No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Commitee on History of Culture, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-327).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-278). Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The tathāgatagarbha doctrine of Mahāyāna Buddhism affirms the existence of some permanent, significant content of sentient beings that is of the same character as a Buddha. While this alone was an important innovation within Buddhist thought, some of its authors ventured further to deem this significant content an ātman: a ‘self’, in apparent contradiction to the central Buddhist teaching of the absence of self (anātman) in the constitution of all beings. The aims of this thesis are two. Firstly, to examine usage of the term ātman in the Indian tathāgatagarbha sources which develop use of this expression. This entails a close reading of relevant sources (primarily Mahāyāna sūtra literature), and attention to how this term is used in the context of each. These sources present different perspectives on the tathāgatagarbha and its designation as a self; this study aims to examine significant differences between, and similarities across, these texts and their respective doctrines. The second aim is to attempt an account of why authors of these texts ventured to designate the tathāgatagarbha with the term ātman, especially when some of our sources suggest that this innovation received some opposition, while others deem it in requirement of strong qualification, or to be simply inappropriate. It is not my objective to account for whether or not the tathāgatagarbha is or is not implicitly what we may deem ‘a self’ on the terms of Buddhist tradition; rather, I am concerned with the manner in which this expression itself was adopted, and – in light of clear difficulties raises by it – what may have motivated those authors responsible. I argue not only that we can trace the development of this designation across the tathāgatagarbha literature, but also that those authors responsible for its earliest usage adopted an attitude towards non-Buddhist discourses on the self that requires special attention. This, I believe, had its roots in an account of the Buddha and his influence that advances our understanding of one tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhology, and its ambition to affirm its superiority over other Indian religious traditions.

Thesis (PhD--Anthropology)--University of Auckland, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

This thesis examines Ratnakarasanti's (ca. 970-1045 C.E.) explication of Prajnaparamita in his doxographical works and his Saratama. Based on extant Sanskrit and Tibetan primary sources, it argues that Ratnakarasanti's main teacher was Dharmakirtisri (late 10th C.E.) and that Ratnakarasanti's Saratama sought to replace his teacher's Yogacara-Madhyamika framework with a causal explanation of Prajnaparamita through redefining the term Prajnaparamita as the path to awakening, rather than its goal. By unpacking that causal explanation in light of his broader system, the thesis demonstrates the way that Ratnakarasanti's own version of Nirakaravadin-Yogacara-Madhyamika refutes cognitive images (akara) as unreal ultimately, but claims they are still perceived by buddhas out of compassion. This conclusion debunks the long-standing theory that Ratnakarasanti was an Indian proponent of the controversial Tibetan gZhan-stong despite later gZhan-stong propon-ents' attempts to claim him as their own. There are two parts to the study. The first part introduces Ratnakarasanti's life, philosophy and doxography based upon evidence from a Tibetan colophon to his Madhyamika commentary and the Tibetan hagiography of his student Adhisa (a.k.a. Atisa) and upon a comparative analysis of his doxographical works that are prerequisites for reading his Saratama. The second part consists of an annotated translation of the Saratama's introductory section, contrasted with the prior standard interpretation by Haribhadra's (9th century C.E.). In the two appendices are included a Tibetan critical edition and a separate hybrid Sanskrit and Tibetan critical edition of the Saratama's first parivarta based on the extant 11th and 13th century incomplete MSS and on the Tibetan translations in the sDe dge, Peking and sNarthang editions. The hybrid edition also includes my provisional critical edition of the root text - i.e. the first parivarta of the Aryasta - sahasrikaprajnaparamitasutra - and my own translation of two small sample sections of the Saratama, which are extant only in Tibetan, back into Sanskrit.