Crushing the Categories (Vaidalyaprakarana)

Crushing the Categories (Vaidalyaprakarana) PDF Author: Nagarjuna
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1949163016
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A rare glimpse of the sophisticated philosophical exchange between Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools at an early stage. The Vaidalyaprakarana provides a rare glimpse of the sophisticated philosophical exchange between Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools at an early stage and will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist thought, classical Indian Philosophy, and the history of Asian thought. Belonging to a set of Nagarjuna’s philosophical works known as the yukti-corpus, the Vaidalyaprakarana is noteworthy for its close engagement with the Hindu philosophers. It refutes the sixteen categories of the Nyaya school, which formed the logical and epistemological framework for many of the debates between Buddhist and Hindu philosophers. The Sanskrit original of the Vaidalyaprakarana long lost, the author translates the text from Tibetan, giving it an extensive analytical commentary. The aim is twofold: to investigate the interaction of the founder of the Madhyamika school with this influential school of Hindu thought; and to make sense of how Nagarjuna’s arguments that refute the Naiyayika categories are essential to the Madhyamika path in general.

Crushing the Categories (Vaidalyaprakarana)

Crushing the Categories (Vaidalyaprakarana) PDF Author: Nagarjuna
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1949163016
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A rare glimpse of the sophisticated philosophical exchange between Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools at an early stage. The Vaidalyaprakarana provides a rare glimpse of the sophisticated philosophical exchange between Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools at an early stage and will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist thought, classical Indian Philosophy, and the history of Asian thought. Belonging to a set of Nagarjuna’s philosophical works known as the yukti-corpus, the Vaidalyaprakarana is noteworthy for its close engagement with the Hindu philosophers. It refutes the sixteen categories of the Nyaya school, which formed the logical and epistemological framework for many of the debates between Buddhist and Hindu philosophers. The Sanskrit original of the Vaidalyaprakarana long lost, the author translates the text from Tibetan, giving it an extensive analytical commentary. The aim is twofold: to investigate the interaction of the founder of the Madhyamika school with this influential school of Hindu thought; and to make sense of how Nagarjuna’s arguments that refute the Naiyayika categories are essential to the Madhyamika path in general.

The Two Truths in Indian Buddhism

The Two Truths in Indian Buddhism PDF Author: Sonam Thakchoe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614297614
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
An insightful and illuminating survey of key insights into one of the most foundational and profound topics in Buddhist thought. In this clear and exemplary approach to one of the core philosophical subjects of the Buddhist tradition, Sonam Thakchoe guides readers through the range of Indian Buddhist philosophical schools and how each approaches the two truths: ultimate truth and conventional truth. In this presentation of philosophical systems, the detailed argumentations and analyses of each school’s approach to the two truths are presented to weave together the unique contributions each school brings to supporting and strengthening a Buddhist practitioner’s understanding of reality. The insights of the great scholars of Indian Buddhist history—such as Vasubandhu, Bhavaviveka, Kamalashila, Dharmakirti, Nagarjuna, and Chandrakirti—are illuminated in this volume, with profound implications for the practice and views of modern practitioners and scholars. The Vaibhashika, Sautrantika, Yogachara, and Madhyamaka schools provide a framework for a continuum of philosophical debate that is far more interrelated, and internally complex, than one may presume. Yet we see how the schools build upon the findings of one another, leading from a belief in the realism of external phenomena to the relinquishment of any commitment to realism of either external or internal realities. This fascinating movement through philosophical approaches leads us to see how the conventional and ultimate—dependent arising and emptiness—are twin aspects of a single reality.

Living with Concepts

Living with Concepts PDF Author: Andrew Brandel
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823294293
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This volume examines an often taken for granted concept—that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal

Textures of the Ordinary

Textures of the Ordinary PDF Author: Veena Das
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823287904
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
How might we speak of human life amid violence, deprivation, or disease so intrusive as to put the idea of the human into question? How can scholarship and advocacy address new forms of war or the slow, corrosive violence that belie democracy's promise to mitigate human suffering? To Veena Das, the answers to these question lie not in foundational ideas about human nature but in a close attention to the diverse ways in which the natural and the social mutually absorb each other on a daily basis. Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. Das shows that doing anthropology after Wittgenstein does not consist in taking over a new set of terms such as forms of life, language games, or private language from Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Instead, we must learn to see what eludes us in the everyday precisely because it is before our eyes. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence. Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. With questions returned to repeatedly throughout the text and over a lifetime, this book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives.

The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy

The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy PDF Author: Jan Westerhoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019104704X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy in the first millennium CE. He starts from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the common era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka's theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual and cultural context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahayana sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main focus is the period up to the sixth century CE, Westerhoff also discusses some important thinkers who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His aim is that the historical presentation will also allow the reader to get a better systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.

Nāgārjuna's Reason Sixty with Chandrakīrti's Reason Sixty Commentary

Nāgārjuna's Reason Sixty with Chandrakīrti's Reason Sixty Commentary PDF Author: Nāgārjuna
Publisher: American Institute of Buddhist Studies
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
The Reason Sixtyis the most concise philosophical work by the second-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. This heavily annotated translation is accompanied by detailed introductory essays, critical Tibetan editions, trilingual and technical glossaries, timelines, bibliography, and index.

Ideology and Status of Sanskrit

Ideology and Status of Sanskrit PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004644776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
The present volume is the outcome of a seminar on the Ideology and Status of Sanskrit held in Leiden under the auspices of the International Institute for Asian Studies. The book contains studies of crucial periods and important areas in the history of the Sanskrit language, from the earliest, Vedic and pre-Vedic periods, through the period in which the (restricted) use of Sanskrit spread over practically all of South (including part of Central) and Southeast Asia (sometimes referred to as the period of "Greater India"), up to the recent history of Sanskrit in India. The contributions of this volume are divided into three sections: (1) Origins and Creation of the "Eternal Language"; (2) Transculturation, Vernacularization, Sanskritization; (3) The Sanskrit Tradition: Continuity from the past or Construction from the present?

The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism

The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism PDF Author: Ian Charles Harris
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004644717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
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.

The Dispeller of Disputes

The Dispeller of Disputes PDF Author: Nāgārjuna
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199732701
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani is one of the most important Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophical texts. Jan Westerhoff offers a new translation, reflecting the best current philological research & all available editions, adding his own commentary on the text.

Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka

Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka PDF Author: Jan Westerhoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199705119
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The Indian philosopher Acharya Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE) was the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Path) school of Mahayana Buddhism and arguably the most influential Buddhist thinker after Buddha himself. Indeed, in the Tibetan and East Asian traditions, Nagarjuna is often referred to as the "second Buddha." His primary contribution to Buddhist thought lies is in the further development of the concept of sunyata or "emptiness." For Nagarjuna, all phenomena are without any svabhaba, literally "own-nature" or "self-nature," and thus without any underlying essence. In this book, Jan Westerhoff offers a systematic account of Nagarjuna's philosophical position. He reads Nagarjuna in his own philosophical context, but he does not hesitate to show that the issues of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy have at least family resemblances to issues in European philosophy.