Paradox and Embodied Appearance in the Sakya Lamdré Tradition

The relationship of self and world and of body and mind are central to Buddhism. In this paper, I demonstrate how one thirteenth-century Tibetan thinker addresses paradoxes within these relationships. In his treatise on the inseparability of saṃsāra and nīrvāṇa, Drakpa Gyaltsen uses a diverse repertoire of techniques to guide the practitioner in realizing that all phenomena are included in the body and mind. In conversation with the work of Merleau-Ponty and critical phenomenologists responding to his legacy, I illuminate the role of paradox in approaching appearances, experience, and nonduality within the ritual and philosophical perspectives of the Sakya Path and Fruit tradition. In the process, I interrogate what “body” and “mind” mean in this context and where and how they are situated in relationship to one another.