Kamalaśīla’s Views on Dependent Origination

Abstract

Abstract Directly or indirectly, by way of scriptural commentary or philosophical investigation, dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) plays an important role in several of Kamalaśīla’s works. His interpretation is remarkably consistent. As earlier “Yogācāra-Mādhyamika” authors such as Śrīgupta, Jñānagarbha and Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla regards dependent origination as one of the characteristic features of genuine conventional reality, non-origination (anutpāda) being characteristic of ultimate reality/truth. Genuine conventional reality and ultimate reality correspond to the two modes – conventional and ultimate – of dependent origination in the ŚSūṬ, a commentary whose purpose was to provide the ŚSū with a Mādhyamika interpretation. Although it seems to leave no room for the Madhyamaka and culminates in a Yogācāra analysis of reality, the TSP likely is no exception to this, as its maṅgala’s indebtedness to Nāgārjuna already suggests. Close comparative and intertextual analysis reveals that the intention underlying the TS(P) was to provide a description of true conventional reality, i.e., the domain of dependently originated though ultimately essenceless entities similar to magical horses and elephants. As a corollary, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla attempted to “purify” it from pseudo-entities, i.e., non dependently originated fictions, or, equivalently, entities with incongruous causes (viṣamahetu), such as a rabbit’s horn, the self, and God. In this perspective, the TS(P) can be read as a detailed philosophical propedeutics to a Mādhyamika analysis of reality, cognition, and truth.