Dependent Arising

Concluding Verses of the Third Section of the Text Having pointed out the trouble that our self-grasping and self-cherishing causes, and identifying that self-cherishing and self-grasping lie underneath the various problems and suffering that we have, Dharmarakshita finishes...

We’ve been speaking about dependent arising, and we’ve seen that it fits together with the topic of voidness – there is no such thing as a self-establishing nature that, by its own power, establishes the existence of conventional objects and what they conventionally are. Their...

Realizing the Voidness of Mind Itself Once we have gained conviction in the lack of true and inherent identity on the basis of our own "self," we turn to the basis of other persons or individuals and then to the massive network of all other phenomena. We examine voidness...

Statement of the Problem The most basic mental activity during each moment of our experience is to produce mental objects and simultaneously to engage with them. If, however, the actual object we perceive with mirror-like awareness is merely an appearance our mind creates,...

Voidness, or emptiness, is the total absence of impossible ways of existing, such as self-established inherent existence, while mental labeling is how we account for the conventional existence of things as “this” or “that.”

With correct understanding of voidness, we also correctly understand the different levels of dependent arising.

Tsongkhapa was a revolutionary reformer who reinterpreted and clarified many of the key Buddhist teachings, especially concerning the assertions of the Prasangika tenet system concerning voidness, the two truths, the two obscurations and cognition theory.

Nagarjuna’s text is a foundational treatise on Madhyamika philosophy consisting of 27 chapters. Chapter 26 offers an analysis of the twelve links of dependent arising.

When we correctly understand emptiness (voidness), we correctly understand dependent arising; and when we correctly understand dependent arising, we correctly understand emptiness.

This article explores the dynamics of relating to others as part of the ongoing process of providing a bridge between modern Western thought and Buddhism.