The article presents Go rams pa’s interpretation and classification of cognizable object as explained by Sa skya Paṇḍita in his famous Tshad ma rigs gter. The text consists of introduction to the translation of the original, translation of Go ram pa’s commentary to the first chapter of Tshad ma rigs gter, edition of the original, and outline of the Tibetan text.

The doctrinal position of Ratnākaraśānti is a source of great controversy among modern scholars. As diversified as the modern understanding of Ratnākaraśānti’s doctrinal position is the traditional ways in which the gZhan stong view is defined in Tibet. This paper aims to argue, with special attention paid on his presentation of the three natures, that Ratnākaraśānti defines his own doctrine as Rang bzhin gsum gyi dbu ma / *Trisvabhāva- mādhyamika in his “Core Trilogy”: the Prajñāpāramitopadeśa, the Madhyamakālaṅkāropadeśa, and the Madhyamakālaṅkāravṛttimadhyamapratipatsiddhi, (...) demonstrate, by comparing Ratnākaraśānti’s view with that of the orthodox Jo nang authors represented by Dol po pa Shes rab rgyal mtshan and Tāranātha, that Ratnākaraśānti is arguably a gZhan stong pa in its strictest sense, and problematize Brunnhölzl and Sponberg’s classification of different accounts of the three natures in Indian, Tibetan and Chinese sources. (shrink)

There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers like Śrīgupta (seventh–eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an unfounded illusion. In this paper, I present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s "neither-one-nor-many argument" against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning (...) is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses. (shrink)