Cognition

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...

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...

Review Yesterday we began our discussion of the types of appearances that the mind gives rise to. We saw that in order to understand this, we need to understand what we mean by “mind.” We saw that what it’s referring to is mental activity, which is the individual, subjective...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Decisive Determination and Apprehension A decisive determination (nges-shes, determining cognition) is a cognition that ascertains (nges-pa) its own object (rang-yul) correctly by decisively cutting it off from incorrect interpolations (sgro-’dogs bcad-pa) that it is something...

Cognition Theory: Cognition of Commonsense Objects Last session we looked at several unique points that Tsongkhapa made and contrasted some of them with the non-Gelug positions on them. Since the presentation I gave was quite sophisticated and advanced, I’d like to start this...