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Śāntarakṣita
Indian Buddhist philosopher (725-788) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Śāntarakṣita (Sanskrit: शान्तरक्षित; Tibetan: ཞི་བ་འཚོ, Wylie: zhi ba tsho,[3] 725–788),[4] whose name translates into English as "protected by the One who is at peace"[5] was an important and influential Indian Buddhist philosopher, particularly for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.[6] Śāntarakṣita was a philosopher of the Madhyamaka school who studied at Nalanda monastery under Jñānagarbha, and became the founder of Samye, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet.
Śāntarakṣita | |
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![]() 19th-century painting depicting biographical episodes from the life of Shantarakshita | |
Personal | |
Born | |
Religion | Mahayana Buddhism |
Occupation | Translator, Philosopher, Abbot |
Śāntarakṣita defended a synthetic philosophy which combined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logico-epistemology of Dharmakirti into a novel Madhyamaka philosophical system.[6] This philosophical approach is known as Yogācāra-Mādhyamika or Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamika in Tibetan Buddhism.[7][6] Unlike other Madhyamaka philosophers, Śāntarakṣita accepted Yogācāra doctrines like mind-only (cittamatra) and self-reflective awareness (svasamvedana), but only on the level of conventional truth.[8][9] According to James Blumenthal, this synthesis is the final major development in Indian Buddhist philosophy before the disappearance of Buddhism from India (c. 12-13th centuries).[9]