Appearing Differently to All While Not Departing from Emptiness, the Essence of the True Nature of Things

Appearing Differently to All While Not Departing from Emptiness, the Essence of the True Nature of Things concerns the emergence of different philosophical interpretations of the Buddha’s teaching on the true nature of things. It illustrates the paradoxical nature of the Buddha’s teaching and of reality itself insofar as both are simultaneously one and many.

This short and dense discourse has a narrative frame in which the Buddha is himself described as being unmoving from the true nature of things, and as such, does not form any thought about teaching the Dharma. Nevertheless, a teaching on the true nature of things is heard, but is heard differently by the various members of the audience, based on their different inclinations.1 These different understandings are then delineated as five distinct philosophical views, or “analytic positions” or “ways of examining”2 all things, some of which resemble well-known philosophical positions that emerged in classical Indian Buddhism.

When Mañjuśrī becomes aware that members of the audience are harboring these different understandings of the Buddha’s teaching on the true nature of things, he decides to question the Buddha about it, inquiring as to why such differences have arisen, whether such diverse views are equally valid as means for achieving awakening, whether they will persist in the future, and whether such differences will be a source of dispute. The Buddha’s replies indicate that although all the different analytic positions may all be seen as correct insofar as they go, the first four constitute something like progressive steps along the way to the fifth and final view, which alone is described as the unmistaken view that is in accordance with the experiential domain of all buddhas. The Buddha then offers a series of analogies by way of illustration. He also makes the prediction that these differing views will persist long after his own parinirvāṇa and that in the future they will be exploited in competitive rivalries and disputes.

At the end of the sūtra, Mañjuśrī raises a final question: if these different viewpoints all concern a single basis for all things, what then is that basis? The Buddha’s answer, which is reminiscent of teachings on emptiness found in the sūtras on the Perfection of Wisdom and elsewhere, is that although the basis of all experience is the aggregates, constituents, and sense fields, one must not reify even these if one is to reach unsurpassed, complete, and perfect awakening.

Though not made explicit in its title, the content and position of this sūtra in the General Sūtra section of the Degé Kangyur indicate that it is considered a Mahāyāna sūtra.3 In the text itself there is mention of followers of the Lesser Vehicle and the Great Vehicle. Nevertheless, the discourse strikes a nonsectarian tone insofar as it gives some credence to a number of different views and explicitly offers a critique of needless dispute. At the same time, however, it does make the strong claim that there is one unmistaken, undistorted point of view.

As will be outlined below, the provenance of this sūtra is somewhat uncertain. This is noted by both Tibetan Kangyur scholars Chomden Raltri (1227–1305) and Butön Rinchen Drub (1290-1364) and, in recent times, Herrmann-Pfandt (2008, pp. 147–48) and Li (2021, p. 203).

In short, the complications arise from the fact that the Denkarma catalog, which was compiled in the early ninth century ᴄᴇ, includes a text it classifies as having been translated from Chinese that is very similar in title and length.4 Nevertheless, there is evidence that the text existed in India in the eleventh century, since it is cited (though without a title) in a commentary translated into Tibetan that is attributed to Avadhūtipa, better known as Maitrīpa (ca. 1007–85).5 The sūtra is also mentioned by name in a treatise by Atīśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982–1054), likewise extant only in Tibetan translation.6 Later, in the thirteenth century, Chomden Raltri lists the sūtra among those Tibetan translations whose attribution is unknown.7 Therefore, it seems that Chomden Raltri had a version of the text in his possession, but that the translation lacked a colophon to identify its translators. However, a few decades later, when Butön compiled his History of the Dharma, he lists the same text among “thirty-six sūtras that have not been found.” In the same passage Butön notes that this sūtra “was certainly translated previously, but these days it is not included in the Kangyur and cannot be located.”8 Since he assumed that it had gone missing, it follows that Butön did not have access to the text that Chomden Raltri listed.

Its disappearance cannot have lasted long, however, because a younger scholar in the next generation of Butön’s lineage, the important Prajñāpāramitā specialist Yaktön Sangyé Pal (g.yag ston sangs rgyas dpal, 1350–1414), includes the entire sūtra verbatim, with intercalated comments of his own, in his commentary on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra.9 Yaktön was quoting it soon after the first appearance of a complete Kangyur as a collection (the Tshalpa Kangyur was produced in 1347–51) and well before the production of the Themphangma manuscript in 1431.

The text did eventually make it into the Kangyur collections (in both Tshalpa and Thempangma recensions) that were compiled in the period following Butön. However, the text in the Kangyur now appeared with a translators’ colophon stating that the translation was produced in the early ninth century by the Indian preceptor Dānaśīla and the Tibetan translator and editor Bandé Yeshé Dé.10 If this colophon were correct, this would of course mean that the translation was made from Sanskrit, and not Chinese as stated in the Denkarma catalog.

Both Herrmann-Pfandt and Li note this discrepancy but suggest that the puzzle can be solved either by viewing the Denkarma catalog’s attribution as erroneous (Herrmann-Pfandt, 2008, p. 148), or by assuming that the text in the Denkarma catalog is an altogether different text from the one that appeared in the Kangyur collections after the fourteenth century (Li, 2021, p. 203). Li does, however, acknowledge that neither of these theories is fully convincing since they both fail to account for the observation of Chomden Raltri, who seems to have had in his possession a translation that lacked a translators’ colophon. Nor do they explain how the version that was included in the Kangyur could reappear in the fourteenth century, after having gone unnoticed by the compilers of the imperial catalogs, as well as both Chomden Raltri and Butön, during the preceding five centuries since it had purportedly been produced.

Unfortunately, no extant parallel versions of the text, in either Chinese or Sanskrit, have been identified, which leaves the conundrum concerning its translation into Tibetan difficult to resolve conclusively. However, based on our work with the translation published here, we feel that one cannot rule out the possibility that the version of the text that we find included in the Kangyur is in fact, as stated in the Denkarma catalog, related to, or perhaps an edited version of, the translation that was produced from Chinese in the late eighth or early ninth century. If this theory is correct, the colophon that is attached to the text in the Kangyur would constitute a later, incorrect, editorial intervention, added at some point after the time of Chomden Raltri. To add a translators’ colophon to a text, or to modify an existing colophon, or even to merge several preexisting colophons into one, was rather common practice in Tibet. Such editorial interventions had already begun in the ninth century and continued, until the period after Chomden Raltri and Butön, up until the end of the fourteenth century.11

In addition to the information found in the notes written by Chomden Raltri and Butön, the Tibetan and Sanskrit titles of the text, as found in the various sources, themselves also present some uncertainties. First, regarding the Tibetan title, half of the title has been more or less stable in all sources since the Denkarma catalog and up through the various Kangyurs, while the other half of the title has varied considerably. As such, the part of the title that we have here rendered “While Not Departing from Emptiness, the Essence of the True Nature of Things” (chos nyid rang gi ngo bo stong pa nyid las mi g.yo bar), has remained more or less stable in the various sources, apart from the inclusion or absence of the word “emptiness” (stong pa nyid). The other half of the title, however, differs significantly in the different sources. First, the titles listed in the Denkarma catalog and Atīśa’s text are shorter than the titles given in the Kangyur collections.12 It is in fact only from the time of Chomden Raltri that we find the longer version of the title “Appearing Differently to All,” and even in these later sources several minor variations are found. For example, in the Degé Kangyur the title given at the end of the text is different from the title page insofar as the word “emptiness” (stong pa nyid) is absent and there is no dative particle (or la don) after the word “all” (thams cad). The title given in this colophon accords more closely with the title found in the Stok Palace Kangyur and other Thempangma lineage Kangyurs.

In addition to these differences, the longer Tibetan title in the various Kangyurs also contains some grammatical features that make it difficult to interpret its meaning with certainty.13 Avoiding these ambiguities, the sūtra is often referred to in later Tibetan sources by the simpler short title The Sūtra of Not Departing from the True Nature of Things (chos nyid mi g.yo ba’i mdo). The longer English title that we have presented here should therefore be seen as one interpretation among several other possibilities. Why and how the title came to vary in these ways is unclear to us at present and deserves further study.

The Sanskrit title as found in the Degé Kangyur also contains elements that make it an unlikely title for an Indian manuscript. For example, the title includes the word āloka (“light” or “illumination”) which, despite being a plausible Sanskrit basis for the Tibetan translation snang ba had the content of the text been different, is difficult to map on to the most likely meaning of the Tibetan in this text, which is “appearing.” Moreover, the Sanskrit word prati is not easily translated into Tibetan as tha dad par, considering the meaning that this Tibetan term occupies in this particular text‍—where it seems to carry the sense of “differently”. More generally, the Sanskrit title does not seem viable as a meaningful title, and, notably, the Stok Palace version also bears no Sanskrit title. It is, therefore, tempting to see the Sanskrit title as a later creation, back-translated and added to the text at some point during its history in Tibet.

Finally, there is also a feature in the Tibetan terminology used in this text that may further hint at this text being originally a translation from Chinese, even if it may subsequently have been edited. Of the eight sūtras in the Kangyur where we find the Tibetan term rang gi ngo bo nyid, four of these (if we include our text among them) are translations from Chinese (Toh 61, Toh 108, Toh 128, and Toh 135).14 Considering the relatively small number of sūtras translated from Chinese compared to the hundreds of sūtras that were translated from Sanskrit, this could be yet another indication of the text’s possibly Chinese origins.15

In light of all these considerations, one should perhaps not rule out the Denkarma catalog’s classification of this text as a translation from Chinese, especially considering that the Denkarma catalog was produced shortly after the translation was made. The Denkarma catalog is a ninth century historical document and, therefore, seems a more reliable source than a translators’ colophon of which there is no trace in any source until at least the fourteenth century.

Of course, neither the Tibetan or Sanskrit titles, the use of the term rang gi ngo bo nyid, or the classification of the Denkarma catalog, themselves constitute proof that this text was translated from Chinese. It is also possible that the original translation from the early ninth century might have been edited by later Tibetan scholars, perhaps with reference to the Sanskrit passages quoted by Maitrīpa. As such, the text in the Kangyur might be a result of editorial interventions produced over several centuries. For the time being, these questions cannot be resolved with certainty.

The sūtra might also seem to present some conundrums of chronology in terms of its doctrinal content. Its main theme is five “analytic positions” that, at first sight‍—to readers in any age later than the tenth or eleventh century‍—would have looked like the summarized views of the four or five historically extant philosophical schools of thought (grub mtha’) constituting the doxography widely adopted in the commentarial literature of the later Madhyamaka. They are also given in the same progressive sequence as the doxography attributes to those schools of thought. Yet the narrative is set at the time of the Buddha, long before any of those schools came into being and even longer before they were categorized and ranked schematically. Early scholars, some of whom mapped the five positions on to the philosophical schools, may have legitimately wondered if the text might have been redacted to reflect that doxography despite the apparent anachronism. It could be that the remark attributed to Dānaśīla in the editorial note added‍—rather unusually‍—to the translators’ colophon was intended to dispel any doubts regarding the sūtra’s canonicity on those grounds.

On the other hand, it is worth pointing out first of all that none of the statements in this sūtra constituting the five “analytic positions” say anything that cannot be found in other sūtras. It is only the way they are set out in an explicitly progressive order that might be seen as a reference to a doxographical classification of views. Indeed, Dānaśīla’s remark points to how doubts invoking an anachronism might actually be inverted. The sūtra’s canonical status itself can be deployed to demonstrate that in it‍—documented as being witnessed and explained by the Buddha himself‍—the fact that people experienced different views as they tried to make sense of the phenomenal world with the guidance of his teachings was simply a natural manifestation of their different human propensities. In other words, this text might be the locus classicus of how a range of views should be (and later were) categorized into a doxography.

This approach is taken most directly by Amé Zhab (a myes zhabs ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams, 1597–1659) in a long commentary on the Kālacakratantra. He specifically equates the five “analytic positions” in the sūtra with the philosophical positions respectively of (1) the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika (don smra ba gnyis), (2) the Cittamatra (sems tsam), (3) the general Madhyamaka (dbu ma spyi), (4) the “illusion-like” Madhyamaka (dbu ma sgyu ma lta bu), and (5) the “nonabiding” Madhyamaka (dbu ma rab tu mi gnas pa). However, he also makes the important distinction between, on the one hand, these views arising in the minds of individuals as they are here recorded as having done in the sūtra and, on the other, their being adopted as views belonging to collective schools of thought. He reinforces his argument by citing instances in other sūtras and tantras featuring the terminology of these views: the Laṅkāvatārasūtra (Toh 107), Sumaghadāvadāna (Toh 346), Hevajratantra (Toh 417–418), Ḍākārṇava (Toh 372), and others.16

However, such assumptions that the five tersely stated views in the sūtra can be directly mapped on to the five well-known philosophical positions do not seem to have been universally accepted. Maitrīpa simply takes them all as a necessary, sequentially coherent, and sufficient set of steps in establishing a correct view, with little reference to names of schools other than Madhyamaka. Yaktönpa’s commentary goes into considerable detail regarding the view, meditation, action, and result of the schools (naming not only the Sautrantika, Cittamatra, and Madhyamaka, but also some of their sub-schools), yet his approach uses the statements from the sūtra to structure and illustrate his exposition, rather than using his exposition to characterize the statements.

None of these commentators, therefore, interpret the five “analytic positions” in ways that could be adduced as anachronistic, and there appear to be no documented suggestions that the text could be apocryphal.

In any case, the fifth and final position upheld in this sūtra as the true and correct one‍—that all things are unborn, nonabiding, without all delimitations of action and activity, beyond conceptualization, and unelaborated from beginningless time17‍—has been cited and paraphrased by many Tibetan scholar-adepts over the centuries, particularly those associated with mahāmudrā or dzogchen. These include Gampopa Sönam Rinchen (1074–1153),18 and Longchenpa Drimé Öser (1308–63),19 among others.20

The sūtra has also been drawn upon by historians. Guru Tashi, the early nineteenth-century historian, while discussing the duration for which the teachings of the Buddha will persist, quotes the Buddha’s prediction in this sūtra that for two thousand five hundred years after the Buddha’s own passing there will still be those who follow and debate these different philosophical views.21

The sūtra does not appear to have attracted modern scholarly attention apart from a single short study in Japanese published in 1971,22 and this is its first translation into English.

This translation is based primarily on the text in the Degé Kangyur, but in consultation with the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and in particular the Stok Palace Kangyur, which in several places was found to have preferable readings. Where the interpretation of the Tibetan text remains tentative, or where the variant readings have been preferred, this has been recorded in the notes.