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ABSTRACT Trisvabhavanirdesa (Treatise on the Three Natures) is Vasubandhu's most mature and explicit exposition of the Yogcacara doctrine of the three natures and their relation to the Buddhist idealism Vasubandhu articulates. Nonetheless there are no extent commentaries on this important short test. The present work provides an introduction to the text, its context and principal philosophical theses; a new translation of the text itself; and a close, verse-byverse commentary on the text explaining the structure of Yogacara/Cittamatra idealism and comparing it to Western versions of transcendental idealism. In particular, I show how the doctrine of the three natures is used to make idealism coherent in a Buddhist context and how it sheds light on the structure and evolution of transcendental idealism in Europe.
1. Introduction
The present text Trisvabhavanirdesac (Rang bzhin gsum nges par bstan pa) is one of Vasubandhu's short treatises (the others being the Treatise in Twenty Stanzas [Vimsatika] and the Treatise in Thirty Stanzas [Trimsatika] expounding his cittamatra, or mind-only philosophy. Vasubandhu and his older brother Asanga are regarded as the founders and principal exponents of this Buddhist idealist school, developing in the Fourth or Fifth century CE as the major philosophical rival within the Mahayana Buddhist tradition to the older Madhyamaka tradition. The latter school, founded by Nagarjuna, urges the emptiness-the lack of essence or substantial, independent reality-of all things, including both external phenomena and mind. [2] Vasubandhu, however, reinterprets the emptiness of the object as being its lack of external reality, and its purely mind-dependent, or ideal status. [3] At the same time, however, he argues that the foundational mind is non-empty since it truly exists as the substratum of the apparent reality represented in our experience. The position is hence akin to the idealisms defended by such Western philosophers as Berkeley, Kant and Schopenhauer. [4]
While Trisvabhavanirdesa is arguably the most philosophically detailed and comprehensive of the three short works on this topic composed by Vasubandhu, as well as the clearest, it is almost never read or taught in contemporary traditional Buddhist cultures or centres of learning. The reason for this is simple: this is the only one of Vasubandhu's root texts for which no auto-commentary exists. [5] For this reason, none of Vasubandhu's students composed commentaries on...