Types of Phenomena

Introduction We are going to begin our discussion of Buddhist metaphysics. This is a large topic which covers an enormous amount of material, and all of this material is quite difficult; it is very complex, with many, many different items that are involved. But I think the...

Introduction The past, the present, and the future are important topics to study on the Buddhist path. This is because, for the purification of karma, it is helpful to understand the nature of past destructive actions that we have committed and their future karmic results....

Introduction This weekend we are going to be speaking about negations (dgag-pa) and affirmations (sgrub-pa). And although there are quite different explanations of this in the different Tibetan traditions, we’ll present here only the presentation that we find in the Gelug...

Preface Among the Tibetans, the Buddhist monasteries have traditionally been the great centers of learning. The educational system followed by many of them, such as Ganden, Sera and Drepung of the Gelug tradition, is modeled on that introduced more than a thousand years ago...

We’re speaking about affirmations and negations, and this is a very important topic. This topic touches another very important topic, which is the topic of words, and the meanings of words, and how do we actually, through words, mean something, feel something. This is crucial...

Introduction When we speak about the two truths in Chittamatra and the other Mahayana schools, we’re not talking about two different types of true phenomenon, we’re going to talk about the true truths. But speaking about the two truths that are descriptive of all phenomena,...

Review We’ve been speaking about appearances and how the mind is involved with that. We’ve seen that when we speak about appearances, we’re speaking about something that appears to the mind and has a deep relationship with mind. And when we speak about mind, we’re speaking...

Atomic Particles Among forms of physical phenomena are atomic particles (rdul-phran). Although atomic particles do not exist as external phenomena; nevertheless, visible objects, such as clay vases, are made of them. Unlike the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika assertion of atomic...

Fine Points about Categories There was an interesting question Ulla brought up this morning that I thought about. That is: how do we know a double negative? We were speaking in terms of specifiers. How do you know that something is not anything other than itself? Let’s say...

We started our discussion of conceptual cognition last time and I asked you to think of a dog and examine: what is it that appears? Did you think of all dogs in general? Or did a mental picture of a specific dog come to your mind? Answer please. My dog. So, a specific...