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Dependent-Arising and Emptiness: A Tibetan Buddhist Interpretation of Madhyamika Philosophy
Dependent-arising and emptiness are two essential Buddhist concepts. Elizabeth Napper helps us understand the integral relationship of these ideas and the ways that they have been interpreted by Tibetan and Western scholars. An essential reference work for students and practitioners of Buddhism.
Along with a translation of the insight (vipashyana) section of Tsongkhapa's Great Exposition on the Stages of the Path (Lam rim chen mo) , Napper provides an extensive introduction that contrasts the Geluk view of emptiness to that of Western scholars, and a translation of four interwoven commentaries on the text.
Along with a translation of the insight (vipashyana) section of Tsongkhapa's Great Exposition on the Stages of the Path (Lam rim chen mo) , Napper provides an extensive introduction that contrasts the Geluk view of emptiness to that of Western scholars, and a translation of four interwoven commentaries on the text.
- GenresBuddhism
868 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1989
7 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Napper
11 books1 followerElizabeth S. Napper, Ph.D. (Buddhist Studies, University of Virginia, 1985), is a scholar of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, and Co-Director of the Tibetan Nuns Project, which was established under the auspices of the Tibetan Women’s Association and the Department of Religion and Culture of H. H. the Dalai Lama and is dedicated to educating and supporting nuns in India from all Tibetan Buddhist lineages.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
need-to-reread
August 23, 2018August 22, 2018
Hmmm. Needs a reread. I lost too much - even with notes. I would like to write something of a review but cannot bring it all together.
Perhaps Dzong-ka-ba is correct when he says that you need to want to escape from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth in order to grasp the philosophy. I don’t really want to escape from anything.
Shall start the reread in September.
Hmmm. Needs a reread. I lost too much - even with notes. I would like to write something of a review but cannot bring it all together.
Perhaps Dzong-ka-ba is correct when he says that you need to want to escape from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth in order to grasp the philosophy. I don’t really want to escape from anything.
Shall start the reread in September.
December 16, 2019
This is #6 of 6 books I chose from the library, to acquaint myself with my neighbors, that I found especially helpful.
((I was provided with access to a library as part of spending this winter in close proximity to a cultural center. I have been involved in some way with Buddhism for my entire adult life, but this tradition is the least familiar to me, and for good reason. Imagine that once upon a time there were seven great libraries, and all but one of them was burned down. So this tradition also protects the thoughts and scholarship of entire cultures, many vanished, while at the same time provides a long continuous record of striving to move into the future by acquiring knowledge and living a principled life. The result of this reading list has been to discover uncanny similarities in such colorful difference, which has brought me closer to the philosophy of non-duality that has meant so much to my education. I am sharing a list that I can recommend, this does not make an expert in the slightest, but I can promise these are rich and better distillations than many I have scanned.))
The world of Buddhist philosophy is so large and its traditions so numerous and specific to location, that few people even get as far as grasping how it is made up of three large 'groups' each with wildly different outward manifestations, but sharing a core philosophy that is relatively brief but in itself exceedingly difficult to grasp without a component of physical participation. This complexity creates an impression that it is exotic, and cannot apply to ordinary life. However, underneath the traditions, which naturally absorbed some of whatever came before them, especially special locations like springs and mountains, it shares a common culture across the board and all borders - much the way science shares a culture (of peer review and reproducible experiments), or universities share a culture (public access and referenced study) or democracy shares a culture (of popular decision making). So whether you are encountering a tradition where a mummy is being marched in a golden throne, or a poet is trying to write the perfect letter "A" with a brush, they all share one culture - the philosophy of the 'Middle Way', in which interconnection and emptiness are essential concepts. This is a challenging subject for the unexposed, as many of us are taught that philosophy is an intellectual pursuit, but here is a philosophy which questions, in detail, every part of the intellect and how it knows what it claims to know. By clearly, physically showing it's a difficulty in our own lives, we are provided a concrete reason to have empathy for others. Then it goes on to make recommendations for long term mental health. By this initially curious seeming approach, it arrives at something that we nevertheless will probably appreciate - that what you choose to do is more important, for your own and everyone else's happiness, than what you think.
This book is advanced, and in a different way from the others I've listed, which focus more on the details of the culture and art that preserve one of the great intercultural libraries of the ancient past. This focuses instead on one of the more difficult but absolutely central topics that makes Buddhism what it is. As a long term student, gaining even a little nuance on this topic is delightful, and feels like a reward for real effort. It may not be an ideal place to start if you want to survey the myriad cultural and artistic manifestations that exist today, but it is considerably closer to the roots that they all come from. These are the concepts that stimulated so much colorful interpretation, that even the most remote and trivial contact has left lasting impressions. This critical look at cognition is the transcendent component that has resulted in so many creative outcomes, and remains its most useful challenge to any student today, because it reveals something hidden about what it is to be human, something that fundamentally challenges the ego and its need to be different from all the humans.
In addition to tackling the DNA of the movement, it focuses on a major literary point in its history, that highlights a discourse between numerous then seperate schools, over the finer points of how to teach one of the most difficult topics philosophy has ever examined - human cognition of the senses. The subject then is also the "Middle Path" school, or Madhyamaka, whose ideas were absorbed into all the later schools in various degrees, but especially formed the core of Mahayana. Its main teachers, especially Nagarjuna, are closely linked to the university system of the 1st and 2nd century Indian world, when contact with the western worlds were still quite strong. This puts it in direct connection with the other great libraries of the time, all closely linked by trade but also intellectual exchange, from the furthest edges of Europe to the capitals of China.
The school sought ways to teach the topic "everything is connected, and everything is empty" and basically had found over centuries of refinement that non-dualism was so challenging to relate, the school decided to produce different curriculums for different types of student... tantra for those looking for magic, art and ritual as visitors from their householder lives, and other more rigorous philosophical and physical methods for full time scholars who wanted to delve deeper into the life of the mind. The author expertly weaves this rarely discussed history of the explosion of schools that followed literary expansion, in with selections of primary texts and a useful glossary and notes on how this knowledge was then transferred to Tibetan archives, allowing us to know them today. By giving context and content together (probably the best way of explaining how we got to all of the lavish, morphological spectacles today from less than literary origins) a crucial and often excluded chapter is made sensible. Teaching one to live as though they were both bound by and essentially free from any condition one might choose to look upon, remains a matter of liberty still unrealized almost everywhere you look. Still radical thought after thousands of years, still pulling students into all sorts of reactions, as they investigate their response to these concepts, all this from coming into contact with a relatively simple idea. Even if one does not agree or grasp it, it is healthy to challenge the mind, even just to entertain the notion of mind as a sort of untrained tyrant requiring inspection. Simple to brush against, but so challenging to one's ideas of self and knowledge, that it provides a lifetime of growth in perspective. Entertaining this topic gets to the grain of sand that produced the oyster's pearl, it lifts the paving stones of the temple and reveals the dry leaves and bread crumbs left beneath it by nameless persons who first found it a charming place to rest and contemplate...
This book is possibly the best I've read on the subject, in that it shows both the literary development and the ancient principle together, as they bloomed into the relatively modern Medieval movement of universities. It's often avoided in preliminary teaching because the physical challenge of losing one's impression of meditation as exotic in itself can take a long time for many of us... but it is nevertheless one of the key points, the glue that holds all the various forms together as authentic, whether there are images or no images, prayer or silence, golden marvels or little more than a walking stick and beggar's bowl. This topic is the best way I can think of for demonstrating how the Buddhism I know is a body-rooted philosophy and education system first, and if you understand it, you will know why they say it is compatible with (in that it relates to) any subject on earth.
((I was provided with access to a library as part of spending this winter in close proximity to a cultural center. I have been involved in some way with Buddhism for my entire adult life, but this tradition is the least familiar to me, and for good reason. Imagine that once upon a time there were seven great libraries, and all but one of them was burned down. So this tradition also protects the thoughts and scholarship of entire cultures, many vanished, while at the same time provides a long continuous record of striving to move into the future by acquiring knowledge and living a principled life. The result of this reading list has been to discover uncanny similarities in such colorful difference, which has brought me closer to the philosophy of non-duality that has meant so much to my education. I am sharing a list that I can recommend, this does not make an expert in the slightest, but I can promise these are rich and better distillations than many I have scanned.))
The world of Buddhist philosophy is so large and its traditions so numerous and specific to location, that few people even get as far as grasping how it is made up of three large 'groups' each with wildly different outward manifestations, but sharing a core philosophy that is relatively brief but in itself exceedingly difficult to grasp without a component of physical participation. This complexity creates an impression that it is exotic, and cannot apply to ordinary life. However, underneath the traditions, which naturally absorbed some of whatever came before them, especially special locations like springs and mountains, it shares a common culture across the board and all borders - much the way science shares a culture (of peer review and reproducible experiments), or universities share a culture (public access and referenced study) or democracy shares a culture (of popular decision making). So whether you are encountering a tradition where a mummy is being marched in a golden throne, or a poet is trying to write the perfect letter "A" with a brush, they all share one culture - the philosophy of the 'Middle Way', in which interconnection and emptiness are essential concepts. This is a challenging subject for the unexposed, as many of us are taught that philosophy is an intellectual pursuit, but here is a philosophy which questions, in detail, every part of the intellect and how it knows what it claims to know. By clearly, physically showing it's a difficulty in our own lives, we are provided a concrete reason to have empathy for others. Then it goes on to make recommendations for long term mental health. By this initially curious seeming approach, it arrives at something that we nevertheless will probably appreciate - that what you choose to do is more important, for your own and everyone else's happiness, than what you think.
This book is advanced, and in a different way from the others I've listed, which focus more on the details of the culture and art that preserve one of the great intercultural libraries of the ancient past. This focuses instead on one of the more difficult but absolutely central topics that makes Buddhism what it is. As a long term student, gaining even a little nuance on this topic is delightful, and feels like a reward for real effort. It may not be an ideal place to start if you want to survey the myriad cultural and artistic manifestations that exist today, but it is considerably closer to the roots that they all come from. These are the concepts that stimulated so much colorful interpretation, that even the most remote and trivial contact has left lasting impressions. This critical look at cognition is the transcendent component that has resulted in so many creative outcomes, and remains its most useful challenge to any student today, because it reveals something hidden about what it is to be human, something that fundamentally challenges the ego and its need to be different from all the humans.
In addition to tackling the DNA of the movement, it focuses on a major literary point in its history, that highlights a discourse between numerous then seperate schools, over the finer points of how to teach one of the most difficult topics philosophy has ever examined - human cognition of the senses. The subject then is also the "Middle Path" school, or Madhyamaka, whose ideas were absorbed into all the later schools in various degrees, but especially formed the core of Mahayana. Its main teachers, especially Nagarjuna, are closely linked to the university system of the 1st and 2nd century Indian world, when contact with the western worlds were still quite strong. This puts it in direct connection with the other great libraries of the time, all closely linked by trade but also intellectual exchange, from the furthest edges of Europe to the capitals of China.
The school sought ways to teach the topic "everything is connected, and everything is empty" and basically had found over centuries of refinement that non-dualism was so challenging to relate, the school decided to produce different curriculums for different types of student... tantra for those looking for magic, art and ritual as visitors from their householder lives, and other more rigorous philosophical and physical methods for full time scholars who wanted to delve deeper into the life of the mind. The author expertly weaves this rarely discussed history of the explosion of schools that followed literary expansion, in with selections of primary texts and a useful glossary and notes on how this knowledge was then transferred to Tibetan archives, allowing us to know them today. By giving context and content together (probably the best way of explaining how we got to all of the lavish, morphological spectacles today from less than literary origins) a crucial and often excluded chapter is made sensible. Teaching one to live as though they were both bound by and essentially free from any condition one might choose to look upon, remains a matter of liberty still unrealized almost everywhere you look. Still radical thought after thousands of years, still pulling students into all sorts of reactions, as they investigate their response to these concepts, all this from coming into contact with a relatively simple idea. Even if one does not agree or grasp it, it is healthy to challenge the mind, even just to entertain the notion of mind as a sort of untrained tyrant requiring inspection. Simple to brush against, but so challenging to one's ideas of self and knowledge, that it provides a lifetime of growth in perspective. Entertaining this topic gets to the grain of sand that produced the oyster's pearl, it lifts the paving stones of the temple and reveals the dry leaves and bread crumbs left beneath it by nameless persons who first found it a charming place to rest and contemplate...
This book is possibly the best I've read on the subject, in that it shows both the literary development and the ancient principle together, as they bloomed into the relatively modern Medieval movement of universities. It's often avoided in preliminary teaching because the physical challenge of losing one's impression of meditation as exotic in itself can take a long time for many of us... but it is nevertheless one of the key points, the glue that holds all the various forms together as authentic, whether there are images or no images, prayer or silence, golden marvels or little more than a walking stick and beggar's bowl. This topic is the best way I can think of for demonstrating how the Buddhism I know is a body-rooted philosophy and education system first, and if you understand it, you will know why they say it is compatible with (in that it relates to) any subject on earth.
April 19, 2018
One word: brilliant. Though...not easy to read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews