Kamalaśīla

Abstract

According to Tibetan historiographers, the eighth-century Indian Mādhyamika philosopher Kamalaśīla emerged as the champion of a storied debate that took place near Lhasa and that pitted him against a Chinese monk named Moheyan. Kamalaśīla is said to have argued for a gradual path to awakening, while his opponent advocated a sudden one. Kamalaśīla’s gradualism was grounded in a profound confidence in the power of reason and argument to cut through our deep-seated delusion and to get at the ultimate nature of reality. But given that the ultimate nature of reality was one of essential naturelessness, the foundations on which Kamalaśīla could ground his rational theories were inevitably in question. This chapter argues that Kamalaśīla addresses this quandary by recourse to a series of provisional foundations for philosophy, each of which is destined to be dismantled once its work has been done. Although lacking any ultimate or absolute ground, these provisional foundations rely on the seemingly common appearances that arise from our experience as embodied beings embedded in social and linguistic contexts. Reason thus functions like a magic trick, and Kamalaśīla finally emerges as the champion of a kind of magical reason.