I asked this question over here but got no relevant answers, so I thought I’ll ask it here as well:
At the risk of being overly simplistic, it seems that Mahayana traditions have dedicated their intellectual efforts to developing the idea of Emptiness (śūnyatā), starting from Nagarjuna, through Dogen, and extending to the modern Kyoto School.
As you might notice, these examples are biased towards the Japanese branch, which I’m personally more interested in, but other examples also exist, of course.
I was trying to locate medieval or modern Mahayanic systematic discussions of Upādāna and Taṇhā. I was hoping that these ideas were discussed and interpreted in light of the emptiness idea. However, it seems that they have lost intellectual focus.
If it’s indicative of anything, the Wikipedia page for Upādāna says the Japanese is “shu”, and the one for Taṇhā says the Japanese is “katsu ai”. But I couldn’t find any meaningful results using these terms in the context of Buddhism.
Are there any notable examples of systemaic discussions of Upādāna and Taṇhā in Mahayana Buddhism (particularly within Japanese traditions)?
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These forums have a focus on what’s called Early Buddhist Texts, which are Nikayas / Agamas and adjacent material. While there are people informed / trained with Mahayana, you might find a much better answer over dharmawheel.net, a website dedicated to all things Mahayana.
What exactly are you meaning by “systematic discussions”? What would be the corollary in non-Mahayana texts that you would like to compare them to? The basic problem that we have when we try to study Buddhism outside of Theravada is that most of the texts are not translated to modern languages. So, the impression people have comes from a very incomplete picture. Even Mahayanists themselves are unaware of most of their own literary tradition unless they learn an ancient language and read it themselves.
@cdpatton, yes, I’m aware of this problem, that’s why I was hoping that here I could get a good answer, as there seems to be a group of people with knowledge in untranslated texts.
But I actually compare it not to non-Mahayana texts, but to Mahayana texts. I’m just genuinely surprised that the sunyata idea was given so much focus, while other seemingly-main ideas was abandoned. But maybe it is what it is.
Going further back into the “proto-Mahayana,” the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya by Vasubandhu has a section about Upadāna and Taṇhā, for example:
The difference between “craving” and “clinging” is explained by Vasubandhu as follows: it is “craving” when one strongly wants enjoyments but has not yet started searching for those objects of enjoyments (yāvan na tadviṣayaparyeṣṭim āpadyate); it is “clinging” once one starts seeking ways to obtain those objects of enjoyments and thus runs in all directions (viṣayaprāptaye paryeṣṭim āpannaḥ sarvato dhāvati).
Are you interested in non-Theravada Abhidharma? Or only self-consciously “Great Vehicle” texts?
So you are meaning a discussion of dependent origination. This is found in any Mahayana text that summarises foundational ideas. For example, the Yogacarabhumi, the Dazhidulun, and I’m sure it’s found in some sutras. It’s not nonexistent, it’s just not an idea developed by Mahayanists. It was assumed as foundational teaching outside of Mahayana sutras. I.e., Mahayanists extended the principle of dependent origination into emptiness teachings. That was their innovation, so to speak.
