Gelug

Historical Introduction The Buddhist teachings on cognition theory and logic derive from the works of the late 5th-century Indian master Dignaga and of Dharmakirti, the late-6th century disciple of his disciple. Dignaga wrote A Compendium of Validly Cognizing Minds (Tshad-ma...

The Meaning of “Mind” in Buddhism I’ve been asked to come here this weekend to teach about appearances (snang-ba), how the mind makes appearances and the various problems that are associated with that. This is not a very simple topic, because in fact all our problems come...

The Need for Understanding Correctly the Two Truths To gain a true stopping (‘gog-bden; true cessation) of suffering and thus attain liberation, we need to gain a true stopping of unawareness (ma-rig-pa; ignorance) and of the rest of the emotional obscurations (nyon-sgrib)...

[As background, see: The Main Features of Tantra] Methodology Tantra is well known as being a quicker and more efficient method for achieving enlightenment than is sutra. To appreciate tantra and put full enthusiasm into its practice in a realistic manner, it is important...

Introduction  Concerning the life of Tsongkhapa, one of the most important points is what a great revolutionary Tsongkhapa was. Through all his tremendous efforts in meditation and preliminary practices building up positive force and so on, he gained a newer and deeper...

Definition of the Two TruthsDeepest TruthA mind that analyzes the deepest nature of a knowable phenomenon takes as its involved object (‘jug-yul) its deepest essential nature, i.e. it takes the voidness of the phenomenon as the main object with which it cognitively engages....

The Five Systems of Five Buddha-Families  We’ve seen that when we speak about the five Buddha-families, if we look at it from the dimension of what will develop into all the aspects of a Buddha, we have this one set of five: mental activity, good qualities, verbal expression,...

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...

Review We are continuing our discussion of what karma actually means. We discussed the presentation the Indian master Asanga made within the context of the Chittamatra system of tenets. If we translate Chittamatra literally, it means “mind-only.” We saw that, in this system,...