Dr. Ligeia Lugli: “A Fork in the Middle Path: Empty Words and Mahāyāna Hermeneutics in the Bodhisattvabhūmi”

15 April 2015

Photo: Orna Almogi

If intellectual historians could dream up their ideal object of study, they would dream up the Bodhisattvabhūmi. Placed at the confluence of Śrāvakayāna, Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, and pervaded by a keen hermeneutic awareness, this text offers invaluable material for the study of the philosophical tensions stirring ancient Buddhist thought. The idea that words are empty designations and commonly experienced reality amounts to ‘only names’ (nāmamātra or prajñaptimātra) constitutes an important node in the Bodhisattvabhūmi’s articulation of the Buddhist tradition and of its own place in it. 

This paper investigates the Bodhisattvabhūmi’s reformulation of “name only” as a form of semantic middle way between the reification of the referents of language and the total denial of any ontic ground for words. It discusses how this text grapples with competing interpretations of scriptural assertions on nāmamātra  on the part of Śrāvakayāna and "śūnyavāda" circles, and highlights the conservative logic that lies behind its own elaborations on this Mahāyāna theme.

• Click here to download the invitation [PDF]

April 15th, 2015 - 16.00h
Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1,
ESA-OST, Raum 209
Free Entrance.