Cognition

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.

Our minds give rise to many different kinds of appearances. To avoid confusion, we need to recognize and discriminate among the various different ways in which our minds make things appear to us.

It’s very important to try to understand the various appearances of the mind, how they exist and do they correspond to reality or not.

Learning about Buddhist metaphysics is an analytical tool to deconstruct our experiences.

The superficial and deepest truths of anything are those phenomena that the valid conceptual and non-conceptual cognitions, scrutinizing superficial truth on the one hand or deepest truth on the other, take as their involved objects and explicitly apprehend.

Only the omniscient awareness of a Buddha can cognize all the causal factors that affect which specific “presently-happening result” arises from a karmic tendency.

A Gelug presentation of the topic of negations and affirmations, which are crucial in meditating on the negation phenomenon, voidness.

All apprehensions explicitly apprehend one or more involved objects. Not all, however, implicitly apprehend anything.

Mental activity is made up of six types of consciousness that are aware of an object as being a sight, a sound, and so on, and 51 types of mental factors that qualify or help with the cognition of that object.

This eighteenth century text concerns the mind and the ways in which it knows things, and is written from the point of view of the Gelug interpretation of the True Aspectarian branch of the Sautrantika tenet system of Indian Buddhism.