Alumni

Greg Seton

What have I done since leaving Naropa and what am I doing now?

After receiving my MA in Buddhist Studies with Tibetan language at Naropa University in 2005, I went on to receive another MA in Religious Studies with Sanskrit from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2008, and am now finishing up research for my PhD in Buddhist Studies at Oxford University in England. 

My dissertation is focused on Ratnākaraśānti’s Quintessence (sāratamā) commentary on the 8,000 verse Perfection of Wisdom sutra.  Even though the Quintessence was historically one of the two most important commentaries on one of the most important Mahāyāna sūtras, it was lost for hundreds of years in Tibet.  Since the Quintessence emphasized practice over philosophical argumentation, it was neglected by later Tibetan scholars, who were more and more interested in scholasticism and debate.  Despite this neglect, since the 8,000 verse Perfection of Wisdom sutra forms the backbone of all Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna practice, it seems important to recover this valuable commentary about which, the famous scholar Ātiśa once said, “As soon as my guru Ratnākaraśānti explained the 8,000 verse Perfection of Wisdom sutra, because he refuted all [other] explanations concerning Madhyamaka individually, he clarified my Mādhyamika view regarding suchness and the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka became utterly clear to me and I still remain within that supreme ongoing state [of realization] with respect to Candrakīrti’s view.”   

In order to recover this commentary, however, there are some problems. Although the early Tibetan translation Quintessence has now been reprinted and the reprint allows Tibetan and Western scholars some access to the original Sanskritcommentary, the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit original is not always clear and there are no extant Tibetan sub-commentaries of it to help illuminate its many confusions. Because of this, for the past two years, I have been working to restore the original Sanskrit text based photographs of the only two extant Sanskrit manuscripts, which were written on palm leaves in the 11th and 13th centuries, respectively. First, I learned the 11th century proto-Bengali script and the 13th century Newari script in which the manuscripts are written. Then, I began critically editing them in order to produce an easily legible Sanskrit text in a modern standard transliteration that can be read by anyone with knowledge of Sanskrit.  Next, I began translating the commentary into English and comparing them to Haribhadra’s commentary, on which the inherited Tibetan scholastic tradition relies almost exclusively.

At the moment, I am still in this middle of this work and writing my dissertation.  The task of editing and translating has been quite difficult, since both the manuscripts are incomplete and only 70% of the total original Sanskrit folios remain. Furthermore, of the remaining folios, many are damaged.  Hence, in order to reconstruct the damaged sections of the extant 70% and the other sections from the missing 30% (which is extant only in the early Tibetan translation from the 12th century), I have been painstakingly comparing the 11th and 13th century Sanskrit manuscripts of the Quintessence with both an 11th century palm leaf, Sanskrit manuscript of the 8,000 verse Perfection of Wisdom sutra and the original Tibetan translation of the Quintessence.  Through the process of philological reconstruction and philosophical argumentation, I hope to demonstrate that this Quintessence commentary, which has great value for both scholars and practitioners, deserves much more attention than it has received in the past five hundred years or so.

Even though my philological work is challenging and time consuming, I am thoroughly enjoying each day’s discovery of philosophical nuances in this masterfully written text.  I can’t thank Naropa enough for providing me with the foundation in both Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan and with the inspiration to do this highly fulfilling work.