Sthiramati (Sanskrit; Chinese: Anhui 安慧, and Jianhui 堅慧; Tibetan: Blo gros brtan pa) was a 6th-century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk.
[1] Sthiramati is mainly known for his numerous commentaries to Yogācāra and Abhidharma works which synthesized a varied tradition into a more coherent system.
These phenomena deceptively appear as objectively existent things, but are ultimately unreal, like optical illusions.
Thus, no words have an objective referent, and thus all language is necessarily figurative, a theory that has been termed pan-figurative or pan-metaphorical.
Sthiramati thought that the dependent nature was characterized by duality (of subject-object), which is the result of false imagination.
[3] In Sthiramati's system, the only thing that has real existence (dravyasat) is "the bare reality, free from the differentiation into subject and object".
Some modern scholars like Hidenori Sakuma have questioned theis tradition understanding of Sthiramati's Yogācāra views due to a lack of primary source evidence.
[9] Furthermore, Sakuma also argues that it is likely there were different Indian commentators whose work later became conflated into one figure named "Sthiramati".