Jñānagarbha

Jñānagarbha (Sanskrit: ज्ञानगर्भ, Tibetan: ཡེ་ཤེས་སྙིང་པོ་, Wyl. ye shes snying po) was an 8th-century Buddhist philosopher from Nalanda Monastery who is considered part of Bhāviveka's Svātantrika-Madhyamaka school. He was a student of Śrīgupta, who was in turn the student of Bhāviveka, and the teacher and ordaining master of Śāntarakṣita. Tibetan sources refer to him, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla as meaning "the three Svātantrika teachers from the East" (rang rgyud shar gsum) indicating their origins from Eastern India. The work he is most known for is "Distinguishing the Two Truths" (Skt. Satyadvayavibhaṅga). He is most well-known for the explanation found in this text of the two truths doctrine (satyadvaya).

Biography Little is known about the life of Jñānagarbha from Indian sources, but Tibetan historian Tāranātha places him in eastern India. According to Tāranātha, Jñānagarbha was born in Oḍiviśa, located roughly in modern-day Odisha, and studied with Śrīgupta in Bhaṃgala (modern-day Bengal). He reportedly became well-known for being "a great Mādhyamika follower of the views of Bhavya," or Bhāviveka, an influential 6th-century commentator on Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Jñānagarbha would largely follow Bhāviveka's Sautāntrika-Svātantrika Madhyamaka, while Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, the other two members of the "eastern trio" departed from it, giving rise to the subschool of Yogācāra-Svātantrika Madhyamaka.

Although he is attributed several others, Jñānagarbha is known for two main works, which are brief relative to other authors. The first is the Satyadvayavibhaṅgakārika, on which he wrote an auto-commentary (Vṛtti). The second work is a commentary that now only exists in Tibetan translation on the Anantamukhanirhāradhāraṇī-sūtra, a Mahayana text containing Tantric doctrine. This commentary is thought to be authored by Jñānagarbha in part because some of the verses from it are also found in his autocommentary on the Satyadvayavibhaṅga. Śāntarakṣita, Jñānagarbha's student, wrote a sub-commentary, known as Satyadvayavibhaṅgapañjikā, on the Satyadvayavibhaṅga. Though it is hard to confirm this, Jñānagarbha also may have written a commentary to the Sandhinirmocana Sutra, a major sutra of the Yogacara school associated with figures like Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. He followed Bhāviveka's svatantrika interpretation of Madhyamaka philosophy. The svatantrika school, traced to Bhāviveka's critique of Buddhapālita's prasangika school, opted to use positive or independent inferential argumentation (anumāna) in arguing for Madhyamaka philosophy. The prasangika school based their method on Nāgārjuna's claim that he lacks a position of his own. They argued for the sole utilization of prasanga, or reductio ad absurdum, argumentation. Śāntarakṣita, who was Jñānagarbha's student, would remain part of the svatantrika school but departed from Jñānagarbha in forming a Yogācāra-Svātantrika Madhyamaka school. Jñānagarbha thus synthesized the realist Sautāntrika school with Madhyamaka, and his student synthesized it with the epistemological idealism of Yogācāra.

He is mostly known for his work "Distinguishing the Two Truths" (Skt. Satyadvayavibhaṅga, Wyl. bden gnyis rnam ‘byed). Whatever has the capacity for causal efficacy is ultimately real. [Whatever is] otherwise is conventionally real (Pramāṇavārttika 3.3)For Śrīgupta and Jñānagarbha, the capacity for causal efficacy only distinguishes the conventionally real, not what is ultimately real. Before Jñānagarbha, the difference between real and unreal conventional things was based on general consensus. This was a view held by Candrakīrti in his Madhyamakāvatāra. Bhāviveka did not clearly distinguish between two kinds of conventional things, though he did think that there can be conventionally false things like a creator God (Īśvara), which he argued, in Prajñāpradīpa, could not even be conventionally true.

In all, Jñānagarbha argues that there are four criteria of real conventional truths. They cannot either be conceptually imagined or analyzable, and they must be dependently arisen and causally effective. Conceptually imagined things (kalpitārtha) include primal matter affirmed by the Samkhya tradition and the consciousness of the Yogācāra tradition. Being dependently arisen means arising based on a set of causes and conditions. Being unanalyzable means that it cannot bear critical analysis. Critical analysis refers to the asking of metaphysical questions like are many effects produced by many causes or are many effects produced by one cause.

Reason Jñānagarbha defines ultimate truth in terms of reason (nyāya), and conventional truth in terms of perception. He reverses Dharmakīrti's epistemological framework, which ties perception with ultimate truth and inferential reasoning with conventional truth. Dan Arnold argues that this is a common Madhyamaka reaction to the Buddhist epistemological school's foundationalist epistemology. Jñānagarbha's positioning of reasoning in this way seems to conflict with the Buddhist assumption that Dharma is inaccessible through reason (atarkāvacāra). Jñānagarbha addresses this problem by making a distinction between two kinds of ultimate truths, that which can be expressed using words and that which cannot. Jñānagarbha classifies the first kind of ultimate truth as the "negation of arising." According to Malcolm David Eckel, Jñānagarbha's view is that the ultimate truth can be understood as rational cognition from a relative stance, but it is not an object of cognition from an ultimate stance. Jñānagarbha rejects Dharmakīrti's and his follower Devendrabuddhi's theory of causation that is based on his theory of apoha, which argues that many causes produce many distinct effects and that one cause produces many effects.

Karma Jñānagarbha argues that although karma lacks the status of ultimate truth, it still functions as a conventionally real appearance: "[The Buddha] teaches actions and results just as they appear to him as he sees them. This is why all [actions and results] correspond to appearances."