Āryadeva
An early 2nd-century ce Madhyamaka master, and the foremost disciple of Nāgārjuna. Born in southern India or Sri Lanka.he composed a number of commentaries on the works of Nāgārjuna as well as ...
Avatamsaka literature
An important and extensive literary compilation in Mahāyāna Buddhism centring on the Avatamsaka-sūtra, also known as Buddhāvatamsaka-sūtra (Sutra of the Garland of Buddhas; Chin., Hua-yen ching; ...
Bhāvaviveka
(c.490–570).A noted Indian Madhyamaka philosopher, also known as Bhavya, who wrote a number of important works, including the Tarka-jvālā, refuting other contemporary Buddhist and non-Buddhist ...
bhūtatathatā
(Skt., ‘suchness of existents’).In Buddhism, the true nature, as opposed to the appearance, of the manifest world. It is ‘that which really is’, in contrast to all that is transient, and thus in ...
Buddhapālita
(470–540).A teacher and commentator of the Prāsaṇgika branch of the Madhyamaka school. He is the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-vṛtti, a commentary on the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā of Nāgārjuna, the ...
Buddhist schools
(sometimes referred to as ‘sects’).These are felt by Buddhists to be primarily a matter of lineage more than credal confession. A Buddhist is a Bauddha (Skt., ‘Follower of Buddha’) ...
Candrakírti
(c.7th c. ce)A major Madhyamaka philosopher and key proponent of the reductio ad absurdum (prasaṇga) method of argumentation. This method aims to reduce to absurdity the position of the opponent ...
Catuḥśataka
The most celebrated work of Āryadeva. The title of the work means ‘the four hundred verses’, and it consists of sixteen chapters. The first eight chapters expound the Madhyamaka philosophy while the ...
Chih-i
(538–97).Tradition places Chih-i as the third in the line of patriarchs in the T'ien-t'ai school, but in fact he founded the school and furnished most of its distinctive teachings himself, including ...
Chi-tsang
(549–623).Buddhist teacher of the San-lun school, who wrote many commentaries on Sūtras and Mahāyāna texts. Of immense importance in the development of San-lun (Chin. for Mādhyamaka), Chi-tsang's ...
dharma
In Indian religion, the eternal law of the cosmos, inherent in the very nature of things. In Hinduism, dharma is seen as the cosmic law both upheld by the gods and expressed in right behaviour by ...
extrinsic emptiness
(Tib., gzhan-stong).A theory developed in Tibet by Dolpopa Sherap Gyeltshan (Tib., Dol-po-pa shes-rab rgyal-mtshan, 1292–1361) and others based on the embryonic Buddha (tathāgata-garbha) concept ...
five degrees of enlightenment
Scheme adopted within the Ch'an andzen schools of Buddhism which classifies the nature of bodhi.or religious awakening, into five increasingly profound levels, the fifth being the highest. The ...
intrinsic emptiness
(Tib., rang-stong).The standard Madhyamaka view of emptiness in contrast to the doctrine of ‘extrinsic emptiness’. According to the theory of intrinsic emptiness all conventional phenomena are empty ...
Jōjitsu school
One of the Six Schools of Nara Buddhism that flourished under government patronage during the early period of Japanese Buddhism. This school took as its focus the Satyasiddhi Śāstra written by the ...
Kamalaśīla
The 8th century ce Indian scholar-monk and student of Śāntarakṣita, who continued his teacher's work of disseminating Buddhism in Tibet during the period known as the ‘first diffusion’ (snga dar). ...
koan
(Jap.; Chin., kung-an).Sometimes referred to as ‘zen riddles’, kōans are brief stories or dialogues from the Ch'an/zen tradition upon which Zen students focus during their meditation in order to ...
Louis de La Vallée Poussin
(1869–1938).A renowned Belgian scholar of Buddhism who made a major contribution to the field, notably through the editing and translating of important Buddhist works in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and ...
Madhyamakāvatāra
1 The ‘Entrance to the Middle Way’, being a work of Candrakīrti which relates the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) to the religious practice of a Bodhisattva. The text contains ten ...
madhyamā-pratipad
(Skt.; Pāli, majjhimā-paṭipadā). The ‘middle way’ or ‘middle path’ a term which resonates at many levels in Buddhism. In the first place it stands as a synonym for the totality of Buddhist doctrine ...
