The Progress in Meditation: The Three Bhavanakramas of Kamalashila

The title, THE PROGRESS IN MEDITATION: THE THREE BHĀVANĀKRAMAS OF KAMALAŚĪLA refers to the Sanskrit tile BHĀVANĀKRAMA composed in Tibet between the years 792-794 CE on the occasion of the the so-called bSam Yas debate or the Council of Lhasa which featured the historic encounter between the Indian Buddhist scholar Kamalaśila and the Chinese Chan monk Hva Shang Mahāyāna. The completed translation of the three Bhāvanākramas of Kamalaśīla represents for me the grateful fulfillment of a task originally undertaken over 40 years ago when I first encountered Prof. Giuseppe Tucci's editions of the trilogy. In my peregrinations and vicissitudes over these years, I have actually lost three earlier translations but so committed have I been to getting a complete translation done that I began anew over three years ago with a determined effort to get the task done in a reasonable time-frame. Thanks to my experience with the earlier (lost) completed translations, my latest attempt was much obviated. I am pleased to present to interested readers these most celebrated treatises on Buddhist meditation according to the standpoint of the hybrid Yogācāra-Svatantrika Mādhyamaka school represented by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. My Introduction does not cover all important topics in the trilogy but focuses primarily on some topics of polemical significance such as gradual versus instantaneous enlightenment (kramika vs. yugapat bodhi) 'discriminating wisdom and skillful-means' (praj opāya), the importance of the balanced practice of tranquility and insight (śamatha-vipaśyanā-yuganaddha) and the proper role of mindfulness and attention (smṛti-manasikāra) in the practice of samādhi (samādhi-bhāvanā). The headings in square brackets are not part of the original texts (Sanskrit or Tibetan) but were deemed necessary to delineate the various topics. The Bhāvanākrama-s of Kamalaśil̄a are of particularly foundational importance in the history of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and more generally to Buddhist soteriology in the matter of the sudden-gradualist controversy concerning enlightenment (bodhi), an issue which figures greatly in some Mahāyāna schools, both exoteric (Sūtra-based) and esoteric (Tantra-based). From a modernist perspective, the trilogy may be characterized as partly religious and partly philosophical: it has the pervasive tone of Buddhist piety in its extolment of the bodhisattva-practice involving the Six (or Ten) Perfections (pāramitā) and Ten Stages (bhūmi) as found in the Mahāyāna Discourses (Sūtras) and Expository Treatises (Śāstras), amply quoted in the trilogy, but its rigorous arguments and polemics are entirely consistent with the author's commentary (Pa jikā) to his teacher Śāntarakṣita's Compendium of Philosophical Tenets (Tattvasaṁgraha). The logical arguments of the Bhāvanākramas (BKs) are also entirely consistent with those found in his Madhyamakāloka. The Bhāvanākrama-s can be classed with the Bodhisattvabhūmi, Bodhicittopāda-Sūtraśāstra and the Bodhicaryāvatāra. In an even wider comparison, it is comparable in part to the Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga in exposition of the theme of the integration of tranquility and insight (śamatha-vipaśyana-yuganaddha) and the Tian Ta'i patriarch Chi-I's monumental The Great Calming and Contemplation (Mo ho chih kuan), devoted entirely to the subject of śamatha-vipaśyanā.Translated from the original Sanskrit with footnotes and appendices of the Sanskrit texts in Devanagari and Roman, this present translation is only the second complete translation from Sanskrit. The other pioneering translation by Paramananda Sharma (Aditya Prakashan, Delhi 1997, 2004)) from the Sanskrit is entirely welcome but the scholarship in this area requires the more complete treatment that i have given to this trilogy.