Svatantrika

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

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...

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...

The Five Great Madhyamaka Lines of Reasoning Madhyamaka masters use the five great Madhyamaka lines of reasoning (dbu-ma'i gtan-tshigs chen-po lnga; five great Madhyamaka syllogisms) to establish the voidness of true existence. The five are: The line of reasoning "parted...

What’s voidness (emptiness) all about? What is it talking about? It’s talking about how do you establish or prove that something exists. How do you know it exists? How do you prove it exists? What establishes its existence? Most translations present voidness as being about how...

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...

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...

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...

Ultimate Phenomena In the context of Madhyamaka in general, ultimate phenomena (don-dam-pa) refer to voidnesses, which are of two types: denumerable ultimate phenomena (rnam-grangs-pa’i don-dam),non-denumerable ultimate phenomena (rnam-grangs ma-yin-pa’i don-dam). Denumerable...