Ratnākaraśānti

Ratnākaraśānti (also known as Ratnākara, Śāntipa, and Śānti) (late 10th-century CE to mid 11th-century CE) was an influential Buddhist philosopher and vajrayana tantric adept and scholar. He was the "gate scholar" of Vikramaśilā university's eastern gate (modern-day Bihar in India), a key post in the university's leadership. Ratnākara was known by the title kalikālasarvajña ("the Omniscient One of the Degenerate Age") and is depicted as one of the eighty-four mahāsiddhas (great yogic masters).

Ratnākara wrote over forty works which include several influential commentaries to Mahayana sutras and tantras (especially the Hevajra tantra), treatises on Yogācāra, Madhyamaka, and Pramāṇa.

At Vikramaśilā, Ratnākara was a teacher to Atīśa, Maitrīpa, Drokmi Śākya Yeshe among others. He was also a contemporary of Vāgīśvarakīrti. Ratnākaraśānti was influential on some Tibetan Buddhist figures. Defenders of the shentong view him as a forerunner of this tradition and as a defender of shentong. His work on the Hevajra Tantra was also influential. However, modern scholars have now determined that the most likely dating for Ratnākaraśānti's birth (based on philological, philosophical and biographical evidence) is in the late tenth century, "slightly before Jñānaśrīmitra, Ratnakīrti, and Atiśa." Tāranātha says that he took his post at Vikramaśīla during the reign of King Canaka (active in the early 11th century).

While both factions inherited Dharmakīrti's assertion of a tādātmya (identity) relation between appearance and consciousness, they differed in their understanding of it. For the Sākāravādin, consciousness and images are identical and any conscious experience necessarily has an image. According to the Sākāravādin, for example, in the experience of a patch of blue, there is no consciousness apart from blue: there is just blue-consciousness. On the other hand, Ratnākaraśānti argues that the tādātmya relation simply means that appearances are grounded in consciousness, existing in virtue of it, but it does not follow from this that consciousness exists in virtue of appearance. For Ratnākaraśānti, the relationship is therefore asymmetrical: while consciousness and appearance are non-distinct in some sense, they are not identical in every respect. Davey Tomlinson describes this as a "compositional identity," giving the example of a statue and a lump of clay: in the same way that the statue is composed of clay, images have luminous awareness as their compositional identity. But just as the clay is not identical to the statue in every respect (for example, the statue may be destroyed by mushing, but not the clay), so too luminosity and images are not entirely identical, and what is the case for one is not necessarily so for the other.

With this view, Ratnākaraśānti maintained that opposing properties such as being false and being real may be predicated of one and the same thing, such that an appearance is false but the luminous awareness out of which it is composed is real. As such, Ratnākaraśānti argued against Mādhyamikas such as Śāntarakṣita who maintained that, since appearances do not withstand the neither-one-nor-many argument, and are therefore false, so too must luminosity be false if appearances and luminosity are not distinct. While Ratnākaraśānti agrees with the Mādhyamika that images do not withstand the neither-one-nor-many argument, it does not follow for him that luminosity is thereby also false. At the same time, Ratnākaraśānti argues against the Sākāravādin who maintains that appearances and luminosity, being identical, both withstand the neither-one-nor-many argument and are therefore both real. While Ratnākaraśānti agrees with the Sākāravādin that luminosity is real, it does not follow for him that appearance is also real.

Sākāravādins such as Jñānaśrīmitra argued that the manifestation of something unreal to consciousness was incoherent: since consciousness is real, whatever is manifest to it, being identical to that consciousness, must also be real. In response to this view, Ratnākaraśānti gives the counterexample of generic properties or universals, which all Buddhists take to be false. Generic properties, such as "cow-ness" (gotva) for instance, are agreed by all parties to be products of ignorance and habituation. But while the generic property is false, it is nonetheless undeniably luminous and shows up in awareness. Ratnākaraśānti points out that no self-respecting Buddhist would argue that a generic property is real just because it has this compositional identity with awareness. Ratnākaraśānti then extends this argument to appearances, such as blue: in the same way that generic properties show up in awareness without being real thereby, blue may have a compositional identity with awareness without being real.

For Ratnākaraśānti, when we think we are seeing blue, there is something real that is seen, namely awareness itself. According to Ratnākaraśānti, this self-awareness cannot be refuted, as he states, "Because it is a direct perception, because there is nothing superior, and because it is not imputed, self-awareness—which is the nature of cognition—is not harmed, [but] blue and so forth are refuted." In this way, awareness is thus the dependent nature (paratantrasvabhāva), which is neither a convention nor an imputation. However, while real, Daniel McNamara explains that for Ratnākaraśānti, "Due to karmic distortions, the dependent nature manifests in an impure manner as the imagination of the unreal (abhūtaparikalpa)—specifically, even though we are seeing awareness, its presentation is distorted by karma such that awareness seems like 'blue.'" At the same time, for Ratnākaraśānti, even while the defiled aspect arises and dissolves, the basis also has a pure aspect which remains. According to Luo, "For Ratnākaraśānti, the imagination of the unreal is a duality in which two rūpas [forms] manifest: clear light (prakāśa), the perfect rūpa, and a mental image (ākāra), the imagined one."

Moriyama observes that for Ratnākaraśānti the relationship between cognition and images is one of bhedābheda (difference and non-difference), similar to colors appearing in a mirror: the colors are neither identical to the mirror itself nor different from it.

Yogācāra and Madhyamaka While being a Yogācāra philosopher who defended the nirākāravāda ("without images", also known as alikākāravāda) view of Yogācāra, Ratnākaraśānti also argued for the compatibility of Madhyamaka with this Yogācāra view. His works, like the Prajñāpāramitopadeśa, state that the Yogācāra and Madhyamaka schools are congruent, having the same ultimate intent and final realisation, even if they describe it somewhat differently.

Due to his unique doctrinal view, which draws on both Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, Tibetan authors like Taranatha labelled Ratnākara's position "Vijñapti-madhyamaka" (rNam rig gi dbu ma). Modern scholars have also described his position with other terms including just "nirākāravāda", "nirākāravāda yogācāra-mādhyamika" and trisvabhāva-mādhyamika. H. Luo notes that various texts by Ratnākara show that he associated his view with the term "Rang bzhin gsum gyi dbu ma pa" which can be reconstructed in Sanskrit as *Trisvabhāva-mādhyamika ("the middle way of the three natures"). According to Ratnākara, true Mādhyamikas cannot ultimately deny reflexive awareness (Sanskrit: svasaṃvedana or svasaṃvitti). Those who deny this undermine the very epistemic force (pramāṇa) of their system and their own negative arguments. This is because for Ratnākara to be able to logically refute anything there must be a foundation for one's epistemology. Thus, Ratnākara argues that as long as Mādhyamikas accept reflexive awareness as a real foundation, their intent is equal to that of nirākāravāda Yogācāra. Ratnākara's main critique is against Śāntarakṣita, whom he cites and attempts to refute in the Madhyamakālaṃkāravṛtti madhyamāpratipad-siddhi (Proving the Middle Path: A Commentary that Ornaments Madhyamaka).

The common model found in most Yogacara sources (such as the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu) is that the dependent nature is empty of the imagined nature, and this very emptiness is the perfected nature. The second model, which is found in Prajñaparamita commentaries like the Bṛhaṭṭīkā and the Āmnāyānusāriṇī, is that the perfected nature is empty of both the dependent and the imagined natures. Brunnholzl argues that Ratnākaraśānti defends model one in all texts except the Sutrasamuccaya-bhasya (which is a questionable text).

In the Madhyamakālaṃkāravṛtti madhyamāpratipad-siddhi, Ratnākaraśānti encapsulates his view of the ultimate reality as follows: "Those dharmas—which do not exist—appear Not from matter, nor from what is other, Nor from non-existence, because of two faults. Therefore, their identity is awareness." Buddha nature Ratnākara mentions buddha-nature in his *Guhyasamāja-maṇḍalavidhi-ṭīkā. He describes buddha-nature as the five kinds of Buddha wisdom (such as ādarśajñāna, mirror-like wisdom, and the rest) which are completely pure, abide in sentient beings "forever, throughout beginningless and endless time", and are merely veiled by adventitious stains but always remain unchanged.

Furthermore, he also wrote a technical treatise on Buddhist pramāṇa theory called the Antarvyāptisamarthana.

Spurious works A Sutrasamuccaya-bhasya is attributed to an author named Ratnākaraśānti. However, this treatise defends the ekayana view of buddha-nature, and thus it is likely to be by a different figure using this name, and not by Ratnākaraśānti the Yogācāra philosopher from Vikramaśīla.