Traditional as well as contemporary interpreters of Indian Yogācāra divide that tradition into a variety of doxographical camps depending on whether awareness is understood tobe endowed with phenomenal content (ākāra) and, if so, whether that content is understood to be real or true. Kamalaśīla’s extensive commentary on his teacher Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha contains passages that throw into question certain doxographical equivalencies, especially the equivalencies sometimes proposed betweenthe doctrine that awareness is endowed with phenomenal content (sākāravāda) and the doctrine that such content (...) is true or real (satyākāravāda) and between the doctrine that awareness is devoid of phenomenal content (nirākāravāda) and the doctrine that such content is false or unreal (alīkākāravāda). Further, in accord with his broadly rhetorical approach to the application of reason, Kamalaśīla is seen in this commentary to endorse a range of seemingly contradictory positions vis-à-vis ākāra. This article argues that this situation can be explained by way of reference to Kamalaśīla’s larger philosophical and soteriological program as a Mādhyamika thinker, a program not made explicit in the text yet nonetheless present in nascent form. That is, while various theories of awareness as endowed or not endowed with phenomenal content are useful in different rhetorical contexts as well as at different stages of philosophical analysis, at the end of the day such distinctions are moot since neither awareness nor its content is upheld as ultimately real. Instead, soteriologically efficacious phenomenal content is said to be like a “true dream” (satyasvapna), an illusion that satisfies only for as long as it remains unanalyzed. (shrink)

This paper considers Jñānaśrīmitra’s defense of manifestation as the criterion of ultimate existence. In the first section, "Asatkhyāti and Adhyavasāya: making sense of manifestation as the criterion of the real", I show the way that, in response to Ratnākaraśānti’s Nirākāravāda, Jñānaśrīmitra argues for a sharp distinction between manifestation and determination in an effort to establish that the manifestation of something unreal is incoherent. The unreal, he thinks, is only ever determined; it is never manifest to consciousness, properly speaking. In (...) the second section, “To be manifest is to be locked away in a single awareness-event”, I turn to one of the consequences of this view that Jñānaśrīmitra embraces: what manifests is only what appears in a single moment of conscious awareness. In the third section, “The scope of neither-one-nor-many: Jñānaśrīmitra’s Interpretation of PV 3.220–221”, I consider one of the problems this raises: how is it that an appearance with mutually opposed parts manifests in one and the same unitary moment of awareness? Jñānaśrīmitra solves this problem by appealing to the nature of manifestation and its distinction from determination: what is manifest, even if it is variegated, is nondual and indivisible; distinctions arise only on the basis of determination. I trace the details of this solution in the context of his discussion of an important pair of verses from Dharmakīrti. Finally, in the last section, “The marvelous nonduality of variegated awareness-events”, I turn to the surprising buddhological consequences of this solution. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify how Śālikanātha’s epistemology can be distinguished from that of Dharmakīrti, especially in terms of their respective views on cognitive form (ākāra). It has been pointed out that Śālikanātha’s tripuṭī theory and svayaṃprakāśa theory are very close to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology. However, it remains questionable if Śālikanātha, who belongs to the Prābhākara branch of the Mīmāṃsā and is therefore a nirākāravādin, can subscribe to notions that Dharmakīrti developed on the basis of sākāravāda. The present (...) paper concludes that Śālikanātha agrees with Dharmakīrti in assuming that a single cognition consists of three parts; unlike Dharmakīrti, however, Śālikanātha puts emphasis on the difference between these parts, especially between the cognition and its form, on the ground that the cognitive form belongs to the external thing, and not to the cognition (nirākāravāda). In Dharmakīrti’s epistemology, the cognitive form belongs to cognition (sākāravāda); in the ultimate level, there remains no difference between the three parts. (shrink)

In his *Bāhyārthasiddhikārikā (BASK), “Verses on the Establishment of the External Object”—extant only in Tibetan translation—Śubhagupta (720–780 CE), a philosopher connected with the logical-epistemological school of Buddhism, argues the reality of external objects of cognitions. In this article, I shall provide an account of Śubhagupta's theory of the cognitive process, as expressed in BASK 35–44, particularly in light of his view that the images (ākāra) of those objects do not appear in cognition. BASK is part of an internal Buddhist debate (...) over the reality of external supports of perceptions, wherein Śubhagupta disproves the views of thinkers like Diṅnāga and Vasubandhu. On the other hand, he is one of the main opponents addressed in the Bahirarthaparīkṣā (BAP) of the Tattvasaṅgraha (TS) by Śāntarakṣita (725–788 CE) and the Tattvasaṅgrahapañjikā (TSP) by Kamalaśīla (740–795 CE). Therein, the two authors, while demonstrating the absence of the characteristics of apprehended (grāhya) and apprehender (grāhaka) with regard to cognition, keenly refute his ideas and quote selected Sanskrit verses that can be identified as the original Sanskrit of stanzas in BASK. Accordingly, I shall examine Śubhagupta’s theory of the cognitive process in two steps: (i) analyzing the arguments that Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla advance against him based on their interpretation of Śubhagupta’s views; and (ii) analyzing the arguments that he brings forward against his opponents (namely, Diṅnāga and Vasubandhu), by means of the investigation of BASK 35–44 in their original context. (shrink)