Immeasurable Joy: Being One Meditation of a “Bodhisattva Vaibhāṣika”
Religions July 25, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/rel16080967 via OpenAlex
Summary
The paper analyzes the practice of immeasurable joy (muditā) as described in a seventh century Sanskrit yoga manual from Qïzïl. It shows that the author drew from the *Vibhāṣā, a significant Buddhist metaphysical text. By identifying parallels between these texts, it presents a new edition of passages that outline a theory of practice, demonstrating how Vaibhāṣika principles are integrated at various levels of the yoga practice.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | The author of the yoga manual relied on the *Vibhāṣā to articulate a theory of practice that integrates Vaibhāṣika principles into the experience of immeasurable joy. |
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Abstract
This paper considers the practice of immeasurable joy (muditā) as presented in the so-called Yogalehrbuch, a seventh century Sanskrit “yoga manual” from Qïzïl, on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin. It demonstrates that the author of the text, whose purpose is to describe the journey of a yogin on the path to the awakening of a Bodhisattva, relied on some version of the *Vibhāṣā, the voluminous treatise on Buddhist metaphysics from which the Vaibhāṣika school derives its name. Identifying several parallels between the two texts, it presents a new edition of select passages of the manuscript from the preface to immeasurable joy which constitute what the text terms a theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa). On this basis, it is shown that the specific principles of Vaibhāṣika ontology and phenomenology conveyed by this theory come to be instantiated at the experiential, structural and representational levels of the practice (prayoga), which the text primarily serves to example.