Mental Factors

Commentary on Blo-rigs-kyi sdom-tshig blang-dor gsal-ba’i me-long by A-kya Yongs-‘dzin dByangs-can dga’-ga’i blo-gros, (also known as A-kya Yongs-‘dzin Blo-bzang don-grub) (1740 – 1827), compiled from oral teachings by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, translated and edited by Sharpa...

 Mental Factors There are primary consciousnesses and mental factors. In any cognition there are always these two kinds of conscious phenomena, which share five congruent features (mtshungs-ldan lnga). They share a common (1) object (yul), (2) reliance (rten), (3) mental...

A Clear Mirror of What Should be Accepted and Rejected Homage to Manjushri. An explanation of the presentation of ways of knowing involves both knowing, which is something having an object, and the objects (it has). Of these, in general, something that has an object is...

Existent Phenomena According to the Buddhist analysis, existent phenomena (yod-pa) comprise everything validly knowable. If something exists, it is validly knowable and, in fact, the existence of something can only be established in relation to its being validly knowable....

Balanced sensitivity requires deconstructing the deceptive, dualistic appearances our mind creates and harnessing our underlying deep awareness and natural talents. We also need to work with other mental factors that structure our mental activity, but do not form part of our...

Questions and Answers Let’s start our session with some questions. Karma I wonder if this statement is right or not: Every perception that we have through our six senses, along with the mental factors, is our karma, our past accumulated karma. Are perceptions which I perceive...

Review The presentations of the various metaphysical topics in Buddhism, as I’ve explained, are useful in helping us to deconstruct various problems that we might face. And one way that we saw that we can deconstruct what we experience is to see within that experience… Like...

Background We are continuing our discussion of how to adjust our mental factors within the context of developing balanced sensitivity. His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of the different aspects of Buddhism, and he differentiates Buddhist science from Buddhist religion and...

The mind gives rise to many types of appearances, in terms of both the objects of cognition and the ways of cognizing them that arise. In both cases, what arises may be accurate or inaccurate, pure or impure, tainted or untainted, samsaric or nirvanic. Why is it important to...