Toh 2730Untitled

EXPLANATORY INTERPRETATION OF THE TEXT HONORING THE COMPLETE FOUR TREATISES (Toh 2730)

Context

This work belongs to the Commentarial Canon (Abhidharmapitaka) in the Northern Tibetan Mahayana tradition, preserved and translated in the Tibetan Tengyur. Tibet is a major constituent of Mahayana Buddhism on this plateau, where the compilation and preservation of treatise literature reached the highest degree of detail and depth. This is a continuation of the Buddhist tradition from the early period, when Indian noble ones such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, and later scholars taught and composed great works on the Dharma.

The Commentarial Canon is not the Sutra section, that is, the direct teachings of the Buddha, but consists of treatises and profound analyses of doctrine that bodhisattvas and subsequent wise ones developed to help beings understand the principle of the Dharma more clearly. The text numbered Toh 2730 belongs to the type of work concerned with Buddhist philosophy or with the practice of cultivation, serving as an important theoretical foundation for the Mahayana path.

Main Content

Although the original title of this text has not yet been fully received in the Vietnamese tradition, based on its position in the Tengyur we may judge that this is a work focused on fundamental aspects of the Dharma. In the Northern Tibetan tradition, the Commentarial Canon often includes specialized treatises on the fourteen collections of the Buddha Dharma, or other classifications, on the nature of dharmas, on cause and effect, on the definition of philosophical concepts such as emptiness (śūnyatā), Buddha-nature, and the path of practice leading to Buddhahood.

Treatise works such as this often rely on methods of analysis and comparison among different schools, especially comparisons between Hinayana and Mahayana, and among the Mahayana schools themselves, such as Yogācāra, Madhyamaka, etc.