Omniscience and Mental Construction in *Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasiddhi

In classical Buddhist philosophy and contemporary scholarship alike, it’s frequently claimed that a buddha’s awakening involves some kind of “nonconceptual gnosis” (nirvikalpakajñāna). This paper will focus on *Śāntarakṣita’s claim to the contrary in his Tattvasiddhi, where he argues that a buddha’s omniscience must be savikalpaka. (This work was initially explored by Ernst Steinkellner in a series of papers, 1999, 2001, and 2008; Allison Aitken draws attention to it again in her forthcoming study of Śrīgupta’s Tattvāvatāra.) I’ll show that, as *Śāntarakṣita develops this claim, a buddha’s gnosis must involve mentally constructed difference—namely, a distinction between object, subject, and awareness itself—even though it does not involve language, generic properties, and other discursive elements. 

*Śāntarakṣita’s rationale is twofold. First, contra the Dharmakīrtian tradition’s view of the power of cultivation in the development of yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa), *Śāntarakṣita operates on a basic principle that like produces like. So, a savikalpaka awareness-event will only ever give rise to another savikalpaka awareness-event, no matter how long or how intensely it is cultivated; likewise, a nirvikalpaka awareness-event would produce a nirvikalpaka awareness-event. Because we evidently start out mired in mental constructions, then—and because the tantric path of cultivation involves further constructions like the mandala, mudra, the pretense that one is the deity, and so on—the path will culminate in an awareness-event that involves constructions. 

Yet, *Śāntarakṣita claims, this awareness-event is nevertheless vivid (spaṣṭa). This leads him to refine the notion of vividness. An opponent might say, as Dharmakīrti does, that an awareness-event made vivid through cultivation just is non-conceptual. *Śāntarakṣita responds to this with the distinction between awareness-events that involve language, generic properties, and so on (nāmajātyādi), and awareness-events that involve the distinction between object, subject, and awareness itself (grāhyagrāhakasaṃvittibheda). Vivid awareness-events, he argues, are devoid of the former, but nevertheless involve the constructed distinctions that make skillful immersion in practical undertakings possible.

Second, *Śāntarakṣita is clear that this fact is what lets a buddha act toward sentient beings. A buddha’s omniscience is not the absence of all appearances; rather, it involves the active determination of all objects of awareness without exception (aśeṣajñeyaparicchedakatva). It’s only this that lets a buddha take sentient beings as objects of compassion. Without the distinction between object, subject, and awareness itself, such determination would be impossible. So, the fact that mental construction remains in the vivid gnosis that results from cultivation is a feature, not a bug, of *Śāntarakṣita’s tantric system.

*Śāntarakṣita’s position, I’ll argue, sheds light on the relation between habituation and buddhahood more generally. Many accounts of buddhahood struggle to make sense of how a buddha’s mind can be non-dual, or devoid of object and subject (grāhya and grāhaka), and yet still engage in the world. On *Śāntarakṣita’s account, the vividness of a buddha’s omniscience implies not a complete absence of mental construction, but an effortless and immersive engagement with each and every mental construction—one that is not mediated by concepts, but one that nevertheless involves the continued presence of distinctions. Objects don’t fall away on this view; rather, their presence makes practical undertakings directed toward sentient beings possible.