Immeasurable Joy: Being One Meditation of a “Bodhisattva Vaibhāṣika”
Religions July 25, 2025 Henry Albery
A seventh-century Sanskrit yoga manual from Qïzïl describes the practice of immeasurable joy (muditā) as part of a bodhisattva's path to awakening. The manual's author relied on a version of the *Vibhāṣā, a major Vaibhāṣika treatise on Buddhist metaphysics. The paper identifies parallels between the two texts and presents a new edition of select passages from the preface to immeasurable joy, which the text calls a theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa). It shows that Vaibhāṣika ontological and phenomenological principles are instantiated at the experiential, structural, and representational levels of the practice that the manual exemplifies.