Download or read book Living Yogacara written by Tagawa Shun'ei and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yogacara is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology that stems from the early Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition. The Yogacara view is based on the fundamental truth that there is nothing in the realm of human experience that is not interpreted by and dependent upon the mind. Yogacara Buddhism was unable to sustain the same level of popularity as other Buddhist schools in India, Tibet, and East Asia, but its teachings on the nature of consciousness profoundly impacted the successive developments of Buddhism. Yogacara served as the basis for the development of the doctrines of karma and liberation in many other schools. In this refreshingly accessible study, Tagawa Shun'ei makes sense of Yogacara's subtleties and complexities with insight and clarity. He shows us that Yogacara masters comprehend and express everyday experiences that we all take for granted, yet struggle to explain. Eloquent and approachable, Living Yogacara deepens the reader's understanding of the development of Buddhism's interpretation of the human psyche.
Download or read book Buddhist Phenomenology written by Dan Lusthaus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly complex study of the Yogacara tradition of Buddhism, divided into five parts: the first on Buddhism and phenomenology, the second on the four basic models of Indian Buddhist thought, the third on karma, meditation and epistemology, the fourth on the Trimsika and its translations, and finally the fifth on the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun and Yogacara in China.
Download or read book Being as Consciousness written by Fernando Tola and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is intended to the study of the Yogacara Buddhist philosop[hy together with its commentaries and notes for better comprehensibility of the contents of three edited and translated texts, namely, Alambanapariksavrtti of Dignaga; the vimsatika Vijnaptimatratasiddhih of Vasubandhu and Trisvabhavakarika of Vasubandhu.
Download or read book Contexts and Dialogue written by Tao Jiang and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there Buddhist conceptions of the unconscious? If so, are they more Freudian, Jungian, or something else? If not, can Buddhist conceptions be reconciled with the Freudian, Jungian, or other models? These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogācāra Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities. Tao Jiang argues convincingly that such questions are inherently problematic because they frame their interpretations of the Buddhist notion largely in terms of responses to modern psychology. He proposes that, if we are to understand ālayavijñāna properly and compare it with the unconscious responsibly, we need to change the way the questions are posed so that ālayavijñāna and the unconscious can first be understood within their own contexts and then recontextualized within a dialogical setting. In so doing, certain paradigmatic assumptions embedded in the original frameworks of Buddhist and modern psychological theories are exposed. Jiang brings together Xuan Zang’s ālayavijñāna and Freud’s and Jung’s unconscious to focus on what the differences are in the thematic concerns of the three theories, why such differences exist in terms of their objectives, and how their methods of theorization contribute to these differences. Contexts and Dialogue puts forth a fascinating, erudite, and carefully argued presentation of the subliminal mind. It proposes a new paradigm in comparative philosophy that examines the what, why, and how in navigating the similarities and differences of philosophical systems through contextualization and recontextualization.
Download or read book A Yog ac ara Buddhist Theory of Metaphor written by Roy Tzohar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist philosophy is fundamentally ambivalent toward language. Language is paradoxically seen as both obstructive and necessary for liberation. In this book, Roy Tzohar delves into the ingenious response to this tension from the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism: that all language-use is metaphorical. Exploring the profound implications of this claim, Tzohar makes the case for viewing the Yogacara account as a full-fledged theory of meaning, one that is not merely linguistic, but also applicable both in the world as well as in texts. Despite the overwhelming visibility of figurative language in Buddhist philosophical texts, this is the first sustained and systematic attempt to present an indigenous Buddhist theory of metaphor. By grounding the Yogacara pan-metaphorical claim in a broader intellectual context, of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, the book uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that reaches across sectarian lines. Tzohar's analysis radically reframes the Yogacara controversy with the Madhyamaka school of philosophy, sheds light on the Yogacara application of particular metaphors, and explicates the school's unique understanding of experience.
Download or read book A Concise Encyclopedia of Buddhism written by John Powers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the teachings of the early masters to the growth of the tradition in the West, this authoritative new reference tool contains over 900 entries supplying information on all the key doctrines, practices, and figures central to Buddhism.
Download or read book Making Sense of Mind Only written by William S. Waldron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through engaging, contemporary examples, Making Sense of Mind Only reveals the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism as a coherent system of ideas and practices for the path to liberation, contextualizing its key texts and rendering them accessible and relevant. The Yogacara, or Yoga Practice, school is one of the two schools of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in the early centuries of the common era. Though it arose in India, Mahayana Buddhism now flourishes in China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. While the other major Mahayana tradition, the Madhyamaka (Middle Way), focuses on the concept of emptiness—that all phenomena lack an intrinsic essence—the Yogacara school focuses on the cognitive processes whereby we impute such essences. Through everyday examples and analogues in cognitive science, author William Waldron makes Yogacara’s core teachings—on the three turnings of the Dharma wheel, the three natures, the storehouse consciousness, and mere perception—accessible to a broad audience. In contrast to the common characterization of Yogacara as philosophical idealism, Waldron presents Yogacara Buddhism on its own terms, as a coherent system of ideas and practices, with dependent arising its guiding principle. The first half of Making Sense of Mind Only explores the historical context for Yogacara’s development. Waldron examines early Buddhist texts that show how our affective and cognitive processes shape the way objects and worlds appear to us, and how we erroneously grasp onto them as essentially real—perpetuating the habits that bind us to samsara. He then analyzes the early Madhyamaka critique of essences. This context sets the stage for the book’s second half, an examination of how Yogacara texts such as the Samdhinirmocana Sutra and Asanga’s Stages of Yogic Practice (Yogacarabhumi) build upon these earlier ideas by arguing that our constructive processes also occur unconsciously. Not only do we collectively, yet mostly unknowingly, construct shared realities or cultures, our shared worlds are also mediated through the storehouse consciousness (alayavijñana) functioning as a cultural unconscious. Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses argues that we can learn to recognize such objects and worlds as “mere perceptions” (vijñaptimatra) and thereby abandon our enchantment with the products of our own cognitive processes. Finally, Maitreya’s Distinguishing Phenomena from Their Ultimate Nature (Dharmadharmatavibhaga) elegantly lays out the Mahayana path to this transformation. In Waldron’s hands, Yogacara is no mere view but a practical system of transformation. His presentation of its key texts and ideas illuminates how religion can remain urgent and vital in our scientific and pluralistic age.
Download or read book M dhyamika and Yog c ra written by Gadjin M. Nagao and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-08 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nagao invariably focuses on the core of Mahāyāna Buddhism--the path of the Bodhisattva, the doctrine of śūnyatā, and the system of Trisvabhāva are explained. Important technical terms used in the Mahayana textual tradition, whose exact understanding is imperative for the study of Mahāyāna Buddhism, are skillfully presented, making the book indispensable to scholars of Buddhist studies.
Download or read book Madhyamaka and Yogacara written by Jay L. Garfield and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madhyamaka and Yogacara are the two principal schools of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. While Madhyamaka asserts the ultimate emptiness and conventional reality of all phenomena, Yogacara is usually considered to be idealistic. This collection of essays addresses the degree to which these philosophical approaches are consistent or complementary. Indian and Tibetan doxographies often take these two schools to be philosophical rivals. They are grounded in distinct bodies of sutra literature and adopt what appear to be very different positions regarding the analysis of emptiness and the status of mind. Madhyamaka-Yogacara polemics abound in Indian Buddhist literature, and Tibetan doxographies regard them as distinct systems. Nonetheless, scholars have tried to synthesize the two positions for centuries. This volume offers new essays by prominent experts on both these traditions, who address the question of the degree to which these philosophical approaches should be seen as rivals or as allies. In answering the question of whether Madhyamaka and Yogacara can be considered compatible, contributors engage with a broad range of canonical literature, and relate the texts to contemporary philosophical problems.
Download or read book The Yog c ra Idealism written by Ashok Kumar Chatterjee and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1987 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yogacana-Vijnanavada Idealism was the last great creative synthesis of Buddhism and its position in that tradition is comparable to that of the Advaita Vedanta. In this present book the author deals with the Yogacara-Vijnanavada in all its aspects and bearings, historically, analytically and comparatively. The first two chapters show, with great clarity and sufficient detail, the origin and development of the Yogacara idealism as an outcome of those fruitful and dynamic ideas associated with the previous schools of Buddhism, especially with the Sautrantika and the Madhyamika. The originality of the Yogacara synthesis of Buddhist teachings has been clearly brought out, and the individual contributions made by the philosophers of this school, such as Asanga, Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, Dignaga, Dharmakirti and Santaraksita, have received adequate attention. The subsequent chapters, which form the core of the work, represent a constructive and critical exposition of the Yogacara metaphysics, its idealism and absolutism as well as its spiritual discipline. This reprint after a lapse of ten years fills the need of the researchers.
Download or read book The Buddhist Unconscious written by William S Waldron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud. This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion, which, despite only recently gaining plausibility, was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago.
Download or read book The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yog c ra in Indian Mah y na Buddhism written by Ian Charles Harris and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past European scholars have tended to treat both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra as separate and fundamentally opposed trends in Mahāyāna Buddhist thought. Drawing heavily on early textual evidence this work questions the validity of such a "Mahāyāna schools" hypothesis. By down-playing the late commentorial traditions, the author attempts a general reappraisal of the epistemological and ontological writings of Nagarjuna, Asanga and Vasubandhu. He concludes that the overlap in all areas of doctrine is significant, but particularly with respect to the teachings on the levels of truth, the enlightened and unenlightened states, the status of language and the nature of reality. It is hoped that such investigations may provide the basis for a new theory on the proliferation of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism as an organic process of assimilation to new audiences, and specific contemporary problems, rather than in the more schismatic manner favoured by past researchers.
Download or read book Visions of Unity written by Yaroslav Komarovski and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark book discusses the thought of Tibetan Buddhist thinker Shakya Chokden (1428–1507) on the two major systems of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Influential and controversial in his own day, Shakya Chokden's thought fell out of favor over time and his writings were eventually repressed, becoming available again only in the 1970s. Yet, his startling interpretations of the core areas of Buddhist thought remain valuable and well worth consideration today. Yaroslav Komarovski has used the twenty-four volumes of Shakya Chokden's collected work to provide a systematic presentation of a central aspect of his thought: a reconciliation of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. Providing a detailed analysis of the two systems' mutual refutations of each other, Shakya Chokden argues for their fundamental compatibility and shared vision. In analyzing Shakya Chokden's ideas, Komarovski explores some of the most important issues of both traditional and modern Buddhist scholarship, including contested approaches to the nature of reality, the relationship between philosophy and contemplative practice, inter- and intrasectarian Buddhist polemics, and the nature of consciousness and mental processes.
Download or read book Transforming Consciousness written by John Makeham and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Transforming Consciousness' develops a wide-ranging and deeply sourced argument that Yogācāra Buddhism played a much more important role in the development of modern Chinese thought than has previously been recognized. It shows how key Chinese thinkers used Yogācāra Buddhism to make sense of and to change the modern world.
Download or read book The Treasury of Knowledge Book One written by Jamgon Kongtrul and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tibetan religious literature, Jamgön Kongtrül's Treasury of Knowledge in ten books stands out as a unique, encyclopedic masterpiece embodying the entire range of Buddhist teachings as they were preserved in Tibet. In his monumental Treasury of Knowledge, Jamgön Kongtrül presents a complete account of the major lines of thought and practice that comprise Tibetan Buddhism. This first book of The Treasury which serves as a prelude to Kongtrul's survey describes four major cosmological systems found in the Tibetan tradition—those associated with the Hinayana, Mahayana, Kalachakra, and Dzogchen teachings. Each of these cosmologies shows how the world arises from mind, whether through the accumulated results of past actions or from the constant striving of awareness to know itself.
Download or read book Existence and Enlightenment in the La k vat ra S tra written by Florin Giripescu Sutton and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a systematic analysis of one of the most important concepts characterizing the Yogācāra School of Buddhism (the last creative stage of Indian Buddhism) as outlined and explained in one of its most authoritative and influential texts, Laṅkāvatāra-Sūtra. Compiled in the second half of the fourth-century A.D., this sutra not only represents a comprehensive synthesis of both early and late religio-philosophical ideas crucial to the understanding of Buddhism in India, but it also provides an insight into the very early roots of the Japanese Zen Buddhism in the heart of the South Asian esotericism. The first part of the book outlines the three-fold nature of Being, as conceptualized in Buddhist metaphysics. The author uses an interpretive framework borrowed from the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger, in order to separate the transcendental Essence of Being from its Temporal manifestation as Self, and from its Spatial or Cosmic dimension. The second part clarifies the Buddhist approach to knowledge in its religious, transcendental sense and it shows that the Buddhists were actually first in making use of dialectical reasoning for the purpose of transcending the contradictory dualities imbedded in the common ways of perceiving, thinking, and arguing about reality.
Download or read book M dhyamika and Yog c ra written by Gadjin M. Nagao and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1991-01-08 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nagao invariably focuses on the core of Mahāyāna Buddhism--the path of the Bodhisattva, the doctrine of śūnyatā, and the system of Trisvabhāva are explained. Important technical terms used in the Mahayana textual tradition, whose exact understanding is imperative for the study of Mahāyāna Buddhism, are skillfully presented, making the book indispensable to scholars of Buddhist studies.
