Ways of Knowing

Examples illustrating the seven ways of knowing, and how to identify and apply them in our daily lives.

An overview of the different numbers of valid ways of knowing in Indian tenet systems.

Comparing non-Prasangika and Prasangika Indian logic for gaining valid inferential cognition of a conclusion about an object.

Bare cognition is a fresh, nonfraudulent awareness that is non-deceptive and parted from concepts.

Conceptual cognition is a deceptive cognition, because it confuses a category and generic representation of a member of a category with a specific item. Western languages call such conceptual labeling “projection.”

Presumptive cognition is an invalid cognition that conceptually takes its object correctly and freshly but presumes it to be true either for no reason, a wrong one, or even a right one but without understanding why it is correct.

The Tibetan debate process is a learning and clarifying process for ways of knowing, which is then intended for application in meditation and in practice.

Indecisive wavering is a mental factor in conceptual cognition that vacillates between two conclusions concerning its object.

Buddhist psychology and science have a great deal of relevance for Westerners. The religious aspects of Buddhism can supplement, but not substitute them.

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