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Concept
Śāntarakṣita
Summary
(Sanskrit: शान्तरक्षित; , 725–788), whose name translates into English as "protected by the One who is at peace" was an important and influential Indian Buddhist philosopher, particularly for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. 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 defended a synthetic philosophy which combined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logico-epistemology of Dharmakirti into a novel Madhyamaka philosophical system. This philosophical approach is known as Yogācāra-Mādhyamika or Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamika in Tibetan Buddhism. 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. 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).
There are few historical records of Śāntarakṣita, with most available material being from hagiographic sources. Some of his history is detailed in a 19th-century commentary by Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso drawn from sources like the Blue Annals, Buton and Taranatha. According to Ju Mipham, Śāntarakṣita was the son of the king of Zahor (in east India around the modern day states of Bihar and Bengal). Tibetan sources refer to him, Jñānagarbha and Kamalasila as rang rgyud shar gsum meaning the "three eastern Svātantrikas".
Most sources contain little information about his life in India, as such all that can be known is that he was an Indian monk in the Mulasarvastivada lineage in the Pala Empire. Tibetan sources also state he studied under Jñānagarbha, and eventually became the head of Nalanda University after mastering all branches of learning.
He was first invited to Tibet by king Trisong Detsen (c. 742–797) to help establish Buddhism there and his first trip to Tibet can be dated to 763.
Official source
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