Nalanda Mahavihara

The most important philosopher in the history of Buddhism after the Buddha himself, and one of the most rigorous philosophical minds of any tradition in any era. His Mūlamadhyamakakārikā established Madhyamaka philosophy by demonstrating that no phenomenon — including causation, time, motion, selfhood, and nirvana itself — possesses svabhāva: inherent, independent existence. Everything arises in dependence on conditions. Crucially, emptiness itself is empty: if Śūnyatā were a positive doctrine about the ultimate nature of things, it would be a new absolute — which Nāgārjuna argues against with the same rigour he applies to everything else. He is available here in two versions: as this Nalanda-specific simulacrum and as the Divinity School’s Madhyamaka simulacrum in the Buddhist Annexe below.

Can help you study: The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Śūnyatā and what it does and does not mean, svabhāva and its denial, the Two Truths doctrine, the debate between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, and the question of whether Śūnyatā is nihilism.

Nāgārjuna’s principal disciple and the figure who extended the Madhyamaka tradition into systematic refutation of all competing philosophical schools. His Catuḥśataka (“Four Hundred Verses”) attacks Buddhist and non-Buddhist positions from a Madhyamaka standpoint, demonstrating in each case that the position cannot be coherently maintained. The Madhyamaka lineage — Nāgārjuna to Āryadeva to Candrakīrti — is the spine of the Nalanda philosophical tradition.

Can help you study: The Catuḥśataka and its arguments, the extension of Prāsaṅga into systematic philosophical debate, the Madhyamaka critique of rival schools, and the lineage from Nāgārjuna through Āryadeva to Candrakīrti.

The only major philosopher in the Nalanda tradition who explicitly changed his fundamental position — radically. In his first phase he wrote the Abhidharmakośa, the most comprehensive account of Sarvastivadin Buddhist metaphysics, while privately sympathising with Sautrāntika objections. Converted by his brother Asaṅga to Yogācāra, he then wrote the Viṃśikā and Triṃśikā, arguing for vijnaptimatratā — experience is of representations only, not of independently existing external objects.

Can help you study: The Abhidharmakośa, vijnaptimatratā and its arguments, the Viṃśikā’s refutation of external realism, the relationship between Vasubandhu’s two phases, and whether Yogācāra is idealism.

Co-founder of the Yogācāra school whose Mahāyānasaṃgraha addressed the question the Abhidharma could not answer: what is the basis of continuity of consciousness across momentary mental events and across lifetimes, without positing a permanent self? His answer: the ālayavijñāna — the storehouse consciousness — carrying karmic seeds without being a self in any metaphysical sense.

Can help you study: The Mahāyānasaṃgraha, the ālayavijñāna and its function, the three natures (trisvabhāva), Yogācāra as a philosophical system, and the problem of how consciousness can be continuous without a self.

The founder of Buddhist logic and epistemology as a formal discipline. His Pramāṇasamuccaya established the framework for all subsequent Buddhist epistemology: exactly two valid sources of knowledge — perception and inference — and nothing else. His Hetucakra mapped all possible logical relationships between a reason and its target. His apoha theory of meaning — that a word’s meaning is the exclusion of everything it does not refer to — is one of the most sophisticated theories of meaning in any tradition.

Can help you study: The Pramāṇasamuccaya, the two valid sources of knowledge, the Hetucakra, the apoha theory of meaning, and the comparison of Buddhist logic with Aristotelian and Fregean approaches.

The great systematiser of Buddhist logic whose Pramāṇavārttika extended and radicalised Dignāga’s system. His central criterion: what is real is what is causally efficacious. If something can make a difference to how things go, it is real; if it cannot, it is a conceptual construction. Universals, enduring substances, the self — most of what we ordinarily take to be real fails this test. Tibetan Buddhist philosophy is, substantially, the extended commentary on Dharmakīrti.

Can help you study: Causal efficacy as the criterion of the real, the Pramāṇavārttika, momentarism and its implications, the apoha theory, the proof of rebirth, and the influence of Dharmakīrti on Tibetan philosophy.

The philosopher who definitively systematised the Prāsaṅgika interpretation of Madhyamaka — the reading of Nāgārjuna that became standard in Tibetan Buddhism. His Madhyamakāvatāra opens by placing compassion as simultaneously seed, water, and fruit of the bodhisattva path. Against Bhāvaviveka, he argued that Prāsaṅga — drawing out the absurd consequences of the opponent’s own premises — is both necessary and sufficient. His Prasaṃnapadā is the most important commentary on Nāgārjuna’s root text.

Can help you study: Prāsaṅgika vs Svātantrika Madhyamaka, the Madhyamakāvatāra, the Prasaṃnapadā, the debate with Bhāvaviveka, and the Tibetan reception of Candrakīrti.

A monk of Nalanda whose Bodhicaryāvatāra is the most beloved Mahāyāna text after the canonical scriptures: simultaneously devotional poem, philosophical treatise on emptiness, and practical guide to the cultivation of bodhicitta. The chapter on patience is among the most rigorous in any ethical tradition. Chapter nine on wisdom gives one of the most condensed statements of Madhyamaka. This is the Nalanda-specific simulacrum; the Divinity School version appears in the Buddhist Annexe below.

Can help you study: The Bodhicaryāvatāra chapter by chapter, bodhicitta, patience (ch. 6), the exchange of self and other (ch. 8), the wisdom chapter (ch. 9), and the relationship between philosophical understanding and ethical transformation.

The philosopher who built the most systematic synthesis of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, then went to Tibet to become the first abbot of Samyé. His Tattvasamgraha is a systematic examination and refutation of every major philosophical position available in 8th-century India. He recommended Padmasambhava to the Tibetan king; together they established Samyé and the translation bureau that preserved Nalanda’s texts in Tibetan.

Can help you study: The Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, the Tattvasamgraha, the founding of Samyé, the transmission of Nalanda to Tibet, and whether Yogācāra and Madhyamaka are ultimately compatible.

The Chinese Buddhist monk who walked from Chang’an to Nalanda and back — seventeen years, approximately 25,000 kilometres — and whose Da Tang Xiyu Ji is the most detailed eyewitness account of Nalanda at its height. He studied under the abbot Śīlabhadra, mastered Sanskrit, and returned to China with 657 Buddhist texts he spent the rest of his life translating. He is the only simulacrum in this department whose primary value is not philosophical argument but testimony: he was there, he saw it, he wrote it down.

Can help you study: The Da Tang Xiyu Ji and its evidence, Nalanda as a physical institution, the relationship between Chinese and Indian Buddhism, Xuanzang’s translations, and Journey to the West as a literary transformation of his pilgrimage.

The last great master of Nalanda, and the figure who carried the tradition to Tibet for a second time — not as an exporter but as a restorer. The king of western Tibet sent three men to invite him; two died in the attempt. His Bodhipathapradīpa reorganised the entire Buddhist path into three scopes. Every subsequent Tibetan lam rim text — including Tsongkhapa’s Lam Rim Chenmo — is a commentary on it. He is the last link between the living Nalanda tradition and its Tibetan continuation.

Can help you study: The Bodhipathapradīpa and the three scopes, the lam rim tradition, the revival of Buddhism in western Tibet, the relationship between Atiśa and Tsongkhapa, and what it means to restore rather than originate a tradition.

The oldest voice. The Pali Canon preserves the Buddha’s teaching as transmitted by the Theravāda tradition — the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, dependent origination, and the three marks of existence. This is the Buddha before the commentaries, before the schools, before the philosophical elaborations. Nalanda was the institution that turned this teaching into a philosophical tradition of extraordinary rigour.

Can help you study: The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, dependent origination, the three marks of existence, the Pali suttas, and the practice of seeing things as they are.

The Buddha thinking through emptiness. Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā takes the Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination to its logical conclusion: everything is empty of inherent existence — including emptiness itself. The Divinity School’s Madhyamaka simulacrum, complemented by the Nalanda-specific Nāgārjuna above.

Can help you study: Śūnyatā, the two truths, dependent origination as emptiness, the Madhyamaka dialectic, and what it means that nothing has a fixed nature — not even this teaching.

The Buddha as compassion in action. The Bodhicaryāvatāra is the path of the bodhisattva — the being who postpones personal liberation to work for the liberation of all. The Divinity School’s version of the Nalanda monk; complemented by the Nalanda-specific Śāntideva above.

Can help you study: The bodhisattva path, the six perfections, patience, compassion, the exchange of self and other, and the practice of taking on the suffering of others.

The Buddha as the Lotus-Born. Padmasambhava carried the dharma to Tibet — carrying what Nalanda had built to a culture that would preserve it through the destruction to come. Founder of the Nyingma, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Can help you study: Vajrayāna, the introduction of dharma to Tibet, terma (treasure teachings), the Nyingma tradition, and the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of consciousness, death, and the bardo.