Dharmakirti on Compassion and Rebirth- With a Study of Backward Causation in Buddhism

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Dharmakirti on Compassion and Rebirth highlights the religious dimension of Buddhist logic and epistemology by way of individual studies on fundamental and controversial philosophical and religious issues in Dharmakīrti’s notions of com-passion, karma, rebirth, the objects of meditation, the reliability of the Buddha, the four noble truths, the path to enlightenment, and related topics. The book also presents the first attempt to translate large portions of Prajnakaragupta’s commentarial masterpiece, the Pramaṇavarttikalankarabhaṣya. At the occasion of its second edition, the book has been supplemented with a new substantial study which addresses a remarkable theory developed by Prajnakaragupta and called “the doctrine of a future cause” (bhavikaranavada). This is a highly original theory of backward causation, or retrocausation, which Prajnakaragupta employs in his proof of rebirth, his explanation of the yogic perception of past and future objects, and his understanding of pervasion (vyapti) as an essential feature of inference.

Eli Franco is director of the Department of Indology and Central Asian Studies at the University of Leipzig, and a Member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. His main research area is the history of Indian philosophy with special emphasis on the Buddhist philosophical traditions. Franco has authored a foundational study on skepticism in classical South Asia, particularly in its relation to the materialistic tradition of Lokāyata. Further, he edited and partly reconstructed the “Spitzer Manuscript,” the earliest philosophical Sanskrit manuscript, which goes back to the period of the Kushanas and was discovered by the Third Prussian Turfan expedition in Kizil (Chinese Central Asia). Thanks to a cooperation with the China Tibetology Research Center, Beijing, Franco has been conducting research projects on unique Sanskrit manuscripts of works by the renowned Buddhist philosophers Jitāri and Yamāri that have survived in Tibet.

The Pramanasiddhi-chapter, the second chapter of the Pramanavarttika, is unique in Dharmakirti's writings. DharmakIrti (ca. 600-660) is the sort of author who writes on the same issue several times, elaborating and refining his thoughts in the process, sometimes modifying them radically. Of course, the major and general subjects of classical Indian epistemology, namely, perception and inference, are treated in one form or another in all of Dharmakirti's writings, but there are also some specific topics, such as the determination of vyapti, that run like a leitmotif through his work. In stark contrast, religious issues are dealt with nowhere else but in the Pramanasiddhi-chapter. This chapter, therefore, stands apart as representing the only period, early in his career, in which Dharmakirti wrote on religious issues (albeit in a philosophical manner) such as karma and rebirth, modes of meditation, the four noble truths, the Buddha's compassion, the path to enlightenment, etc.

Although two monographs and a number of important papers have been written on the Pramanasiddhi-chapter, it has received far less attention than Dharmakirti's work on inference, on which Steinkeliner published his path-breaking editions, translations and studies in the sixties and seventies, influencing decisively the course of Dharmakfrtian studies for many years to come. I hope, therefore, that the present monograph will advance our knowledge of the religious background of Buddhist logic and epistemology.

Pramanasiddhi 34-131 ab, our subject matter here, can be considered structurally as a commentary on a single compound jagaddhitaisin ("seeking the benefit of all living beings"), in the mangalasloka of Dignaga's Pramana-samuccaya , thematically as forming a paralokasiddhi treatise, and philosophically as dealing above all with the two fundamental problems of the immortality of the mind and of the mind-body relationship. Contrary to what one might expect, Dharmakirti's purpose in these verses is not to prove that the Buddha seeks the benefit of all living beings, nor even that the Buddha was compassionate. That proof, as I try to show in chapter I, is accomplished by establishing direct and indirect relationships among certain properties of the Buddha. Dharmakirti and his commentators suggest a relatively large number of schemes as to how one Buddha-property might be derived or deduced from another. I present six such schemes, and a seventh one in an addendum, without claiming to be exhaustive. Further, I try to show that behind these seemingly endless arrangements and rearrangements of Buddha-properties lies a genuine philosophical problem concerning the relationship between faith and reason in the Buddhist tradition. Since we have not attained enlightenment, we (presumably including Dharmakirti) do not remember our past lives and do not understand how the law of karma operates in detail. Therefore, these intriguing parts of the Buddha's teaching, which are not accessible to us through perception or inference and which, according to Dharmakirti, are not essential to the teaching, have to be accepted on faith. The truthfulness of these statements of the Buddha can only be inferred indirectly from the reliability of the person. Thus, by proving that the Buddha is a trustworthy authority in these matters, i.e., that he knows the truth and has no reason to lie to us, one can also establish the authority and trustworthiness of his teachings. But how do we know that the Buddha is a reliable person? Dharmakirti's answer to this question hinges on his interpretation of the Buddha's properties mentioned by Dignaga and their relationship.

In the second part of this chapter I also try to show that the problem of religious authority and reliability was by no means confined to the Buddhist tradition alone. Interestingly enough, the solution proposed by Dharmakirti for establishing the authority of the Buddha is structurally similar to Vatsyayana's proof of the authority of the Vedas and to the proof of Siva's authority put forth by the Tantric author Sadyojyotis. Thus, we deal here with a topic that cuts across the boundaries of different religious traditions and various philosophical schools.

The concept of authority/means of knowledge (pramana) forms the subject matter of chapter 11. In this chapter I try to argue that contrary to previous interpretations, the initial verses of the Pramanasiddhi-chapter should not be taken as intending a general definition of the means of knowledge, but, in compliance with the general purport of the chapter, only as arguing that the Buddha is a means of knowledge. This analysis is supported by the observation that up to Dharmakirti's time no philosopher tried to define the means of knowledge in general, and therefore one need not expect Dharmakirti to do so either. It seems that Dharmottara was the first to have focused on a doctrine of general validity and to have made it the important topic that we know it to be from later works, for even Santaraksita and Kamalasila are still concerned above all with the issue of extrinsic vs. intrinsic validity.

**Contents and Sample Pages**