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  • Visions of Unity: The Golden Pandita Shakya Chokden’s New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka by Yaroslav Komarovski
  • Douglas S. Duckworth
Review of Yaroslav Komarovski, Visions of Unity: The Golden Pandita Shakya Chokden’s New Interpretation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011, 466 pages

Komarovski offers an important contribution to Yogācāra studies in Tibet in his Visions of Unity, which brings to light Śākya Chokden’s (shākya mchog ldan, 1428–1507) interpretation of the relationship between Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. Komarovski gives a descriptive appraisal of this issue, citing around fifty primary texts from Śākya Chokden’s writings. Authoring the first book-length study exclusively devoted to Śākya Chokden to date, his work opens a spacious window into the world of a creative Tibetan thinker, and puts on display the systematic and polemic intricacies fundamental to Buddhist scholasticism in Tibet.

The works of Śākya Chokden, an influential fifteenth-century Sakya (sa skya) scholar, have largely been neglected in Tibetan scholarship, due in large measure to the originality of his interpretation (a fatal “flaw” for scholastic traditions), along with the suppression of his work following his forceful criticisms of other schools, including what came to be the [End Page 281] orthodox Geluk (dge lugs) view of Madhyamaka, which Śākya Chokden characterized as being guilty of “excessive attachment to relative truth” (kun rdzob kyi bden pa la lhag par zhen pa) (93). His writings also challenged other sectarian traditions, including orthodox positions within his own Sakya school.

Komarovski presents the key to Śākya Chokden’s treatment of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka by focusing upon his distinction between the Alīkākāravāda or “False Aspectarians” (rnam rdzun pa) and the Niḥsvabhāvavāda or “Proponents of Entitylessness” (ngo bo nyid med par smra ba). Niḥsvabhāvavāda (another way of expressing “Madhyamaka”) for Śākya Chokden represents a subset of Madhyamaka defined by its negative analytic claim: that no essence or entity exists under analysis. Alīkākāravāda (commonly represented in Tibet as a subset of Cittamātra, but stands as a distinctive Yogācāra subset of Madhyamaka for Śākya Chokden) is derived from its perceptual claim: that a dual-aspected structure of perception is false, as opposed to Satyākāravāda (rnam bden pa), which describes the dual-aspected structure of perception as true. Komarovski believes that a scholarly exploration of this distinction between Alīkākāravāda and Niḥsvabhāvavāda—the only genuine division of non-tantric Madhyamaka according to Śākya Chokden (78)—could be as fruitful for philosophical studies of Yogācāra as the distinction between Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika has been for the philosophical reconstruction of Madhyamaka in recent years.

Komarovski contrasts two tendencies within the exegetical traditions of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: a “separating and distancing” tendency on the one hand (e.g., Candrakīrti, Bhāviveka, Dharmapāla) and a “harmonizing” tendency that bridges their differences on the other (e.g., Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Ratnakaraśānti) (74). Śākya Chokden clearly falls on the side of the harmonizers. Yet harmonizers like Śākya Chokden can also be seen as exclusivists in disguise. Harmonization, or inclusivism, is also a form of exclusivism because if everything does not fit into your brand of harmonization (or does not come out on top), it is excluded—dissonant. This is exactly the case with Śākya Chokden’s brand of Yogācāra.

Komarovski does a superb job of describing Śākya Chokden’s complex and comprehensive exegetical structure, but he fails to acknowledge the “separating and distancing” exclusivism implicit in Śākya Chokden’s inclusivist rhetoric. That is, Komarovski’s greatest strength is his greatest weakness: he deftly unpacks details of Śākya Chokden’s interpretation while not noticing the bigger picture of how his rhetorical moves fit into a more typical Yogācāra narrative. For instance, Komarovski claims that “Niḥsvabhāvavāda and Alīkākāravāda are a paradigmatic example of two systems that cannot be treated hierarchically” (209). Yet Niḥsvabhāvavāda [End Page 282] is clearly...

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