Language is dealt with in Tibetan epistemological treatises in terms of the relationship between “what expresses” (rjod byed) and “what is expressed” (brjod bya)—two notions that come quite close to the Saussurian distinction between “signifier” and “signified.”

The Tibetan tradition of epistemology and philosophy of language focuses on how knowledge is defined, validated, and expressed. This article explains the rich tradition and examines key concepts like “reliable cognition” and the influence of Indian Buddhist thinkers such as Dignāga and Dharmakīrti on Tibetan thought.

As long as one remains with a tenet system that accepts outer [objects], it is not tenable for the object and the [apprehending] consciousness to be of a single substance. In that case, the [object that is] the cause that casts an aspect [upon the consciousness] is called the apprehended object.

In this excerpt from “The Word-By-Word Commentary on the Treasury of Valid Reasoning,” Jamyang Loter Wangpo, an important Rime Sakya master, explains that knowable objects are those that can be apprehended by the mind. He distinguishes between object generalities and non-existent clear appearances, arguing that while both can appear to the mind, they lack substantial existence and are not valid objects of cognition. Though a non-sectarian thinker, he respectfully examines competing views from other schools, critiquing their reasoning to clarify and strengthen the Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka position.

In certain cases I found that it was possible to clear up perceived difficulties without too much trouble. In other cases, the more I looked, the more problematic the texts became. So this work is concerned with problem-solving: looking at difficult or controversial areas, highlighting the most accurate textual data, and looking at different possibilities for interpretation. It is not meant to be a guide to monastic conduct, and does not attempt to be complete or systematic. Along the way I offer a little advice for those seeking practical guidance. Usually, despite the forbidding textual complexities, the ethical issues are really quite simple.

Nagarjuna seems willing to embrace contradictions while at the same time making use of classic reductio arguments. He asserts that he rejects all philosophical views including his own-that he asserts nothing-and appears to mean it. It is argued here that he, like many philosophers in the West and, indeed, like many of his Buddhist colleagues, discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought. For those who share a dialetheist’s comfort with the possibility of true contradictions commanding rational assent, for Nagarjuna to endorse such contradictions would not undermine but instead confirm the impression that he is indeed a highly rational thinker. It is argued that the contradictions he discovers are structurally analogous to many discovered by Western philosophers and mathematicians.

Experiencing autonomy—being allowed to make those choices that constitute an autonomous life—as a learner is a better way of learning to be autonomous than being told what to do.

Education of whatever type cannot be sustained without some notion of imparting a belief system.

A rigorous philosophical analysis of how humans acquire mental categories which argues that human values are always already present in any act of teaching or learning, thus solving some of Wittgenstein’s problems and encouraging us to ask radical questions about what our education system currently values, and what it might be designed to value instead.

The Buddhist attitude to any such revelation would be that of accepting what is true, good and sound and rejecting what is false, evil and unsound after a dispassionate analysis of its contents without giving way to prejudice, hatred, fear or ignorance.

K. N. Jayatilleke outlines three broad means of spiritual knowledge, where Buddhist thought fits in, and how this compares to the major religious thought at the time of the Buddha.

The three means are: revelation, reason, and direct experience. Jayatilleke places Buddhism squarely in the third category. He then explores these means of knowledge as viewed by the materialists, Jains, and followers of the Vedas, comparing them with Buddhist thought.

For an important task of the Zen philosopher is to police the border between the factual and the non-factual, between the sayable and the non-sayable, between the contingent and the necessary. But this task cannot be reduced to just policing. The Zen master must somehow point the disciple to the realm of the non-sayable while at the same time keeping him or her firmly anchored in the sayable.

Looking at Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, this article compares the philosopher’s analysis of language to that of Zen Buddhism, particularly “koan Zen.” The author begins by highlighting the seeming resemblance between Wittgenstein’s idea of only saying “what can be said” and Zen’s attempts to use words to point to what is beyond words. Much of the remaining article compares Wittenstein’s methodology with Zen’s usage of koans.

The fleshly eye, the divine eye, and the wisdom eye. These, bhikkhus, are the three eyes.

True confidence only comes about once the teachings have led the disciple to personal verification of their efficacy.

Faith is a starting point for the realization of truth.

Both viññāṇa and paññā can be interpreted to mean consciousness, the former the consciousness apropos of the phenomenal and the latter apropos of the noumenal.

The main topics of each lecture are:

1. The historical background of non-Buddhist thought at the time of the Buddha
2. The Buddha’s critique of those existing epistemological attitudes
3. The uses and limits of logic
4. The role of authority and reason on the path
5. The limits of knowledge

More info on the classes can be found on the course page on SC:D&D.

What if I were to dwell in dependence on this very Dhamma to which I have fully awakened, honoring & respecting it?

What a Buddha bows to.

The post-modern epistemic absolute is based on the belief that knowledge is intrinsically tied to identity. And consequently this belief embraces positionality and standpoint theories as valid theoretical and practical foundations for personal and communal education, or cultivation. These beliefs come to percolate contemporary Buddhist discourse more and more.

In this interview, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā discusses her paper for the 2021 TLKY International Conference. That paper focused on the dialogue between early Buddhism and postmodern discourse on ideas of self-identity, self-conceit, and the construction of first-person experience and whether liberation is truly subjective.

For an alternate understanding of this sutta, Evans, 2007.

Madhyamaka is thus conceived of as a means, with liberation as its ultimate end. But the question remains, how does philosophical argumentation lead to spiritual goals?

This article explains the basic tenets of Madhyamaka thought found in Nagarjuna’s Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikās, and then, focusing on chapter 23, proceeds to show how such philosophical inquiry and its resultant understanding lead to final liberation (nibbana).

They discuss: past-life recollection, Western scientific methods in relation to rebirth, and whether a practitioner needs to believe in rebirth to attain awakening.

So there’s a tension in the Buddha’s recommendations about faith and empiricism. Few of Asian Buddhists I know find the tension uncomfortable, but Western Buddhists — raised in a culture where religion and faith have long been at war with science and empiricism — find it very disconcerting.

The delicate, but wonderful balance of faith and empiricism in Buddhism.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu highlights that it is direct seeing that liberates a practitioner, and faith operates as a working hypothesis. The essay also focuses on the psychological importance of faith.

This standpoint, which the author calls a mode of being, is aware of itself as such (i.e. as a standpoint), and it is this awareness itself that leads to transformation.

The paper also covers Dharmakīrti’s views on perception, inference, and scriptural authority as means of valid knowledge.

Leave behind the analogies of foolish minds and modes of speech,
And look instead into the mind for which there can be no analogy.

In this poetical advice, Mipham Rinpoche calls on his listeners to forget conceptions of reality, no matter how grand, and to look directly at the mind in order to gain wisdom.

You will never let go of the things you love. So you don’t have to worry.

In this talk, followed by questions and answers, Yuttadhammo explains the different categories of meditation and their common factors, such as mindfulness and concentration.

The reason the teaching of anattā can serve as a strategy of liberation is precisely because it serves to rectify a misconception about the nature of being, hence an ontological error. It accomplishes this task by promoting a correct comprehension of the nature of being…

This essay is a response to Ajahn Geoff’s “The Not-Self Strategy”.

Bhikkhu Bodhi agrees with his contention that “the Buddha’s teachings on self and not-self are strategies” but disagrees strongly when he says that “true and false can be put aside.”

For Ajahn Geoff’s reply to this essay, see “The Limits of Description.”

If the sense of self is doxastically anchored, then it will be anchored in the sort of belief that is ascribed along an action-based rather than judgement-based avenue.

A Western-philosophical exploration of the different levels of the “self” delusion.

Contemporary Buddhist studies has been strongly affected by its origins in the Victorian era, when Western religious scholars sought to rationalize and historicize the study of religion. Modern Asian scholars, trained within the Western scholarly paradigm, share this prejudice. The result is a skewed understanding of Buddhism, emphasizing its philosophical and theoretical aspects at the expense of seemingly ‘irrational’ religious elements based on the direct experience of meditation practice.

Sensual search, the search for being,
The search for a holy life …

They ask their communities to “wait and see” whether these allegations are true, with the unspoken assumption that they are not. I assert these responses use Buddhist teachings to uphold cis-masculine innocence by using hegemonic logics and commitments to downplay and delegitimize the phenomenon of sexual violence.

It is when doubts regarding the nature of reality, ourselves, or our beliefs arise that we start to ponder philosophical questions…

The [seven] studies presented in this book stem from a symposium of the same name which was held at the University of Hamburg in November 2017

… any theory which goes beyond the data of sensory experience could lead to a lot of unnecessary speculation and diatribes resulting in vexation.

Potthapada—having other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers—it’s hard for you to know whether perception is a person’s self or if perception is one thing and self another.

The Buddha discusses with a wanderer the nature of perception and how it evolves through deeper states of meditation. None of these, however, should be identified with a self or soul.

… whatever is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, reached, sought after, examined by the mind—that I know.

The Buddha knows what can be known and thus remains poised in the midst of the world.

For Early Buddhism, “public knowledge” would be a contradiction in terms.

Contrasting the Early Buddhist theory of knowledge with logical positivism, to which it is sometimes compared.

Drawing upon the Yogācārin model, Dharmakīrti explains that the contemplative must first grasp the objects through cognition born of listening, ascertain them through reflection based on reasoning, and finally cognise them through meditative cultivation. This leads to valid perception.

The more convincing position taken in Sarvāstivāda exegesis sees the three types of wisdom as interrelated activities that can rely on mindfulness, thereby testifying to the flexibility and broad compass of mindfulness in Buddhist thought as something not limited to a rigid division between theory and practice.

thinkers developed the notion of a ‘concept’ in order to explain how it is that words are capable of applying to real objects, and how concepts can be used to capture elements of word meaning extending beyond reference to real objects. In particular, I will focus on the developments made by Phywa pa Chos kyi seṅ ge in the middle of the twelfth century, as well as on reactions to those developments by Sa skya Paṇḍita

In early Buddhist logic, it was standard to assume that for any state of affairs there were four possibilities: that it held, that it did not, both, or neither. This is the catuskoti (or tetralemma). Classical logicians have had a hard time making sense of this, but it makes perfectly good sense in the semantics of various paraconsistent logics, such as First Degree Entailment (FDE).

Matters are more complicated for later Buddhist thinkers, such as Nagarjuna, who appear to suggest that none of these options, or more than one, may hold. The point of this paper is to examine the matter, including the formal logical machinery that may be appropriate.

The word “suffering” just means everything that can make you unhappy, that stops you from being a peaceful and happy and content person. When we really look at it, that comes down to just about everything! Everything we come into contact with has the potential to cause us suffering.

Truth, indeed, is deathless speech

A short sutta on Right Speech, equivalent to SN 8.5.

… these four things are unthinkable. They should not be thought about

If you try to think about these things you will go mad or get frustrated.

… the Buddha confined himself to asserting statements which were true and useful, though pleasant or unpleasant, so that the Dhamma is pragmatic, although it does not subscribe to a pragmatic theory of truth.

A short introduction to early Buddhist epistemology from its preeminent, modern scholar.

… for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Venerable Kaccānagotta asks the Buddha about right view.

This sutta, brief but profound, became renowned as the only canonical reference named in Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, perhaps the most famous philosophical treatise in all of later Buddhism.

If anyone, bhikkhus, should speak thus: ‘Having rejected this all, I shall make known another all’—that would be a mere empty boast on his part.

The Buddha makes clear that the senses are really “all” there is.

… even this view of yours, Aggivessana—‘All is not pleasing to me’—is even that not pleasing to you?

Deftly outmaneuvering an extreme skeptic, the Buddha discusses the outcomes of belief and disbelief. Rather than getting stuck in abstractions, he encourages staying close to one’s experiences.

Bhikkhus, there are these three authorities. What three? Oneself as one’s authority, the world as one’s authority, and the Dhamma as one’s authority.

For a translation of this sutta’s semicanonical commentaries, see Bhikkhu Bodhi’s The Root of Existence.

In this work, the questions pertaining to the means of knowledge known to, criticized in, and accepted by the Buddhism of the Pali Canon are fully discussed. A comprehensive survey of the historical background was indispensable for this purpose.

For Bhante Sujato’s lectures on this book, see Sujato, 2021.

… whatever (is) seen, heard, or thought, the good say ‘putting down’

A short note on the grounds for valid knowledge in the pre-Abhidhamma Pāli.

Those who wanted to uphold the radical non-substantialist position of early Buddhism were faced with the dual task of responding to the enormously substantialist and absolutist think­ing of the non-Buddhist traditions as well as to those within the Buddhist tradition who fell prey to such thinking.

… a consolidation of thirty years of research and reflection on early Buddhism as well as on some of the major schools and philosophers associated with the later Buddhist tradi­tions

… all pathways for verbal expression, terminology and designation converge on this whirlpool between name-and-form and consciousness

The Nivane Niveema are a series of thirty-three sermons on Nibbāna, originally delivered in Sinhala during the period 1988–1991 and given to the assembly of monks in Nissaraṇa Vanaya, Meethirigala, one of Sri Lanka’s most respected meditation monasteries in the strict forest tradition.

The English translations were released in 7 vols. between 2003 and 2012 and continue to brilliantly challenge the traditional Theravāda exegesis.

… a fair number of occurrences in the Buddha’s life would be difficult to explain if he had been omniscient

If a person has faith, they preserve truth by saying, ‘Such is my faith.’ But they don’t yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘This is the only truth, other ideas are silly.’

The Buddha instructs a Brahmin on the right way to talk about religion and how to make our way through the thicket of views to arrive at the truth.

Interesting to note: one of the methods mentioned was tried recently, with results exactly as reported.

You can find part two here.

I say it’s not possible to know, see or reach the end of the world by traveling. But I also say there’s no making an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world.

The mendicants ask Ānanda to explain this enigmatic statement derived from the famous story of Rohitassa.

See also AN 5.197 for a discussion on the causes of the weather!

There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.

The escape from conditions exists.

See also, Iti 43.

It is wrong perception that leads to the concepts of being and nonbeing.

Discriminatory views and practices are the antithesis of Right View, and they undermine the Middle Path by perpetuating identification with concepts of independent, constant, inherently existing selves and others

A brief outline of the discrimination faced by women across the Buddhist world, and a thoroughly cited argument for rejecting sexist views, even those that can be found in the Buddhist Canon.

Co-incidence of two phenomena, even when repeated, does not mean that one phenomenon is the cause of the other. To claim that activity in the brain causes awareness, or mind, is plainly unscientific.

Ajahm Brahm explains how science can be dogmatic and religion scientific.