Ways of Knowing

Understanding Different Interpretations and Analysis in Buddhist Schools We have presented the Sautrantika way of enumerating the different ways of knowing. As we go deeper in our studies we find that there are certain variants to be found. For instance, in Asanga’s...

Today, we are going to have a meditation session on the material we’ve covered concerning voidness (emptiness). Before we actually do the meditations, what was suggested that might be helpful would be to break into small groups, perhaps of four or five people, to discuss with...

A summary of the main assertions unique to the Gelug tradition, concerning cognition theory, the Indian Buddhist tenet systems, karma, the three times, and many more.

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.

Existent phenomena are defined as what is validly knowable. In the Sautrantika system, existent phenomena are divided into nonstatic objective entities and static metaphysical ones.

Apprehension is an accurate, decisive cognition of its own object. Of the seven ways of knowing, bare cognition, inferential cognition and subsequent cognition are apprehensions.

An overview of objects that are not decisively cognized within the context of conceptual and nonconceptual 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.

All Indian Buddhist tenet systems, except Vaibhashika, agree that the validly knowable “me” is not a self-sufficiently knowable phenomenon, it is imputedly knowable.

We need a detailed map of all possible ways of knowing and states of mind so that we can always identify what is occurring on our mental continuum, so that we can guide ourselves toward any constructive goal.