Indian Non-Buddhist Tenets

Background  There were six schools of classical Indian philosophy, and these were the schools that were the opponents in the debates that the Buddhists had. Among those schools, the ones that were the most vocal or relevant in terms of the schools the Buddhists interacted with...

Let’s compare the Samkhya, Nyaya and Buddhist explanations of the various characteristics of the atman, the self.  Assertions about Cognition  Samkhya Assertions about Cognition Samkhya says – this is very interesting because it sounds like our Western scientific position –...

The Source of the Tantras Tantra practice requires conviction in the authenticity of the tantras, correct understanding of their procedures and theory, and certainty of their validity as methods leading to enlightenment. According to the Tibetan tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha...

Introduction We’ve been going through, in summary, the main points of the sixteen chapters of Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verse Treatise. And we saw that the first eight chapters speak about how to rid ourselves of incorrect views concerning conventional truth. And now we’re ready...

The Indian Tenet Systems on Rebirth, Liberation and a Creator In India, at both the time before and after the Buddha came, there were many systems of tenets. Within the Charvaka school of tenets, there's no acceptance of past lives and future lives. They assert that the mind...

Conceptual Cognition Furthermore, a conceptual cognition is a conceptually implying awareness that cognizes an audio (category) or meaning/object (category) as suitable to be associated (with each other). An audio category (sgra-spyi) is the category of the sound of a specific...

Introduction and Question about Concepts and Nonexistent Phenomena We started going through the second half of the text, the chapters that deal with voidness, (specifically the topic is refuting or overcoming the incorrect views regarding voidness and the deepest nature of how...

Once we have a little bit of an understanding of the twelve links of dependent arising and how our uncontrollably recurring rebirth, samsara, actually works, then we can focus with close placement of mindfulness on the feelings in terms of being the true origins of suffering....

The non-Buddhist Nyaya logician Shankarasvami composed this text as a summary introduction to Dignaga’s system of Buddhist logic.

All major religions try to answer the questions around what the self is and where it comes from. The Dalai Lama advises us to develop respect for each of the different traditions in order to know the essence of these religions and thus appreciate their value.