Position summary
Haribhadra is the principal Madhyamaka commentator on the Prajñāpāramitā through Maitreya’s Abhisamayālaṅkāra. His Āloka (“Light”) expounds the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā by correlating it, section by section, with the Ornament’s eight topics and seventy subtopics — the reading practice that treats the sūtra’s explicit dialogue as carrying an implicit path-structure.
His philosophical position is that a buddha’s knowing is a relatively real phenomenon which perceives the ultimate reality of emptiness (སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་) and is not separate from it. This governs how he reads the title term. Unpacking prajñāpāramitā as prajñāyāḥ pāram+iḥ+tā, he takes it to mean the state of one who has reached the other shore of the wisdom that has thoroughly distinguished all phenomena — so its main referent is a buddha’s nondual knowing (advayajñāna), and the paths leading there are called by the same name only figuratively, as the name of a fruit is applied to its seed.
The commentarial position matters beyond the philology because the two Indian commentators on this sūtra divide along the Madhyamaka / Yogācāra line, and their disagreement is visible in miniature on a single sentence. Where Ratnākaraśānti takes the main referent to be a bodhisattva’s nonconceptual knowing on the paths of seeing and cultivation, Haribhadra takes it to be the goal.
Hermeneutical approach
- Exegesis of a sūtra through a śāstra: the Abhisamayālaṅkāra’s outline supplies the structure the sūtra is taken to be carrying implicitly, and the commentary’s work is to show the correlation section by section.
- His comments serve the five standard functions of the genre: resolving Sanskrit word-division, paraphrasing ambiguous terms and syntax, etymological and grammatical analysis, interpreting ambiguous sentences, and addressing doubts about intended meaning.
- The 84000 translators note that his philosophical remarks and Ratnākaraśānti’s are, in part, each claiming authority for their own school by showing that the sūtra should be read from its perspective. His comments are therefore a Madhyamaka reading of the Prajñāpāramitā and not a neutral gloss.
Key claims
- The main referent of prajñāpāramitā is a buddha’s nondual knowing; application to the paths is figurative (astasahasrika-84000-2026, Introduction).
- “That mindset is free of a mindset” (acitta, Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā 1.7) is a non-affirming negation (prasajyapratiṣedha, མེད་དགག་): such a mind appears but does not ultimately exist. The relative mind of awakening, not distinct from the perspective of freedom from habitual fixation, is ultimately free of a mind (n. 95).
- “Mindset” in bodhicitta can only describe a mindset and not the components of a mindset, since like the perfection of wisdom it must refer to a buddha’s nondual knowing, which has relative and ultimate aspects. Aspiration and engagement are then figurative descriptions of resetting the mind on awakening and proceeding on that basis (Introduction).
- “Going about life” in the perfection of wisdom is with unconcentrated knowing, “cultivating” it is with concentrated knowing (n. 93).
Related scholars
- Ratnākaraśānti — the Yogācāra counterpart on the same sūtra and the more useful of the pair for catushkoti-must-negate-all-four-extremes, since his gloss on the Śāriputra exchange names the second-koṭi refusal explicitly.
- Śāntarakṣita — the Madhyamaka side of the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis; Haribhadra stands in the same Indian milieu and is placed by Tibetan doxography in the same sub-school.
- Ārya Vimuktisena — earlier in the same Abhisamayālaṅkāra commentarial line; the Tibetan translation of his Vṛtti (Toh 3787) is one witness to the alternative construal of acitta.
- Gorampa — cites the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā as scriptural warrant for the four-extremes requirement, arriving at a reading of the negation continuous with Haribhadra’s.