Madhyamaka in South Asia and Beyond: RYI Scholars and Alumni Present at Vienna’s Largest Buddhist Philosophy Conference
An account of this conference by RYI visiting scholar of Buddhist Studies, Dr. Daniel McNamara
From August 18th to 22nd, 160 scholars from 27 countries gathered in Vienna (and at least 30 more participated online) for a conference titled “Madhyamaka in South Asia and Beyond,” hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It was the largest academic conference on Buddhist philosophy to date, organized in partnership with the University of Vienna—where several RYI graduates have moved on to pursue PhDs, and also the home university of several visiting scholars and researchers who have spent time with us in Boudha.
The conference was a resounding success. The atmosphere was full of interest and collegiality, with some speakers shedding new light on texts and persons, while others offered new interpretations. One paper in the former category that struck me was given by Ven. Bandeng (Renmin University of China), who discussed the available compositions of Atiśa’s teacher Serlingpa (གསེར་གླིང་པ་, aka Dharmakīrtiśrī, etc). Ven. Bandeng argued that Serlingpa was definitely a follower of Madhyamaka and not yogācāra and that the mistake was most likely due to conflating Serlingpa with Atiśa’s other most important teacher, Ratnākaraśānti. Regarding new interpretations, the paper given by former RYI Principle and Professor Philippe Turenne, whose paper title speaks for itself: “Reassessing the Third Option in the Madhyamaka Tetralemma: A Comprehensive Survey and Methodological Analysis of Contemporary Interpretations.” Philippe offered an overview of scholarship on Nāgārjuna’s “third lemma,” which considers whether conditioned things can arise from a mixture of themselves and other factors. My own paper—with the intentionally dramatic title “The Two Truths are Not Enough”—was part of a panel focused on the important 11th century scholar-siddha Ratnākaraśānti (རིན་ཆེན་འབྱུང་གནས་ཞི་བ་). In that paper, I presented translations and explained the arguments behind two startling claims that Ratnākaraśānti makes: (1) that Nāgārjuna accepted the three natures, and (2) that the Sixty Stanzas on Reasoning (Yuktiṣaṣṭikā)—not the Root Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā)—is Nāgārjuna’s most important work. I am happy to report that both Philippe’s talk and my own were very well attended and well received. As a result of my paper, I am currently in touch with a number of scholars from across the world regarding Yogācāra critiques of Madhyamaka philosophy.
A number of RYI alumni—students and faculty—also participated in the conference. RYI graduate Ryan Conlon, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at Hamburg University, gave an insightful talk on the relationships between Madhyamaka literature and Indian commentaries concerning the generation stage (བསྐྱེད་རིམ་, utpattikrama) in Buddhist tantric practice. Jorge Bartolomé Herrero (Ph.D. Candidate, Complutense University of Madrid) began studying Classical Tibetan through one of RYI’s online courses and is now completing a dissertation on Tsongkhapa’s “Eight Difficult Points” (དཀའ་གནས་བརྒྱད་). Seth Auster-Rosen (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago), who attended RYI’s summer program and also attended events at Gomde California, delivered an excellent talk on the Eight Karmapa’s Madhyamaka thought in relation to Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s philosophy of Other-Emptiness (གཞན་སྟོང་). An alumna of our TTP program also presented, “Yo-yo” Yat Ching Yeung (Ph.D. Candidate, Temple University). Yo-yo presented on Prāsaṅgika interpretations of Candrakīrti’s philosophy, specifically regarding epistemology.
A number of other scholars connected to RYI in various ways also gave presentations. These include Jan Westerhoff (Oxford University), who has given short courses on philosophy at RYI; David Higgins (Tsadra Foundation), who has taught Advanced Classical Tibetan for our Summer Programs; and Klaus Dieter-Mathes, a frequent visitor and speaker at RYI who has also served as co-advisor or external examiner for several of our MA students’ theses.
