- Lived:
- c. 725–788 CE · born in eastern India (Zahor, traditionally placed in Bengal); taught at Nālandā; died in Tibet
- Tradition:
- Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism — the grand synthesis of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and Buddhist logic
- The Big Idea:
- The rival systems of a thousand years of Indian philosophy aren't just enemies to refute — they're rungs on a single ladder, each true at its own level, with emptiness at the top.
- In their words:
- "These things our schools and others argue over — examine them, and they turn out to be neither one thing nor many. So they have no nature of their own. They are like reflections."
- If you remember one thing:
- The last great philosopher of Indian Buddhism packed a millennium of argument into one system, carried it over the Himalayas, and planted it in Tibet — where it survived the death of Buddhism in the land of its birth.