Buddhist Doctrinal Classification
Buddhist Doctrinal Classification refers to various systems used by Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions to classify and organize the numerous texts and teachings that have developed over the history of Buddhism. According to buddhologist Peter Gregory, these classification systems fulfill three interwoven roles for Buddhist traditions: hermeneutical, sectarian, and soteriological. From an hermeneutical standpoint, they function as a method of organizing Buddhist texts both chronologically and hierarchically, thereby producing a doctrinal structure that is internally coherent and logically consistent. In its sectarian application, different Buddhist schools evaluate and order scriptures based on their own doctrinal priorities, using this to legitimize their specific traditions. From a soteriological perspective, classification schemas map out a graded path of spiritual development, wherein the practitioner’s insight evolves from basic teachings toward the most advanced and profound realizations.
One of the earliest such systems was the "Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma", an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist framework for classifying and understanding the teachings of the Buddhist Sūtras and the teachings of Buddha Śākyamuni. This classification system first appears in the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and in the works of the Yogācāra school. According to the three turnings schema, the Buddha's first sermons, as recorded in the Tripiṭaka of early Buddhist schools, constitute the "first turning". The sūtras which focus on the doctrine of emptiness like the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra corpus, are considered to comprise the "second turning", and the sūtras which teach Yogācāra themes, like the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, comprise the final and ultimate "third turning".
This and other similar classification systems later became prevalent in various modified forms in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in East Asian Buddhism. In East Asian Buddhism, doctrinal classification systems, called "panjiao", were developed in nearly all major Chinese Buddhist schools. Tibetan Buddhism generally uses the term "classification of tenets", which is also a name for a whole genre of literature that focuses on this topic.
Indian theories
The idea of classifying various doctrines and teachings has its antecedents in Early Buddhist texts such as the Tevijja sutta and the Brahmajala sutta. These early Buddhist sources discuss the various worldviews of brahmins, sramanas and ascetics during the Buddha's time, explaining why they are inadequate and why the Buddha's teaching is superior to them.Earlier Mahayana Sutras mostly discuss the Buddha's teachings in two main categories: Hinayana or Śrāvakayāna and the Mahayana or Vaipulya teachings. The schema of the three vehicles is also another early classification scheme, which contains three main vehicles to awakening: Śrāvakayāna, Pratyekabuddhayāna and Mahayana. Some sutras complicate this classification however. Perhaps the most famous example is the Lotus Sutra, which teaches that the Buddha taught three vehicles only provisionally. In reality, they are ultimately a single teaching, the all inclusive One Vehicle.
The Three Turnings
The Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra is the first work to introduce the "three turnings of the wheel of Dharma" schema, which became the normative classification system in the Yogācāra school. file:Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath. Gandhara.Met.jpg|thumb|A second century Gandharan depiction of the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath.First Turning
The first turning is traditionally said to have taken place at Deer Park in Sarnath near Varanasi in northern India. It consisted of the teaching of the four noble truths, dependent arising, the five aggregates, the sense fields, not-self, the thirty seven aids to awakening and all the basic Buddhist teachings common to all Buddhist traditions and found in the various Sutrapitaka and Vinaya collections. These teachings are known as the "Hinayana" teachings in Mahayana. In East Asian Buddhism, it is called "the teaching of existence" since it discusses reality from the point of view of phenomena which are explained as existing.The Abhidharma teachings of the various śrāvakayāna traditions are generally also placed into this category.
Second Turning
The second turning is said to have taken place at Vulture Peak Mountain in Rajagriha, in Bihar, India. The second turning emphasizes the teachings of emptiness and the bodhisattva path. The main sutras of this second turning are considered to be the Prajñāpāramitā sutras. In East Asian Buddhism, the second turning is referred to as "the teaching that the original nature of all things is empty, that signs are not ultimately real".The second turning is also associated with the bodhisattva Manjushri. The analytical texts of the Madhyamaka school of Nagarjuna are generally included under the second turning.
Third Turning
Yogācāra sources
The first sutra source which mentions the "three turnings" is the Ārya-saṃdhi-nirmocana-sūtra,'' the foundational sutra of the Yogācāra school. Major ideas in this text include the storehouse consciousness, and the doctrine of cognition-only and the "three natures". The Saṃdhinirmocana affirms that the teachings of the earlier turnings authentic but are also incomplete and require further clarification and interpretation. According to the Saṃdhinirmocana, the previous two turnings all had an "underlying intent" which refers to the three natures, the central doctrine of the third turning.The Saṃdhinirmocana also claims that its teachings are the ultimate and most profound truth which cannot lead to a nihilistic interpretation of the Dharma which clings to non-existence and is also incontrovertible and irrefutable. As such, the third turning is also called "the wheel of good differentiation", and "the wheel for ascertaining the ultimate". In East Asian Buddhism, the third turning is referred to as “ultimate turn of the Dharma wheel”.
file:Asanga.JPG|thumb|Tibetan depiction of Asanga receiving teachings from Maitreya.
Other Mahāyāna sutras are considered to be associated with the Yogācāra school, and thus, with the third turning. These include the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Ghanavyūha Sūtra, both of which discuss Yogācāra topics like the ālayavijñāna, the three natures and mind-only idealism as well as tathāgatagarbha ideas.
The teachings of the third turning are further elaborated in the numerous works of Yogācāra school masters like Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, Dharmapāla, Śīlabhadra, Xuanzang, Jñānaśrīmitra and Ratnākaraśānti.
In his Commentary on Distinguishing the Middle from the Extremes, Vasubandhu comments on the three turnings and how they relate to the three natures. According to Vasubandhu, the first turning teaches the non-existence of the self through an analysis of the five aggregates. The second turning then establishes how the very appearance of a self comes about from its aggregate parts through dependent arising. The third turning then, explains the fundamental nature of emptiness itself, which is how the non-existence of the self exists, i.e. the existence of the non-existent as explained by the three natures. In this sense, the ultimate truth in the third turning is said to be both existent and non-existent.
In his Commentary on the ''Cheng weishi lun, Kuiji, lists the following as the most important sutras for the Yogācāra school:
Buddha-nature teachings
The Indian Yogācāra tradition eventually developed various works which synthesized Yogācāra with the tathāgatagarbha thought found in various Mahayana sutras. This synthesis merged the tathāgatagarbha teaching with the doctrine of the ālayavijñāna and the three natures doctrine. Some key sources of this Indian tendency are the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Ghanavyūha Sūtra, and the Ratnagotravibhāga.This Yogācāra-Tathāgatagarbha tradition became influential in East Asian Buddhism and in Tibet. The translator Paramārtha was known for promoting this syncretic Yogācāra and for defending the theory of the "stainless consciousness", which is revealed once the ālaya-vijñāna is purified.
As noted by Jan Westerhoff, the identification of buddha-nature teachings with the Yogācāra's third turning happened not only because several sutras explicitly synthesized the two doctrines, but also because:
the notion of the tathāgatagarbha lines up more naturally with the characterization of ultimate reality we find in Yogācāra than with what we find in Madhyamaka. The latter's characterization of ultimate reality in terms of emptiness is primarily a negative one, it describes it in terms of what is not there, while the former's is more positive, postulating a foundational consciousness that is the source of all appearance.Due to the influence of Yogācāra-Tathāgatagarbha thought, some Buddhist traditions also consider the tathāgatagarbha teachings as part of the third turning. For example, the Jonang master Dölpopa Shérap Gyeltsen held that the Tathāgatagarbha sutras contained the "final definitive statements on the nature of ultimate reality, the primordial ground or substratum beyond the chain of dependent origination."
For Dölpopa, some of the key “sutras of definitive meaning” included: the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra, Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra, Ghanavyūha Sūtra, Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra. Dölpopa's classification of Tathāgatagarbha sutras was influential on numerous later Tibetan authors. The Rime master Jamgon Kongtrul also held that these buddha-nature sutras belonged to the definitive third turning.
The teachings found in several of the "treatises of Maitreya", such as the Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā, Ratnagotravibhāga and the Dharmadharmatāvibhāga are also considered to be part of the third turning by several schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Furthermore, in Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist tantra and its associated scriptures are sometimes considered to also be part of the third turning.