Status Updates From The Central Philosophy of T...

...as for the Ten Stages refutation of any other creator (than the mind), this is stated as evidence for the fact that the “only” in the expression “mind-only” does not exclude external things, and not as evidence showing that the negation of external things is interpretable in meaning.

“Just as a doctor prescribes medicines for the sickness of invalids, so the Buddha teaches even ‘mind-only’ to some living beings.”

...the statements of “mind-only” are not in terms of the Teacher’s own system but in terms of the inclination of the disciples, just as the doctor does not give medicine to particular patients out of his own whim, but in accord with the particular pattern of the patient’s sickness.

...Among types la and 2a, there are four subtypes: i) cause-non-perception, ii) concomitance-non-perception, iii) identity-non-per-ception, and iv) effect-non-perception. For further exemplification he refers us to Drop of “Logic (NB); see Stcherbatski, Buddhist Logic IL

P. 439

Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!!

...some clarifying comments: (in paraphrase) “non-perception” negative reasons are twofold—1) those arising from non-perception of an imperceptible, and 2) those arising from non-perception of a perceptible. Each of these is again twofold: 1a, 2a) non-perception of related fact reasons, and lb, 2b) non-perception through perception of contradictory fact reasons. Among types la and 2a, there are four subtypes: i)...

REASONING NEGATING THE NEGATEE

What is the chief reasoning used to negate the above negatee?
With some exceptions, the reason used to negate the negatee of this system is the reason (called) “non-perception of the related fact.” 64

Note 64:

Tib. ’brel zla ma dmigs pa. In regard to a “non-perception of related fact” (negative) reason, dPal-’byor Lhun-grub has some clarifying comments: (in paraphrase)...

So challenging. But where else can you find a comparative analysis of Tibetan Buddhism and Ludwig Wittgenstein?

...the profound, terrifying practice of enlightenment, whose essence is emptiness and compassion.

Finally, the Jewel Garland declares:

Just as the grammarians make one read the grammar, the Buddha teaches the Dharma according to the tolerance of the disciple. To some he teaches the Dharma to refrain from sins, to some to accomplish virtue, to some as dependence on dualism, and to some as freedom from dualism; (finally) to some he teaches...

...the “real” relative, the inexpressible processes that we are.

[I have the impression that Thurman unfortunately makes this text, through his translation and his presentation, more difficult than is necessary. It is a bit of a slog at times and I don't think it should be.]

...“The form-aggregate is produced,” “it is ceased,” “it is abandoned,” “it is fully understood,” and so on. Thus, as long as our perceptions are habitually entangled in our conventional, verbalized descriptions of the world, that is, as long as we have not seen the unreality of the “structured, verbally, conceptually, and imaginatively constructed world,” we do not perceive...

“The imagined reality” designates the world of conditional processes, which are its ground as object of conceptual constructions, when this world is verbally and conventionally structured into a world of natural entities, as [evinced in perceptions accompanying such] expressions as “This is the form-aggregate,” and of natural qualities, as [evinced in perceptions accompanying such] expressions as...

...Tsong Khapa has the audacity to argue that the Absolute, the Ultimate Truth, Reality, can be proven, expressed, and experienced, and that human reason can thus serve as the solid ground for ethical, creative, and liberative action in the world.

P. 230
(re-reading some as I had put it down for awhile)

...Nirvana cannot be distinguished from samsara. It is just here now, and the full experiential acceptance of that is liberation, which is not a going elsewhere.

There is a Nirvana, a supreme bliss. But salvation is not “mystic,” a “leap into the void” having discarded reason, and Nirvana is not a place outside the world; it is a situation that includes the world within its bliss.Samsara cannot be distinguished from it. It is in Nirvana that samsara is embraced completely.In the ultimate reality, there is no duality of any sort, and samsara and Nirvana are the same actuality.

Tsong Khapa urges us to “listen with reverence” to the philosophy of enlightenment and yet we have discovered that the hermeneutical act of listening can only be performed by means of pure reason. The definitive teaching turns out ultimately to be sheer silence, an absolute negation of the ultimate expressibility of reality.

Most commentaries on the Essence place it in the context of the four traditional hermeneutical strategies called the “Four Reliances,” which are as follows:

a. rely on the teaching, not the teacher(’s authority);
b. rely on the meaning, not the letter;
c. rely on the definitive meaning, not the interpretable one;
d. rely on (non-conceptual) wisdom, not on (dualistic) cognition.

...nor of a subject, nor therefore of ‘I’ either”? Might I not ask: in what sense have you got what you are talking about and saying that only you have got it? Do you possess it? YOU DO NOT EVEN SEE IT! And this too is clear: if as a matter “matter of logic you exclude other people’s having something, it loses its sense to say that you have it.”

Quoting Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations:

“But when I imagine something, or even actually see objects, I have got something which my neighbor has not!” —I understand you. You want to look about you and say: “at any rate, only I have got THIS!” What are these words for? They serve no purpose. —Can one not add: “there is here no question of a ‘seeing’ and therefore none of a ‘having’—nor of a subject,...

If we understand this investigation, we will transform our understanding of everything. We will be transformed in our perceptions, thoughts, and responses. If we have not been transformed, we have not understood.

...it is a matter of hanging onto the high trapeze of his [Lama Tsongkhapa] thought for it to swing us out beyond our habitual image of ourselves as perplexed non-geniuses into the free flight of the wisdom that we all possess.

When we become confused, uncertain in our reading, we must therefore push ourselves first to think more deeply, and cannot easily sit back and find the fault in the writer or the text.

Tsong Khapa always felt deeply his debt to this great master [Buddhapalita], as it was while reading Buddhapalita’s book that he attained his highest enlightenment experience.

...The problem with this system was that it was not immune to the reificatory mental habits that plague people and philosophers everywhere.

In Buddhist thought of his day, the refined science of the Abhidharma (itself merely a systematization of the Buddha’s critique of the naive realists) had ossified into a more subtle form of realism, a kind of reductionistic pluralism that took an atomistic form with the Vaibhashikas, the “Analysts,” and a nominalistic form with the Sautrantikas, the “Traditionists.”

The problem with this system was that...

...Charvaka thought decisively influenced the main writers in the field of political economy, the Arthaśāstra literature, the most famous text being that of Kautilya, in which they taught a ruthless pragmatism that Max Weber admitted “out-Machiavellied Machiavelli.”

Tsong Khapa himself wrote, the very morning of his highest enlightenment, that “Of all deeds, the deeds of speech are supreme; hence, it is for them that the wise commemorate a Buddha!” And Manjushri, as god of the Word, is the universal icon of the liberative power of the Word. Thus he is invoked at the beginning of all works of philosophy in the Buddhist tradition.

... I have a great sense of gratitude to another colleague and kindred spirit, the late philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom I never was privileged to meet, but whose courageous breakthroughs and lucid insights provided me with the key concepts with which to bring Dialectical Centrism to life in the modern universe of philosophical discourse.