The "Ornament of/for Realization[s]", abbreviated AA, is one of five Sanskrit-language Mahayana śastras which, according to Tibetan tradition, Maitreya revealed to Asaṅga in northwest India circa the 4th century AD. (Chinese tradition recognizes a different list of Maitreya texts which does not include the AA.) Those who doubt the claim of supernatural revelation disagree (or are unsure) whether the text was composed by Asaṅga himself, or by someone else, perhaps a human teacher of his.
The AA is never mentioned by Xuanzang, who spent several years at Nalanda in India during the early 7th century, and became a savant in the Maitreya-Asaṅga tradition. One possible explanation is that the text is late and attributed to Maitreya-Asaṅga for purposes of legitimacy. The question then hinges on the dating of the earliest extant AA commentaries, those of Arya Vimuktisena (usually given as 6th century, following possibly unreliable information from Taranatha)See ch. 9 of Makransky. and Haribhadra (late 8th century).
The AA contains eight chapters and 273 verses. Its pithy contents summarize—in the form of eight categories and seventy topics—the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras which the Madhyamaka philosophical school regards as presenting the ultimate truth. Gareth Sparham and John Makransky believe the text to be commenting on the version in 25,000 lines, although it does not explicitly say so. Haribhadra, whose commentary is based on the 8,000-line PP Sūtra, held that the AA is commenting on all PP versions at once (i.e. the 100,000-line, 25,000-line, and 8,000-line versions),Sparham, AA vol. 1, p. xiv; Makransky, p. 129. and this interpretation has generally prevailed within the commentarial tradition.
Several scholars liken the AA to a "table of contents" for the PP.Among them are Edward Conze (The PP Literature, p. 104) and James Apple (Stairway to Nirvana, p. 49.) Edward Conze admits that the correspondence between these numbered topics, and the contents of the PP is "not always easy to see...";From his Preface to the Large Sutrap. x and that the fit is accomplished "not without some violence" to the text.From his AA translation, p. 10. The AA is widely held to reflect the hidden meaning (sbas don) of the PP, with the implication being that its details are not found there explicitly. (Sparham traces this tradition to Haribhadra's student Dharmamitra.) Sparham, AA vol. 1, p. xx. One noteworthy effect is to recast PP texts as path literature. Philosophical differences may also be identified. Conze and Makransky see the AA as an attempt to reinterpret the PP, associated with Mādhyamaka tenets, in the direction of Yogacara.Conze, The PP Literature, p. 104; Makransky, p. 10.
The AA is studied by all lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and is one of five principal works studied in the geshe curriculum of the major Gelug monasteries. Alexander Berzin has suggested that the text's prominence in the Tibetan tradition, but not elsewhere, may be due to the existence of the aforementioned commentary by Haribhadra, who was the disciple of Śāntarakṣita, an influential early Indian missionary to Tibet.In his "Overview..." (cited below), second sentence. Je Tsongkhapa's writings name the AA as the root text of the lamrim tradition founded by Atiśa.
Georges Dreyfus reports that "Gelug monastic universities... take the Ornament as the central text for the study of the path; they treat it as a kind of Buddhist encyclopedia, read in the light of commentaries by Je Dzong-ka-ba, Gyel-tsap Je, and the authors of manuals [monastic textbooks]. Sometimes these commentaries spin out elaborate digressions from a single word of the Ornament."Dreyfus, Georges B.J. (2003) The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk, pp. 175-176. University of California Press. Dreyfus adds that non-Gelug schools give less emphasis to the AA, but study a somewhat larger number of works (including the other texts of the Maitreya-Asanga corpus) in correspondingly less detail.
Title of the work
The text's full title is:
Sanskrit: Tibetan:
Which means:
abhisamaya () - "Realization(s)" () -- "Ornament" (Berzin prefers "Filigree") nāma () -- "called" prajñāpāramitā () - "Perfection of Wisdom" upadeśa () -- "Instructions" (literally, "an up-close look") śāstra ()-- "Treatise"
Thus, a "Treatise [of] Instructions [on the] Perfection of Wisdom, called [the] Ornament [of / for] Realization[s]."
Sparham explains:
"The word abhisamaya is made up of the prefix abhi ("toward, over"), the prefix sam ("together with"), and the root i, a verb of motion with the secondary meaning "to understand." Generally speaking, abhisamaya means a coming together, a "re-union," particularly of a knower with something to be known, hence a "clear realization." In a title abhisamaya may just mean "chapter," hence the title means Ornament for the Clear Realizations or Ornament for the Chapters. Sparham, AA vol 1, pp. xiii-xiv
Conze adds some details about the term's origins:
In the Pali scriptures the term is used to designate the stage when we comprehend the four holy truths. In the Abhidharmakośa (VI 122) it is interpreted as the correct (sam = samyak) knowledge (aya) which is turned toward (abhi) Nirv. In the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra itself it is invariably coupled with prāpti, "attainment," and in one place...it is a synonymn for sāksātkriya (realization).Conze, The PP Literature, pp. 104-105.
As to whether we are speaking of one realization, or of eight, Sparham offers the following explanation by , a 14th-15th century Tibetan commentator:
An admirer views a naturally beautiful woman adorned with golden ornaments reflected in a mirror. The Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras are the naturally beautiful woman. The systematization of the contents of the Sūtras into eight subjects and seventy topics are the golden ornaments, and the Ornament the mirror through which they view her.Sparham, AA vol 1. p. xiii.
Elaborating on the metaphor, Geshe Jampa Gyatso distinguishes between a "natural ornament" (the beautiful woman, the Perfection of Wisdom), "beautifying ornament" (her jewelry, the eight categories and seventy topics), "clarifying ornament" (the mirror, the AA), and "joyful ornament" (the joy of the beholder or AA devotee).From pp. 3-4 of an oral commentary given in Pomaia, Italy, 1998. Transcript reprinted by the Istituto Lama Tsong Khapa, Pomaia, 2008.
Philosophical perspective
The PP Sūtras form the basis for the Mādhyamika ("Middle Way") school of Indian Buddhist philosophy, which Tibetan consensus acknowledges as the "highest" (truest, best) tenet system. Other writings by Maitreya and Asaga, however, form the basis for the rival Yogācāra ("Yoga Adepts") or Cittamātra ("Mind Only" or "Consciousness Only") school. It is therefore perhaps understandable that the AA, as Sparham writes, "straddles the ground between Indian Middle Way and Mind Only..." Conze concurs, ascribing to the AA "an intermediate position between Mādhyamikas and Yogācārins..."Conze, The PP Literature, p. 101.
Conze discovers in the AA "some affinities with other Yogācārin works" and suggests a number of precise correspondences. At the same time, he notes, "Two of the specific doctrines of the Yogācārins, i.e. the 'storeconsciousness' and the three kinds of own-being (svabhāva) are quite ignored."Conze, The PP Literature, pp. 102-103. Eugène Obermiller on the other hand writes that "The main philosophical view expressed in the is that of strictest Monism and of the Non-substantiality and Relativity (śūnyatā) of all separate elements of existence, i.e. the standpoint of the Mādhyamikas." Obermiller sees the AA as the product of interaction between Mahāyāna Buddhism and the Hindu Vedānta philosophy.p.Obermiller, Analysis of the AA, ii-iii. (This is also a main point of his article "The Doctrine of PP...")
Gelugpa writers, following Bu ston, affirm Maitreya's text to represent the Prāsaṅgika viewpoint, but consider Haribhadra and later commentators to have taught something called "Yogācāra Svātantrika Madhyamaka."See Alexander Berzin's "The Five Pathway Minds (The Five Paths): Advanced Presentation," par. 3. The category is often criticized as artificial, even by the standards of Tibetan doxography. Nyingma and Sakya writers agree that the AA contains Madhyamaka teachings, without necessarily endorsing the subdivisions proposed by Gelugpas.
In an aside, Ian Charles Harris finds it "curious" that
"...Maitreya is generally considered to be the mythical instructor of Asaga, and therefore for those who see Māhāyana Buddhism in terms of schools [as Harris does not], to be the founder of the Yogācāra-Vijñānanavāda. One wonders why someone seeking to establish a rival school to Nāgārjuna should wish to write a treatise on the Prajñāpāramitā if, as many authors believe, it is amenable only to an interpretation from the standpoint of the Prāsa-Madhyamaka."The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 72.
Harris goes on to note the "strange fact" that Tsongkhapa would be a self-avowed Prasangika, despite his system's assignment of "all the great Madhyamaka authorities on the Prajñāpāramitā" to Yogācāra Svātantrika Madhyamaka.The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 73
According to Makransky, the AA was designed to impose a Yogācāra framework and vocabulary onto the PP. AA commentator Arya Vimuktisena preserves this Yogācāra reading; however, Makransky sees Haribhadra's reading as an attempt to "Mādhyamika-ize" the AA. Later Tibetan commentators broadly follow Haribhadra.Makransky, p. 10.
The Eight Categories and Seventy Topics
The AA is divided into eight categories, which correspond to the eight chapters of the work, and (with one technical exception in chapter eight) According to Geshe Jampa Gyatso, the eighth category is the "resultant truth body" whereas the eighth clear realization is the "resultant exalted wisdom truth body." This reflects a Gelug understanding. From p. 1 of a 1998 oral commentary printed in 2008 and privately circulated by the Istituto Lama Tsong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy. to the eight "realizations" said to be necessary for full enlightenment. (Conze remarks that these eight are "not attested elsewhere.") The Prajnaparamita Literature, p. 105.
This division into eight appears thus at the beginning of the AA itself:
[The Buddhas] proclaim the Perfection of Wisdom [Sūtra] by way of eight subjects. These eight are the knowledge of all aspects, knowledge of paths, and all knowledge. Then there is the awakening to all aspects, when culmination is attained, serial, awakening in an instant, and the Truth Body. [AA verses 1.4 and 1.5, Sparham translation]Sparham, AA. vol. 1, p. xviii.
These eight categories naturally fall into three groups, as shown below. The seventy topics (here enumerated but not shown) are their subdivisions. Obermiller traces this list to a manual attributed to 'Jam dbyangs Bzhad pa, who also created the various definitions and category-boundaries familiar to Tibetan debaters.Obermiller, Analysis of the AA, p. v. The text may be subdivided further still, into 1,200 items.
Unless otherwise indicated, the English terms below follow Sparham's translation (which revises Conze's).
The Three Knowledges
The first three categories represent the objects or goals of practice, whose attainment leads to peace for the four classes of Buddhist practitioner. Obermiller calls them "the 3 Kinds of Omniscience," while Toh prefers "the Three Exalted Knowers" and Berzin, "the Three Sets of Realized Awareness."
1. Knowledge of all aspects (Sarvākārajñatā, rnam pa tham cad mkhyen pa).............................10 topics (Wisdom attained by Buddhas; inclusive of categories two and three below)
2. Knowledge of paths (Mārgākārajñatā, lam shes pa)....................................................11 topics