Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis

Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis PDF Author: International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The papers provide access for the first time to Tibetan documents and practices from the period of the tenth to fifteenth century.

Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis

Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis PDF Author: International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The papers provide access for the first time to Tibetan documents and practices from the period of the tenth to fifteenth century.

Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003. Volume 4: Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis

Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003. Volume 4: Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047411676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The papers provide access for the first time to Tibetan documents and practices from the period of the tenth to fifteenth century.

Approaching the Land of Bliss

Approaching the Land of Bliss PDF Author: Richard Karl Payne
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825782
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The discourse of Buddhist studies has traditionally been structured around texts and nations (the transmission of Buddhism from India to China to Japan). And yet, it is doubtful that these categories reflect in any significant way the organizing themes familiar to most Buddhists. It could be argued that cultic practices associated with particular buddhas and bodhisattvas are more representative of the way Buddhists conceive of their relation to tradition. This volume aims to explore this aspect of Buddhism by focusing on one of its most important cults, that of the Buddha Amitabha. Approaching the Land of Bliss is a rich collection of studies of texts and ritual practices devoted to Amitabha, ranging from Tibet to Japan and from early medieval times to the present.

Dialectical Practice in Tibetan Philosophical Culture

Dialectical Practice in Tibetan Philosophical Culture PDF Author: Kenneth Liberman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742576868
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Tibetan Buddhist scholar-monks have long engaged in face-to-face public philosophical debates. This original study challenges Orientalist text-based scholarship, which has overlooked these lived practices of Tibetan dialectics. Kenneth Liberman brings these dynamic disputations to life for the modern reader through a richly detailed, turn-by-turn analysis of the monks' formal philosophical reasoning. He argues that Tibetan Buddhists deliberately organize their debates into formal structures that both empower and constrain thinking, skillfully using logic as an interactional tool to organize their reflections. During his three years in residence at Tibetan monastic universities, Liberman observed and videotaped the monks' debates. He then transcribed, translated, and analyzed them using multimedia software and ethnomethodological techniques, which enabled him to scrutinize the local methods that Tibetan debaters use to keep their philosophical inquiries alive. His study shows the monks rely on such indigenous dialectical methods as extending an opponent's position to its absurd consequences, "pulling the rug out" from under an opponent, and other lively strategies. This careful investigation of the formal philosophical work of Tibetan scholars is a pathbreaking analysis of an important classical tradition.

Death and Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism

Death and Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism PDF Author: Tanya Zivkovic
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134593694
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms – corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations – extend a lama’s trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth and death. The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better understanding of how Tibetan culture navigates its own understanding of reincarnation, the veneration of relics and different social roles of different types of practitioners. It analyses both the minutiae of everyday interrelations between lamas and their devotees, specifically noted in ritual performances and the enactment of lived tradition, and the sacred hagiographical conventions that underpin local knowledge. A phenomenology of Tibetan Buddhist life, the book provides an ethnography of the everyday embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism. This unusual approach offers a valuable and a genuine new perspective on Tibetan Buddhist culture and is of interest to researchers in the fields of social/cultural anthropology and religious, Buddhist and Tibetan studies.

The Man from Samyé

The Man from Samyé PDF Author: Gidi Ifergan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
This study explores the largely unrecognized scholarly and pedagogical contributions of one of Tibet's greatest thinkers, Longchen Rabjampa (kLong chen rab 'byams pa 1308-1364) within the context of what I refer to as the "rhetoric of negation" which is the focused and intense critique of philosophical views and spiritual practices pointing to their incapability of directly causing liberation. It is a central theme of his key works The Natural Freedom of Reality (Tibetan title: Chos nyid rang grol) and A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission: A Commentary on the Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena (Tibetan title: Chos dbyings rin po che'i mdzod zhes bya ba'i 'grel pa) that are considered closely in the study. Like that of his predecessors, Longchenpa's rhetoric of negation aimed to dismantle compulsive conceptualising mental processes, creating ab-sence, a vacuity. But Longchenpa goes one step further, overcoming the problem of the futility of spiritual practices in relation to liberation, by creatively transforming his rhetoric of negation into a pedagogy that is claimed to be completely capable of facilitating the experience of natural awareness, Buddha mind or liberation. Longchenpa's rhetoric of negation will be the subject of my case study, with the emphasis on him primarily as a teacher of liberation. This is significantly different from most academic research dedicated to Longchenpa to date, which has focused on his literary abilities, his epistemology and logic, his doxography, his poetry, and existential interpretations of his philosophy and exegesis. In the process of clarifying the position of praxis that stands as a general term for spiritual practices, in Longchenpa's rhetoric of negation, this study contextualizes Longchenpa historically and examines macro-historical trends and developments, including textual ones, that determined his position in Tibetan society, religion and politics. It locates Longchenpa biographically in terms of micro-historical formative events that shaped his life in relation to the other seminal figures before and during the 14th century. As a result, the thesis demonstrates that the location of Longchenpa and his school, the Nyingma (rNying ma), was on the periphery of Tibetan social, political and religious realities. Longchenpa was specifically conscious of this fact and in order to relocate the school to the centre and to implement his vision of Buddhism, he adopted certain devices which one of them was the rhetoric of negation.The historical contextualization "humanises" Longchenpa and depicts a "realistic" portrait of him as opposed to the "idealised" one perceived by traditional practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, including western Tibetan Buddhists. Finally, the study examines Longchenpa's pedagogy, more precisely the aspect of it which he refers to as "abiding in natural awareness", that is to say, the practice of trekchö (khregs chod), and shows how it transcends the means-ends dichotomy inherent in general goal-oriented practices. The study demonstrates that Longchenpa's pedagogy, being capable of facilitating the experience of natural awareness, is compatible with Dzogchen's notion of non-duality and with integration of the Two Truths.

Tibetan Renaissance

Tibetan Renaissance PDF Author: Ronald M. Davidson
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
ISBN: 9788120832787
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
How did a society on the edge of collapse and dominated by wandering bands of armed men give way to a vibrant Buddhist culture, led by yogins and scholars? Ronald M. Davidson explores how the translation and spread of esoteric Buddhist texts dramatically shaped Tibetan society and led to its rise as the center of Buddhist culture throughout Asia, replacing India as the perceived source of religious ideology and tradition. During the Tibetan Renaissance (950-1200 C.E.), monks and yogins translated an enormous number of Indian Buddhist texts. They employed the evolving literature and practices of esoteric Buddhism as the basis to reconstruct Tibetan religious, cultural, and political institutions. Many translators achieved the de facto status of feudal lords and while not always loyal to their Buddhist vows, these figures helped solidify political power in the hands of religious authorities and began a process that led to the Dalai Lama's theocracy. Davidson's vivid portraits of the monks, priests, popular preachers, yogins, and aristocratic clans who changed Tibetan society and culture further enhance his perspectives on the tensions and transformations that characterized medieval Tibet.

Tibetan Literary Genres, Texts, and Text Types

Tibetan Literary Genres, Texts, and Text Types PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004301151
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The papers in Tibetan Literary Genres, Texts, and Text Types deepen our knowledge of Tibetan literature. They not only examine particular Tibetan genres and texts (pre-modern and contemporary), but also genre classification, transformation, and reception. Despite previous contributions, the systematic analysis of Tibetan textual genres is still a relatively undeveloped field, especially when compared with the sophisticated examinations of other literary traditions. The book is divided into four parts: textual typologies, blurred genre boundaries, specific texts and text types, and genres in transition to modernity. The introduction discusses previous classificatory approaches and concepts of textual linguistics. The text classes that receive individual attention can be summarised as songs and poetry, offering-ritual, hagiography, encyclopaedia, lexicographical texts, trickster narratives, and modern literature. Contributors include: Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Ruth Gamble, Lama Jabb, Roger R. Jackson, Giacomella Orofino, Jim Rheingans, Peter Schwieger, Ekaterina Sobkovyak, Victoria Sujata, and Peter Verhagen.

The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryamelapakapradipa)

The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryamelapakapradipa) PDF Author: Aryadeva
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1949163199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
An essential tantric text on the practice of advanced yoga in tantric Buddhism. The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryamelapakapradipa) is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Community Tantra (Guhyasamaja-tantra) as espoused by the Noble (Nagarjuna) tradition, an influential school of interpretation within the Mahayoga traditions of Indian Buddhist mysticism. Equal in authority to Nagarjuna's famous Five Stages (Pañcakrama), Aryadeva’s work is perhaps the earliest prose example of the “stages of the mantra path” genre in Sanskrit. Its systematic path exerted immense influence on later Indian and Tibetan traditions, and it is widely cited by masters from all four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. This volume presents the Lamp in a thoroughly annotated English translation. It includes an introductory study discussing the history of the Guhyasamaja and its exegetical traditions, surveying the scriptural and commentarial sources of the Nagarjuna tradition, and analyzing in detail the contents of the Lamp. The book also features a detailed, trilingual glossary. Simultaneously presented online for scholars are a version of its Sanskrit original, critically edited from recently identified manuscripts, and a critical edition of the eleventh-century Tibetan translation by Rinchen Zangpo, including notes on readings found in “lost,” alternative translations.

Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature

Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature PDF Author: Douglas S. Duckworth
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190883952
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
"Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature is a philosophical overview of Tibetan Buddhist thought. Charting the different ways Buddhist traditions in Tibet configure the relationship between Madhyamaka and Mind-Only, Duckworth shows how these configurations inform the shape of distinct contemplative practices"--