Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa–madhyamakopadeśa

Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa–madhyamakopadeśa (T. dbu ma'i man ngag rin po che'i za ma tog kha phye ba; “Personal Instructions on the Middle Way called "An Open Basket of Jewels"”). A treatise on the Madhyamaka view composed by Atiśa.

The Tsadra editors state:

Atiśa's Open Basket of Jewels: Special Instructions on the Middle Way (Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭamadhyamakopadeśa) is one of the primary works among his collected writings and perhaps the most extensive of his extant writings composed in India. The text outlines a number of significant features regarding his theory and practice of Mahāyāna Buddhism in general, as well as his understanding of Madhyamaka in particular. The term ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa refers to an open karaṇḍa, a "basket or covered box," made of jewels (ratna) or containing jewels. In this instance, the jeweled box or box of jewels is the text itself, containing over 120 citations from sūtras and tantras, as well as śāstras and hymns attributed to seminal Buddhist figures such as Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva. The citations of these sources indicate that Atiśa had access, possibly in a temple or monastic library or depository, to a great number of Indian Buddhist texts when he composed this work.

James Apple states:

Atiśa is said to have composed the greater and lesser Special Instructions on the Middle Way (dbu ma’i man ngag che chung). The “greater” special instructions is a reference to the Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa–madhyamakopadeśa (Tôh. no. 3930), [and] the “lesser” is the Madhyamakopadeśa (Tôh. no. 3929; also, no. 4468)... However, according to the colophon of the canonical version of the Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa, this work was written in the great temple of Vikramaśīla, under the patronage of King Devapāla (Apple 2010:120). The colophon to the so–called short Dbu ma’i man ngag does mention that it was composed in the main temple of Lhasa and that Atiśa and Tshul-khrims rgyal-ba translated and edited the text together. Therefore, the Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa was composed first in India and then the Madhyamakopadeśa was composed years later in Tibet. As the Madhyamakopadeśa has similar content to some sections of the Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭa, Atiśa may have composed the Madhyamakopadeśa as a brief instruction based on extracts from the latter work. Atiśa may have used both texts to give lectures on Madhyamaka during his time in Lhasa.

English translation

• Apple, James. Jewels of the Middle Way: The Madhyamaka Legacy of Atiśa and His Early Tibetan Followers. Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2018. Tsadra book page

Sources

• Apple, James (2015), A Study and Translation of Atiśa’s Madhyamakopadésa with Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, Acta Tibetica et Buddhica, Volume 7, pp. 1-82, 2014. PDF version at JSTOR
• Ratnakaraṇḍodghāṭanāmamadhyamakopadeśa, Bodhicitta: A Tsadra Foundation Project