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Tradition

Saraha

Saraha
Yaska · CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Overview

Saraha,Sarhappa, Sarahapa, Sarahapāda (Tibetan: མདའ་བསྣུན་, Wylie: mda' bsnun, THL: danün, lit. 'The Archer'; c. 8th century CE) was an Indian Buddhist Mahasiddha and poet. The name Saraha means "the one who has shot the arrow.". According to one, scholar, "This is an explicit reference to an incident in many versions of his biography when he studied with a dakini disguised as a low-caste arrow smith. Metaphorically, it refers to one who has shot the arrow of non duality into the heart of duality."

Saraha is considered to be one of the founders of Vajrayana Buddhism, particularly the Mahāmudrā tradition associated with the mind teachings of Tibet.

Saraha was originally known as Rāhula or Rāhulabhadra and was born in Roli, a region of the city-state of Rajni in eastern India, into a Shakya family and studied at the Buddhist monastic university Nalanda.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy

    States what Saraha is.

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  2. These in the open sea set upon the men and cast them out of the ships; but they knew nothing about ships, nor how to use rudders or sails or oars, and after they had cast out the men they were driven about by wave and wind and came to that part of the Maiotian lake where Cremnoi stands; now Cremnoi is in the land of the free Scythians. 109 There the Amazons disembarked from their ships and made their way into the…

    Herodotus, The History of Herodotus — Volume 1

    States what Saraha is.

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  3. There is our rightful home; from that land did Dardanus come." That Atlas came from Africa, the mountain called by his name, which stands in that continent, bears witness; and Orosius says that it is in Africa in his description of the world, where he writes: "Its boundary is Mount Atlas, and the islands which are called 'the happy isles.'" "Its"--that is, "of Africa," of which he was speaking.[211]

    R. W. Church, Dante. An essay. To which is added a translation of De Monarchia.

    States what Saraha is.

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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Buddhist philosophy.

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