Buddhajñānapāda

Buddhajñānapāda (T. sangs rgyas ye shes zhabs སངས་རྒྱས་ཡེ་ཤེས་ཞབས་)(fl. c. 770–820 CE) "was one of the most influential figures of mature Indian esoteric Buddhism."

Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online states:

He is remembered first and foremost as the founder of the earlier of the two most important exegetical schools of the Guhyasamājatantra..., but he was also very likely a guru of some note in the Pāla court, the dominant power in East India at the time, and the first warden of the famous Vikramaśīla monastery.

Catherine Dalton states: "...Buddhajñānapāda is asserted by Tāranātha to have been the first tantric ācārya at Vikramaśīla..."

Jikme Lingpa mentions in the auto-commentary on his Treasury of Precious Qualities that Buddhajñanapada's terminology and tenets are very similar to that of the Great Perfection.

Buddhajñānapāda was a disciple of Haribhadra, and the author of a commentary on the Verse Summary of the Perfection of Wisdom.

Name variants

Catherine Dalton states:

Although Buddhajñānapāda (sangs rgyas ye shes zhabs), and Buddhajñāna (Sangs rgyas ye shes), are the most common names found in the colophons to his works, we find other versions of his name in the Tibetan colophons, as well: Buddhaśrījñāna (Sangs rgyas dpal ye shes), and Buddhaśrījñānapāda (Sangs rgyas dpal ye shes zhabs/ Sangs rgyas dpal kyi ye shes zhabs).

In Indic works by his direct disciples and later writers we find a similar variety: Buddhajñanapāda, Buddhajñāna, Jñānapāda (ye shes zhabs), Śrījñānapāda (Dpal ldan ye shes zhabs), and Buddhaśrījñānapāda. Tibetan authors similarly run the gamut, naming him Buddhajñānapāda, Buddhajñāna, Buddhaśrījñāna, and Jñānapāda. Adding śrī to various places in his name was presumably done out of respect, and shortening names is also common practice.

Early life and teachers

Catherine Dalton states:

Buddhajñānapāda’s own account of his life tells us nothing of his birth or childhood but begins only with his studies. It appears not to be until an account of his life written by Chögyal Phagpa in the 13th century, that we learn more about his early life, though the information in our sources here varies significantly. Chögyal Phagpa tells us that Buddhajñānapāda was born in a place called Sindhura in southeast India to a king called Gyaparuprabhava (!?), whereas Taranatha, in the 17th century, reports that according to some sources (to which we unfortunately no longer have access) he was a Brahman who is ordained at Nalanda into the Mahāsāṃghika school, while according to others he was a kṣatriya “reader” (scribe?).

As Buddhajñānapāda himself tells us, he spent a number of years in the earlier part of his life traveling quite extensively throughout the subcontinent studying and practicing under the guidance of different gurus with whom he remained for varying amounts of time—he mentions staying with one guru for just eight months and another for nine years. The teachers Buddhajñānapāda mentions in his account are Haribhadra, with whom he studied in the town of Takṣaśilā, in the area of Khapir, in Magadha; Vilāsavajra, Guṇeru and Jātig Jālā, with whom he studied in Uḍḍiyāna; Bālipāda, who lived in Ko no dze in the area of Jālandhara;153 and Pālitapāda, who stayed at “the place with sky trees” in the Koṅkan, most probably at modern-day Kadri.

His most important guru was Mañjuśrī himself, who appeared to Buddhajñānapāda as an "emanated monk” who then emanated Mañjuśrī and his maṇḍala for Buddhajñānapāda in the Kuvaca forest behind Vajrāsana. Well the exact locations of these encounters are difficult to ascertain with certainty based on the toponyms given in his account, what is clear is that Buddhajñānapāda’s travels took him for thousands of kilometers across a wide swath of the subcontinent from its north-central area to the far northeast, to the southeast, and finally to the northeast.

Later life as a teacher and author

Catherine Dalton states:

Following his visionary encounter with Mañjuśrī, Buddhajñānapāda reports setting up residence with his students in the Parvata cave not far from Bodhgaya. The details that Vaidyapāda gives regarding the location of this residence, which he further specifies as the practice place of “great practitioners of former times,” enable us to identify it as being in the region of the Rajgir hills. There, Buddhajñānapāda himself tells us, he and his disciples received daily donations from the wealth deity Jambhala, and it was there that Buddhajñānapāda compiled the instructions he had received from Mañjuśrī in the Dvitīyakrama and composed other works. He likewise reports traveling back to the Koṅkan to visit his guru Pālitapāda who requested Buddhajñānapāda to compose a sādhana, which Vaidyapāda identifies as the Samantabhadra.

As noted before, he further mentions some "detailed accounts" of his life, which Vaidyapāda specifies to be “the taming at Nālandā, making offerings at Varjāsana, the consecration, and the others,” but gives no further information. It is only in the Tibetan histories, starting with Chögyal Phagpa, that we begin to find descriptions of these and other events from his later life. Some of the most detailed accounts of Buddhajñānapāda’s later life are found in the writings of Tāranātha. His Seven Transmissions contains a biography which references Vaidyapāda’s Sukusuma directly and elaborates on each of the three episodes mentioned by Vaidayapāda by name.

Sources

• Catherine Dalton, Enacting Perfection: Buddhajñānapāda’s Vision of a Tantric Buddhist World (Berkeley, 2019)

Further reading

• Buddhajñānapāda, Tsadra Commons
• Buddhajñānapāda, Rigpa Shedra Wiki