Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy
Accurate view is crucial if our practice is to ripen into prajna and benefit others. Without a proper training in the view of emptiness, our efforts on the cushion could end be just another excursion into spiritual materialism.
Based on The Treasury of Knowledge (Book 6, Part 3) by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, this course will examine the development of Buddhist view. The text sets out the traditional framework of Buddhism's three vehicles, four philosophical systems, and an unusually profound presentation of the rangtong and shentong views. By offering progressively subtler conceptual descriptions of emptiness, these teachings bring us closer and closer to an actual experience of prajna, "the fire that burns the fuel of conceptual mind."
Developing confidence in the view of emptiness forms an important foundational understanding crucial to any actual experience of emptiness we hope to encounter in the path of vipashyana. The practice of vipashyana will be the focus of subsequent classes in the SSBS Year 3 curriculum.