In texts, through thoughts, with pleasure

This is a: snip, written by Birgit Kellner 85 days ago.
Keywords: svasaṃvedana

“If it were really of primary concern that in truth only the light exists, why does it then take the trouble of illuminating and enlightening, and does not content itself with merely shining?”

A good question, as far as theories of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana), or self-awareness, in Buddhism are concerned, and their relation to various functions of mental events (illuminating objects or illuminating themselves, or just shining forth) – formulated from a (perhaps not so) unexpected perspective:

Paul Hacker, “The Idea of the Person in the Thinking of Vedānda Philosophers”, in: Wilhelm Halbfass (ed.), “Philology and Confrontation”, Albany, NY: Suny Press, p. 160.

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This is a: article, written by Birgit Kellner 102 days ago.
Keywords: Buddhist logic

Interesting – I hadn’t noticed so far that the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath structures its faculty according to a modernized version of the fivefold knowledge.

The traditional model comprises inner knowledge (adhyātmavidyā), arts and crafts (śilpakarmasthānavidyā), medicine (cikitsāvidyā), language-related studies (śabdavidyā) and logic/dialectics (hetuvidyā). It dates as far back as the Bodhisattvabhūmi, the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, and the *Abhidharmamahāvibhāṣāśāstra. According to the two former treatises, a Bodhisattva should apply himself to all of them.

The CIHTS model joins logic/dialectics with inner knowledge, together labelled “philosophy”, and adds “Adhunika Vidya” (“ādhunikā vidyā”) – social science, the “science of the present”.

This transformation is interesting. “Inner knowledge” has been considered Buddhist learning in its more specifically soteriologically relevant sense in traditional sources. Tibetan classifications often set it apart from the four other forms (or “fields”) of knowledge, which are characterized as “outer”. Some Indian classifications are more nuanced and regard language and logic as “outer”, whereas arts/crafts and medicine are considered to be “worldly”.

Debates have emerged in Tibet as to whether logic/dialectics – then in fact understood more broadly to refer to the logico-epistemological or “tshad ma”-tradition – is an “outer” form of knowledge or whether it belongs to “inner knowledge”.

Precisely on this background, the CIHTS’ grouping these two, whose relationship has been a matter of debate, is interesting. It could be seen as resulting from the attempt to present this fivefold classification in a modern academic setting, where “inner knowledge” is already more oriented towards “philosophical” aspects of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, and not necessarily limited to Buddhist adepts on the path of the Bodhisattva.

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This is a: cocktail, written by Birgit Kellner 167 days ago.
Keywords: geekism

A clip from Norway, 2001, with English subtitles.

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