Tags: Madhyamaka

The Quintessence of Rangtong

A long time coming, actually a year to the day since my last January 13th posting, The Quintessence of Zhentong from the collection of 108 Quintessential Instructions, I thought to…

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Are there Geluk Zhentongpas?

Are there Geluk zhentongpas? This is a question that I’ve been asking for some time. Fortunately, a set of rare texts that were recently recovered from Tibet may shed some…

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Notes on Jonang Series II

The second set in the Jonang Publication Series (Jo nang dpe tshogs) was recently published (vols. 11-21) in Beijing.[1] This annual series is dedicated to making select works on sūtra…

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The Quintessence of Zhentong

Thinking about this well structured collection of 108 instructions, I thought to pick a few and post them. Feeling predictable, I wanted to start with what you may expect to…

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Zhentong isn’t Cittamātra

For some reason, those unfamiliar with the zhentong presentation tend to associate it with the Cittamāra (“Mind Only” or “Mentalist”) system, as if Madhyamaka was only divided into Svātantrika and…

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Tradition of the Perfect Eon

The “now” is important for any tradition. For it is in the process of bringing the past into the present wherein a tradition is brought to life. However, the past,…

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What Is / Isn’t Rangtong?

Dolpopa, like many great Tibetan scholars, was interested in making distinctions. Within his writings, we find several terse compositions that employ rich Buddhist lingo in order to succinctly and deliberately…

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Whose Svabhāva is It?

One of the major tripping points in Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy is identifying what is intrinsically existent ― what is referred to in Sanskrit as “svabhāva” (rang bzhin), and what is…

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