66. Candrakīrti: Introduction to the Middle Way and Its Autocommentary
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
Jay L. Garfield [+]
Smith College
Description
This entry presents a selection of translations from Candrakīrti’s (d. 650 CE) Introduction to the Middle Way and Its Autocommentary which is structured by the bodhisattva path—the map of practice for one who resolves to achieve awakening in order to benefit all sentient beings. Each of its ten chapters is devoted to one of the ten stages on that path, explaining the qualities to be achieved on that stage, and the nature of practice on that stage. The sixth chapter from which the present excerpt is drawn, comprises about two thirds of the entire text. It is devoted to the stage at which the bodhisattva cultivates wisdom and articulates the content of that wisdom, an account that draws on Nāgārjuna’s own analysis of emptiness. A great deal of that discussion is devoted to how to understand the selflessness of persons, a central Buddhist metaphysical tenet. Candrakīrti argues that while the self is an illusion, persons are conventionally real, thus showing how to understand our own existence through the rubric of the two truths developed by Nāgārjuna.