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. Because his unique philosophy attempts to merge the insights of both Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, Ratnākara referred to it as Trisvabhāva-mādhyamaka ("the middle way of the three natures"). He also known as a major defender of the "nirākāravāda" (without images") interpretation of Yogācāra.Tomlinson, D. (2022). Limiting the Scope of the Neither-One-Nor-Many Argument: The Nirākāravādin’s Defense of Consciousness and Pleasure. Advance online publication on Project MUSE.
At Vikramaśilā, Ratnākara was a teacher to Atīśa, Maitrīpa, Drokmi Śākya Yeshe among others.Tatz, Mark. "Maitrī-pa and Atiśa," pp. 473-477. 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.
Life
There is much uncertainty about the facts of Ratnākaraśānti's life since Tibetan and Sanskrit sources disagree on many issues. Many sources refer to him as a "pūrvadeśīya" born in Magadha (modern-day Bihar in India).
Abhayadatta Sri places him during the reign of the Pāla king Devapāla (c. 810-850 CE).Abhayadhatta and Robinson, James (1979). Buddha's Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, p. 61. 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).Tāranātha, Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (trans.). Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India, p. 299.
Naktso Lotsāwa Tsultrim Gyelwa, a Tibetan student of Ratnākaraśānti, states that Ratnākaraśānti was a student of *Dharmakīrtiśrī (a.k.a. Bla ma Gser ling pa, *Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa). Tibetan sources also state he was a student of Nāropa, though it is hard to say how reliable this claim is as many of these sources are unreliable historically.Tāranātha, Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (trans.). Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India, pp. 299-300.
In the early stages of his career, Ratnākaraśānti received his ordination at the monastery of Odantapuri. He seems to have gained much fame and status during the middle of his life when he became acting head of Vikramaśīla and attracted many offers to teach abroad and this allowed him to secure many donations for the upkeep of Vikramaśīla. Several sources mention that Ratnākaraśānti lived long and was still at Vikramaśīla when Adhīśa (Atisha) when to Tibet in 1041. Sources seem to indicate that he died sometime before 1050 CE.
Thought Nirākāravāda Ratnākaraśānti is perhaps best known for representing the Nirākāravāda view in the debates between the Nirākāravāda and Sākāravāda positions within Yogācāra philosophy. This debate concerned the question of the status of mental images (ākāra). Both factions agreed in their denial of an external world apart from consciousness. That is, for both sides, the appearance of the external world is just an image within consciousness. However, where the Sākāravādins maintained that the images showing up within cognition are real, since they are not different from the ultimately real consciousness, the Nirākāravādins argued that reality is ultimately free of images, as images are constructed by ignorance and therefore false. Thus, according to the Nirākāravāda, only primordial mind as self-cognition exists.Komarovski, Yaroslav, Visions of Unity: The Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden's New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2011, p. 73-74.
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.Tomlinson, D.K. The Marvel of Consciousness: Existence and Manifestation in Jñānaśrīmitra’s Sākārasiddhiśāstra. J Indian Philos 50, 163–199 (2022). 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."McNamara, Daniel. “The Two Truths are not Enough: Ratnākaraśānti on the Two Truths and the impossibility of Pramāṇa for Mādhyamikas.” Paper presented in American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 2021. 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."Luo, Hong. An Anachronistic Analogy: Rereading the Dasheng qixin lun in the light of Ratnākaraśānti’s Prajñāpāramitopadeśa. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2020.
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.Moriyama, Shinya. Ratnākaraśānti's Theory of Cognition with False Mental Images (*alīkākāravāda) and the Neither-One-Nor-Many Argument. Journal of Indian Philosophy, June 2014, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Special Issue on Ākāra in Buddhist Philosophical and Soteriological Analysis (June 2014), pp. 339-351.
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.Komarovski, Yaroslav, Visions of Unity: The Golden Paṇḍita Shakya Chokden’s New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2011, p. 79. 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.Brunnhölzl, Karl (2011). Prajñāpāramitā, Indian "gzhan Stong Pas", and the Beginning of Tibetan Gzhan Stongm p. 133. Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien.Kano, Kazuo. "Ratnākaraśānti’s Understanding of Buddha-Nature." China Tibetology 25, no. 2 (2015): 52–77.