Abhisamayālaṃkāravivṛti

Abhisamayālaṃkāravivṛti (T. [Shes rab phar phyin man ngag gi bstan bcos] mngon rtogs rgyan gyi ’grel pa) is a commentary by the Indian scholar Haribhadra that summarizes the author's Abhisamayalankaraloka.

Modern scholars commonly refer to this text as the Sphuṭārthā. The name "Sphuṭārthā" is the Sanskrit equivalent of the abbreviated name used in the Tibetan tradition, 'grel pa don gsal, meaning "Clear Meaning."

The full title for the text is:

• Sanskrit: Abhisamayālaṃkāra-nāma-prajñāpāramitopadeśa-śāstra-vṛtti
• Tibetan: ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པའི་མན་ངག་གི་བསྟན་བཅོས་མངོན་པར་རྟོགས་པའི་རྒྱན་ཞེས་བྱ་བའི་འགྲེལ་པ། · shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag gi bstan bcos mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan zhes bya ba'i 'grel pa/
• English: A Running Commentary on “The Ornament for Clear Realizations, A Treatise of Personal Instructions on the Perfection of Wisdom”

The Princeton Dictionary states:

The Abhisamayālaṃkāravivṛti gained considerable importance in Tibet after rngog lo ldan shes rab supplemented his translation of it with a summary (bsdus don) of its contents, beginning a tradition of Prajñāpāramitā commentary that spread from gsang phu ne'u thog monastery into all four Tibetan sects. This tradition, which continues down to the present, uses the Abhisamayālaṃkāra and Abhisamayālaṃkāravivṛti as twin root texts to structure wide-ranging discussions of abhidharma, right philosophical view and proper praxis.

Presentation of the four kayas

John Makransky states:

Haribhadra, in his Aloka and Sphutartha, interpreted [Abhisamayālaṃkāra chapter 8] as teaching four Buddha kayas (comprising the four topics of the chapter) together with a Buddha's activity. Using a Madhyamaka style of analysis, he analytically separated the ultimate truth of a Buddha (paramartha satya) from the conventional truth (samvrti satya). The former he identified as the svabhavikakaya: the sunyata (emptiness) or dharmata (ultimate reality) of a Buddha's mind. The latter he resolved into three conventional kayas, distinguished according to the type of person to whom each appears. The (jñanatmaka) dharmakaya consists of a Buddha's undefiled dharmas, understood as his pure forms of awareness, his gnoses. They appear directly only to himself as conventional object. The sambhogakāya is the form in which a Buddha appears conventionally to arya bodhisattvas, and the nirmāṇakāya is the form in which he appears conventionally to other beings.

Commentaries

The following commentaries on this text were written by Indian scholars, and are included in the Tibetan Tengyur:

• Prasphuṭapadā (A Clarification of the Words) by Dharmamitra
• Durbodhāloka (An Illumination of the Points that are Difficult to Understand) by Suvarṇadvīpa Dharmakīrti
• Piṇḍārtha (The Concise Meaning) by Prajñākaramati

Further reading

• Sphutartha, Rigpa Shedra Wiki
• Hirofusa Amano, A Fragment from the Abhisamayālaṅkāra-namaprajñaparamitopadesa-sastravṛtti, alias 'Sphuṭartha' of Haribhadra, Annual Report of the Tôhoku Research Institute of Buddhist Culture, vol. 3 (1961), pp. 1-25 (in Japanese).
• Hirofusa Amano, A Study on the Abhisamaya-Alaṅkara-Karika-Sastra-Vṛtti (Tokyo 1975) 314 pp., Sanskrit and Tibetan. Reviewed by J.W. de Jong in Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 20 (1978), pp. 313-314.
• K.H. Amano, On the Composite Purpose of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra-karika-sastra. Haribhadra's Way of Explaining, Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, vol. 17, no. 2 (1969), pp. 59-69 (in Japanese).
• Hirofusa Amano, Sanskrit Manuscript of the Abhisamayalaṅkara-vṛtti. In six parts: Bulletin of the Hijiyama Women's Junior College, vol. 7 (1983), pp. 1-15. Bulletin of the Faculty of Education of Shimane University, vol. 19 (1985), pp. 124-138; 20 (1986), pp. 67-86; 21 (1987), pp. 39-51; 22 (1988), pp. 10-25; 23 (1989), pp. 1-7.
• David P. Jackson, ed., Rong-ston on the Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra, His Sub-commentary on Haribhadra's "Sphuṭārthā": A Facsimile Reproduction of the Earliest Known Blockprint Edition, from an Exemplar Preserved in the Tibet House, New Delhi, Nagata Bunshodo (Kyoto 1988)