The Adornment of the Middle Way, Part 1

Shantarakshita was the main proponent of the Yogachara Madhyamaka syntheses and one of the first two main transmitters of Buddhism from India to Tibet - the other being Padmasambhava. The Madhyamakalankara represents the middle way view of emptiness based entirely upon the logic of things being neither one nor many, and therefore not being validly established ultimately. We will study this relatively short text in detail using the Padmakara Translation Committee translation which includes a wonderful commentary by Mipham Rinpoche, supplemented by selected recent analyses.

Core Materials

  1. Syllabus

  2. Source Book

  3. Chants

Supplemental Materials

  1. A Controversial Topic from Mipham’s Analysis of Madhyamakalankara

  2. Later Madhyamika’s Epistemology and Meditation

  3. The “Neither One Nor Many” Argument for Shunyata

  4. Shantarakshita’s “Neither-One-Nor-Many” Argument

  5. Shantarakshita from Indian Buddhist Pandits

  6. Was Shantarakshita a “Positivist”?

  7. Vipashyana Cheatsheet

  8. "Comments on Self-Awareness" by Raziel Abelson

  9. "Reflexive Awareness and the Cogito" by Paul Bernier

  10. "What’s at Stake in a Tibetan Debate?" by Jay Garfield

  11. Sixteen Moments of the Path of Seeing

  12. The Seventy-Five Dharmas

  13. The One-Hundred Dharmas

  14. "Outlines of Sautrantika" by Konchok Jigmey Wangpo

  15. Tenets Handouts

  16. The Five Reasons in Syllogisms from The Treasury of Knowledge

  17. Class 7 Outline

  18. Class 8 Outline

Class Recordings

  1. April 5, 2011

  2. April 12, 2011

  3. April 19, 2011

  4. April 26, 2011

  5. May 3, 2011

  6. May 15, 2011

  7. May 17, 2011

  8. May 24, 2011

  9. May 31, 2011

  10. June 7, 2011