The Tibetan tradition terms Bhavavi

The Tibetan tradition terms Bhavaviveka’s (subsub)school ‘Sautrantika-Svatantrika Madhyamika’ in order to distinguish it from the subsequent development of Yogacara- Svatantrika Madhyamika under Śāntarakṣita and his pupil Kamalaśīla (eighth century). The basic text for the Yogacara-Svatantrika tradition is Śantarakṣita’s Madhyamakālaṃkāra, with an autocommentary, and a subcommentary by Kamalaśīla. Śantarakṣita was influenced by the development of Buddhist ‘idealism’ (see Chapter 4 below), the Yogacara tradition, which he is able to use as a stage on the path to establish the Madhyamika position. The principal Yogacara element in Śantarakṣita’s thought seems to lie in a view that, although ultimately absolutely everything lacks any fundamentally real existence (the sort of existence associated with a svabhāva), conventionally objects are not external to the reflexively aware perceiving mind. Bhavaviveka accepted that conventional objects are genuinely external to consciousness, as aggregates of atoms, and so he is termed a ‘Sautrantika-Svatantrika Madhyamika’ because his position in this respect is like that of the non-Mahayana Sautrantika tradition. Kamalaśīla also wrote a number of independent works, particularly the Madhyamakāloka, and three Bhāvanākramas showing the stages of Madhyamika practice. Both Śantarakṣita and Kamalaśīla were important early missionaries to Tibet, and according to some sources Kamalaśīla is said to have been murdered there by anti-Buddhist rivals. Among later Yogacara-Svatantrikas should also be mentioned Haribhadra (late eighth century), whose Abhisamayālaṃ- kārālokā is the principal Indian commentary to the Perfection of Wisdom treatise, the Abhisamayālaṃkāra.