The Debate Between Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment

As Seen in Two Major Works of the Madhyamika School:

The Bodhicaryāvatāra and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Dave DeFrank

REL 645 Indian Buddhism - Final Paper

12/7/15

When I first learned about the Madhyamika school of Indian Buddhism I came to it from the

standpoint of a modern Zen practitioner and it immediately struck a resonance with what I had

learned in my contemporary practice. The focus on emptiness, especially as laid out in

Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā was completely in line with the doctrines and meditation

practice I had been trained in. The text offered no positivist reasoning, and no direct

recommendation for forms of practice in order to understand the enlightenment it was describing.

Instead it systematically disproved all preconceived notions of reality and traditional Buddhist

teachings until all that was left was an understanding of reality as essentially groundless. In this

understanding there is no suffering to be experienced and thus ultimate liberation is immediately

and fully realized.

I understood this technique not as a matter of stylistic choice or nihilism, but rather a

necessary demonstration of what it teaches. To prove emptiness one cannot recommend a new

way of thinking because this too would invite reductionist critique and not truly exhibit

emptiness. In the same way, to recommend any certain practice as a way of training to

understand emptiness would create new constructs of self and mind, and thus take the
practitioner away from a true experience of the emptiness of self. This is also how zazen is

taught in the Soto Zen school in which I’ve been trained. I was taught that it is not a meditation

technique, it is simply sitting with reality as it is. If one were to use mental objects or techniques

in zazen, it would only add to the illusory mind which is the source of delusion in the first place.

So how is one to practice then? Much the same way as Nāgārjuna wrote his

Mulamadhyamakakirika. Simply see reality, and see what it is actually made of. As you have

thoughts, good or bad, simply see them for what they are and seeing this, they will fall away of

their own. Even this habit of dropping off itself falls away and one will be left with only ultimate

reality as it actually is, freed from the experience of suffering and samsara. It is a subtractive

process, that is actually no process at all, because it is based on the idea that ultimate reality has

no inherent existence and all you are doing is viewing it without adding anything else to it.

Understanding this as foundational to the Madhyamika way of thinking I was surprised

when I read Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra. While some of the work does read like Nāgārjuna’s

deconstructionism, the majority of the text is devoted to exhortations for specific modes of

practice, and threats of hell fire and suffering for those who do not hold to these means. This

seemed incongruous. If Śāntideva comes from the same school as Nāgārjuna that teaches reality

as ultimately groundless, than why would he threaten hell and suffering for those who live in sin?

Nāgārjuna never spoke of sin, only ignorance. How could Śāntideva recommend a clear path of

practice in the way he did if he too understands that all one has to do is see reality for what it is

in the present moment to attain liberation?

These differences, while born of the same understanding of dharma and reality, are

exemplary of a split that occurred in Mahayana Buddhism between the doctrines of sudden and

gradual enlightenment. This split is best exemplified in the modern world by the differences in
practice between Tibetan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, with Tibetan practice emphasizing a

course of gradual cultivation and Zen Buddhism teaching a practice of sudden awakening. This is

a debate that stretches back over a thousand years and was contentious in both Tibet and China

before each chose their respective paths. What one sees even today is that the essential

understanding of awakening each teaches is the same, but the methods and teachings to get there

are radically different and diametrically opposed. Looking at Nāgārjuna’s and Śāntideva’s texts

we see the roots of this split, with Nāgārjuna demonstrating an approach of sudden awakening,

and Śāntideva laying out a course of gradual cultivation. In this paper I will be doing a

comparative analysis of these two texts to show how they embody the different methods and then

ultimately show how despite their differences they in fact demonstrate the same understanding of

enlightenment and reality. I will begin by using historical accounts of this debate in China and

Tibet to understand the conflict as it was perceived near the time of Śāntideva’s writing. Having

already examined Nāgārjuna’s work in my previous paper for this class, I will here go through

the Bodhicaryāvatāra in closer detail comparing the practice he lays out with Nāgārjuna’s

teaching, referring each back to the historical debate between sudden and gradual enlightenment,

and the differing meditation techniques and practice paths that grew out of these influences. My

ultimate aim is to show how these two different approaches are not only rooted in the same

understanding, but are actually complementary and in fact cannot exist without each other.

Rather than being a debate to be won by one side or the other, they are in fact two necessary

halves of the same Buddhism.

There is probably no more concise illustration of sudden versus gradual enlightenment

then the account found in the Platform Sutra of the poetry contest between Huineng and Shenxiu.
Most likely composed in the 8th century near to the time of Śāntideva, 1 the story has been used

for centuries in China and the surrounding countries who adopted its Chan Buddhism to argue

for the supremacy of the sudden enlightenment doctrine. In the story, Hongren, abbot of the East

Mountain Temple and fifth patriarch of Chan, announces a poetry contest where the person who

can demonstrate the greatest understanding will become his successor and the sixth patriarch.

Shenxiu was Hongren’s chief disciple and was expected to win, so no other monks bothered to

compete. Still unsure of himself though, Shenxiu wrote his poem in secret on a wall of the

temple in the middle of the night. It read:

The body is the bodhi tree;

The mind is like a mirror stand.

Constantly strive to keep it polished

And never let dust collect

Huineng was an illiterate wood cutter who had attained sudden realization when he heard a

passing monk reciting the Diamond Sutra while out in the forest. After this awakening he came

to the temple where Hongren, despite recognizing his enlightenment, made him work as a laborer

so as not to make the other monks jealous. Hearing of the contest and Shenxiu’s verse, Huineng

is said to have understood that it lacked full understanding. So he went to the wall the following

night and dictated a verse for another monk to write beside Shenxiu’s. It read:

From the beginning bodhi has no tree;

The mirror also has no stand

Buddha nature is always pure

where is there for dust to settle?

Seeing this second verse, Hongren was forced to acknowledge its superiority. He secretly gave

Huineng transmission as the sixth patriarch and then told him to flee before the other monks

found out and tried to kill him out of jealousy.

One can see in the poems a perfect illustration of the difference between the two

doctrines. In Shenxiu’s version, Buddhist practice is a matter of cleaning off dust to uncover the

Buddha nature underneath. Cleaning dust here is a metaphor for purifying one’s mind of

defilements and delusion in a process of gradual cultivation towards a mind of enlightenment.

Huineng’s verse contrasts this with the understanding that both body and mind are already

fundamentally empty and that this emptiness is the innately pure and perfect buddha nature of

enlightenment. If one understands this, there are no delusions or defilements to clean and nothing

that needs to be cultivated, because the only mind that exists is the empty, pure, and perfect

buddha nature. The story makes plain its preference for Huineng’s understanding of practice, and

the history of Chan and Zen Buddhism ever since has been guided by this preference for sudden

awakening. One can easily see the influence on modern zazen practice as described in the

introduction to this paper. As the founder of Soto Zen, Dogen Zenji taught, sitting practice itself

is already enlightenment, even from the first moment. 4 As is popular to say in Zen centers today

“one moment zazen, one moment buddha.” 5

This story is contrasted by accounts of the Council of Lhasa held in Tibet also in the 8th

century. As opposed to China, where sudden enlightenment became the dominant teaching after
this time period, Tibet made the conscious decision that gradual cultivation was to be its

dominant practice. The Council of Lhasa is said to be the deciding factor in this decision. The

council was sponsored by King Trisong Detsän to test the Chinese monk Móhēyǎn’s sudden

enlightenment teachings against the Indian monk Kamalaśīla representing the side of gradual

cultivation.

Móhēyǎn was famous for teaching a practice of seated meditation that involved only

seeing the mind of no-thought and the dropping off of even this awareness of mind, similar to

contemporary zazen. However during the debate he was forced to concede that those of lesser

faculties would not be able to attain enlightenment this way and would need to use means of

gradual cultivation in order to become ready for such practice. This left him vulnerable to

critiques of dualism in his teachings and so the debate is said to have been decided in

Kamalaśīla’s favor, at which point Tibet committed itself to a practice of gradual cultivation as

evidenced by current Vajrayāna schools of Buddhism. Tibetan schools now generally follow a

rigid, structured path, starting the novice with Hinayana practice of cultivating the mind,

progressing through Mahayana practices of emptiness, finally culminating in higher Tantric

practices said to bring about full enlightenment, all under the strict guidance of a guru who

determines what level the practitioner is ready for each step along the way. 6

While these debates were roughly contemporaneous with the time of Śāntideva’s writing

of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, they were far in the future for Nāgārjuna’s 2nd-3rd century writing of

the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. So it is a matter of inference to say what side he would have taken,

as the concepts of gradual and sudden enlightenment do not appear to have been discussed in the

same manner during his lifetime. However the debate is roughly analogous to the appearance of
the prajñā pāramitā literature and their emphasis on knowing prajñā as a means of fully

embodying all the pāramitās and thereby attaining full realization. This idea of one realization

containing the whole of Buddhist practice can be seen as an origin to the doctrine of sudden

enlightenment. As I laid out in my previous paper, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is essentially a

proof of how this works, showing in detailed reasoning how the wisdom of fully realized

emptiness causes the whole chain of samsara to instantly break down, leaving no suffering or

delusion to cultivate. As Huineng would say, leaving no dust to be polished away. While it is not

specifically expressed how to practice this as meditation, the later forms promoted by Chan

Buddhism and Móhēyǎn discussed above appear as a perfect embodiment of Nāgārjuna’s

reasoning.

Śāntideva’s work on the other hand instead takes us step by step through the cultivation

of the bodhisattva path and by extension, enlightenment. While not specifically contradicting any

of the logic in Nāgārjuna’s work, the method he employs speaks to a completely different

approach. In comparing the openings of the two texts we see the difference immediately.

Nāgārjuna begins with the simple statement, “Not from itself, not from another, not from

both, nor without cause; never in any way is there any existing thing that has arisen.” 7 From the

very beginning we are introduced to a world composed of emptiness, and by extension a lack of

suffering as the fundamental state of nature. He has no need to mention the ending of suffering in

his opening, because in his text there is no suffering that needs to be ended. This is his entire

campaign against suffering, simply to understand that it never existed in the first place.

Śāntideva instead begins with a dualism. After a humble introduction, he takes us into his

subject with the words “Virtue, thus, is weak; and always evil is of great and overwhelming
strength. Except for bodhicitta, what other virtue is there that can lay it low?” 8 (pg 1 line 6) For

Śāntideva, the existing state of nature appears to be one of evil and therefore suffering, requiring

something, bodhicitta, to be introduced in order to end it. This dualism is a constant throughout

the work. Bodhicitta must be constantly employed, protected, and cultivated, in order to combat

suffering.

To fully appreciate the Bodhicaryāvatāra it is important to take a moment to understand

the concept of bodhicitta, since it is the fundamental force he builds his recommendation of

practice around. For him, it is the one weapon that can overcome suffering. “All other virtues,

like the plantain tree, produce their fruit, but then their force is spent. Alone the marvelous tree of

bodhicitta constantly bears fruit and grows unceasingly.” 9 (pg 2 line 12) The term literally

translates as “awakening mind” (10), and is traditionally used to describe the aspiration to

enlightenment, which in Mahayana Buddhism implies the bodhisattva path and all the virtues of

compassion that go along with it. Śāntideva describes bodhicitta in two aspects, the “bodhicitta

in intention” and “active bodhicitta.” 11 (line 17 pg 3) Whereas the bodhicitta of intention is a

good and necessary start, alone it is insufficient for merit. As he writes, from it “Great results

arise… Yet merit does not rise from [it]… in ceaseless streams.” 12 Only when employed in

action does bodhicitta carry actual merit and “yield abundant fruits in greater strength,” and

“bring their very enemies to perfect bliss.” These two aspects are often described as ultimate and

relative bodhicitta (13). The former is used to denote the wisdom of emptiness and non-dual

realization, the latter to describe the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the good of all beings,

including the bodhisattva path. It appears Śāntideva is promoting the relative form as the active

version. We can make a correlation between sudden realization and ultimate bodhicitta, while

seeing Śāntideva’s insistence that only through the relative, traversing the bodhisattva path akin
to gradual cultivation, do we actually generate merit.

This idea of an active bodhicitta carried out to “drive away the darkness of ignorance,”

(pg5 line 30) is again a marked contrast to the way action is talked about in sudden

enlightenment schools. Specifically they teach non-action brought about from no-mind, in line

with Nāgārjuna in his chapter “An analysis of Object and Agent” in which he proves that nothing

can ever be said to act on any other thing. This would make an idea like bodhicitta driving away

darkness seem completely unnecessary. We will return to these aspects later in an exploration of

the fundamental nature of bodhicitta when we attempt to reconcile the different approaches.

Moving into chapter 2, Śāntideva then makes a confession of his sins while noting the

fleeting nature of life. “The thought came never to my mind that I too am a brief and passing

thing. And so, through hatred, lust, and ignorance, I have committed many sins.” (pg 12 line 38)

He turns to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas for protection in the face of death. Here, the relativist

dualism can be seen in viewing death as an ending, sins as an opposition to virtue, and Buddhas

and bodhisattvas as external figures capable of providing aid in return for a virtuous life. From a

more absolute perspective one might associate with a sudden enlightenment teaching, one would

note in the face of death simply the unreality of a singular living self in the first place, and so the

idea of having sins to commit or the necessity of protectors simply falls away.

Chapter 3, “Taking Hold of Bodhicitta,” extols virtue, especially giving. Śāntideva offers

himself and everything he might possess to all beings, promising to use bodhicitta to train in the

precepts. We note an absolutist understanding in his desire to hold nothing for himself and offer

all to others, this would be clear folly when realizing the self as fleeting and impermanent. But

the manner in which he makes this realization, “for the benefit of beings, I will bring to birth the

awakened mind, and in those precepts, step-by-step, I will abide and train myself (pg 20 line
24),” we see this understanding only reached through step by step cultivation of the precepts.

In “Carefulness,” chapter 4 it is stated that once bodhicitta has been aroused it must be

constantly protected and that to lose it once it has been aroused is a betrayal worse than never

having aroused it at all. Again with an eye to imminent death, he threatens hell and suffering in

the next life to those who abandon their bodhicitta. And yet at the same time he recognizes any

defilements as ultimately empty, “Defilements are not in the object, nor within the faculties, nor

somewhere in between. And if not elsewhere, where is their abode, whence they inflict their

havoc on the world? They are simple mirages, and so take heart! Banish all your fear and strive

to know their nature. Why suffer needlessly the pains of hell? (pg 29 line 47)” Here, the paradox

of the relativist path is clearly laid out, and the self awareness of this in the text begins to point to

how we will find unity and resolution in the two paths. The irony of the hell he is railing against

is that it only exists as a product of mind, a result of the delusion of taking what is illusory and

viewing it as real. This statement on defilements reads very much like Nāgārjuna’s

deconstructionist arguments. One cannot tell if the recommendation to banish fears and know

their nature refers to a sudden understanding or the gradual path of the bodhisattva. We have the

dualism of the threat of hell laid out against wisdom, but the understanding that this dualism is in

itself the delusion.

“Vigilant Introspection,” chapter 5 is about the mind, specifically the need for

introspection and mindfulness. By means of these methods, no self is ultimately realized, “And

when you have divided all the bones, and searched right down amid the very marrow, you

yourself should ask the question: where is the essential core? If persisting in the search, you see

no underlying essence, why do you protect with such desire the body that you now possess?”

These are recommendations for specific types of mindfulness meditation practice, that imply a
cultivationist approach. While it can be argued that zazen or Móhēyǎn’s methods are at their

heart introspection and mindfulness, they are intentionally never referred to as such because to

do so implies that they are techniques designed to bring about a goal of seeing no-self. As long as

one is viewing no-self as a goal separate from current experience, one is reinforcing the illusion

of a separate subject and object and will never be able to actually realize no-self. Therefore it is

counterproductive to consider the practice of realization any sort of nameable technique.

However in Śāntideva’s teaching, these methods are the only manner in which one who is

starting from a relativist understanding might eventually realize the ultimate truth of no-self.

In chapter 6, “Patience,” Śāntideva counsels against anger most of all, reminding the

reader that suffering is a gift because it inspires one along the bodhisattva path and therefore

leads away from hell and towards ultimate joy. Here the practice path is one of cultivated

patience toward anger, and the eventual understanding of suffering as a joy in itself, but only

when realized in opposition to the path towards hell. Thus only through a cultivated relativistic

dualism are we able to experience ultimate joy.

In “Diligence,” chapter 7, laziness is laid out as the enemy of enlightenment and the

reader is charged to “labor to increase my diligence, through aspiration and self confidence,

relinquishment and joy, by strength of earnest application and exertion of control.” This is a clear

and strong recommendation of a practice path only walked through hard determined effort. From

a subitist perspective it would be control that would be seen as reinforcing self and therefore

delusion, and the relinquishing of control as the only means of letting go and experiencing

groundless reality as it already exists. However from the gradualist side, practicing in the relative

world, control is necessary to cultivate the mind against defilement.

Chapter 8, “Meditative Concentration,” marks a turning point in the text. It contains some
of the strongest statements so far on the nature of emptiness as the true ultimate reality, but also

recommends specific meditation practices as a means of realizing this understanding. He

recommends a practice that sounds like the traditional technique of visualizing the body as a

corpse as a means of letting go of one’s attachment to sense pleasures and the body itself, “going

to the charnel ground, when shall I compare my body with the dry bones there, so soon to fall to

nothing…” (pg 83 line 29). And then, after a recommendation to meditate on the nature of pain

in self and others he brings us to the realization that “there is no one to experience pain, for who

is there to be its ‘owner?’“ We have here a perfect illustration of a gradual path designed to bring

about a sudden understanding. Starting from conventional relative awareness, one must meditate

and investigate in order to be able to see the ultimate truth that there never was anything for the

body to desire or any pain and suffering in the first place. There can be no grey area between

these understandings, one does not have an awareness of “less pain” through any “partial self.”

The shift must be total and instant, but one is only capable of realizing that shift after spending

time cultivating one’s awareness to allow the shift to happen. This is the beginning of the

resolution to our classical debate.

In chapter 9, “Wisdom,” we find Śāntideva in most agreement with Nāgārjuna and the

spirit of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The chapter is mostly composed of Nāgārjuna style

rhetoric to disprove any notions of karma, self, and phenomenon. First however, he makes a clear

distinction between ultimate and relative truth and gives reasoning behind his focus thus far on

the gradual relative path he has been promoting. He says “Relative and ultimate, these the two

truths are declared to be. The ultimate is not within the reach of the intellect, for intellect is said

to be the relative.” (pg 107 line 1) In disproving the self in light of ultimate truth, we inherently

recognize that the standard conception of self and intellect must be of the relative. Therefore it
follows that one would have to use methods based in relative truth in order to train this intellect

to break free of itself. He then goes on to discuss two types of people in an argument reminiscent

of the Council of Lhasa. “…within the world two kinds of people are observed: those with yogic

insight and the common run of people.” (107 line 3) “When ordinary folk perceive phenomena,

they look on them as real, and not illusory. This, then, is the subject of debate where ordinary and

yogis differ.” Śāntideva is pointing out what Móhēyǎn was forced to admit. That while yogis

may be able to experience sudden awakening by simply viewing reality as it is, ultimate truth is

not graspable by common people initially, and therefore a cultivation of mind based in relative

truth is necessary for them to understand the illusory nature of phenomena, see the emptiness of

afflictions, and ultimately break free of suffering through an awareness of ultimate truth.

Finding that the remainder of the chapter is in total agreement with and appears to be

based on Nāgārjuna’s work begs the question why the rest of the text is in such seeming

contradiction. Before attempting to resolve this we should first take a step back and compare his

main arguments thus far with those laid out by Nāgārjuna to clearly understand their differences

before we can show them as necessarily interdependent.

One of the most common themes throughout the work is the reminder that the body is

impermanent and destined only to become a rotting corpse. This is used to recommend against

clinging to sense pleasures or the gratification of any base desires as a means of experiencing

pleasure. The body who enjoys pleasures is nothing more than a corpse-to-be rotting in the

ground, and what good are sense pleasure to a corpse? The threat is made that the karma created

by indulging these pleasures leads to rebirth in hell and so any pleasure gained through

indulgence is actually the cause of suffering. Nāgārjuna on the other hand when discussing

suffering takes the position that suffering is not self made, nor made by anyone else, and
therefore no suffering can be said to be found anywhere. We seem to have Śāntideva implying

that suffering is self-made, and thereby made real, while Nāgārjuna argues that such a thing is

completely impossible.

Another argument made by Śāntideva is that various virtues when cultivated and

maintained through bodhicitta increase our bodhicitta and therefore progress us further along the

bodhisattva path toward ultimate liberation. The metaphor of virtue and bodhicitta as bearing

fruit is made explicitly. This is compared to Nāgārjuna in his chapter “An Analysis of Action and

Fruit” in which he makes the proof that neither action nor actor can be said to exist of themselves

and “if there is neither action nor agent how would there be the fruit born of the action?

Moreover if the fruit does not exist, how will there be its enjoyer?”

A final seeming difference in the works is the recommendation of practice. Śāntideva

spends the majority of the Bodhicaryāvatāra emphatically stating the need to cultivate bodhicitta,

work diligently to maintain it, and then recommending specific meditation practices designed to

further this aim. The closest Nāgārjuna comes to recommending a specific means of practice

comes in the chapter “An Analysis of the 12 Fold Chain.” Here he takes us step by step through

the links in the chain showing how each leads to the next and how the whole suffering world of

samsara arises interdependently together with them. He notes that if the first link of ignorance

fails to arise, the entire chain fails to arise and so “does the entire mass of suffering completely

cease.” In pointing out ignorance as the key to undoing all suffering, and knowing that prajñā is

the opposite of ignorance, he is suggesting that simply knowing prajñā pāramitā is sufficient to

attain ultimate liberation.

Whether or not this is another contradictory argument between the two authors is

dependent in large part on our understanding of bodhicitta and prajñā . We return now to our
understanding of bodhcitta as composed of two aspects, the ultimate realization of emptiness and

the relative practice of the bodhisattva path, or compassion. These two aspects must be

understood as an interdependent pair. Without the realization of emptiness, there can be no true

compassion, and without a practice of compassion there can be no realization of emptiness.

(intro) Realizing emptiness is simply a letting go of the illusory self, and living within the world

as a non-dual whole in which all things can be said to be self. The practice of compassion is

nothing more than the actualization of this understanding. If one does not act with compassion,

the self that arises will be one of relative understanding caught in the wheel of suffering and

unable to maintain a true awareness of self as an interdependent aspect of an ultimately empty

and indivisible world. Prajñā pāramitā, or the perfection of wisdom is nothing more than this

understanding and therefore too this actualization. So as Śāntideva exhorts us to cultivate our

active bodhicitta as a means of attaining liberation, and Nāgārjuna tells us that all we have to do

is know prajñā and all suffering will immediately cease, they are actually saying precisely the

same thing.

So returning to our diametrically opposed doctrines of sudden and gradual enlightenment

we find that not only can we unite them in aspiration, but actually they are fundamentally

composed of the same practice. Gradual enlightenment as practiced by means of steady patient

cultivation of compassionate action, is nothing more than an actualization of the ultimate wisdom

of emptiness. Sudden enlightenment as practiced by immediately realizing the true nature of self

and phenomena, is nothing more than the experience of actualized compassion. So as much as

we can say that the practice of compassion as taught by Tibetan Buddhist schools will eventually

lead us to enlightenment, we also have to say that the enlightenment experiences of the Chan and

Zen schools also leads to the same practice of compassion. There is no path without realization,
and no realization without the path.

Śāntideva ends his work with a chapter dedicating its merits to all living beings. Having

resolved the contradiction between sudden and gradual forms of practice it is only fitting that this

final innovation is a practice now commonly shared by both sudden and gradual schools. No

matter the approach taken towards liberation, if the self that is liberated is not understood to be

inseparable from all living beings, then there is no liberation The only true liberation is the

liberation of all beings, and so to not dedicate one’s merits of practice is to attain no merit at all.

In that spirit I would like to dedicate any benefit and wisdom I have gained from this class to you

in gratitude for your teaching and to all beings everywhere. Thank you!