philosophy
49 articles in tag.
Master Gangxiao: Interpreting the Ancient Commentaries on Xuanzang's *True Consciousness-Only Syllogism*
Master Gangxiao: Interpreting the Ancient Commentaries on Xuanzang's True Consciousness-Only Syllogism
ReadNeither Emptiness Nor Existence, Yet Both at Once
Don't trade one ignorance for another. Don't swap one delusion for a different one.
ReadSeeing Interdependent Conditions Clearly Lets You Cultivate Your Practice While Influencing Others
That earnest, aching wish— the kind that longs to see rough iron forged into fine steel, frustrated when progress stalls— has softened and leveled out over long years of practice. He, too, is shaped by his own karma and the causes and co...
ReadContinually Sweeping the Dust from the Mind
Zen Master Dingzhou was walking through the monastery courtyard with a young novice when a sudden gust of wind swept through, sending a flurry of leaves tumbling from the trees. The old master bent down, picked them up one by one, and tu...
ReadVenerable Gangxiao Explains the Sixth Gatha of the Twenty Verses on Consciousness-Only
Sixth Gatha
ReadLay Buddhist Zhuang Chunjiang: *A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha*, Chapter 8: Discerning the Tathāgatagarbha Buddha-Nature
A Study of the Tathāgatagarbha
ReadContemplating Emptiness Through Phenomenal Constructs, Writing That Transmits the Way
We speak of the stage of seeing the Path—but what Path does one actually see here? Two: the first is called the true seeing of the Path, the second the seeing through phenomenal marks. The true seeing of the Path springs from fundamental...
ReadThe mind is originally unmoving — so who is it that moves?
How wondrous: the self-nature is free of all birth and death. The mind of an ordinary person is caught in ceaseless rise and fall, because we cling to the idea of a separate self. Once we latch onto this “I,” we start grasping at externa...
ReadLay Practitioner Zhuang Chunjiang: A Study of Tathāgatagarbha — Chapter 3: The Development of the Teaching on the Mind's Innate Purity
According to the Mahāvibhāṣā and the Abhidharmakośa, "mind" (citta) carries the sense of "growing, accumulating, and lineage"—it's a broad, general term that doesn't denote a singular nature (which is why investigating its "substance" is...
ReadDo you really need a pure mind to be reborn in the Western Pure Land?
After learning about the supremely efficacious practice of nianfo (the continual recitation of the Buddha’s name to seek rebirth in the Pure Land), I feel the threshold for rebirth in the Western Pure Land is very low, and that one can b...
ReadThough Not Pursuing the Emptiness-Nature of Dreams, Illusions, Bubbles, and Shadows, It Perfectly Embodies Their Empty Nature
Everyone knows that the fundamental purpose of the Buddha Dharma is to teach that "all dharmas are empty." That is why, whenever we recite the Heart Sutra, we chant "the five aggregates are empty"; when someone leaves home, we say they h...
ReadHow to Tell If You Are Abiding in the Mind of Birth and Death or the Mind Beyond Birth and Death
Ananda addressed the Buddha, saying: "World-Honored One! I have been blessed with the Tathagata’s supreme compassionate teachings, and my mind has now opened and awakened. I know that through my own practice and realization, I can attain...
Read