Cognition

Introduction  This evening we are going to be speaking about ways of knowing; in other words, cognition theory, and how it is that we know things – how our cognition actually works. This is an important topic since it relates very much to how we experience the four noble...

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...

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...

Conceptual Fabrication – A Way of Being Aware or Conventional Objects Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: All four Tibetan traditions share this verse (XVIII.5) of Nagarjuna in common: From the depletion of karmic impulses and disturbing emotions (there is) liberation. Karmic...

Non-Determining Cognition A knowing (of something) that is a non-determining cognition is one whose involved object is an objective entity that appears clearly but without decisiveness. When divided, there are three: (1) (non-determining) sensory bare cognition, (2)...

Mind We’ve seen the general application and relevance of this topic, ways of knowing. There are additional general things that we also need to understand in order to be able to go further into the individual seven ways of knowing. The first of these is to understand what we...

Atomic Particles Among forms of physical phenomena are atomic particles (rdul-phran). Although atomic particles do not exist as external phenomena; nevertheless, visible objects, such as clay vases, are made of them. Unlike the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika assertion of atomic...

Inferential Cognition  The next is inferential cognition, and here in the Gelugpa Sautrantika system, this is a cognition that arises depending on a line of reasoning. For example, we could directly perceive smoke coming from the house on the other side of the valley. If...

Review We’ve been speaking about appearances and how the mind is involved with that. We’ve seen that when we speak about appearances, we’re speaking about something that appears to the mind and has a deep relationship with mind. And when we speak about mind, we’re speaking...

Intermittently Manifest Mental Factors Like primary consciousness, the five types of deep awareness and the ten ever-functioning and ascertaining mental factors, the rest of the mental factors also have no beginning. Although they share the same essential nature as the...