This chapter considers tantra, and the contemplative practices in Tibet informed by Mind-Only and Madhyamaka, where language plays a more explicitly creative and liberating role. Tantric traditions, including the Great Perfection and Mahāmudrā, resonate deeply with Mind-Only. In significant ways, these traditions can even be said to be iterations of Yogācāra, as extensions of its contemplative...
This chapter begins with a discussion of emptiness and introduces two broad streams of interpretation of the import of negation. The “enframed” interpretation emphasizes the value of language and thought in the discovery of ultimate truth, while the “unenframed” interpretation emphasizes the way that language and thought impede this discovery. Both interpretations claim to represent the view of...
This chapter shows the ways that Madhyamaka and Mind-Only can be seen to offer distinct depictions of the world, framed in terms of a relationship between ontology and phenomenology. The perspectives offered by ontology and phenomenology can be understood as taking their starting points in object-oriented and subject-oriented modes of inquiry, respectively. Mind-Only highlights the subjective...
This chapter discusses various interpretations of self-awareness, including its meaning as the beginning and culmination of Mind-Only’s phenomenological analysis. It also discusses the ways this notion has been criticized as simply another conceptual construct. Self-awareness can refer to an intransitive cognition and an intrinsic property of all awarenesses. It can also take the form of an...