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Lotsawa Workbench The Lotsawa Workbench is an initiative of the Tsadra Foundation research department. Currently, this is just a test and we welcome any comments and suggestions. We hope to invite collaboration from users and stakeholders from Dharma groups as well as academia. Please contact us if you are interested in developing this project with us: research AT tsadra DOT org.
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རྣམ་ཤེས་
rnam shes
Hopkins Comments ?
No direct match.| 147 other match(es) |
Reference Notes from other Works [i.e. Footnotes/Endnotes]
| Book | Author/Translator | Note |
|---|---|---|
| When the Clouds Part | Asaṅga Maitreya Brunnhölzl, K. |
1177. In the Yogācāra system, the typical triad of "mind (citta/sems)," "mentation (manas/ yid)," and "consciousness (vijñāna/rnam shes)"refers to the ālaya-consciousness, the afflicted mind, and the remaining six consciousnesses.
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| When the Clouds Part | Asaṅga Maitreya Brunnhölzl, K. |
2593. This refers to the typical Yogācāra triad of "mind (citta/sems)," "mentation (manas/ yid)," and "consciousness (vijñāna/rnam shes)" as indicating the ālaya-consciousness, the afflicted mind, and the remaining six consciousnesses. Shentongpas (such as Dölpopa, Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé, and Mikyö Dorje in his commentary on the Abhisamayālaṃkāra) often speak of the "ālaya-consciousness"versus the "ālaya" or "ālaya-wisdom"in the sense of the sugata heart. According to Khenchen Tsültrim Gyatso Rinpoche, from a shentong point of view, the problem with the position that Tibetans call "Mere Mentalism" (taking smallest moments of self-aware consciousness free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended to be ultimately existent) is that it fails to realize that, ultimately, the ālaya and self-awareness are nothing but the luminous nature of the mind. Naturally, any attempt to establish the ālaya and self-awareness as really existing phenomena on the level of seeming reality cannot withstand Madhyamaka reasoning. In Mere Mentalism, self-awareness is the inward-facing aspect in each moment of consciousness (be it a sense consciousness, a thought, or an emotion) that experiences itself without being differentiable into an experiencer and what is experienced. Once the illusion of external objects is seen through, it is this self-awareness that realizes the absence of any subject-object duality and is itself free from such duality. This is called "the ultimate dependent,"which is equivalent to the perfect nature when understood as the dependent nature's being empty of the imaginary nature. The self-awareness (in the sense of the personally experienced wisdom of the sugata heart) that is discussed in the Lamp and other shentong texts operates on the level of ultimate reality alone and is never connected with afflictions or any states of mind of seeming reality, but is empty of both the imaginary and the dependent natures. Just as all phenomena depend on space for their existence and interactions, while space neither depends on, nor is connected to, them, all seeming phenomena—the adventitious stains—operate within the infinite space of the inseparability of mind's expanse and awareness, but this nature of the mind neither depends on, nor has any connection with, these stains. This is explained at length in Uttaratantra I.52–63. Without exception, the afflictions and the resulting karma and suffering of ordinary beings arise from "improper mental engagement,"that is, their fourfold mistakenness of taking what is impermanent to be permanent, what is suffering to be happiness, what is impure to be pure, and what lacks a self or identity to have a self or identity. From the perspective of the Uttaratantra and RGVV, even the opposites of these four (as realized by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas) are not "proper mental engagement." For, such proper mental engagement consists of "the power of yoga"—the nondual and nonconceptual meditative equipoise of realizing the four pāramitās of supreme permanence, bliss, purity, and self, which are beyond any clinging to the above four mistakennesses and their opposites (for details on these four pāramitās, see section 2.2.1. in the text below). Since such yoga entails the freedom from the duality of apprehender and apprehended, it lacks the fundamental ignorance of "improper mental engagement,"which is also known as "false imagination." |