Haribhadra (Buddhist philosopher)
Haribhadra (Skt. Haribhadra, Tib. སེང་གེ་བཟང་པོ་, Senge Zangpo, Wyl. seng ge bzang po) (late 8th C.) was a great pandita and master of the prajnaparamita teachings. He received instructions directly from Maitreya and composed the Sphutartha, which is the most celebrated commentary on Maitreya's Abhisamayalankara. Taranatha says he was a disciple of Shantarakshita. He was a teacher of Buddhajñanapada. Haribhadra (8th century): One of the "seventeen great panditas" and commentator on Asanga's Ornament of Clear Realization in Clarifying the Meaning.
Writings
- Śāstravṛtti (popularly known as the Sphutartha)
- Light on the Ornament (Skt. Abhisamayālaṃkārālokā), a commentary on the Sutra in Eight Thousand Lines
- Easy-to-Comprehend Commentary on the Difficult Points of the Verse Summary
- Eight Chapters on the 25,000
Further Reading
- David Seyfort Ruegg, The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981, pp. 101-103
- Lobsang N. Tsonawa, Indian Buddhist Pandits from The Jewel Garland of Buddhist History, Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1985.
Source
Haribhadra (Chinese: 師子賢, pinyin: Shīzixián, Tib. seng-ge bzang-po) was an 8th-century CE Buddhist philosopher, and a disciple of Śāntarakṣita, an early Indian Buddhist missionary to Tibet. Haribhadra's commentary on the Abhisamayalankara was one of the most influential of the twenty-one Indian commentaries on that text, perhaps because of its author's status as Shantarakshita's student. Like his master, Haribhadra is retrospectively considered by Tibetan doxographical tradition to represent the Yogacara Svatantrika Madhyamaka school.
Haribhadra's interpretation of the Abhisamayalankara, particularly his four-kaya model, was controversial and contradicted the earlier normative interpretation popularized by Vimuktasena. Haribhadra claims, that Abhisamayalamkara chapter 8 is describing Buddhahood through four kayas: svabhavikakaya, dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya. Haribhadra's position was in turn challenged by Ratnākaraśānti and Abhayakaragupta. In Tibet the debate continued, with Tsongkhapa championing Haribhadra's position and Gorampa of the Sakya school promoting the other.
