The Progress in Meditation

This title, The Two Bhavanakramas of Vimalamitra is intended as a companion volume to my Progress in Meditation: The Three Bhavanakramas of Kamalashila (Amazon 2020). The Progress in Meditation: The Three Bhavanakramas of Kamalashila, is a translation from Sanskrit (with reference to the Tibetan) of the Indian scholar Kamalshila's three treatises on the path of gradual practice of meditation (bhavanakrama) for achieving enlightenment (bodhi). Composed in Tibet at the behest of the Tibetan king Khri srong lde bstan following the Great Debate (or Council of Lhasa) convened at the monastery of Samye between the years 792-794 CE, the method of Gradualism (krama-praveshika) advocated in Kamalashila's Bhavanakrama trilogy was adjudged the officially approved method to be practiced in Tibet over the rival position of Sumultaneism or Instantaneity (yugapat-praveshika) championed by the Chinese Cha'an patriarch Hwa Shang Mahayana' and his followers. Vimalamitra, another prominent Indian scholar of this period, a contemporary of Kamalashila, invited like Kamalashila and his teacher Shantarakshita to firmly establish Buddhist in Tibet in the late 8th century CE, was the author of two treatises also called Bhavanakramas, one devoted to the method of Gradualism (krama-praveshika/rim gyis pa) and the other to the method of Simultaneism or Instantaneousness ( yugapat-praveshika). The present volume is a translation from the Tibetan (of the presumably lost Sanskrit originals) of Vimalamitra's "Kramapraveshikabhavanartha" The Meaning of the Gradual Entrance into Meditative Cultivation" (Tib. Rim gyis 'jug pa'i bsgom don) and "Nirvikalpapraveshikabhavanartha" The Meaning of the Non-Conceptual Entrance into Meditative Cultivation (Tib. Mi rtog pa'i bsgom don). These first of these two treatises describe the gradualist method of approach to meditation and enlightenment, while the second is devoted to exposition and advocacy of the Simultaneous (or Instantaneous) approach. Though both approaches have been taught in Buddhism from the outset, there are a number of points of controversy concerning them which have been the source of debate and rivalry, primarily in China and Tibet. The extensive Introduction explores in-depth both historical and doctrinal issues involved in these two approaches, debated by scholars and practitioners up to the present. The Tibetan texts of the two treatises are given the Appendices..