Mahā-vākya

Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2014

The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………………. IX Abbreviations and Bibliography …………..………..……………………………………… X Signs ………………………………………………….………………………………. XXI The Birth of Gautama ……..…….…………………………………………………………… Asita ……….………..…………………………………………………………………… Mañjarī-jātaka …………………………………………………………………………… Godhā-jātaka ………...………………………………………………………………….. Yaśodharā-hārapradāna-jātaka ……………………………………………………………… Yaśodharā vyāghrībhūtā ………….………………………………………………………. Yaśodharā ……………………………………………………………………….……… Dharmapāla-jātaka ……………………………………………………………………. Śarakṣepaṇa-jātaka ….….……………………………………………………………. Amarā-jātaka ……………………………………………………………………………. Śiri-jātaka ……………………………………………………………………………. Kinnarī-jātaka …………………………………………………………………………… Sukumāra-sūtra ……….…….……………………………….……………………… Pañca Mahāsvapnā ………………………………………………………………………. The Great Renunciation …………..….…………………………………………………… Śyāmā-jātaka …….……….…………………………………………………………… Campaka-parikalpapadā ………….……………………………………………………… Campaka-jātaka ………..………………………………………………………………… Kanthaka-vyākaraṇa ……………..…………………………………………………… Sujātā-vyākaraṇa …………….….…………………………………………………… Śyāmakajātakasya parikalpa …………………………………………………………… Śyāmaka-jātaka ….…………….…………………………………………………… Śiriprabha-jātaka ………………………………………………………………………… Temptations by Māra ……………….……………………………………………………… VIII Śakuntaka-jātaka (I) ………….………………….………………………………………… Kacchapa-jātaka …….…….……………………….…………………………………… Markaṭa-jātaka …………………………………………………………………………… Śakuntaka-jātaka (II) …….………………………………………………………………. Surūpa-jātaka ……….………………………………………………………………….

Journal of East Asian Cultures, 2024

This short essay is an introduction to the study of the Mahāmudrātilaka (‘An Ornament of the Great Seal’), an important Buddhist tantric scripture of the Hevajra cycle. The text is a so-called uttaratantra (ancillary scripture) of the Hevajratantra. This cult emerged around ca. 900 CE in Eastern India and quickly rose to a position of prominence. In order to illustrate this point, first I discuss some historical references to the Hevajra cult: a lexicographical work, inscriptions, and testimony in Śaiva exegesis. I then contextualise the Mahāmudrātilaka among the Hevajra ancillary scriptures and share some notes on the purpose of such texts. I argue that such scriptures were meant to update a cult’s ritual and doctrinal palette in order to keep up with developments seen (and thought desirable to have) in rival schools. In the next section, I present the only known Sanskrit manuscript of the Mahāmudrātilaka, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbe-sitz Orientabteilung Hs. or. 8711, a late Nepalese copy dated 1827 CE, which can be shown to be a copy of a Vorlage dating to 1204 CE. Next, I compare the text transmitted therein to the Tibetan translation, Tōh. 420, and identify them as two recensions. I then proceed to discussing exegesis on the Mahāmudrātilaka, the works of *Gambhīravajra and *Prajñāśrīgupta; these texts are for now available only in their Tibetan translation. I also identify some testimonia of the Mahāmudrātilaka. Using all this evidence, I argue that the text cannot be much earlier than the late 11th century. Next, I present an overview of the text by means of examining selected passages and their most significant features, with special focus on the differences and similarities with the Hevajratantra, the internal references to other scriptures, and the text’s significant parallels with the Vajramālābhidhāna. I argue that the text is unapologetically antinomian and gnostic. In the second half of the paper, styled as an appendix, I select five blocks of verses, which I edit and translate: the first deals with the relationship between initiating master and disciple, the second provides some insights into the attitudes of tantric practitioners towards orthodox Buddhists, the third contains detailed instructions on how to gather the antinomian substances known as ‘nec-tars’, the fourth deals with communal worship in a rite known as the gaṇacakra, and the final one describes a somewhat rare and rather gruesome ritual meant to bestow the power of flight.

Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient (Monographies, n° 195), 2017

Speculations about buddhas and bodhisattvas flourished with a remarkable dynamism between the 1st and the 6th century CE. This so-called “Middle Period” of Indian Buddhism is, for instance, characterized by the growth of the Bodhisattvayāna, the movement promoting the path to perfect Awakening (samyaksambodhi), understood as a realisation far superior to that the achieved by arhants. The present book aims at tracing these “buddhological” developments within the literature of the Mahāsāṅghika-Lokottaravāda, a lineage that was influential in Magadha and in the Northwest of South Asia during the period considered. This historical enquiry is rooted in a philological praxis, and, in particular, it is achieved by scrutinising the formation and the vicissitudes of an integral part of the school's Vinayapiṭaka, namely the Mahāvastu. The latter work, dealing with the lengthy bodhisattva career and the last birth of the Buddha Śākyamuni, is vast and composite. The reconstruction of distinct phases in its composition necessarily entails a close examination of the witnesses transmitting the work and, in particular, of its earliest copy, being a 12th century CE palm-leaf manuscript preserved in Nepal. The study, which forms the first part of this book, is therefore grounded on the new annotated edition and French translation of carefully selected sections of the Mahāvastu, featuring as part two. The close study of these key sections allows to uncover the editorial and rhetorical practices of Mahāsāṅghika milieux, as well as some of their core doctrines. This book therefore contributes to furthering our understanding of the monastic lineages, the canonical corpora, and the soteriology of Indian Buddhism. This monograph, recipient of the Collette Caillat Prize in Indology at the Institut de France (2018), has been reviewed by G. Ducoeur in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions (2021/4): https://doi.org/10.4000/rhr.11617 and by N. McGovern in Religions of South Asia (2021/15.1): https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.20913. A detailed review article by O. von Hinüber further appeared in the Indo-Iranian Journal (2023, 66/1): https://brill.com/view/journals/iij/66/1/iij.66.issue-1.xml.

The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2019

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this book may be reproduced, translated or utilised in any form, either by print, photoprint, microform, multimedia or any other means, now known or hereafter invented, without written permission of the copyright holder and publishers. Enquiries should be made to the publishers.

New Delhi: Manohar; London: Routledge, 2018

The Mahāvidyās are the representative Tantric feminine pantheon consisting of ten goddesses. It is formed by divergent religious strands and elements: the mātṛ and yoginī worship, the cult of Kālī and Tripurasundarī, Vajrayāna Buddhism, Jain Vidyādevīs, Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava faith, Śrīvidyā, the Brahmanical strand of Puranic traditions, etc. This volume is the first attempt to explore the historical process, through which these traditions culminated in the Mahāvidyā cult and the goddesses with different origins and contradictory attributes were brought into a cluster, with special reference to socio-political changes in the lower Gaṅgā and Brahmaputra Valley between the 9th and 15th centuries CE. Based on a close analysis of Purāṇas, Tantras and inscriptional evidence, and on extensive field research on archaeological remains as well as sacred sites, Jae-Eun Shin discusses the two trajectories of the Mahāvidyās in eastern Śākta traditions. Each led to the systematization of Daśamahāvidyās in a specific way: one, as ten manifestations of Durgā upholding dharma in the cosmic dimension, and the other, as ten mandalic goddesses bearing magical powers in the actual sacred site. Their attributes and characteristics have neither been static nor monolithic, and the mode of worship prescribed for them has changed in a dialectical religious process between Brahmanical and Tantric traditions of the region. This is the definitive work for anyone seeking to understand goddess cults of South Asia in general and the history of eastern Śākta traditions in particular. To aid study, the volume includes images, diagrams and maps.

2022

THE UPANISHAD CODE A CONNECTING “PSYCHOLOGY” OF THE PRIMARY INSIGHTS OF VEDANTA Class lecture delivered at the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Hollywood May 18, 2004 Amended, April 21, 2022 ABSTRACT In this communication I introduce my first public presentation of insights into the great sayings of Vedanta (mahavakyas) as commented on by Swami Vivekananda. In it, I give to a group of interested people in Los Angeles a broad overview of his approach to these key elements of Vedanta and how they seem to interrelate with each other in an apparently coherent manner. This material was intended as an introduction to a later presentation of the actual content of his interpretations on each of the shlokas (verses) Vivekananda had commented on. In this basic plan I also included other shlokas that seemed to share the same purview or “psychology” as the core material and on which Vivekananda had made frequent comments I had identified these materials from 1973 to 1991 and arranged them under the Veda and Upanishad to which they classically belong. This made it possible to discern the interconnections and correspondences between the classical range of insights in Vedanta as well as, of course, the original thinking that Vivekananda brought to interpreting them. Six years later in MacPhail, 2010 I gave an academic interpretation of this overall approach, indicating the content of each shloka with headings from Vivekananda’s compiled commentary. The layout that I developed for that presentation I will utilize here and add to it the “psychology” that seems to underlie the whole system. This psychology was developed in full in my doctoral thesis (MacPhail, 2013, 348-369) in connection with the occurrence of samadhi, the classical turning-points in the experiential progression from level to level of consciousness that I perceive as enshrined in the overall array of mahavakyas. Utilizing this recondite material here is intended to give more gravitas to the more general discussion of the subject in the classes in Los Angeles. Since the publication of my overview of Vivekananda’s “take” on the development of Vedanta historically (Gayatriprana, 2020), I have been arriving at the importance of the notion of chatushpad, or four steps of the Atman, in codifying these different levels of consciousness. I first discerned the classical four in the mahavakyas, and beyond them the present emergence of a fifth step that seems to be of major significance in meeting the demands of contemporary human existence. Meeting with considerable resistance to this turn in my thinking, I have recently written what might be called a history of the chatushpad, with the proposed title A History of Consciousness from a Vedantic Point of View: A Belated Response to Max Velmans’s Question: Is the Universe Conscious? A further extension of this enquiry will include a study of the Western point of view that rejects this mode of understanding and also some examples of those who can see value and meaning in it.

Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, 2012

Nepalese Culture

Mahakala is the God of Time, Maya, Creation, Destruction and Power. He is affiliated with Lord Shiva. His abode is the cremation grounds and has four arms and three eyes, sitting on five corpse. He holds trident, drum, sword and hammer. He rubs ashes from the cremation ground. He is surrounded by vultures and jackals. His consort is Kali. Both together personify time and destructive powers. The paper deals with Sacred Mahakala and it mentions legends, tales, myths in Hindus and Buddhist texts. It includes various types, forms and iconographic features of Mahakalas. This research concludes that sacred Mahakala is of great significance to both the Buddhist and the Hindus alike.