Path to the Middle: Oral Madhyamika Philosophy in Tibet: The Spoken Scholarship of Kensur Yeshey TupdenDoes a Bodhisattva's initial direct cognition of emptiness differ from subsequent ones? Can one "improve" a nondualistic understanding of the unconditioned and, if so, what role might subtle states of concentration play in the process? In material collected by Anne Klein over a seven-year period, Kensur Yeshey Tupden addresses these and other crucial issues of Buddhist soteriology to provide one of the richest presentations of Tibetan oral philosophy yet published in English. Anne Klein's introduction to his commentary surveys oral genres associated with Tibetan textual study, and the volume concludes with a translation of the text on which Kensur bases his discussion of the "Perfection of Wisdom" chapter in Tsong-kha-pa's Illumination of (Candrakirti's) Thought (dbu ma dgongs pa rab gsal), translated here by Jeffrey Hopkins and Anne Klein. |
Common terms and phrases
absorption of cessation aggregates apprehending aspect attained ba'i Bodhisattva Bodhisattva ground bshad Buddha Buddhahood Buddhist byung calm abiding Candrakīrti's chen chos conceiving conception of true conventional consciousness conventionally existent cyclic existence dbang dependent arising Dharamsala direct perception discussion dzin entity established explained eye consciousness force of appearing four noble truths Gelukba grub gsal gzhi Ha-shang impermanence inherent existence lam rim Licchavi ma yin Mādhyamika Mahāyāna Mañjuśrī meaning meditative equipoise mental mind mngon mode of subsistence mtshan Nāga Nāgārjuna's ngag nonconceptual nonexistent nyid Nyingma oral commentary pa'i perfection of wisdom person phenomena pillar posited Prāsangika rdzob realizing emptiness rebirth refuted rnam rtog Śākyamuni Buddha Sanskrit Sarnath Sarnath edition Sautrāntika sciousness selflessness sems sixth ground snang Sutra Svātantrika tha snyad things Tibet Tibetan true cessation true existence tshad Tsong-kha-pa ultimate truth uncommon absorption understand uninterrupted path valid cognition
Popular passages
Page 1 - ... words come into being. The word in its natural, oral habitat is a part of a real, existential present. Spoken utterance is addressed by a real, living person to another real, living person or real, living persons, at a specific time in a real setting which includes always much more than mere words. Spoken words are always modifications of a total situation which is more than verbal. They never occur alone, in a context simply of words. Yet words are alone in a text. Moreover, in composing a text,...
Page 20 - The sensorium is a fascinating focus for cultural studies. Given sufficient knowledge of the sensorium exploited within a specific culture, one could probably define the culture as a whole in virtually all its aspects.
Page 27 - ... 3) In other words, a text's difference is not its uniqueness, its special identity. It is the text's way of differing from itself. And this difference is perceived only in the act of rereading.
Page ix - I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a...
Page 24 - Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, I must move my eyes around from one part to another. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every direction at once: I am at the center...
Page 8 - Sound is a special sensory key to inferiority. Sound has to do with interiors as such, which means with interiors as manifesting themselves, not as withdrawn into themselves, for true interiority is communicative