Cognition

Chapters 13 to 16 Thirteen: The Meditations for Refuting (Truly Existent) Cognitive Sensors and Cognitive Objects (1) You do not see absolutely everything about a vase (all its sensory qualities and parts) at the time when you see (its) form. Who would state “(because) the...

Brief Review Of the six far-reaching attitudes, generosity and so forth, we began discussing the sixth one, the far-reaching attitude of discriminating awareness. Prior to that were the verses concerning a combined state of a stilled and settled mind and an exceptionally...

Milarepa introduces a young man to mahamudra meditation to search for his mind.

An introduction to the system of ways of knowing (lorig), a major component of the Buddhist map of the mind. The text covers the various ways in which we cognize objects – valid, non-valid, conceptual, non-conceptual and so on.

To understand the Gelug Prasangika presentation of dependent arising (rten-’byung ’brel-ba) and the voidness of self-established existence (rang-bzhin-gyis grub-pa; inherent existence), we need to understand the distinctions this...

Introduction  When we look at the concept of the self in Buddhism, we need to analyze it from the points of view of the four schools of the Indian tenet systems. We’re going to refine our understanding further and further as we work our way through these schools. When we...

Introduction The past, the present, and the future are important topics to study on the Buddhist path. This is because, for the purification of karma, it is helpful to understand the nature of past destructive actions that we have committed and their future karmic results....

Introduction This weekend we are going to be speaking about negations (dgag-pa) and affirmations (sgrub-pa). Although there are quite different explanations of this in the different Tibetan traditions, we’ll present here only the presentation that we find in the Gelug...

Introduction [As background, see: The Two Truths: Vaibhashika and Sautrantika] The Tibetans study four tenet systems (grub-mtha’) of Indian Buddhism. Among them, Vaibhashika (bye-brag smra-ba) and Sautrantika (mdo-sde-pa) are Hinayana systems – specifically, subdivisions of...

Introduction to the Topic  In this seminar, we’re going to explore the topic, “What does it mean to understand something?” This is a very important topic and one that is not traditionally dealt with in Dharma presentations. However, we need to understand the teachings and...