Origins of Secret Mantra • Day Seven
17 August 2026
Previously, His Holiness has been teaching on the split into the eighteen schools according to three different traditions of the Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda and the Mahāsāṃghika.
His Holiness began by stating that during the thousand years when Nikāya Buddhism flourished, there were innumerable great Buddhist scholars, and then continued with an introduction to the famous masters of the different schools, focusing on the scholars from the Sthaviravāda schools.
- Kātyāyanīputra and the Seven Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma Treatises
Within the Sarvāstivāda tradition, there are the scriptures of the Abhidharma, the most famous being the seven treatises of the Abhidharma; they are well known in Tibet and also in the Chinese. They are called the “one main and the six branches,” or the “seven Abhidharma treatises,” or also the “one main and six secondary treatises.”
Among the several scholars who upheld this tradition of Abhidharma, the first of these is the author of the main treatise of the Sarvāstivāda, Kātyāyanīputra.
“Kātyāyanīputra is sometimes said to be a direct disciple of the Bhagavat Buddha, and he is the author of the Jñānaprasthāna (The Establishment of Knowledge) the main text of the Abhidharma. Actually, he was probably born in northwestern India in a Brahmin family,” His Holiness explained. [The full title of this text is the Abhidharmajñānaprasthānaśāstra (Treatise on the Establishment of Knowledge of Abhidharma). But it is usually shortened to Jñānaprasthāna]
The time that he appeared was slightly after the split of the Sarvāstivāda from the Sthaviravāda. As far as the actual dates when he lived, there are many different accounts from different scholars. According to Vasumitra’s Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions, the time when the Sarvāstivāda split from the Sthaviravāda was just over 200 years after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. Thus, he probably lived in the mid or the late third century after the parinirvāṇa, somewhere around 150 BCE.
In the Great Records of the Western Regions by Chinese scholar Xuanzang, it says that the author of the Jñānaprasthāna, Kātyāyanīputra, lived in the third century after the parinirvāṇa.
In the first fascicle of the Notes on the Treasury of Abhidharma, written by Puguang, one of Xuanzang’s students, it states:
“At the end of the third century [after the Buddha’s Nirvāṇa], Kātyāyanīputra composed the Jñānaprasthāna Śāstra [The Treatise on the Establishment of Knowledge], consisting of 25,000 verses.”
There have been many different accounts of his Abhidharma lineage, with no single one that is universally accepted. For example, the great Sui dynasty scholar Jizang wrote a text called The Secret Meaning of the Three Treatises (The three treatises are: Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Root Verses of the Middle way (Mūlamadhyamakārikā) and the Treatise on the Twelve Gates (Dvādaśamukhaśāstra), and Āryadeva’s Treatise on the One-Hundred-Verses (Śataśāstra) in which he says that Upagupta transmitted the lineage to Pūrṇa, Pūrṇa transmitted it to Mecaka, and Mecaka then transmitted it to Kātyāyanīputra. However, the dates given for Pūrṇa and Mecaka are after Kātyāyanīputra’s dates, and this transmission lineage is thus not held to be credible.
Kātyāyanīputra was the author of the fundamental text of the Sarvāstivāda, the Jñānaprasthāna. Karmapa emphasized, “He was basically considered to be the founder of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma tradition. Thus, Kātyāyanīputra was like the founder of the actual Sarvāstivāda tradition, and so it’s reasonable to call him that.” Thus, the Sarvāstivāda held him in extremely high esteem.
The Jñānaprasthāna was not in the Tibetan canon, but later it was translated into Tibetan. There was a Chinese scholar Fazun who went to Tibet, learned Tibetan in the main monasteries, studied the great texts, and translated the Jñānaprasthāna and the Great Exposition (Mahāvibhāṣā) from Chinese into Tibetan. Now we are able to read the Jñānaprasthāna and the Great Exposition in Tibetan.
From one perspective, the Jñānaprasthāna is like a commentary on the Buddha’s words, and in another, it is like a systematic organization of the meaning of the Buddha’s scriptures. A solid foundation is established for the Sarvāstivāda school within this text. This text and the other six, when grouped together, are called the “seven Abhidharma treatises,” or in the Chinese term, “one body and six limbs,” or the “one main and six secondary treatises.” These are the main Abhidharma treatises, the basis of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma tradition.
2. The Six Secondary Treatises of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma
The first of the six secondary treatises is the Saṃgītiparyāya (Abhidharma-saṃgīti-paryāya-pāda-śāstra), the Exposition of the Recitation It has 12 fascicles in the Chinese translation. In the Chinese tradition, it is said to be written by Śāriputra. However, the Indian sources and Tibetan schools hold that it is written by Mahākauṣṭhila. This is probably only extant in Chinese and was translated by Xuanzang.
The second is the Dharmaskandha (Abhidharma-dharma-skandha -pāda-śāstra), the Aggregate of Dharma, with 12 fascicles in Chinese. According to the Chinese accounts, it was written by Maudgalyāyana, but in another account by Indian and Tibetan scholars, it is said to be written by Śāriputra. This was also translated into Chinese by Tang Xuanzang.
The third is the Prajñaptipāda (Abhidharma-prajñapti-pāda-śāstra), the Treatise on Designation. written by Kātyāyanaputra. According to another Tibetan account, this was written by Maudgalyāyana, and translated in the Song dynasty by the master Chusong into Chinese. There is also a translation of this into Tibetan currently.
The fourth is the Vijñānakāya (Abhidharma-vijñāna-kāya-pāda-śāstra), the Collection of Consciousness, with 16 fascicles, and it was written by Devaśarman. Both the Chinese and Tibetan sources agree on who the author was, and it was also translated into Chinese by Xuanzang.
The fifth is the Prakaraṇapāda (Abhidharma-prakaraṇa-pāda-śāstra), the Exposition Treatise, with 18 fascicles. The author was Vasumitra, and the Chinese and Tibetan sources agree on the author. This was also translated into Chinese by Xuanzang.
The sixth is the Dhātukāya, (Abhidharma-dhātu-kāya-pāda-śāstra), the Collection of Elements, and this also was by the noble Vasumitra. Another account of its author from the Indian and Tibetan scholars is that it was written by Pūrṇa, and this is also translated into Chinese by Master Xuanzang.
Later, there was the Great Exposition of the Abhidharma (Abhidharmamahāvibhāṣā-śāstra usually shortened to Mahāvibhāṣā). 500 arhats compiled many different Abhidharma texts into the Great Exposition (Mahāvibhāṣā), which had 200 fascicles, and this was also translated by the Chinese master Xuanzang into Chinese. This Great Exposition of Abhidharma is like a massive text that contains the entire essence of the Sarvāstivāda school, akin to the entire Sarvāstivāda scholastic tradition.
Karmapa explained, “These are the seven treatises of the Abhidharma. In full, they are in Chinese. Among that, 95% were translated by Tang Xuanzang. In Tibet, only a few of them were translated. Later on, as mentioned earlier, the Jñānaprasthāna and the Great Exposition were translated, and they are extant now.”
Contemporary scholars point out that it is impossible that they could have been written by the Buddha’s direct disciples, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. It is either that their names were borrowed, or that it was written in the tradition of Śāriputra or Maudgalyāyana.
3. The Four Great Exposition Masters
The Great Exposition of the Abhidharma is the longest text of 200 fascicles, and so this text contains all of the main points of the Sarvāstivāda tenets. At the time that the Great Exposition was being compiled, there were several important Sarvāstivādins—there was Dharmatrāta and other masters who gathered and compiled it, including the four: Buddhadeva, Ghoṣa, Dharmatrāta, and Vasumitra.
His Holiness explained, “When we talk about the Great Exposition and the Sarvāstivāda, are they synonyms? Later, they became synonyms, but if you think about it in terms of the development, first the Sarvāstivāda appeared, and then later the Great Exposition school appeared.”
Sarvāstivāda was the initial name of the school. The term “Proponent of the [Great] Exposition”, or Vaibhāṣika, appeared and the reason why it is called that is because of the text, the Great Exposition. They teach this text and consider it important.
Originally when the Sarvāstivāda tradition appeared, there was no Great Exposition; that appeared later. The seven texts of the Abhidharma appeared over time, and during the Third Council the Great Exposition of the Abhidharma was compiled. There is an order of earlier and later, but later on the Vaibhāṣika and Sarvāstivāda became synonymous.
Venerable Dharmatrāta
Among the Buddhist scriptures, there are actually four famous individuals named Dharmatrāta. Karmapa said, “As far as what the actual life of the Dharmatrāta we are discussing here was, we cannot really definitively say what it was. However, all of the Sarvāstivāda texts, including the Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between Scriptural Traditions, speak highly of him as the Venerable Dharmatrāta. Sometimes instead of saying Dharmatrāta, they just use the word ‘Venerable’.”
In his Notes on the Treasury of Abhidharma, Puguang says that Dharmatrāta lived 300 years after the Parinirvāṇa, which is not long after Kātyāyanīputra, the author of the Jñānaprasthāna, appeared. According to Tang Xuanzang, he was born in Gandhāra.
Dharmatrāta was actually an upholder of the Sūtras (Sūtradhara), and thus he was also called a Dārṣṭāntika, or analogist. He did not emphasize the Abhidharma tradition; he upheld the Sūtras, and he also criticized the Abhidharma masters.
Later, the modern Chinese master Yinshun wrote that during the time of the Venerable Dharmatrāta, the Abhidharma was still flourishing and developing. However, Venerable Dharmatrāta himself upheld the earlier positions of the Sarvāstivāda, meaning that he primarily upheld the Sūtras. For that reason, the Sautrāntikas, the Sūtra school, considered him to be like a precursor to their school.
In addition, Dharmatrāta also had some views close to the Mahāyāna regarding the bodhisattvas. From ancient times in China, he was called Bodhisattva Dharmatrāta. The reason was because he was not upholding the teachings of the Abhidharma as much as following a precursor of the Mahāyāna.
His own texts are actually no longer extant; the only thing that we can read now is his compilation of the Dharmapada or the Udānavarga.
Venerable Vasumitra
His Sanskrit name is Vasumitra, but a translation of his name in Chinese is “Friend of the Gods,” Tianyou, Devamitra in Sanskrit. In Chinese Buddhist history, there are also many other scholars who are called Vasumitra, presenting a lot of difficulties. Sometimes we do not know which one we are referring to unless we use designations.
The Vasumitra of the four venerables of the Great Exposition School was born in a place called Mālwā. According to Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India, he was born in a place called Maru in the west. The time he lived was probably sometime between the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. There was a householder named Jāti in the region of Tukhāra who was wealthy and paid him great respect. Later he went to the city of Puṣkalāvatī, where he lived and taught the dharma; he became an eminent western region Sarvāstivāda master.
According to Tang Xuanzang’s Great Records of the Western Regions, during the time of King Kaniṣka, the Third Council was held. During that Third Council, Vasumitra was an important elder and so he was brought to Kashmir. He went to Kashmir and participated in the compilation of the Great Exposition along with Master Pārśva. He was such a significant person of that time that people would ask him questions about everything; they said that all doubts were resolved by asking him. His Holiness remarked, “Scholars currently say that the dates of Vasumitra were actually a bit earlier than that, before the Third Council and the compilation of the Great Exposition, so it was probably impossible that he could have participated in them.”
Venerable Vasumitra himself was a little bit different from Venerable Dharmatrāta. He was a holder of a pure Sarvāstivāda view. He is known for the features of this view: “an emphasis on systematic presentation, an emphasis on the critical points, an emphasis on clarity and simplicity, and an emphasis on etymological explanations.” The longest commentary on the Jñānaprasthāna is the Great Exposition, and there are a lot of citations of Vasumitra within it. It is then apt to say he was an authoritative upholder of the Sarvāstivāda Great Exposition Abhidharma tradition. Among the four of the great masters of the Sarvāstivāda, Vasumitra was shown the highest esteem and greatest respect.
The Great Exposition was compiled in the region of Kashmir. The Sarvāstivādins there in the Great Exposition school were called the Eastern Sarvāstivādins. Vasumitra was born in Gandhāra, so he was considered a Western Sarvāstivādin. But the Kashmiri Sarvastivadins considered him even more highly than those in the west did because they cited so many of his works, which shows the excellence of his philosophical thought. The particular features of his writings are that they have very good systematic order, they are concise and easy to understand, and the characteristics are really clear. He was very influential for both Eastern and Western Sarvāstivādins.
Venerable Vasumitra, like Dharmatrāta, was also respectfully called “Bodhisattva” in ancient Chinese texts. These are described in Tang Xuanzang’s Great Records of the Western Regions. Venerable Vasumitra was well-learned in the three piṭakas and the five sciences. All the compilers of the Great Exposition in Kashmir wanted him to participate, but when he arrived, they told him: “You have not yet eliminated the afflictions and you are not an arhat; we only have arhats here, so you cannot be here,” and they expelled him.
In actuality, Vasumitra had completed all the accumulations to achieve arhathood and could manifest it at any moment. But just as he was about to achieve it, the gods told him: “You are going to awaken to buddhahood after Buddha Maitreya, so why would you want to achieve the result of the Foundation vehicle?” The gods made this prophecy and request, and so for that reason he put aside achieving the level of an arhat. This is the story of why he was called Bodhisattva Vasumitra.
The works of Vasumitra that are still extant are the aforementioned Abhidharma Prakaraṇapāda and the Abhidharma Dhātukāya. In the Chinese tradition, it is said he wrote both. There is also the Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions (Samayabhedoparacanacakra), which is traditionally attributed to Master Vasumitra, although some contemporary scholars doubt whether he wrote it.
In terms of the Chinese, there are three main texts: the Abhidharma Prakaraṇa, the Abhidharma Dhātukāya, and the Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions. In Tibetan, the two Abhidharma texts are not included, but the Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions is extant in Tibetan.
Venerable Buddhadeva
The third is the Venerable Buddhadeva. In Sanskrit his name is Buddhadeva, meaning “Buddha God.” His life story is not very clear, but it is purported that he participated in the compilation of the Great Exposition.
It was suggested that he lived sometime between 10 BCE and 10 CE. In 1869 in the city of Mathurā in northern India, a pillar with a lion capital was found, inscribed with: “Ācārya Buddhadeva and the bhikṣus of the Sarvāstivāda.” Scholars date this pillar between 10 BCE and 10 CE, and it is possible that the Ācārya Buddhadeva mentioned is the Buddhadeva, one of the four masters of the Sarvāstivāda school.
In terms of his philosophy, Buddhadeva and Venerable Dharmatrāta were similar. Within the Sarvāstivāda, they were not “upholders of the abhidharma”, but “upholders of the sūtras”, also called analogists or Dārṣṭāntikas. The Dārṣṭāntikas held the Sūtras to be the most important, and did not consider the Abhidharma all that important. The Abhidharma represents later commentaries on the intent of the Buddha’s words. “They disliked how Abhidharma teachers developed complicated philosophies with subtle distinctions, preferring instead the original, easily understood form of the Buddha’s words,” remarked Karmapa.
Within his own philosophy, Buddhadeva stated that form is just the elements, and mental factors are just the mind (i.e., asserting that there is no form separate from the elements and no mental factors separate from cognition). He did not accept that form could be separate from the elements, nor that there was any mind separate from mental factors.
Venerable Ghoṣa
The fourth is Venerable Ghoṣa, born in northern India in a region called Tukhāra, Togar in Tibetan.
According to Tāranātha’s History of Buddhism in India, after the Third Council, the sponsor King Kaniṣka passed away. In a northern place called Aspamaranta, close to Tukhāra, there lived an extremely wealthy householder named Jāti. He invited both Great Exposition masters—Venerable Vasumitra and Ghoṣa—and spent 12 years making offerings to them along with 300,000 bhikṣus. According to Tāranātha’s history, Vasumitra and Ghoṣa were contemporaries. Another story says that Ghoṣa was present during the compilation of the Great Exposition.
His Holiness then shared a famous story related to Venerable Ghoṣa, that of healing someone’s eyes with tears. There are several versions of this story found in various texts. According to Tang Xuanzang’s Great Records of the Western Regions, in Magadha near the bodhi tree, King Aśoka’s son, Prince Kuṇāla, had lost both of his eyes. The king brought his child to Venerable Ghoṣa and requested him to cure his son. Venerable Ghoṣa asked him to invite everyone to come listen to the dharma, and instructed that each person should carry a bowl. The king made the announcement, and everyone came carrying a bowl to listen.
When they gathered, Venerable Ghoṣa taught on the twelve links of interdependence. Everyone was so moved that they started crying. Ghoṣa instructed everyone to collect their tears in their bowls, and they gathered them all into a golden vessel. He made an aspiration and used the collected tears to wash the eyes of Prince Kuṇāla. The prince’s eyes were restored, and he was able to see just as before.
The modern master Yinshun notes that while Tāranātha’s history holds Ghoṣa and Vasumitra to be contemporaries, the Wheel Distinguishing the Differences Between the Scriptural Traditions includes citations where Ghoṣa quotes Vasumitra’s Prakaraṇapāda, suggesting that Ghoṣa must have lived slightly later than Vasumitra.
4. Scholars of the Vātsīputrīya and Saṃmitīya Schools
The Vātsīputrīya school was a major school that split off from the Sthaviravāda. This school is different from the others because they assert an ineffable self. Generally, all Buddhist schools assert selflessness, but the Vātsīputrīya school asserts an ineffable self that is neither different from nor the same as the aggregates. The Saṃmitīya was a sub-school that split off from the Vātsīputrīya, and in ancient India it became extremely widespread. Tang Xuanzang reports that when he traveled to India, the Saṃmitīya school was very widespread.
The founder of the Vātsīputrīya school was Vātsīputra, who appeared probably in the 3rd century BCE. There are two different explanations for his name: the first is that he was born in the family lineage of an ancient sage; in old Indian folklore there’s the story of an ancient sage with uncontrollable desires who had intercourse with a cow, and the child born from that union was named Vātsīputra, giving rise to that lineage. The second explanation is that he came from the region of Vatsa, one of the sixteen great kingdoms of ancient India [Vatsa was located to the south of the Ganges river, and its capital was the city of Kauśambī on the Yamunā river, corresponding to the modern-day location of Kosam.]
His main influence was establishing the doctrine of an ineffable self.
As for the Saṃmitīya school, there are not many extant works but a few important texts survive in Chinese, one of which is the Treatise of the Saṃmitīya School. It is preserved only in Chinese and lacks both the author’s and translator’s colophons, though contemporary researchers hypothesize that it may have been translated by Master Paramārtha. This is an extremely important text because it is the only extant treatise that systematically explains the entire Saṃmitīya doctrine, including their views on the individual, samsara, imprints, and karmic cause and effect.
Another text is the Twenty-Two Verses Clarifying the Vinaya, authored by the Saṃmitīya master Buddhatrāta, and translated by Paramārtha. This text teaches many different aspects of the Vinaya.
There is also the text Abhidharma: Establishing the World. Although it lacks a colophon, the translator was Paramārtha. It teaches how Mount Meru, the four continents and the six classes of sentient beings form, remain, and perish; most scholars assert that it is a Saṃmitīya text.
Karmapa remarked, “There were probably many great scholars in the Saṃmitīya school, but no other manuscripts of theirs are extant today outside of these few texts in Chinese.”
He then concluded the teaching by mentioning that he would speak on the southern transmission or the Tāmraparṇīya /Tāmraśāṭīya school (a branch of the Vibhajyavāda school), and also about masters like Skandhila, Vasubandhu, Saṅghabhadra, and later authors of commentaries on the Treasury of Abhidharma.
