Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nying-ma Tradition.

• Author: Haskett, Christian
• Position: Book review

Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nying-ma Tradition. By Douglas S. Duckworth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. Pp. xxxiv + 292. $80 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).

This book begins with an introduction that covers Mipam's life, situates his work in the history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, the Nyingma tradition, and the relatively recent Non-Sectarian (ris med) movement in Tibet. Bookending these remarks, Duckworth announces his aim to accomplish a "holistically-oriented" and "broad-based representation of Mipam's view of Buddha-nature that takes into account his treatment of epistemology, negative dialectics, and tantra" (p. xvii). Throughout, he promises to emphasize the dialectic between presence absence, arguing successfully for the superior utility of these over and against the more popular affirmation and negation. His task, throughout, is to demonstrate the centrality of Buddha-nature throughout Mipam's work.

In the first chapter, Mipam's creative genius comes quickly to the forefront. Duckworth lays out Mipam's two models of the two truths. While other philosophers designate these as conventional (samvrtti / kun rdzob) and ultimate (paramartha / don dam), Mipam's schemae take them as appearance / emptiness (snang ba Istong nyid) and authentic / inauthentic (gnas snang mthun / mi mthun, lit., "the mode of appearance [not] in accord with the way it is") experience. Later commentators explain that the first model is based on the second wheel sutras and Candrakirti's Madhyamakavatara and the second relies on third turning sutras and the Uttaratantra. In Mipam's system, each of the two truths is ultimately reconcilable with the other, and the two systems are mutually illuminating, not contradictory. Thus, "[t]he indivisibility of the two truths, empty appearance, is Buddha-nature; and the unity of appearance and emptiness is what is known in authentic experience" (p. 26); thus, emptiness and Buddha-nature are compatible.

Mipam's particular structuring of Svatantrika, Yogacara, and Prasangika distinctions within the Madhyamaka provides the focus of chapter two. Mipam's theory of ultimate truth distinguishes between a conceptual negation, which is an object of thought and language and refers to a mere absence, and a negation free from conceptual constructs. Duckworth translates these (rnam grangs pa / rnam grangs min pa) as "categorized" and "uncategorized." These two also correspond to post-meditative understanding and an...