Chandrakirti (; Sanskrit: चंद्रकीर्ति; ; , meaning "glory of the moon" in Sanskrit) or "Chandra" was a Buddhist scholar of the Madhyamaka school who was based out of the monastery of Nalanda. He was a noted commentator on the works of Nagarjuna () and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. He wrote two influential works on Madhyamaka, the Prasannapadā and the Madhyamakāvatāra.
Chandrakirti does not seem to have been very influential during the 7th to 10th centuries, and his works were never translated into Chinese.Vose 2015, pp. 3-4. However, by the 11th and 12th centuries, his work became influential in the north, especially in Kashmir and in Tibet. Over time, Chandrakirti became a major source for the study of Madhyamaka philosophy in Tibetan Buddhism. Chandrakirti's work was especially promoted by Tibetans like Rendawa Zhönnu Lodrö and his student Tsongkhapa as a way to counter the widespread influence of the Uttaratantra, and the shentong views associated with it.
As noted by Kevin A. Vose, Chandrakirti is seen by many Tibetan Buddhists as offering "the most thorough and accurate vision of Nāgārjuna's emptiness, which, in turn, most fully represents the final truth of the Buddha's teaching."Vose 2015, pp. 2, 6. He is considered by Tibetans to be the main exponent of what they term the "Prāsaṅgika" sub-school of madhyamaka. However, this doxographical categorization only arose in Tibet during the 12th century.
Life Very little is known about Chandrakirti's life, though Tibetan sources state that he was born in South India, became a Buddhist monk and was a student of Kamalabuddhi (who was the student of Buddhapalita).Apple, James B. Candrakirti and Lotus sutra. Bulletin of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, Tōyō Tetsugaku Kenkyūjo Kiyō (The Journal of Oriental Studies), Tokyo No. 31, 2015, pp. 97-122. Tibetan sources like Bu ston and Taranatha state that Chandrakirti was active at Nalanda, where he is said to have become an abbot.Edelglass 2013
According to Karen Lang:According to Bus ton and Taranatha, Candrakirti was born in south India and entered a monastery, where he mastered all the Buddhist scriptures. Taranatha adds that he was born in Samanta during the reign of King Sila, the son of Sriharsa. He took a special interest in Nagarjuna's treatises and studied them with the disciples of two rival interpreters, Bhavaviveka and Buddhapalita. He preferred Buddhapalita's interpretations of Madhyamaka teachings and defended them in a famous debate with the grammarian Candragomin, who supported the idealist position of the Vijñanavada (Doctrine of Consciousness) school.Lang, Karen C. (2003). Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path, pp. 10-11. Oxford University Press.
Tibetan sources further add that during the latter period of his life, he returned to the South of India, where he stayed in the region of Koṅkuna. During his time here, he is said to have worked to defeat and convert many non-Buddhists.
Debate at Nalanda Bu ston and Taranatha both reference a debate that took place at Nalanda between Chandrakirti and the poet-lay scholar, Chandragomin. The debate started after Chandrakirti noticed Chandragomin delivering a lecture to a large crowd on the topics of Pāṇinian grammar, sūtra, and tantra. Chandrakirti invited Chandragomin to come with him to Nalanda, where he could be enrolled into the sangha. However, due to a disagreement, a debate ensued between the two, with Chandrakirti arguing for the Madhyamaka position and Chandragomin taking on the Yogacara view. This debate was said to have attracted a large crowd. Over the course of the debate, Chandrakirti failed to defeat Chandragomin's position, and he began to suspect that someone was secretly teaching Chandragomin. Legend even states that Chandragomin was being tutored by the bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara himself. Both Bu Ston and Taranatha record that the debate only ended after seven years, although neither writer specifies who the winner was.
Philosophy Chandrakirti was a philosopher of the madhyamaka school of Nagarjuna. This school held that all phenomena (dharmas) were empty of intrinsic nature or self-existence (Sanskrit: svabhāva). This includes all Buddhist phenomena including the Buddha, the four noble truths and nirvana. According to Chandrakirti, the apophatic method of madhyamaka is a thoroughgoing negation of all concepts, propositions (pratijñā) and views (dṛṣṭi) which affirms neither existence nor non-existence. Due to this radical negation, madhyamaka is seen as a middle way which rejects all extreme views and positions.
For Chandrakirti, even though all phenomena lack svabhāva, sentient beings impute svabhāva in their experience due to their ignorance about the true nature of reality. Ultimately, all phenomena are merely conceptual constructs (prajñaptimatra) which do not exist in themselves but are mentally imputed dependent designations (prajñāptirupādāya).
Thubten Jinpa outlines what has been seen by commentators as the main philosophical ideas put forth by Chandrakirti as follows:(1) rejection of formal inference based on criteria grounded in objects facts of the world, relying instead on consequential reasoning that reveals logical contradictions and absurd consequences entailed by an opponent's positions, (2) rejection of the key tenets of the Buddhist epistemology initiated by Dignaga and developed further by Dharmakirti, (3) a radical understanding of the inaccessibility of ultimate truth through language and thought, (4) an understanding of conventional truth that appeals for its validity to everyday intuitions of the world instead of philosophical grounding, (5) a unique interpretation of Nagarjuna's statement about his having no thesis, and (6) the possible cessation of mind and mental factors in buddhahood.Jinpa, Thupten (translator); Tsongkhapa, 2021, p. 6.
Two Truths Like all madhyamikas, Chandrakirti defends a theory of two truths with a strict anti-foundationalist character.Thakchoe 2017 According to Chandrakirti, all things (bhāva) have two natures, the conventional and the ultimate.Ruegg 1981, p. 72.
The conventional truth (saṁvṛti satya) is the fact that, provisionally speaking, phenomena have a nature or existence (bhāva). For example, a property of fire is heat and so on. This is the truth of the everyday world (lokasaṁvṛtisatya) and the truth of conventional transaction (vyavahārasatya). However, these conventional properties are not intrinsic natures or svabhāvas (even conventionally speaking), since for Chandra, even conventional truth is empty of intrinsic natures. This view differentiates Chandrakirti from other madhyamikas like Bhāviveka which affirm the conventional existence of intrinsic natures.Padmakara Translation Group 2005, p. 28.
Regarding the ultimate truth (paramārtha satya), when fire is analyzed to find its ultimate nature, no independent essence is found that makes fire hot, and thus fire (and all things, including the most basic concepts like time and causality) have no ultimate essence or nature. This is the ultimate truth i.e. emptiness (śūnyatā) or the lack of self-existence (niḥsvabhāva). It is this very lack of inherent nature in conventional truth that allows it to change and have causal efficacy (arthakriya) and thus, to be a dependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda).
The nature of conventional truth The conventional is the "domain of mundane cognitive process, and is readily accessible for ordinary beings" according to Sonam Thakchoe. The conventional truth can be contrasted with conventional falsehood based on erroneous cognitions. Correct cognition is differentiated from false cognitions by sense faculties that are not impaired. A related distinction which Chandrakirti makes is that between worldly conventions (lokasaṃvṛti), which are epistemically reliable from the point of view of ordinary beings and conventions that do not reflect the world (alokasaṃvṛti) and are thus deceptive even by worldly standards.
"Conventional" (saṁvṛti) can also mean "covering" according to Chandrakirti and is also associated with delusion or ignorance (avidyā). Furthermore, he also glosses the term as codependent (paraparasaṃbhavana) and as being signified (saṁket) or worldly convention (lokavyavahāra).
The conventional truth, especially as experienced by ordinary people (who reify reality), is a concealing and deluded kind of truth which may act as an obstacle to understanding the ultimate.Hayes 2019 From the ultimate point of view in fact, saṁvṛtisatya is not really true. Indeed, Chandrakirti explains that conventional phenomena are illusory and unreal and can be compared to a mirage. The only difference is that conventional phenomena have some causal efficacy from the mundane point of view (for example, water can help a thirsty person, a mirage cannot).
Furthermore, these conventional phenomena are to be differentiated from conventionally illusory entities, such as intrinsic natures or essences that are imputed on to things (which do not exist at all, even conventionally) and conventionally unreal entities (like the horns of a rabbit, which also do not exist at all). The main difference between these latter two unreal phenomena is that the conventionally unreal entities are understood to be unreal by ordinary people, whereas intrinsic nature is not understood to be unreal by ordinary persons. Instead, ordinary persons impute intrinsic nature on to conventional phenomena (such as water etc.) and perceive them as being intrinsically real (only noble beings realize that this is illusory). As such, intrinsic nature is a conceptual fiction in the minds of ordinary beings.
In spite of the unreality of the conventional, Chandrakirti states that the Buddha taught using language and conventional expressions as a way to guide people to the ultimate truth, which is beyond language and cannot be expressed through words.
For Chandrakirti, the way that ordinary beings experience the conventional is very different from the way that awakened saints or noble beings (āryas) experience the conventional. Chandrakirti introduced the concept of mere convention (Tibetan: kun rdzob tsam) to refer to how noble ones experience conventionality, which is quite different to what is held to be conventionally real or conventional true (kun rdzob bden pa). Ordinary beings grasp at and misconstrue phenomena as being intrinsically real, thus they experience conventional reality. Enlightened beings meanwhile, only experience a non-reified kind of appearance, which is perceived as being an unreal construct, like a reflected image.
The nature of the ultimate truth Chandrakirti defines ultimate reality as "the nature of things found by particular exalted cognitive processes (yeshes) of those who perceive reality." He further defines it as follows:“Ultimate is the object, the nature of which is found by particular exalted cognitive processes of those who perceive reality. But it does not exist by virtue of its intrinsic objective reality (svarūpatā / bdag gi ngo bo nyid)."As such, the ultimate truth for Chandra is the nature of all conventional things that is found by a particular exalted perception which sees how things really are. However, as indicated by Chandra, this nature is also not truly real.
According to Chandrakirti, the ultimate truth, emptiness, is seen as having two aspects: selflessness of persons (pudgalanairātmya) and selflessness of phenomena (dharmanairātmya). Chandrakirti provides various arguments to show that persons, phenomena (dharmas) and emptiness itself are all unreal and empty.