Bhāviveka

Bhāviveka, also called Bhavya or Bhāvaviveka (traditional Chinese: 清辯; ; pinyin: Qīngbiàn;Wylie: slob dpon bha bya, skal ldan, legs ldan, c. 500 – c. 578) was a sixth century Madhyamaka Buddhist. In Tibetan Buddhism Bhāviveka is regarded as the founder of the Svātantrika tradition of the Mādhyamaka school of Buddhism, which is seen as antagonistic to Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka.

The life details of Bhaviveka are unclear. He likely lived in early 6th century north India (c. 500-560 CE). This, states Malcolm Eckel, was a period of "unusual creativity and ferment in the history of Indian Buddhist philosophy", when the Mahayana Buddhism movement was emerging as a "vigorous and self-conscious intellectual force" while early Buddhist traditions from the eighteen (Nikaya) schools opposed this Mahayana movement.

Bhaviveka is notable in the Indian tradition for his inclusivist comments. He equated the Buddha's Dharma body with the Upanishadic concept of ultimate reality called Brahman, but this view does not imply that he was a Hindu or that he viewed Buddhism and Hinduism to be the same. In his writings he comments on early Vedanta, and also addresses Hinayana (Theravada) accusations that Mahayana Buddhists are "crypto-Vedantins".

Bhāviveka is generally considered to be the founder of the Svatantrika tradition within Buddhism.

Tibetan doxographers divided the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna into Svātantrika ('svatantra': autonomous) and Prāsaṅgika ('prasaṅga': consequence). This manner of division has been retroactively applied in Tibetan monasteries, and commonly found in modern secondary literature on Madhyamaka. However, according to Dreyfus and McClintock, such a classification is problematic and was not used in India, where instead the "Svatantrika and Prasangika" schools were camped together then contrasted with "Santaraksita and Kamalasila" (Yogacara) schools of Madhyamaka Buddhism. The former accepted "external objects exist", while the latter camp accepted "external objects do not exist". The Svatantrika versus Prasangika sub-schools may have been a 11th/12th century innovativeness of the Tibetan translator "Pa tshab nyi ma grags" while he was translating a Sanskrit text by Candrakirti into Tibetan.

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