Madhyamākalaṃkāra
Madhyamakalamkara (Sanskrit) Madhyamākalaṃkāra (IAST) (8th century CE) is a Buddhist text held to have been originally composed in Sanskrit by Śāntarakṣita (725–788) but extant in Tibetan. The Tibetan text was translated from the Sanskrit by Surendrabodhi (Wylie: lha dbang byang chub) and Yeshe De (Wylie: ye shes sde).
Nature of text
In the short verse text of the Madhyamākalaṃkāra, Śāntarakṣita details his two truths philosophical synthesis of the conventional truth of Yogacara with the ultimate truth of the Madhyamaka with the assistance of Buddhist logic, with a protracted discussion of the argument of "neither one nor many" (gcig du 'bral ba'i gtan tshigs).
Dharmic dialogue
Madhyamākalaṃkāra,is a doxographic reprise in brief, a critical thumbnail-survey of the philosophical History of Buddhism and its inter- and intra-Dharmic dialogue of medieval Islam] belonging to the former and Hinduism (verse: ?), Jainism (verse: ?) and Sikhism (verse: ?) belonging to the latter, evident in India up until his departure from India to Tibet. Though somewhat lyrical, an executive summary and key to his encyclopedic Tattvasamgraha, if you will. Therefore, it contains the fullness of the Sutrayana and Mahayana traditions' development in its place of origin, the status quo in situ, before the Buddhadharma tradition of India was further transposed and acculturated by the various cultures to the Far East (e.g. China, Japan, etc.), east of India, and elsewhere (e.g. Ceylon, Kashmir, etc.), where the Buddhadharma was already evident and for the most part flourishing in culturally specific forms. It enshrines: refutations to the challenges of various Buddhist systems and tenets from both within the tradition, that is, it is a pedagogical discourse on the developmental iteration of the yana; the philosophical challenges posed by both non-Buddhadharma Dharmic Traditions and the non-Dharmic traditions of India; and crystallizes a dialectical sophistication in the employ of Indian logic and sports the pristine diamond-like clarity of vigorous courtyard debate to be expected of a Khenpo of Nalanda Vihara (khenpo: by station, quality and degree). The text was seminal and formative in the tradition of Samye which came to be known as a Nyingma institution in contradistinction to the emergent Sarma traditions of the latter translation phase heralded by Atisha (980-1054). Importantly, the text documents the Nyingma view of the Two Truths and as such, is a canonical work, a required text of the Nyingma 'syllabus' (Tibetan: shedra), to be 'studied, contemplated and realized' (Sanskrit: mulaprajna) by senior 'exegetes' (Tibetan: khenpo; Geshe). Historically, the text became marginalized due to the rise of Prasaṅgika Mādhyamaka post-construction of the Prasaṅgika/Svatantrika doxographic dichotomy of Patsap Nyima Drak (1055–1145)... but was again foregrounded by the eloquent Commentary of Ju Mipham (1846–1912) composed in 1876, more than a millennium after the root text's translation to Tibet, translation in the co-denotation of transposition and transportation.
Madhyamākalaṃkāra and Samye Ling: entwined traditions and historical context
The Madhyamākalaṃkāra and its living tradition inaugurated by Śāntarakṣita, survived the destruction of Nalanda Vihara and the ascendancy of the Moslem Empire in Medieval India during the 13th century eclipse of Buddhism in its place of origin through its fortuitous transplantation to the Indian highlands, the Tibetan Plateau, by Śāntarakṣita in the 8th century at the request of the Dharmaraja Trisongdetsen, where the synthesis of the Madhyamālaṃkāra was institutionalized and taught at the fortified Samye Ling (sited by Śāntarakṣita, its founder who also became its first Kenpo), safeguarded by the Himalaya, its defensive walls and the sacred geometry of the mandala upon which it is founded and the foundation dance of Vajrakilaya performed by Padmasambhava to remove energetic obstructions and obfuscations of its construction and continuity.
