This Volume traces the development of one of the most divisive debates in Buddhist philosophy in which leading parts were taken by Nagarjuna, Bhavaviveka and Candrakirti. The interesting debate between the Prasangikas and Svatantrikas has thus far received comparatively little attention. It has been largely assumed that the division between the two schools occurred as a result of the disagreements on the essentials of the Madhyamaka philosophical view. In the present work the author argues that the school split not over philosophy but over forensic methodology or, in other words, over the way in which the philosophy of emptiness was to be communicated to and vindicated for others. He draws substantially on the Tibetan sources to prove his viewpoint. He also makes use of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhya makakarika and Candrakirti's Prasannapadanamadhyamakavrtti. The volume extends not only the current understanding of the Madhyamaka system, but also offers a new and eminently reasonable interpretation of the nature of the divisions between the Prasangikas and Svatantrikas.

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.

A Study of Svātantrika represents an important contribution to our understanding of Mādhyamika philosophy in India and Tibet. The Mādhyamika is considered to have two subschools, Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika. The Prāsaṅgika school of Candrakīrti is better known than Svātantrika, in part because the major Svātantrika texts are preserved only in Tibetan translation. The Svātantrikas, however, made important contributions to Buddhist philosophy in their expositions of the nature of reality, the role of reasoning in the process of enlightenment, and in their delineations of the paths to nirvana. The synthesis of Yogācāra and Mādhyamika philosophy by the Svātantrika master Śāntarakṣita represents the final development of Buddhist thought in India. In Tibet, Svātantrika was the first Indian Buddhist school to gain currency, prior to the translation of the works of Candrakīrti into Tibetan. In preparing this Study of Svātantrika, Donald S. Lopez, Jr. consulted the major Indian works of the Svātantrikas, figures central to the development of Buddhist thought in India such as Bhāvaviveka, Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, and Kamalaśīla, and analyzed a number of Tibetan expositions of Svātantrika. The result is the most extensive examination of this influential school available in the West.

Exploring the philosophical concerns of the nature of self, this book draws from two of the most influential Indian masters, Śaṅkara and Śāntideva. Todd demonstrates that an ethics of altruism is still possible within a metaphysics which assumes there to be no independent self. A new ethical model based on the notions of ’flickering consciousness’ and ’constructive altruism’ is proposed. By comparing the metaphysics and ethics of Śaṅkara and Śāntideva, Todd shows that the methodologies and aims of these Buddhist and Hindu masters trace remarkably similar cross-cutting paths. Treating Buddhism and Hinduism with equal respect, this book compares and reinterprets the Indian material so as to engage with contemporary Western debates on self and to show that Indian philosophy is indeed a philosophy of dialogue.

Examines various Tibetan interpretations of the Uttaratantra, the most authoritative Indic commentary on buddha-nature. With its emphasis on the concept of buddha-nature, or the ultimate nature of mind, the Uttaratantra is a classical Buddhist treatise that lays out an early map of the Mah?y?na path to enlightenment. Tsering Wangchuk unravels the history of this important Indic text in Tibet by examining numerous Tibetan commentaries and other exegetical texts on the treatise that emerged between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. These commentaries explored such questions as: Is the buddha-nature teaching found in the Uttaratantra literally true, or does it have to be interpreted differently to understand its ultimate meaning? Does it explicate ultimate truth that is inherently enlightened or ultimate truth that is empty only of independent existence? Does the treatise teach ultimate nature of mind according to the Cittam?tra or the Madhyamaka School of Mah?y?na? By focusing on the diverse interpretations that different textual communities employed to make sense of the Uttaratantra, Wangchuk provides a necessary historical context for the development of the text in Tibet. “Well conceived and superbly researched, this book is an invaluable ‘guidebook’ to the arguments and counterarguments of five centuries’ worth of Tibet’s greatest thinkers. This type of philosophical overview is far too rare in Tibetan Buddhist studies these days, and Wangchuk has performed a great service to the field by undertaking it.” — Roger R. Jackson, translator of Tantric Treasures: Three Collections of Mystical Verse from Buddhist India

An adventure into the heart of Buddhist wisdom through the Madhyamika—or Middle Way—teachings This book includes a verse translation of the Madhyamakavatara by the renowned seventh-century Indian master Chandrakirti, an extremely influential text of Mahayana Buddhism, followed by an exhaustive logical explanation of its meaning by the modern Tibetan master Jamgön Mipham, composed approximately twelve centuries later. Chandrakirti's work is an introduction to the Madhyamika teachings of Nagarjuna, which are themselves a systematization of the Prajnaparamita, or “Perfection of Wisdom” literature, the sutras on the crucial but elusive concept of emptiness. Chandrakirti's work has been accepted throughout Tibetan Buddhism as the highest expression of the Buddhist view on the sutra level. With Jamgön Mipham's commentary, it is a definitive presentation of the wisdom of emptiness, a central theme of Buddhist teachings. This book is a core study text for both academic students and practitioners of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.