The Four Buddhist Tenet Systems Regarding Illusion

Background

In the Indian Mahayana Buddhist monasteries, such as Nalanda, monks studied four systems of Buddhist tenets. Two – Vaibhashika and Sautrantika – were subdivisions of the Sarvastivada school within Hinayana. The other two – Chittamatra and Madhyamaka – were subdivisions within Mahayana. The Tibetans have followed this custom, but have made further subdivisions within these four systems. For example, within Madhyamaka, they have differentiated Svatantrika-Madhyamaka from Prasangika-Madhyamaka. Within Svatantrika-Madhyamaka, the Gelug school has further classified Indian authors as Yogachara-Svatantrika or Sautrantika-Svatantrika. The various non-Gelug schools have subdivided Madhyamaka in yet other ways.

[See: Indian Sources for Studying the Four Tenet Systems]

Further, various masters within each Tibetan lineage have interpreted the assorted Indian Buddhist tenet systems differently. In general, Sakya, Kagyu, and Nyingma share an earlier interpretation. Regarding Madhyamaka, this earlier interpretation relies especially on the Yogachara-Svatantrika slant of the two Nalanda masters who introduced Indian Buddhism to Tibet: Shantarakshita and Kamalashila. Because of that, non-Gelug has a great deal of Chittamatra terminology in its presentation of tantra. Tsongkhapa, relying on the works of another Nalanda master, Buddhapalita, radically reinterpreted the tenet systems, especially Svatantrika and Prasangika. Gelug follows his interpretation.

We can see some of the differences in these two main lines of interpretation with just a few examples. For instance, non-Gelug asserts that Svatantrika and Prasangika do not differ in their explanations of the objects nullified by voidness, the emotional and cognitive obscurations, and the stages of ridding ourselves of them. The differences between these two divisions of Madhyamaka lie mainly in the approach toward logic and whether or not any positive assertions can be made about anything. Gelug asserts that these two divisions of Madhyamaka have different assertions concerning the objects nullified by voidness, the emotional and cognitive obscurations, and the stages of ridding ourselves of them. Thus, non-Gelug accepts the Filigree of Realizations (mNgon-rtogs rgyan, Skt. Abhisamaya-alamkara) presentation of the stages of the path for all of Madhyamaka, whereas Gelug accepts it only for Svatantrika and identifies an extremely different Prasangika presentation. Likewise, non-Gelug accepts the basic Sautrantika presentation of cognition theory, while Gelug asserts a different Prasangika presentation of it as the deepest explanation.

Even within Gelug, however, various masters have presented several details differently. We shall restrict our discussion here to the general Gelug presentation.

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