Svatantrika

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...

Unawareness of How We Exist and Disturbing Emotions  We are talking about the self, “me,” how we exist and how we establish that we exist. This is a very crucial question that is asked in Buddhism. When we are unaware of how we and everyone exists, when either we don’t know or...

Madhyamaka-Svatantrika Madhyamaka is divided into two schools according to the Gelug presentation of it. We have Svatantrika and Prasangika, and Svatantrika is divided also into two: Sautrantika-Svatantrika and Yogachara-Svatantrika. Sautrantika-Svatantrika accepts externally...

Review: First Level of the Four Point Analysis: Refuting the Coarse Impossible "Me" and the Subtle Impossible "Me" We have refuted now the coarse impossible "me," which is doctrinally-based and coming together with that are the twenty forms of this deluded attitude towards the...

Review We have been speaking about appearances in conceptual and non-conceptual cognition. We got the basic mechanism with the Sautrantika presentation and in the Chittamatra variation on it we had just a few things that were different, specifically concerning the natal...

The Impropriety of Giving Initiations to Those Having No Understanding of Voidness  It is wrong for lamas to give initiations to those who don’t even know about bodhichitta and voidness. Perhaps they are only giving them for fame. The Nalanda masters did not give initiations...

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, for you to...

When voidness is cognized conceptually, its superficial truth appears; this is known as denumerable voidness. When voidness is cognized non-conceptually, an absolute absence of truly established existence appears; this is known as non-denumerable voidness.

Madhyamaka masters use the five great Madhyamaka lines of reasoning to establish the voidness of self-established true existence.

Svatantrika and Prasangika are two divisions of the Madhyamaka tenet system, but according to the Gelugpa presentation, Svatantrika asserts self-established (inherent) existence, while Prasangika refutes it.