Cognition

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 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...

The Meaning of “Mind” in Buddhism I’ve been asked to come here this weekend to teach about appearances (snang-ba), how the mind makes appearances and the various problems that are associated with that. This is not a very simple topic, because in fact all our problems come...

Introduction Our topic for this weekend is “ways of knowing” or lorig in Tibetan. This is a very helpful topic because it deals with how we know anything, how we know that what we know is correct, and how we know that it is decisive. It very much affects how we proceed on the...

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...

Historical Introduction The Buddhist teachings on cognition theory and logic derive from the works of the late 5th-century Indian master Dignaga and of Dharmakirti, the late-6th century disciple of his disciple. Dignaga wrote A Compendium of Validly Cognizing...

Preface Among the Tibetans, the Buddhist monasteries have traditionally been the great centers of learning. The educational system followed by many of them, such as Ganden, Sera and Drepung of the Gelug tradition, is modeled on that introduced more than a thousand years ago...

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...

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  We are going to begin our discussion of Buddhist metaphysics. This is a large topic that covers an enormous amount of material, and all of this material is quite difficult; it is very complex, with many, many different items involved. However, I think the...