Vasubandhu begins the Abhidharmakosabhasya with a praise to Shakyamuni Buddha:
Om. Homage to the Buddha.
1. He has, in an absolute manner, destroyed all blindness;
He has drawn out the world from the mire of transmigration:
I render homage to Him, to this teacher of the truth, before
composing the treatise called the Abhidharmakosa.
Question: Some explanatory texts say that Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya is an auto-commentary implying that Vasubandhu also wrote a versified Abhidharma text. Is this correct? Did Vasubandhu actually himself write a separate Abhidharma text that he is now commenting on in the Abhidharmakosabhasya?
Or is the Abhidharmakosabhasya his commentary on the Vaibhasika-Sautantrika Abdhidharma, the Mahavibhasa?
Vasubandhu then explains this verse:
"He" refers to the Buddha.
"He has destroyed all blindness" - by him or through him blindness with respect to all things is destroyed.
Blindness is ignorance. Ignorance hinders the seeing of all things as they truly are.
The next paragraph states that the Buddha possessed the antidote to ignorance and definitely destroyed all ignorance wrt all knowable things so that it cannot rearise.
But the Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas have also destroyed all ignorance wrt the defilements.
However there is a difference between the freedom of ignorance of the Buddha and the Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas. As the text states, the Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas have destroyed all ignorance concerning the defilements. The Buddha destroyed all ignorance wrt to all knowable things including the defilements (i.e. the Buddha's freedom is greater than the Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas). And some examples are given:
1. The Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas do not know the qualities proper to the Buddha.
2. The Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas do not know about objects very distant in space and time.
3. The Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas do not know about the infinite complex of things.
(Each of these have chapter endnotes).
Therefore the Pratyekabuddhas and Sravakas have not destroyed blindness (ignorance) in an absolute sense "for the ignorance freed from the defilements is active in them" (this phrase also has an endnote).
So this commentary so far is just about the initial verse:
He has, in an absolute manner, destroyed all blindness
Kirt