Śāntarakṣita was an important and influential Indian Buddhist philosopher of the Madhyamaka school who studied at Nalanda monastery, and became the founder of Samye, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Śāntarakṣita combined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logico-epistemology of Dharmakirti into a novel Madhyamaka philosophical system known as Yogācāra-Mādhyamika or Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamika in Tibetan Buddhism. Unlike other Madhyamaka philosophers, Śāntarakṣita accepted Yogācāra doctrines like mind-only (cittamatra) and self-reflective awareness (svasamvedana), but only on the level of conventional truth. He was responsible for bringing the tantric adept Padmasambhava to Tibet to magically control the local spirits that interferred with the establishment of Samye. He was also the teacher of Kamalashila.
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