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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Tibet

Empiricism of the subtle body

23 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Emotion, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Philosophy of Science, Supernatural

≈ 10 Comments

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Janet Gyatso, phenomenology, tantra, Tibet, Yangönpa Gyeltsen Pel

A public-domain illustration by Alex-engraver of the chakras and channels, taken from Wikipedia.

Traditional Indian and Tibetan tantric anatomy tells us that in the middle of the human torso there are three channels (nādis or “streams”), one each on the left, middle, and right, and that these proceed vertically upward through a number of circular centres (cakras in standard Sanskrit transliteration, chakras in modern English spelling). This account of the “subtle body” (sūkṣma śarīra) has become popular in modern yoga and other forms of alternative medicine or spirituality.

I don’t believe this account of the subtle body – but not primarily for the obvious reason.

Continue reading →

Improving on the Buddha

03 Sunday Nov 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Death, Disgust, Early and Theravāda, Faith, Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Modernized Buddhism

≈ 11 Comments

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Abhidhamma, Aśvaghoṣa, John Dunne, Pema Chödrön, Śāntideva, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Theragāthā, Tibet, Wangchuk Dorje

Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart is a beautiful and valuable work on dealing with difficult circumstances. What strikes me in it is how Chödrön – despite being a monk herself – takes a position so deeply at odds with traditional Indian Buddhism.

Chödrön refers to the traditional Buddhist “three marks” (tilakkhaṇa or trilakṣaṇa) of existence: everything is impermanent, suffering, and non-self. This idea goes back to very early texts. But Chödrön does with it is something quite different from the earlier idea:

Even though they accurately describe the rock-bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It’s easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there’s nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful. (59)

Here’s the problem with this passage: the classical Indian Buddhist texts are quite clear that in fact there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. She is disagreeing with them, whether or not she acknowledges it.

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Finding mysticism in unexpected places

28 Sunday Jul 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Consciousness, Daoism, Epistemology, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Meditation, Serenity

≈ 4 Comments

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Buddhaghosa, Butön, Cloud of Unknowing, Confucius, Dov Baer, Meister Eckhart, mystical experience, Ninian Smart, perennialism, phenomenology, Śāntideva, Tāranātha, Tibet, Victor Mair, Yoga Sūtras, Zhuangzi

When I was in grad school, a big academic fashion was to heap scorn on the idea that mystical experience could be something cross-cultural: everything was reducible to social context, and the similarities of experience didn’t really matter, as I had once argued myself. But the roots of that idea were often more asserted than argued: the famous article by Steven Katz, which inaugurated the approach, didn’t bother to justify its assumption that “There are NO pure (unmediated) experiences“, assuming perhaps that italics and capital letters were the only support necessary.

A little while ago I noted how Robert Forman’s collection of essays illustrate “cool” mystical experiences, where distinctions of senses and self drop away and the mind ceases to fluctuate, in sources as varied as the Indian Yoga Sūtras, the Ukrainian Hasidic Dov Baer and the German mystic Meister Eckhart. Something similar seems to be going on in the Sri Lankan systematizer Buddhaghosa and the medieval English Cloud of Unknowing, which both involve, in Ninan Smart’s terms, a “systematic effort to blot out sense perception, memories, and imaginings of the world of our sensory environment and of corresponding inner states.” And it turns out that once your mind is no longer prejudged to deny any cross-cultural similarity, you start noticing it in a lot of other places.

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Śāntideva’s passages on enemies and their context

30 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Death, Karma, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Patient Endurance, Supernatural

≈ 2 Comments

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Evan Thompson, Madhyamaka, rebirth, Śāntideva, suicide, Tibet

Having discussed the broader context of Śāntideva’s work, I think it is instructive to turn now to the two passages that Evan Thompson quotes from Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra as supposed examples of the way that Śāntideva’s “philosophical arguments fall apart” without rebirth. These respectively say (in the Wallace and Wallace translation he cites), first, “In the past, I too have inflicted such pain on sentient beings; therefore, I, who have caused harm to sentient beings, deserve that in return./Both his weapon and my body are causes of suffering. He has obtained a weapon, and I have obtained a body. With what should I be angry?” (BCA VI.42-43) And second, “since my adversary assists me in my Bodhisattva way of life, I should long for him like a treasure discovered in the house and acquired without effort.” (VI.107)

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Classical and nondual mindfulness

14 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism

≈ 5 Comments

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Abhidhamma, Brian Victoria, Chan/Zen 禪, Hakuin, Japan, John Dunne, Jon Kabat-Zinn, nondualism, Pali suttas, Ron Purser, Tibet, Wangchuk Dorje

Ron Purser’s critique of modern mindfulness is thoroughgoing, and extends beyond chastising its skepticism of political engagement. Purser also criticizes modern mindfulness on other grounds, grounds that I think are considerably closer to the views of classical (early) Buddhist texts.

In particular, Purser’s article “The myth of the present moment” (from the journal Mindfulness 6:680–686) points to a central element of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and other modern mindfulness practices which is not present in the classical texts. Namely: Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR and modern medical mindfulness generally, defines mindfulness as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally”. So a key goal of modern mindfulness practice is “reducing thoughts and ruminations of the past and future, which keeps us from being in the present moment.” (Purser 682) Purser notes that this focus on the present moment is exemplified in the common introductory practice (included in BU’s mindfulness workshop) of mindfully paying attention to the experience of slowly eating a raisin.

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The importance of being Thich Quang Duc

07 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, External Goods, Happiness, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Patient Endurance, Prayer, Serenity

≈ Comments Off on The importance of being Thich Quang Duc

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Charles Goodman, David Halberstam, Malcolm Browne, Matthieu Ricard, Ngo Dinh Diem, Śāntideva, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), suicide, Thich Quang Duc, Tibet, Vietnam

In the Śikṣā Samuccaya‘s chapter on patient endurance, Śāntideva urges aspiring bodhisattvas to attain a meditative state (samādhi) called the Sarvadharmasukhākrānta, which Charles Goodman translates as “Everything is Covered with Happiness.” Śāntideva makes truly extraordinary claims about what is possible for a bodhisattva who has attained this state. In Goodman’s translation:

Bodhisattvas who attain this feel only happy feelings toward all objects they are aware of, with no feelings of suffering or unhappiness. Even while feeling the pains of the torments of hell, they think only happy thoughts. Even while suffering all the harms of the human condition, such as having their hands, feet, or noses cut off, they think only happy thoughts. Even while being beaten with canes, half-canes, or whips, they have only happy thoughts. Even when thrown into prison… or while being cooked in oil, or pounded like sugarcane, or flattened like reeds, or set on fire like an oil lamp, a butter lamp, or a yogurt lamp, they think only happy thoughts. (ŚS 181-2)

The passage is surprising, and modern readers often approach it with deep skepticism. We cannot imagine someone feeling this way; we think it must be impossible. Surely these are exaggerations? Surely it is psychologically unrealistic for anyone to attain such a state?

I think there is at least one significant empirical reason to believe that these claims are not exaggerated, and his name is Thich Quang Duc. Continue reading →

The political path vs. the Buddhist path

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Early and Theravāda, Gentleness, Mahāyāna, Politics, Serenity

≈ 1 Comment

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Aśvaghoṣa, Dalai Lama XIV, Disengaged Buddhism, Engaged Buddhism, Frédéric Richard, IABS, Stephen Jenkins, Tibet, Tibetan Youth Congress

I presented about Disengaged Buddhism at the International Association of Buddhist Studies conference in August. My talk was paired with a presentation by Frédéric Richard on a topic that did not initially appear to be related: the Tibetan government in exile. As it turned out, the papers proved fascinating mirror images of each other. Continue reading →

Farewell to “Yavanayāna”

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Humility, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

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Anagarika Dharmapala, authenticity, B.R. Ambedkar, David McMahan, Engaged Buddhism, identity, Jim Wilton, modernism, modernity, race, Richard K. Payne, Sulak Sivaraksa, Tibet

Late last year I was delighted to see a post from Richard Payne retracting his earlier post on “White Buddhism”, motivated at least in part by my critique. It is all too rare to see a human being change his or her mind, especially on politically charged issues where passions run high and it is all too easy to develop attachment to views. I commend and thank Payne for his thoughtful retraction. On my end, he has provoked me to make a retraction of my own. Continue reading →

On tradition and observation in Tibetan medicine

02 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Epistemology, Health, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Philosophy of Science, Physics and Astronomy

≈ 2 Comments

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ascent/descent, Francesco Sizzi, G.V. Coyne, Galileo Galilei, Janet Gyatso, Phyllis Chiasson, pramāṇa, Richard Westfall, tantra, Thomas Kuhn, Tibet, Yangönpa Gyeltsen Pel, Yutok Yönten Gönpo, Zurkharwa Lodrö Gyelpo

Two disclaimers are required for this week’s post. First, Janet Gyatso was on my dissertation committee and before that served as my doctoral advisor. Second, Columbia University Press offered to send me a free copy of her new book if I would review it on Love of All Wisdom, and I accepted on condition that the review could be critical. This is that review. Take it as you will.

Sometime during my doctoral studies I recall a student asking Prof. Janet Gyatso what she was currently researching, and she mentioned Tibetan medical literature. That couldn’t have been any later than 2007, when I graduated, and was probably before. Only now, at least eight years later, has Gyatso’s book on Tibetan medicine come out – and one can see why it took so long.

Being Human in a Buddhist World cannot have been an easy book to write. It is a detailed study of several different Tibetan works on medicine, none of which have been translated into a Western language, and all of which deal with highly technical questions of biology using a set of concepts very different from those familiar in the modern West – some in the form of “a dark, incomplete, and frequently illegible third-generation photocopy of a manuscript that is itself rife with spelling mistakes and smudges.” One does not find oneself eager to replicate such a study.

The title of this book is well chosen. Most Buddhism tends to be what I have called an ascent tradition; it is about transcending the condition of our everyday particular humanity, detaching oneself from what the texts Gyatso studies call “the horrible world”. But even if we were to grant that its most advanced practitioners have become in some sense superhuman (say Thich Quang Duc, who, eyewitnesses say, was able to remain perfectly at peace while setting himself on fire), the fact remains that everybody else is still human, all too human. Continue reading →

My Buddhist practices

21 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Hermeneutics, Karma, Karmic Redirection, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Prayer, Reading and Recitation, Unconscious Mind

≈ 4 Comments

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academia, autobiography, Confucius, Dalai Lama XIV, Mañjuśrī, Pema Chödrön, S.N. Goenka, Śāntideva, Tibet

Buddhist practice of various sorts has helped me greatly in trying to deal with the frustrations of cancer care. I wrote already of the role of prayer to Mañjuśrī and Buddhist reading. Now I’d like to say more about what I learned from that reading – and how these practices all fit together. Continue reading →

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