Atiśa’s Essence of Bodhisattva Vows (bodhisatvasaṃvarahṛdaya)

Atiśa’s Essence of Bodhisattva Vows (bodhisatvasaṃvarahṛdaya)

2023, Manuscripts for Life -Essays in Memory of Seishi KARASHIMA
This paper provides an analysis and translation of Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna’s (982–1054 CE) The Essence of Bodhisattva Vows (bodhisatvasaṃvarahṛdaya). The Essence of Bodhisattva Vows is introduced with a brief overview explaining its relation to Atiśa’s Stages of the Path to Awakening (byang chub lam gyi rim pa ≈ *bodhipathakrama) and the work’s textual influences including the Bodhisattvabhūmi. The eighteen downfalls and forty-six faulty actions of bodhisattvas listed within The Essence of Bodhisattva Vows are also discussed. The introduction is followed by a Tibetan diplomatic edition and English translation of this previously unknown work.
Dedication: To Seishi Karashima-sensei, who always took the time to provide guidance in my research endeavors.
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https://www.academia.edu/100128415/Ati%C5%9Ba_s_Essence_of_Bodhisattva_
Vows_bodhisatvasa%E1%B9%83varah%E1%B9%9Bdaya_

The Ten Worlds of Tiantai Zhiyi within Atiśa’s Stages of the Path.

The Tiantai master Zhiyi (智顗, 538-597 CE) is famous for popularizing the Buddhist cosmological concept of the ten worlds (十界, shijie) while the Indian Buddhist paṇḍita  from Bengal, Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982-1054 CE), is celebrated for his stages of the path (lam rim) system. The ten worlds of Zhiyi are constituted by six realms (六道) and four noble ways (四聖). Atiśa’s system, onthe other hand, articulates a series of stages of realizations made by three types of spiritual individuals, those of small, medium, and superior spiritual capacity. This paper compares how the ten worlds as conceived by Zhiyi are related to Atiśa’s Buddhist cosmology as found in his Stages of the Path (byang chub lam gyi rim  pa). The paper also examines the points of difference between the two Buddhist cosmologies to illustrate important distinctions between these select examples of Indian Buddhist and East Asia Buddhist soteriology.
Dr. James B. Apple

“Atiśa Dīpamkara” by James B Apple & “The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great” by Alexander Gardner

“Atiśa Dīpamkara” by James B Apple & “The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great” by Alexander Gardner

“Nonetheless, apart from lives of important non-western figures such as Muhammad and Buddha, the hagiographical literature available in English about lesser-known lights of belief-systems other than Christianity is rather scarce. That’s why books like Alexander Gardner’s Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great and James Apple’s Atiśa Dīpamkara are important additions, and deserve wider reading outside specialist or academic circles, in which both these names are presumably well-known. These books are hagiography at its best, “warts and all” (to paraphrase Oliver Cromwell), books which present both men as flesh-and-blood human beings existing in an actual world, but also clearly explain their importance to Buddhist teachings and why they have come to be so venerated. Apple, whose book is one of Shambhala’s excellent Lives of the Masters series, includes a generous selection of Atiśa’s writings as well as copious notes, a table of Tibetan transliterations and an ample bibliography.”

“The details of all this, including a translation of Atiśa’s seminal work, the poem “Lamp for the Path to Awakening” can be found in the useful and extensive selections from Atiśa’s writings which Apple appends to the book. He points out that the written sources which remain pertain only to the Tibetan stage of Atiśa’s life and are therefore Tibetan translations; anything from his Indian days, which would have been written in Sanskrit or Old Bengali, no longer survive.”

A review by John Butler recently retired as Associate Professor of Humanities at the University College of the North in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada, and has taught at universities in Canada, Nigeria and Japan. He specializes in early modern travel-literature (especially Asian travel) and seventeenth-century intellectual history. His books include an edition of Sir Thomas Herbert’s Travels in Africa, Persia and Asia the Great (2012) and most recently an edition of Sir Paul Rycaut’s Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1667) and a book of essays, Off the Beaten Track: Essays on Unknown Travel Writers.