Jewels of the Middle Way: The Madhyamaka Legacy of Atisa and His Early Tibetan Followers (Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Book 22)

496 Pages·2019·3.42 MB·English

by  James B. Apple (Author)

Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism This series was conceived to provide a
forum for publishing outstanding new contributions to scholarship on Indian and
Tibetan Buddhism and also to make accessible seminal research not widely
known outside a narrow specialist audience, including translations of appropriate
monographs and collections of articles from other languages. The series strives
to shed light on the Indic Buddhist traditions by exposing them to historical-
critical inquiry, illuminating through contextualization and analysis these
traditions’ unique heritage and the significance of their contribution to the
world’s religious and philosophical achievements.
Members of the Editorial Board:
Tom Tillemans (co-chair), Emeritus, University of Lausanne José Cabezón (co-
chair), University of California, Santa Barbara Georges Dreyfus, Williams
College, Massachusetts Janet Gyatso, Harvard University
Paul Harrison, Stanford University
Toni Huber, Humboldt University, Berlin
Shoryu Katsura, Ryukoku University, Kyoto Thupten Jinpa Langri, Institute of
Tibetan Classics, Montreal Frank Reynolds, Emeritus, University of Chicago
Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, University of Lausanne Ernst Steinkellner, Emeritus,
University of Vienna Leonard van der Kuijp, Harvard University

“In recent years, James B. Apple has established himself as one of the leading scholars of the contributions
made by Atiśa (d. 1054) and the older Kadampa thinkers to Madhyamaka philosophies and theories of
liberation. Apple’s scholarship is marked by careful translations and analyses of the relatively little-known
and only recently published Tibetan works on which he has focused his attention over the last decade.
Consisting in part of a revision of his own previously published work, the present volume is a highly
welcome addition to the field and adds much to our understanding of the way in which Indian Madhyamaka
philosophy and soteriology was introduced in the Tibetan world and how it was received and developed in
certain intellectual circles. Jewels of the Middle Way is an excellent introduction to an important phase of
Tibetan Buddhist intellectual and religious history.”
—LEONARD W. J. VAN DER KUIJP, Harvard University
“The great Bengali master Atiśa, esteemed for his role in restoring the Dharma to Tibet in the eleventh
century, has long been a figure more revered than read. This problem is eloquently solved with James
Apple’s study, which contains translations of works by Atiśa and his followers that had been long forgotten.
This single volume reshapes our understanding of the origins of Madhyamaka in Tibet.”
—DONALD S. LOPEZ JR., Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan
Studies, University of Michigan
This book is dedicated to the memory of my spiritual teacher Geshé Lhundup
Sopa (1923–2014), my mentor Leslie Kawamura (1935–2011), and my devoted
colleague Jim Blumenthal (1967–2014) —jewel-like teachers of the Middle
Way.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Atiśa’s Middle Way in India and Tibet
PART 1. LINEAGE MASTERS, THE MIND OF AWAKENING, AND THE MIDDLE WAY
1. Atiśa’s Open Basket of Jewels: Special Instructions on the Middle Way
PART 2. ARTICULATING THE TWO REALITIES
2. Atiśa’s Entry to the Two Realities (Satyadvayāvatāra)
3. Collection on the Two Realities: A Kadampa Commentary
4. A General Explanation of, and Framework for Understanding, the Two
Realities, attributed to Atiśa
PART 3. HOW MĀDHYAMIKAS MEDITATE
5. Atiśa’s Special Instructions on the Middle Way (Madhyamakopadeśa)
6. Prajñāmukti’s Commentary on Special Instructions on the Middle Way
(Madhyamakopadeśavṛtti)
7. Collection of Special Instructions on the Middle Way: A Kadampa
Commentary
Appendix of Translated Passages
Table of Tibetan Transliteration
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Preface
GESHÉ LHUNDUP SOPA (1923–2014) enthusiastically introduced me to a
biography of Atiśa in the early summer of 1992 while on retreat at Deer
Park Buddhist Center outside of Oregon, Wisconsin. In the spring of
1996, Geshé Sopa led my graduate school classmates and I through Atiśa’s
biography in a second-year classical Tibetan class at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. The following academic year we read Atiśa’s Open Basket
of Jewels.
Over the summers from 1998 to 2002 at Deer Park Monastery in Oregon,
Wisconsin, Geshé Sopa also introduced me to the Madhyamaka thought of
Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) in seminars on the major works—the Great Treatise
on the Stages of the Path, the Essence of Eloquence, Elucidation of the Thought,
and Ocean of Reasoning. I was intensely interested in Tsongkhapa, but could not
help noticing that Atiśa was always only mentioned in passing in these works. In
the back of my mind was the question, “Did Atiśa have any sustained teachings
or writing on Madhyamaka other than the Open Basket of Jewels?” That
question was left unanswered for a number of years as I tried to gain stable
employment as an academic scholar.
When I landed a tenure-track position at the University of Calgary in 2008,
and having published a book related to Tsongkhapa (Stairway to Nirvāṇa), I
noticed that a scholar in Japan, Izumi Miyazaki, had published a Tibetan critical
edition of Atiśa’s Open Basket of Jewels, the “Annotated Tibetan Text and
Japanese Translation of the Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭamadhyamakopadeśa of Atiśa”
(2007). I immediately found my class notes from Geshé Sopa’s class, revised the
English translation and annotation of Miyazaki’s paper, and published this in
2010 as “Atiśa’s Open Basket of Jewels: A Middle Way Vision in Late Phase
Indian Vajrayāna.” At the same time that I arrived at the University of Calgary,
the availability of the the Collected Works of the Kadampas, unknown to Tibetan
scholars after the seventeenth century and published in fascimiles only recently,
had been announced.
Noticing that a number of the works were no longer extant elsewhere, I
secured grant funds to acquire the Collected Works of the Kadampas in 2008. I
can remember the day that the boxes arrived and my late, lamented mentor-
colleague Leslie Kawamura (1935–2011) and I unpacked and shelved the first
ninety volumes in my office. I was excited to see what these texts would say,
particularly with regard to the Abhisamayālaṃkāra, on which the collection
contained a number of commentaries. As a number of the works were written in
hard-to-read cursive (dbu med) Tibetan script, I began to write down all the
ligatures that I could not read.
Thanks to my training, I could read a majority of the texts, and over time and
through comparison I was able to discern a number of abbreviations (sdus yig)
and other scribal features of the texts that I wished to investigate. I began to
notice several volumes on Madhyamaka whose authorship was considered
anonymous. I analyzed, transcribed, and translated a number of them wherever
and whenever I could find the time. In the spring of 2012, Shōryū Katsura
arranged for me to present a lecture on “An Early Tibetan Commentary on
Atiśa’s Satyadvayāvatāra” at the Ryukoku University Research Institute for
Buddhist Cultures in Asia (BARC) in June 2012. In Kyoto preparing for the
lecture, I realized that the volume A Collection of Special Instructions on the
Middle Way in the Kadampa collection, the text that was the basis for the lecture,
contained elements of Madhyamaka thought and practice I had not read before. I
later revised and published this lecture in 2013, which became the basis for
chapters 2 and 3 of this book. Upon returning to Canada, and interspersed among
other research projects and publications from 2014 to 2016, I gradually edited
and published the texts that would eventually become chapters 4–7.
I had every incentive to rework these articles into a book on the
Madhyamaka thought and practice of Atiśa and his followers. Not only are the
introductory essays and translations based on recently recovered Tibetan texts
never before studied, but I was also motivated to counter the misperception of
some modern scholars that Atiśa was not an important figure either in Indian or
Tibetan Buddhist history. As the book demonstrates, this is decidedly not the
case. I have also been motivated by a recent generation of scholars, particularly
those who do not read Tibetan, who, with a disregard for sociohistorical context
and philological precision, have tried to turn the profound spirituality of Indian
and Tibetan Buddhist Madhyamaka into some type of analytical philosophy.
Organization and Structure of the Book
The book is organized in three parts based on the chronology of Atiśa’s teaching
of Madhyamaka in India and Tibet. Each part focuses on a specific text, or set of
texts, specifically related to Atiśa’s Middle Way. The authorship and date of
composition for each work is discussed along with an outline of the work’s
textual sources followed by an analysis of the content. Part 1 introduces and is a
translation of Atiśa’s Open Basket of Jewels, an extensive teaching that he
composed in India and that was translated by his Tibetan disciples while in
India. This text provides an early record of Atiśa’s extensive instructions on the
Middle Way in which he elaborates his lineage of teachers, the importance of the
“mind of awakening” (bodhicitta), and the scriptural sources that influence his
understanding of Madhyamaka.
Part 2 introduces and provides translations of Atiśa’s understanding of the
two realities (satyadvaya), the basis for his exegesis of the Middle Way. Chapter
2 is a text that Atiśa wrote on the two realities, Entry to the Two Realities
(Satyadvayāvatāra). I have included this brief work of twenty-eight verses as a
reference text for the Kadampa commentary Collection on the Two Realities in
chapter 3, the earliest known commentary on Atiśa’s Entry to the Two Realities.
I introduce the Collection on the Two Realities with a discusion on Atiśa’s
understanding of conventional reality (saṃvṛtisatya) and ultimate reality
(paramārthasatya), and the role of valid cognition (pramāṇa) and reasoning
(yukti) in Atiśa’s thought. Chapter 4 is an extended work attributed to Atiśa
entitled A General Explanation of, and Framework for Understanding, the Two
Realities. I introduce the work with a discussion of the evidence for its
attribution to Atiśa, provide a topical outline, and furnish a summary and
analysis of the content.
Part 3, “How Mādhyamikas Meditate,” concentrates on Atiśa’s Special
Instructions on the Middle Way (Madhyamakopadeśa) along with two
commentaries to the work, one by the Indian scholar Prajñāmukti, who was
among the entourage accompanying Atiśa while he traveled in Tibet, and the
other by an anonymous Tibetan Kadampa author affiliated with the monastic
center of Radreng. Chapter 5 introduces and translates the base text of Atiśa’s
Special Instructions on the Middle Way. Chapter 6 consists of Prajñāmukti’s
Commentary on the Special Instructions on the Middle Way
(Madhyamakopadeśavṛtti), which furnishes evidence of how Madhyamaka was
understood by a contemporary Indian student of Atiśa. Chapter 7 provides a
Tibetan commentary to Atiśa’s base text Collection of Special Instructions on
the Middle Way that demonstrates the faith-based contemplative nature of the
Middle Way among Atiśa’s early followers. Altogether, these chapters bring