Nupchen Sangye Yeshe and The Lamp for the Eye in Meditation: Doxographies and the Shifting Grounds of Yogācāra in Tibet
AAR 2018 Denver Doxography Panel Manuel Lopez
Philosophical Tantras and Tantric Philosophies:
The Intersection of Tantra and Doxography in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Panel AAR 2018 DENVER
Nupchen Sangye Yeshe and The Lamp for the Eye in Meditation: Doxographies and the Shifting Grounds of Yogācāra in Tibet
Manuel Lopez
Note: This is just the introduction to the paper. If you are interested in this paper, please contact me and I will be happy to send you a copy.
Intro
The main goal of the panel is to offer three different examples of Buddhist tantric commentaries, mostly within the doxographical genre, that meaningfully engaged Mahāyāna philosophical issues, particularly those represented by the Yocācāra school of thought.
In my paper, I would like to discuss the example of the 10th century doxography The Lamp for the Eye in Meditation (Tib. Bsam gtan mig sgron ) written by the Tibetan scholar Nupchen Sangye Yeshe (Tib. Gnubs chen Sang rgyas Ye shes). The Lamp is a text that discusses and hierarchically classifies the main
contemplative traditions that had made their way into Tibet at the time of Nupchen’s life, mainly the Indian scholastic Mahāyāna tradition, Chinese Chan, the Tantric tradition as represented by Mahāyoga, and the new philosophical and contemplative developments as represented by Atiyoga, or the Great Perfection (Tib. Rdzogs chen).
The main argument I want to make here is that the doxographical genre allows Nupchen not only to write about some of the most relevant philosophical debates of the period (the Sudden vs. Gradual debate, conceptual vs. non-conceptual modes of perception, the nature of the consciousness, etc.), but also allows him to argue for the superiority (philosophically and
contemplative) of the new Great Perfection in relation to other Buddhist traditions. (In fact, the Lamp is the earliest text we know of where Dzogchen is presented as an independent vehicle (Tib. theg pa). So while the content and the arguments presented in the text are important, I also want to highlight the relevance of the structure of the text: as Marshall McLuhan famously said, ultimately “the medium is the message.”
In this paper I want to focus on two particular philosophical moves that Nupchen makes in the Lamp in order to argue for the superiority of the Great Perfection. The first is an epistemological one, as Nupchen will use the doxographical genre to articulate the different understandings of non-conceptuality
(Skt. avikalpa; Tib. mi rtog pa) by various Buddhist traditions, while claiming the superior understanding of that concept by the Great Perfection. The other move is an ontological one, and it is centered around the innovative interpretation that Nupchen does of the Yogācāra concept of the ālāyavijñāna (Tib. kun gzhi rnam par shes pa) by putting forward a new type of consciousness: the ground, or the universal ground (Tib. Kun/kun gzhi).
Finally, regarding the structure of the text, I will briefly use religious scholar J.Z. Smith’s ideas to shine a light (if I might use the same imagery as Nupchen does in the Lamp) on the structure of the text, showing how, ultimately, all comparisons at the heart of doxographies do not tell us “how things are,” but how things are “re-envisioned” (these are Smith’s terms) by the creator of the comparison.
