Dīpaṁ karaśrījñāna (982-1054 C.E.), more commonly known under his honorific title of Atiśa, is a renowned figure in Tibetan Buddhist cultural memory. He is famous for coming to Tibet and revitalizing Buddhism there during the early eleventh century. Of the many works that Atiśa composed, translated, and brought to Tibet one of the most well-known was his "Entry to the Two Realities" (Satyadvayāvatāra). Recent scholarship has provided translations and Tibetan editions of this work, including Lindtner's English translation (1981) and Ejima's Japanese translation (1983). However, previously there was no known Indian or Tibetan commentary to this work. This article identifies for the first time a brief commentary to the Satyadvayāvatāra and discusses its content and purport in relation to early Madhyamaka philosophy in Tibet, and provides an annotated translation of the work. This early Tibetan commentary on the two realities (satyadvaya) provides important insight into how late eleventh century or early twelfth centuries Tibetan followers of Atiśa understood the tenets of Buddhist philosophy, the nature of valid cognition (tshad ma), and the importance of spiritual authority. The early Tibetan commentary to Atiśa's Satyadvayāvatāra provides direct textual evidence of the beginnings of scholasticism in Tibet and offers an early perspective on the formative developments in the intellectual history of Tibetan Madhyamaka.
A bodhisattva (Pāli bodhisatta; Tib. byang-chub sems-dpa’; Ch. pusa; Jpn. bosatsu) is generally considered to be a person (sattva) in pursuit of awakening (bodhi) to become a buddha. All Buddhist traditions acknowledge the figure of the bodhisattva, but they differ on its interpretation. Bodhisattvas in non-Mahayana forms of Buddhism are mainly considered to be the previous lives of Siddhārtha Gautama that are worthy of veneration. The bodhisattva in Mahayana forms of Buddhism is an ideal that all Buddhists may cultivate and that is committed to attaining awakening for the benefit of all beings. The manner in which bodhisattvas are understood in different Buddhist cultures, such as in Tibet or Southeast Asia, is dependent on the Buddhist literature that is accessible or acceptable to the particular culture and the interpretative attention and practices affiliated with that literature.
At the core of Buddhist eschatological tradition is the concept of dharma -an ordering principle of an unending and beginningless universe, oscillating in a “cyclic existence” of creation and dissolution. But how does this cosmological principle shape Buddhist understanding and interpretation of the contemporary world order? This article relates Buddha’s dharma, with its primary themes of suffering and impermanence, to sociopolitical conditions in the realm of human affairs. Pointing out the dichotomy between the mundane (societal) and the super-mundane (cosmological), the article argues that world order is a process of dissolution and re-emergence based on the differentiation of environmental conditions and human dispositions. It concludes that although Buddhist tradition departs from the normal “end of things” eschatology, relative eschatologies have developed within the varied conditions in which Buddhism has flourished.
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