scholarly journals Doxographical Appropriation of Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi in Chinese Sanlun and Tiantai Thought

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 912
Author(s):  
Hans Rudolf Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
The Mind

This article reconstructs the Chinese “practice qua exegesis” which evolved out of the doxographical appropriation of the Indian Buddhist catuṣkoṭi (four edges), a heuristic device for conceptual analysis and a method of assorting linguistic forms to which adherents of Madhyamaka ascribed ambiguous potential. It could conceptually clarify Buddhist doctrine, but also produce deceptive speech. According to the Chinese interpreters, conceptual and linguistic forms continue to be deceptive until the mind realizes that all it holds on or distinguishes itself from is its own fabrication. Liberation from such self-induced deceptions requires awareness of the paradox that the desire to leave them behind is itself a way of clinging to them. Chinese Sanlun and Tiantai masters tried to uncover this paradox and to disclose to practitioners how the application of the catuṣkoṭi, on the basis of such awareness, enables proper conceptual analysis in exegesis. From this approach followed the Chinese habit of construing doxographies in which hermeneutical and soteriological intent coincide. Understanding the inner unity of doctrinal manifoldness in the translated sūtra and śāstra literature from India via exegesis also made it possible to apprehend the ineffable sense of liberation.

Tiantai Buddhist Elaborations on the Hidden and Visible

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 883-910
Author(s):  
Hans-Rudolf Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Feature ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Linguistic Strategy ◽  
The Mind

Abstract A crucial feature of Tiantai (天台) Buddhist thought certainly is its elaboration on the hidden and visible, called “root and traces” (ben ji 本跡), as the concept of non-duality (bu er 不二) of these opposites is part of what constitutes the highest level of Buddhist doctrine in Tiantai doxography, called “round/ perfect teaching” (yuanjiao 圓教). Such elaboration is inextricably bound up with paradoxical discourse, which functions as a linguistic strategy in Tiantai practice of liberating the mind from its self-induced deceptions. Observation of paradoxes in the elaboration on the hidden and visible could be called practice qua doctrinal exegesis, because Tiantai masters try to integrate self-referential observation in mind-contemplation (guanxin 觀心) with interpretation of sūtra and śāstra. For Tiantai Buddhists, the ultimate meaning of the Buddhadharma (fofa 佛法) itself is independent from speech and script and only accessible to the liberated mind, yet it cannot fully be comprehended and displayed apart from the transmission of the canonical word. To observe the paradox in non-duality of the hidden and visible is what triggers practice qua doctrinal exegesis and entails liberation (jietuo 解脫) according to the “round/ perfect teaching.” The article traces the formation of paradoxical discourse in Chinese Madhyamaka, particularly referencing the Tiantai elaboration on the hidden and visible and its diverse sources of inspiration, which includes both Chinese indigenous traditions of thought (Daoism and Xuanxue) and translated sūtra and śāstra literature from India.

scholarly journals Ecologies of Repair: A Post-human Approach to Other-Than-Human Natures

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Blanco-Wells
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Mutual Care ◽  
Interdependent Relationships

This conceptual paper explores the theoretical possibilities of posthumanism and presents ecologies of repair as a heuristic device to explore the association modes of different entities, which, when confronted with the effects of human-induced destructive events, seek to repair the damage and transform the conditions of coexistence of various life forms. The central idea is that severe socio-environmental crisis caused by an intensification of industrial activity are conducive to observing new sociomaterial configurations and affective dispositions that, through the reorganization of practices of resistance, remediation, and mutual care, are oriented to generating reparative and/or transformative processes from damaged ecologies and communities. Crises constitute true ontological experimentation processes where the presence of other-than-human natures, and of artifacts or devices that participate in reparative actions, become visible. A post-human approach to nature allows us to use languages and methodologies that do not restrict the emergence of assemblages under the assumption of their a priori ontological separation, but rather examine their reparative potential based on the efficacy of situated relationships. Methodologically, transdisciplinarity is relevant, with ethnography and other engaged methods applied over units of observation and experience called socio-geo-ecologies. The relevant attributes of these socio-geo-ecologies, beyond the individual, community, or institutional aspects, are the specific geological characteristics that make possible an entanglement of interdependent relationships between human and non-human agents. The conceptual analysis is illustrated with empirical examples stemming from socio-geo-ecologies researched in Southern Chile.

Awakening of faith in Mahāyāna

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Ultimate Ground

The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (Dasheng qixinlun) is one of the most influential philosophical texts in East Asian Buddhism. It is most important for developing the Indian Buddhist doctrine of an inherent potentiality for Buddhahood (tathāgatagarbha) into a monistic ontology based on the mind as the ultimate ground of all experience. Its most significant contribution to East Asian Buddhist thought is its formulation of the idea of original enlightenment (benjue, or in Japanese, hongaku).

scholarly journals “One’s Own Body of Pure Channels and Elements”: The Teaching and Practice of Tibetan Yoga at Namdroling

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 404
Author(s):  
Naomi Worth
Keyword(s):  
South India ◽  
The Body ◽  
Yoga Practice ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
The Relationship

The Tibetan yoga practice known as “winds, channels, and inner heat” (rtsa rlung gtum mo) is physically challenging, and yet is intentionally designed to transform the mind. This chapter explores the relationship between Buddhist doctrine and this physical practice aimed at enlightenment through the teachings of a contemporary yoga master at Namdroling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery and Nunnery in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, South India. This ethnographic profile exemplifies the role of a modern Tibetan lama who teaches a postural yoga practice and interprets the text and techniques for practitioners. While many modern postural yoga systems are divorced from religious doctrine, Tibetan Buddhist yoga is not. This essay highlights three key areas of Buddhist doctrine support the practice of Sky Dharma (gNam chos) yoga at Namdroling: (1) The history and legacy that accompany the practice, which identify the deity of Tibetan yoga as a wrathful form of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddha of compassion; (2) The role of deity yoga in the practice of Tibetan yoga, where the practitioner arises as the deity during yoga practice, an all-consuming inner contemplation; and (3) The framing of Tibetan yoga within the wider philosophy of karma theory and its relationship to Buddhist cosmology. Practitioners of Tibetan yoga endeavor to burn up karmic seeds that fuel the cycle of rebirth in the six realms of saṃsāra. In Tibetan yoga, the body acts in service of the text, the philosophy, and the mind to increasingly link the logic of texts to experience in meaningful ways.

scholarly journals Psychology and the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy

2010 ◽  
pp. 157-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Talbot
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
The Mind

There is widespread controversy about the use of intuitions in philosophy.  In this paper I will argue that there are legitimate concerns about this use, and that these concerns cannot be fully responded to using the traditional methods of philosophy.  We need an understanding of how intuitions are generated and what it is they are based on, and this understanding must be founded on the psychological investigation of the mind.  I explore how a psychological understanding of intuitions is likely to impact a range of philosophical projects, from conceptual analysis to the study of (non-conceptual) "things themselves" to experimental philosophy.

Is The Mind-Body Problem Empirical?

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Foss
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Real World ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Real ◽  
Existential Import ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

There is no problem more paradigmatically philosophical than the mind-body problem. Nevertheless, I will argue that the problem is empirical. I am not even suggesting that conceptual analysis of the various mind-body theories be abandoned – just as I could not suggest it be abandoned for theories in physics or biology. But unlike the question, ‘Is every even number greater than 2 equal to the sum of two primes?’ the mind-body problem cannot be solved a priori, by analysis alone; though I will not argue this thesis here, it is nearly obvious, since purported solutions must make matter of fact claims, heavy with existential import, about the real world. By contrast, an investigation of the sensitivity of the mind-body problem to empirical evidence will show that purported solutions to the problem are empirically testable, to a degree consistent with philosophy giving a clarified mind-body problem to the sciences. I offer the bold outlines of such an investigation here.

scholarly journals Mind–World Relations

Epistemology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 120-139
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Progress ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This chapter discusses how people often appeal to what they would ordinarily say, and even to what they would ordinarily think, in the exercise of generally shared concepts. When one wonders about personal identity, freedom and responsibility, the mind and its states and contents, justice, rightness of action, happiness, and so on, the main focus is not just the words or the concepts. There are things beyond words and concepts whose nature people wish to understand. The metaphysics of persons goes beyond the semantics of the word “person” and its cognates, and even beyond the correlated conceptual analysis. Philosophical progress might then take a form similar to the kind of scientific progress that involves conceptual innovation.

scholarly journals Attention please: Positioning attention at the center of curriculum and pedagogy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Ergas
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Curriculum Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Voluntary Attention ◽  
Attentional Training ◽  
Curriculum And Pedagogy ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Educational Potential

This paper explores two contradictory approaches to the concept of attention as it underlies curriculum theory based on conceptual analysis and empirical studies. The first approach depicts a common curricular-pedagogical conception based on the following premises: 1) Attention is a means for the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge. 2) Sustained voluntary attention is an unrealistic goal given the tendency of the mind to wander, hence the teacher is responsible for sustaining students’ attention. The second approach, stemming from theory and contemporary applications of ‘attentional training’ challenges both premises suggesting that: 1) Attention determines the quality of our life thus its cultivation is an end in itself. 2) The cultivation of sustained voluntary attention through self-practice is feasible and holds significant transformative educational potential. Based on the analysis proposed the paper suggests and exemplifies a balancing approach in which subject matter and attentional training can be integrated with each made subservient to the other at different times toward broadening the scope of education.

scholarly journals Radio writes back: Challenging media stereotypes of race and identity

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Angel
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
The Mind

Post-colonial theory has become an important but not uncontested lens through which a range of literary works have been analysed and the engine for the production of a range of creative works. This article looks at two concepts from post-colonial theory: ‘the colonisation of the mind’, and Salman Rushdie’s notion of ‘writing back to the centre’ and how they might be applied to an analysis of journalistic texts. This article explores the usefullness for post-colonial theory as both heuristic device and a framework for the production of journalism in the context of the recent media coverage of the federal government's intervention in the National Territory Aborginal communities. 

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