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NEW BOOK> William Ames, The Lamp of Discernment: A Translation of Chapters 1–12 of Bhāviveka's Prajñāpradīpa
by Richard Payne
The Institute of Buddhist Studies is happy to announce the publication of
the latest volume in our Contemporary Issues in Buddhist Studies Series:William Ames, The Lamp of Discernment: A Translation of Chapters 1–12 of Bhāviveka's Prajñāpradīpa
Available from University of Hawai'i Press here
> hardback, $55.00 from the Series Editor's Preface:
·
The Buddhist thinkers of medieval India
addressed many of the issues that are still central to Buddhist praxis in the
present. One of the most important of those thinkers is Bhāviveka, author of
the work known as the Prajñāpradīpa. Over several years, William (Bill) Ames
translated, carefully and precisely, the first twelve chapters of that work,
which he has compiled and revised for consistency in this volume.
The Prajñāpradīpa is a commentary on Nagārjuna’s
famous, and in the view of many famously difficult, Mūlamadhyamakārikā—Root
Verses on the Middle Way. Central to all Buddhist thought in one form or
another is an understanding that the common entities of our experience are
transitory and, therefore, unreliable as grounds upon which to base our own
happiness, satisfaction, security, and even our own sense of self. As Ames
explains in his Introduction, the Madhyamaka pursues this insight further,
asserting that all existing entities are lacking in (empty of, śūnyatā) any
“intrinsic nature (svabhāva).”
As systematized by later Tibetan scholastics, the
Madhyamaka school is understood to have developed into two different forms, the
Svātantrika and the Prāsaṅgika, a textbook style simplification that has had
lasting influence. In this intellectual historiography where movements require
specific founders, Bhāviveka is identified as the founder of the Svātantrika.
Part of the neo-Romantic rhetoric popular in the
second half of the twentieth century was that meditation practice was by itself
capable of leading to full awakening, or rather to an unimpeded, direct
experience of the true and the real. That view has become increasingly
untenable, as meditators have themselves attempted to understand the
significance of their own experiences. Those who have turned to the teachings
of the Buddhist tradition for that understanding are often confronted by the
(only) apparent difficulty of understanding emptiness. Ames’ translation of
this key work of the Madhyamaka school can contribute to untangling much of the
confusion surrounding these ideas.
