New Voices in Buddhist Philosophy

Nāgārjuna is difficult to read. But in what way? This paper articulates the difficulty of Nāgārjuna as first and foremost a difficulty of form. I argue that by attending to the form of his texts—particularly, his use of authorial, first-person voice—we can make progress in interpreting his texts’ appearances of assertoric content, and above all concerning the ‘doctrine of emptiness.’ For more basic than the question of whether the doctrine of emptiness is (conventionally, ultimately) true is the question of whether the doctrine says anything. Traditionally, the latter question has been understood in terms of the Prasaṅgika/Svataṅtrika dispute. But the dispute rests on an assumption: that if all Nāgārjuna is doing is tetralemmic reasoning (prasaṅga), then he holds no thesis and only nihilates theses. Challenging this assumption, this paper seeks to hold space to see how Nāgārjuna might assert nothing independently of whether his tetralemmas succeed.

Use of the term “idealism” in relation to Vasubhandu’s Vimśikā, Triṃśikā and Trisvabhāvanirdeśa has provoked controversy. I endorse the view that the term “idealist” applies to Vasubandhu insofar as his citta-mātratā theory constitutes a variant of epistemic idealism—the view that knowables are mental—along with the view that Vasubandhu is only an epistemic idealist “in the realm of conventions” (Gold 2011). The mental construction of appearances as mind-independent objects is not, for Vasubandhu, equivalent to the nature of ultimate reality. Vasubandhu does not positively argue for the non-existence of anything not-mind-only at the conventional or ultimate level. I will avoid the pitfalls of presupposing that “early Yogācāra was a homogenous and distinctly defined doxographical entity” (Tzohar 2018) to which the concept deployed in the term “idealism” does or does not correspond, by narrowing my analysis of Vasubandhu’s language and to evaluation of Gold (2011; 2015) and Carpenter’s (2014) commentaries.

This paper argues that the Buddha’s purported omniscience through direct perception is a phenomenological shift in his experience, which is difficult to account for based on the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika conception of omniscience (sarvajña), and two of their accepted means of knowledge (pramāṇas): perception and inference.

First, the paper discusses the scope of the Buddha’s omniscience in Abhidharma Buddhism. Second, it discusses the path toward omniscience according to the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika school. Third, it briefly summarizes the Sarvāstivādin theory of perception, showing that the Buddha cannot be omniscient through perception under the Sarvāstivāda model due to their metaphysical commitments. Following this, the paper considers whether the Buddha can be omniscient through inference and show that inference does not rescue the Sarvāstivādin view of omniscience by appealing to both Vasubandhu and Dhammapāla. Last, it posits that the Buddha’s omniscience is a phenomenological shift in his experience due to prajñā and not fully comprehensible through pramāṇa theory.

The alleged convergence of quantum physics and Buddhism has been a main standpoint of dialogue between science and Buddhism since its incipience in the 1980s. Notably, proponents of such ‘parallelism’ have argued that there is an underlying interconnectedness of the universe which bridges quantum theory and Buddhist philosophy through entanglement and interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda). Such conjecture is however not sufficiently informed by the considerable array of interpretative theories of quantum phenomena and various schools of Buddhism, which could invalidate the argument. This paper will investigate the object of ongoing research devoted to a comparative two-layered analysis of such compatibility for interconnectedness, through relational versus holistic theories (that is between Relational quantum mechanics and Nāgārjuna on the one hand, and David Bohm’s holism and Hua-yen Buddhism on the other). While both theories fall under the interconnectedness criteria, they differ substantially in promoting either the relationalism or interpenetration of all things in reality.

This paper explores the monastic philosophical curriculum of the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The curricula of the Gelug monasteries are rooted in the presentation of the 14th century scholar Tsongkhapa, who emphasized the importance of the classical Treatises (rgya gzhung). These texts were written in Sanskrit by great Indian scholars (paṇḍitas) between the 4th and 6th centuries CE and translated into Tibetan beginning in the 9th century CE. Upon completion of the curriculum emphasizing these great texts and their Tibetan commentaries over a period of eighteen to twenty years, monastic graduates receive the title of Geshe (dge bshes). Since the late 1960s, Tibetan monastic scholars have been teaching Buddhism in contemporary secular societies such as North America. This paper will examine how the Geshes present subjects of an ancient philosophical curriculum to diverse modern audiences, and the challenges they face in the process.