Yaroslav Komarovski: Conversations on Buddha-Nature 10-30-2021
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Description & Participants
Śākya Chokden's Unique Views on Buddha-Nature
30th October 2021 · 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
HANDOUT FOR EVENT: Media:Yaroslav Komarovski-2021-10-30-Tsadra Buddha Nature.pdf
Lopen Dr. Karma Phuntsho will have another "Conversation on Buddha-Nature" with one of the world's most knowledgeable scholars of Śākya Chokden (1428–1507), Yaroslav Komarovski.
Śākya Chokden (1428–1507) was one of the most important thinkers of the Sakya tradition and had many complex views on Buddhist philosophy and practice, especially Madhyamaka and theories related to buddha-nature teachings, some of which are quite unique in the history of Buddhism.
Yaroslav Komarovski is a full professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His recent books include Radiant Emptiness: Three Seminal Works by the Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden (Oxford 2020), Tibetan Buddhism and Mystical Experience (Oxford 2015), and Visions of Unity: The Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden’s New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka (SUNY 2011). If you would like to read some of his papers on Shakya Chokden, you can find them freely available online here: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Komarovski%22%20AND%20author_fname%3A%22Yaroslav%22&start=0&context=52045&sort=date_desc&facet=
Conversations on Buddha-Nature
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Shakya Chokden articulated his position on other-emptiness in works written during the last thirty years of his life. In those works he advocated both Alīkākāravāda Yogācāra and Niḥsvabhāvavāda Madhyamaka systems as equally valid forms of Madhyamaka, regarding the former as a system of other-emptiness and the latter as a system of self-emptiness. Instead of approaching the two systems as irreconcilable, he presented them as equally valid and effective, emphasized their respective strengths, and promoted one or the other depending on context and audience. Partly for these reasons, his own philosophical outlook does not neatly fall into the categories of other-emptiness or self-emptiness, and placing him squarely into the camp of “followers of other-emptiness” (gzhan stong pa)—as some advocates of later sectarian traditions did—does not do justice to him as a thinker. (Source: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln)
Śākya Mchog Ldan approaches the buddha-essence inseparable from positive qualities of a buddha in two ways. In some texts, such as the Essence of Sūtras and Tantras, he argues that it has to be identified only as purity from adventitious stains, i.e., the removal of all or some negative qualities that prevent one from directly seeing the buddha-essence. In other texts, such as The Sun Unseen Before, he interprets it as the purity from adventitious stains and the natural purity as it is taught in some sūtras of the Third Wheel of Doctrine and their commentaries. That type of natural purity is understood as the state of natural freedom from all obscurations inseparable from positive qualities of a buddha. Thereby, in this second type of texts, Śākya Mchog Ldan arrives at positing two types of the buddha-essence: relative (kun rdzob, saṃvṛti) and ultimate (don dam, paramārtha). Despite different interpretations of the natural purity, the identification of the buddha-essence as the purity from adventitious stains is present in both.
In his interpretation of the buddha-essence, Śākya Mchog Ldan utilizes the categories of the three levels found in the Sublime Continuum: the impure (ma dag, aśuddha), impure-pure (ma dag dag pa, aśuddhaśuddha, i.e. partially pure) and very pure (shin tu rnam dag, suviśuddha) levels that correspond respectively to the categories of sentient beings, bodhisattvas (understood as ārya bodhisattvas in this context), and tathāgatas.
Śākya Mchog Ldan argues that one becomes a possessor of the buddha-essence free from adventitious stains only on the impure-pure level. In other words, when bodhisattvas enter the Mahāyāna Path of Seeing (mthong lam, darśanamārga) simultaneously with the attainment of the first boddhisattva [sic] ground (byang chub sems pa’i sa, bodhisattavabhūmi) of Utmost Joy (rab tu dga’ ba, pramuditā), they become āryas, i.e. ‘exalted’ or ‘superior’, bodhisattvas, directly realize the ultimate truth (don dam bden pa, paramārthasatya), and thereby for the first time generate an antidote to obscurations of knowables (shes bya’i sgrib pa, jñeyāvaraṇa). They start gradually removing them, and thereby actually see at least a partial purification of stains ‘covering’ the buddha-essence, and its inseparability from at least some positive qualities. Such is not possible for anyone below that level, even for the non-Mahāyāna arhats (i.e., śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas). Thus, only Mahāyāna āryas have the buddha-essence characterized by the purity from adventitious stains; ārya bodhisattvas have only a part of it, while buddhas have it completely.
