Cognition

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...

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...

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)...

Fine Points about Categories  There was an interesting question Ulla brought up this morning that I thought about. That is, how do we know a double negative? We were speaking in terms of specifiers (ldog-pa). How do we know that something is not anything other than...

Presenting Extreme Examples Somebody brought up a point during the break, that in many of my explanations I tend to go to extremes when giving examples from different points of view. This is a method that’s used in Buddhist analysis, especially Prasangika, which is to look at...

We started our discussion of conceptual cognition last time and I asked you to think of a dog and examine: what is it that appears? Did you think of all dogs in general? Or did a mental picture of a specific dog come to your mind? Answer please. My dog. So, a specific...

Bare Cognition The ways of knowing that take as their appearing objects objective entities and metaphysical entities are, respectively, bare cognition and conceptual cognition. According to the Sautrantika explanation, all validly knowable phenomena are either objective...

Definitions  The next topic is subjects and objects. When we talk about subject here, that word, of course, could be understood in many different ways, but literally, it’s something that has an object. Subjects are functional phenomena (dngos-po) that have objects...

How to Approach the Voidness Cognized in an Arya’s Total Absorption Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: Now, the biggest debate regarding Prasangika in Sakya, Kagyu, Nyingma and Gelugpa concerns differences in how to approach the voidness that is seen in total absorption. They all...

Review Among the seven ways of knowing, some are valid ways of knowing and some are invalid. The valid ways of knowing are bare cognition and inferential understanding and all the rest are not valid. “Valid” means that it is fresh and non-fraudulent, and “non-fraudulent” means...