Buddhahood Embodied: Sources of Controversy in India and Tibet

by John J. Makransky

To enter the Mahayana Buddhist path to enlightenment is to seek both to become free from our dualistic, deluded world and to remain actively engaged in that world until all others are free. How are these two apparently contradictory qualities to be embodied in the attainment of buddhahood (dharmakaya)? How can one's present practice accomplish that? These questions underlie a millennium-old controversy over buddhahood in India and Tibet that centers around a cherished text, the Abhisamayalamkara. Makransky shows how the Abhisamayalamkara's composite redaction, from Abhidharma, Prajnaparamita, and Yogacara traditions, permitted its interpreters to perceive different aspects of those traditions as central in its teaching of buddhahood. This enabled Indians and Tibetans to read very different perspectives on enlightenment into the Abhisamayalamkara, through which they responded to the questions in startlingly different ways. The author shows how these perspectives provide alternative ways to resolve a logical tension at the heart of Mahayana thought, inscribed in the doctrine that buddhahood paradoxically transcends and engages our world simultaneously. Revealing this tension as the basis of the Abhisamayalamkara controversy, Makransky shows its connection to many other Indo-Tibetan controversies revolving around the same disagreements over buddhahood's knowledge, embodiment, and accessibility to beings (in Buddha nature and through the path). Tracing the source of tension to early Mahayana practice intuitions about enlightenment, the author argues that different perspectives in these controversies express different ways of prioritizing those practice intuitions.

Genres: Buddhism

494 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Yontan Gyatso]

Just cracked it open today, but looks very promising.
Makransky may have done here for the Abhisamalankara what Vose did for Candrakirti: bring together sources and contexts from its sources and later (fiercely differing) interpretations to give the armchair scholar like myself a much more rounded understanding of the text's impact on Mahayana than any simple translation and study of the text itself.
It's a little dry, but being interested in the topic I should get through it within a week or so.
This hardback is listed at $220?
Let's hear it for inter-library loan!!!