika'' or ''Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamika'' in Tibetan Buddhism. Unlike other Madhyamaka philosophers, Śāntarakṣita accepted Yogācāra doctrines like mind-only (''cittamatra'') and self-reflective awareness (''svasamvedana''), but only on the level ...
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Yogacara
Yogachara ( sa, योगाचार, IAST: '; literally "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga") is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It is also variously termed ''Vijñānavāda'' (the doctrine of consciousness), ''Vijñaptivāda'' (the doctrine of ideas or percepts) or ''Vijñaptimātratā-vāda'' (the doctrine of 'mere representation'), which is also the name given to its major epistemic theory. There are several interpretations of this main theory; while often regarded as a kind of Idealism, critical scholars argue that it is closer to a kind of phenomenology or representationalism, aimed at deconstructing the reification of our perceptions. According to Dan Lusthaus, this tradition developed "an elaborate psychological therapeutic system that mapped out the problems in cognition along with the antidotes to corre ...
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Bhāviveka
Bhāviveka, also called Bhāvaviveka (; ), and Bhavya was a sixth-century (c. 500 – c. 570) madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher.Qvarnström 1989 p. 14. Alternative names for this figure also include Bhavyaviveka, Bhāvin, Bhāviviveka, Bhagavadviveka and Bhavya. Bhāviveka is the author of the ''Madhyamakahrdaya'' (''Heart of the Middle''), its auto-commentary the ''Tarkajvālā'' (''Blaze of Reasoning'') and the ''Prajñāpradīpa'' (''Lamp for Wisdom''). In Tibetan Buddhism Bhāviveka is regarded as the founder of the svātantrika tradition of mādhyamaka, as opposed to the prāsaṅgika madhyamaka of Chandrakirti. There is also another later author called Bhāvaviveka who wrote another set of madhyamaka texts. He is sometimes called Bhāvaviveka II by modern scholars''.''Vose, Kevin A. (2015) ''Resurrecting Candrakirti: Disputes in the Tibetan Creation of Prasangika,'' pp. 30-32'','' Simon and Schuster. Background The life details of Bhāviveka are unclear. The earliest so ...
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Buddhist Philosophy
Buddhist philosophy refers to the philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in India following the parinirvana of The Buddha and later spread throughout Asia. The Buddhist path combines both philosophical reasoning and meditation.Siderits, Mark. Buddhism as philosophy, 2007, p. 6 The Buddhist traditions present a multitude of Buddhist paths to liberation, and Buddhist thinkers in India and subsequently in East Asia have covered topics as varied as phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic and philosophy of time in their analysis of these paths. Pre-sectarian Buddhism was based on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs ('' ayatana'') and the Buddha seems to have retained a skeptical distance from certain metaphysical questions, refusing to answer them because they were not conducive to liberation but led instead to further speculation. A recurrent theme in Buddhist philosophy has been the reificatio ...
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śūnyatā
''Śūnyatā'' ( sa, शून्यता, śūnyatā; pi, suññatā; ), translated most often as ''emptiness'', ''vacuity'', and sometimes ''voidness'', is an Indian philosophical concept. Within Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and other philosophical strands, the concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. In Theravāda Buddhism, ''Suññatā'' often refers to the non-self (Pāli: ''anattā'', Sanskrit: ''anātman'') nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. ''Suññatā'' is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, ''śūnyatā'' refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (''svabhava'')", but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Chan. Etymology "''Ś ...
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Śūnyatā
''Śūnyatā'' ( sa, शून्यता, śūnyatā; pi, suññatā) pronounced in English as (shoon-ya-ta), translated most often as ''emptiness'', ''vacuity'', and sometimes ''voidness'', is a Buddhist concept which has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. In Theravāda Buddhism, ''Suññatā'' often refers to the non-self (Pāli: ''anattā'', Sanskrit: ''anātman'') nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. ''Suññatā'' is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, ''śūnyatā'' refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (''svabhava'')", but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Chan. Etymology "''Śūnyatā''" (Sanskrit) is usually translated as " ...
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Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna . 150 – c. 250 CE (disputed)was an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.Garfield, Jay L. (1995), ''The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jan Westerhoff considers him to be "one of the greatest thinkers in the history of Asian philosophy." Nāgārjuna is widely considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka (centrism, middle-way) school of Buddhist philosophy and a defender of the Mahāyāna movement. His ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' (Root Verses on Madhyamaka, or MMK) is the most important text on the madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness. The MMK inspired a large number of commentaries in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese and continues to be studied today. History Background India in the first and second centuries CE was politically divided into various states, including the Kushan Empire and the Satava ...
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Chandrakirti
Chandrakirti (; ; , meaning "glory of the moon" in Sanskrit) or "Chandra" was a Buddhist scholar of the madhyamaka school and a noted commentator on the works of Nagarjuna () and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. He wrote two influential works on madhyamaka, the '' Prasannapadā'' and the '' Madhyamakāvatāra''. Chandrakirti does not seem to have been very influential during the 7th to 10 centuries, and his works were never translated into Chinese. However, by the 11th and 12th centuries, his work became influential in the north, especially in Kashmir and in Tibet. Over time, Chandrakirti became a major source for the study of madhyamaka philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism. As noted by Kevin A. Vose, Chandrakirti is seen by many Tibetan Buddhists as offering "the most thorough and accurate vision of Nāgārjuna's emptiness, which, in turn, most fully represents the final truth of the Buddha's teaching."Vose 2015, pp. 2, 6. He is considered by Tibetans to be the main exponent ...
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Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majority regions surrounding the Himalayan areas of India (such as Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and a minority in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), in much of Central Asia, in the southern Siberian regions such as Tuva, and in Mongolia. Tibetan Buddhism evolved as a form of Mahāyāna Buddhism stemming from the latest stages of Indian Buddhism (which also included many Vajrayāna elements). It thus preserves many Indian Buddhist tantric practices of the post-Gupta early medieval period (500 to 1200 CE), along with numerous native Tibetan developments. In the pre-modern era, Tibetan Buddhism spread outside of Tibet primarily due to the influence of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), founded by Kublai Khan, which had ruled Chin ...
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Pratītyasamutpāda
''Pratītyasamutpāda'' (Sanskrit: प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, Pāli: ''paṭiccasamuppāda''), commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key doctrine in Buddhism shared by all schools of Buddhism. It states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist". The basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things. The doctrine includes depictions of the arising of suffering (''anuloma-paṭiccasamuppāda'', "with the grain", forward conditionality) and depictions of how the chain can be reversed (''paṭiloma-paṭiccasamuppāda'', "against the grain", reverse conditionality).Fuller, Paul (2004). ''The Notion of Ditthi in Theravada Buddhism: The Point of View.'' p. 65. Routledge.Harvey, Peter. ''The Conditioned Co-arising of Mental and Bodily Processes within Life and Be ...
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Mahayana
''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing branches of Buddhism (the other being ''Theravāda'' and Vajrayana).Harvey (2013), p. 189. Mahāyāna accepts the main scriptures and teachings of early Buddhism but also recognizes various doctrines and texts that are not accepted by Theravada Buddhism as original. These include the Mahāyāna Sūtras and their emphasis on the ''bodhisattva'' path and ''Prajñāpāramitā''. '' Vajrayāna'' or Mantra traditions are a subset of Mahāyāna, which make use of numerous tantric methods considered to be faster and more powerful at achieving Buddhahood by Vajrayānists. "Mahāyāna" also refers to the path of the bodhisattva striving to become a fully awakened Buddha ('' samyaksaṃbuddha'') for the benefit of all sentient beings, and is thus ...
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Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
The ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' ( sa, मूलमध्यमककारिका, ''Root Verses on the Middle Way''), abbreviated as ''MMK'', is the foundational text of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. It was composed by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (approximately around 150 CE).Siderits and Katsura (2013), p. 1. The MMK makes use of reductio arguments to show how ''all'' phenomena (''dharmas'') are empty of ''svabhava'' (which has been variously translated as essence, own-being, or inherent existence). The MMK is widely regarded as one of the most influential and widely studied texts in the history of Buddhist philosophy. The MMK had a major impact on the subsequent development of Buddhist thought, especially in Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism. Background The MMK is the work of Nāgārjuna, an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher writing in Sanskrit. Very little is known about this figure, including exactly where he lived (somewhe ...
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