The Yogalehrbuch, Chapter 8, Karuṇā Sarvāstivāda System and Visionary Images

April 29th, 1230 - 1315: Prof Yamabe Nobuyoshi, Waseda University
The Yogalehrbuch, Chapter 8, Karuṇā: Sarvāstivāda System and Visionary Images
The so-called Yogalehrbuch is an anonymous Sanskrit meditation manual, the manuscripts of which were found in Qizil and elsewhere in Chinese Central Asia. An edition with a German translation of this text was published by Dieter Schlingloff in 1964. I used this text as one of the important materials in my study of Chinese visualization texts. Though the Yogalehrbuch is not a well-known Buddhist text, recently it has been attracting renewed scholarly attention.
In my former research, I focused on the visionary elements of this text and pointed out that similar elements are also found in Chinese meditation texts. However, though the manuscripts are fragmentary, in the chapters that have an extant introductory portion, the discussion starts with a doctrinal definition of the chapter topic. After a few paragraphs of standard abhidharma-type discussion, the atmosphere suddenly changes, and an inscrutable visionary world unfolds.
In my presentation this time, I would like to reexamine the textual nature of Chapter 8 on karuṇā. The first doctrinal portion displays close similarities to the Abhidharma-mahāvibhāṣā and reconfirms its Sarvāstivāda affiliation, already noted by Schlingloff. I will attempt to determine the exact doctrinal meaning of this first portion and discuss how this portion is tied to the visionary portion that follows.