Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Forum for discussion of Tibetan Buddhism. Questions specific to one school are best posted in the appropriate sub-forum.
Norwegian
Posts: 2632
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:36 pm

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Norwegian »

Matt J wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:31 am
Norwegian wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:10 am Please share some names, who said this? Are these people relevant, as in, are they actual representatives of the continental school, or are they just random anonymous people from the streets sharing whatever thought comes to their mind, much like what happens all the day, every day, like usual, with any topic, regardless if it's sensible or not?
Angry U of Chicago grad students taken in, no doubt, by the Sokal affair.
So a bunch of nobodies who are not representatives of the continental school, at least not like actual philosophers, as say Deleuze, Lyotard, and similar.
Of course, this is not a thing of the past:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ax/572212/

What a turn this thread has taken!
The Sokal example has been done to death by more people, outlets, communities, and so on than I can even begin to remember. It means absolutely nothing. And it's honestly quite tiresome at this point.

And as for your incredibly silly Trump argument above, it is dealt with rather nicely in this article, although there are many other sources one could use for the same purpose: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... story.html
I should add, I never said Continental philosophy was incomprehensible or such. That was Malcolm.
This is more about how it's something like an overall trend. You can see it almost everywhere. So it was a general comment.

I won't deny that there's incredibly difficult to read texts in continental philosophy but there are incredibly difficult to read texts in analytical philosophy as well. But there are people who understand what these things means.

If I say "schizoanalysis" then maybe Sokal will go "That's not even a real word! That's so unscientific!" But Deleuze and Guattari rather carefully explained many times in many texts, what exactly "schizoanalysis" means to them.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

tobes wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:08 pmThe issue is not what Derrida writes, it is in the army of Derrideans, who take him as a kind of guru, and make no effort to read or think outside of his paradigm. Same with Foucaldians et al.
Addressed by my comment about those who don’t like to think.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

tobes wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:08 pm For example, 20th century analytic philosophy is unthinkable
The Anglo-American analytical traditions isn’t an ethnic grouping, it is a grouping assembled in the Anglo-American academy in the 1950s, characterized by a certain approach to knowledge.
User avatar
tobes
Posts: 2194
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2010 5:02 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by tobes »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:44 am
tobes wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:08 pm For example, 20th century analytic philosophy is unthinkable
The Anglo-American analytical traditions isn’t an ethnic grouping, it is a grouping assembled in the Anglo-American academy in the 1950s, characterized by a certain approach to knowledge.
Some of the literature on this topic suggests otherwise. i.e. a lot of the hard divisions crystallized during/after WWII. The analytic distaste for Hegel, Nietzsche etc has a lot to do with misreading them as somehow directly responsible for Nazi Germany.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

tobes wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:03 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:44 am
tobes wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:08 pm For example, 20th century analytic philosophy is unthinkable
The Anglo-American analytical traditions isn’t an ethnic grouping, it is a grouping assembled in the Anglo-American academy in the 1950s, characterized by a certain approach to knowledge.
Some of the literature on this topic suggests otherwise. i.e. a lot of the hard divisions crystallized during/after WWII. The analytic distaste for Hegel, Nietzsche etc has a lot to do with misreading them as somehow directly responsible for Nazi Germany.
No, it is just a recognition that Hegelianism, with it focus on Hegel being the apex of history, in turn influenced Nietzsche’s reactionary nihilism, as well as Marx, which ideologies led directly to anti-democratic regimes in Europe of both the left and the right in the twentieth century. This perception you speak, of course, was not positively reinforced by Nietzche’s posthumous Will to Power, compiled and edited by his virulently-antisemitic sister.

Of course Adorno aptly shows how Heidegger’s pseudo-philosophy is fascism in its very essence, a sterling example of literary criticism of a philosophical text if there ever was one.
Last edited by Malcolm on Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
PeterC
Posts: 5191
Joined: Tue May 20, 2014 12:38 pm

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by PeterC »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:20 am
tobes wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:03 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:44 am

The Anglo-American analytical traditions isn’t an ethnic grouping, it is a grouping assembled in the Anglo-American academy in the 1950s, characterized by a certain approach to knowledge.
Some of the literature on this topic suggests otherwise. i.e. a lot of the hard divisions crystallized during/after WWII. The analytic distaste for Hegel, Nietzsche etc has a lot to do with misreading them as somehow directly responsible for Nazi Germany.
No, it is just a recognition that Hegelianism, with it focus on Hegel being the apex of history, in turn influenced Nietzsche’s reactionary nihilism, as well as Marx, were ideologies that led directly to anti-democratic regimes in Europe of both the left and the right.
The common interpretation of this is more than a little unfair to Nietzsche. Hitler never read him, his main philosophical motivation was Heidegger, and his main aesthetic motivation was Wagner. Neitzsche's actual ideas were consistently misrepresented from the Nazi era to today - GötzenDämmerung contains extensive anti-statist thoughts, and the "what does not kill you" line is almost always taken out of context to mean exactly the opposite of what he was actually saying. He also wasn't really a nihilist, the first few sections of Zarathustra make that very clear, he found meaning in the transformation of the individual, but he rejected finding meaning in the collective.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

PeterC wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:27 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:20 am
tobes wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:03 am

Some of the literature on this topic suggests otherwise. i.e. a lot of the hard divisions crystallized during/after WWII. The analytic distaste for Hegel, Nietzsche etc has a lot to do with misreading them as somehow directly responsible for Nazi Germany.
No, it is just a recognition that Hegelianism, with it focus on Hegel being the apex of history, in turn influenced Nietzsche’s reactionary nihilism, as well as Marx, were ideologies that led directly to anti-democratic regimes in Europe of both the left and the right.
The common interpretation of this is more than a little unfair to Nietzsche. Hitler never read him, his main philosophical motivation was Heidegger. Neitzsche's actual ideas were consistently misrepresented from the Nazi era to today - GötzenDämmerung contains extensive anti-statist thoughts, and the "what does not kill you" line is almost always taken out of context to mean exactly the opposite of what he was actually saying.
Nietzsche was a cipher, meaning that one could selectively read whatever one wanted into him. Unfortunately, Will to Power is the most read title of one of his least understood books, inspiring many mini-Hitler wannabes. The other thing is that N has always ironically been more inspiring to the right than the left, because they interpret his anti statism not as a critique of state power, but as critique of consensus and cooperation.
User avatar
tobes
Posts: 2194
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2010 5:02 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by tobes »

It turns out, upon the publishing of his diaries, that Heidegger was the real Nazi.

Nietzsche was anti-German to the core; he constantly disparaged German culture and nationalism and retreated to the Italian hills to live.

The association of Nietzsche with Nazism really does speak the ethnic contours of the analytic-continental divide; it's certainly not based on actually engaging philosophically. There's nothing in Will to Power that remotely looks fascistic. It's a highly abstract metaphysics of relationality.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

tobes wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:59 amThere's nothing in Will to Power that remotely looks fascistic.
Yes, I know, that was my point. People read the title and that’s about it.

However, Nietzsche’s skepticism of states leads directly to skepticism of democratic institutions. A bias or an operating principle in analytical philosophy is the defense of liberalism. Attempts to rehabilitate N’s thought as conducive to democratic liberalism are failures, in my estimation.
Last edited by Malcolm on Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
PeterC
Posts: 5191
Joined: Tue May 20, 2014 12:38 pm

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by PeterC »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:34 am
PeterC wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:27 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:20 am

No, it is just a recognition that Hegelianism, with it focus on Hegel being the apex of history, in turn influenced Nietzsche’s reactionary nihilism, as well as Marx, were ideologies that led directly to anti-democratic regimes in Europe of both the left and the right.
The common interpretation of this is more than a little unfair to Nietzsche. Hitler never read him, his main philosophical motivation was Heidegger. Neitzsche's actual ideas were consistently misrepresented from the Nazi era to today - GötzenDämmerung contains extensive anti-statist thoughts, and the "what does not kill you" line is almost always taken out of context to mean exactly the opposite of what he was actually saying.
Nietzsche was a cipher, meaning that one could selectively read whatever one wanted into him. Unfortunately, Will to Power is the most read title of one of his least understood books, inspiring many mini-Hitler wannabes. The other thing is that N has always ironically been more inspiring to the right than the left, because they interpret his anti statism not as a critique of state power, but as critique of consensus and cooperation.
He was confusing and sometimes obscure, and perhaps the untreated syphilis and excessive self-medication had something to do with that. But a bit like Marx, he didn't say what a lot of people use him to say. Sadly I think in public perception he's beyond the point where he can be rehabilitated now, again like Marx.
User avatar
tobes
Posts: 2194
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2010 5:02 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by tobes »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:05 am
tobes wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:59 amThere's nothing in Will to Power that remotely looks fascistic.
Yes, I know, that was my point. People read the title and that’s about it.

However, Nietzsche’s skepticism of states leads directly to skepticism of democratic institutions. A bias or an operating principle in analytical philosophy is the defense of liberalism. Attempts to rehabilitate N’s thought as conducive to democratic liberalism are failures, in my estimation.
Yes, N is undoubtedly anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal. It is interesting that his star has risen on both left and (alt)right. Politically and ethically, I don't think much can be rescued from Nietzsche. But as a critique of Euro-western culture: very salient.
User avatar
treehuggingoctopus
Posts: 2507
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:26 pm
Location: EU

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

tobes wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:08 pmThe attitude you are criticising here is pure dogma, ungrounded from the actual unfolding of ideas. Which is not to say it does not have traction in many anglosphere departments: dogmas can get a lot of traction.

For example, 20th century analytic philosophy is unthinkable without Husserl, Wittgenstein & Frege: all European, and the former two very influential in the so called continental tradition.

There were influential analytic Hegelians, and in fact he's having a bit of a resurgence in (analytic) logicians.

The problem with French theory is not in the ideas/thinkers themselves (of course, there is much that can be criticised), but rather the way that they are unreflexively deployed as unquestionable dogmas. And this happens almost completely outside of philosophy departments. It is a disease, which has infected many parts of the social science/humanities body.

For example, Derrida has interesting things to say about the impossibility of justice, as does Rawls about how we might accomplish it; they are two radically different takes on the same problem. The issue is not what Derrida writes, it is in the army of Derrideans, who take him as a kind of guru, and make no effort to read or think outside of his paradigm. Same with Foucaldians et al.
I have met such doctrinaires but they are a dying breed in Europe. I mean, in my experience this is a student-level behaviour, mostly, and it usually dissipates entirely by the time one has completed one's PhD. After all, no commitment to the continental theory as such is really possible, since there are so many (and ever growing) stark differences within it, and the history of the debate means it is fairly difficult to keep narrow commitments as well -- impossible not to know that each of these (and any other) viewpoints both enable and delimit, open up and block from sight, and the only way to redeem them a bit in this respect is to bring in something from the outside.

When I was a student in the latish 1990s dogmatic Lyotardians were a plague (I was back then an even more doctrinaire Marcusian surrealist. The parties were wild. Was it fun). They had died out and been entirely forgotten by 2001, replaced by diehard Lacanians, also mostly extinct now. ANT-ism appears to be well on the way when it comes to occupying the throne of high fashion here, but Latourians are a disappointingly tame bunch in general.
Norwegian wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:10 amHere's a picture showing a very easy to understand simple example from analytical philosophy:
Image
I am sure everybody will readily agree to its contents and definitely not claim that it's taken out of its context. Probably kids can understand the above picture too. Continental philosophy however? Wow. Makes no sense. Nobody can understand what any continental philosopher is saying. Nope. Not a single person.
Thirty years later, Trump.
Yes, I suppose this is an excellent argument for why continental philosophy is meaningless, incomprehensible, and whatever else buzzword one would like to ascribe to it. Something something postmodernism something something poststructuralism something something French people something something AND THEN TRUMP HAPPENED! Boo! Continental philosophy sucks!
:good:

I am (to an extent, in a fashion, etc.) a good Marxist. I wish anything happening in academia was capable of significantly contributing to such political changes as the election of POTUS. I suspect none of us uni people has really been able to believe it since the 1960s. Burroughs quipped that the Vietnam War provoked the longest and most sustained grassroot protests in the 20th century, supported by the vast majority of public intellectuals -- and, he says, all of it amounted to a fart.
Générosité de l’invisible.
Notre gratitude est infinie.
Le critère est l’hospitalité.

Edmond Jabès
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

treehuggingoctopus wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 9:53 am
I am (to an extent, in a fashion, etc.) a good Marxist. I wish anything happening in academia was capable of significantly contributing to such political changes as the election of POTUS. I suspect none of us uni people has really been able to believe it since the 1960s. Burroughs quipped that the Vietnam War provoked the longest and most sustained grassroot protests in the 20th century, supported by the vast majority of public intellectuals -- and, he says, all of it amounted to a fart.
Burroughs was wrong. It led to the US Military exiling the press. When I was a child, every night between 1968-1975 there was unedited, raw news footage of the Vietnam war on ABC, CBS, and NBC. Now, we see at best sanitized footage with grim journalists standing in other countries reporting on the latest war news. So, the effect of the anti-war movement was to cause the US military to end press access to war zones. This is one reason we stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for so long. As for the latter, many people in the US had no idea we were still there when Biden finally pulled us out.
User avatar
treehuggingoctopus
Posts: 2507
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:26 pm
Location: EU

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:34 pm
treehuggingoctopus wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 9:53 am
I am (to an extent, in a fashion, etc.) a good Marxist. I wish anything happening in academia was capable of significantly contributing to such political changes as the election of POTUS. I suspect none of us uni people has really been able to believe it since the 1960s. Burroughs quipped that the Vietnam War provoked the longest and most sustained grassroot protests in the 20th century, supported by the vast majority of public intellectuals -- and, he says, all of it amounted to a fart.
Burroughs was wrong. It led to the US Military exiling the press. When I was a child, every night between 1968-1975 there was unedited, raw news footage of the Vietnam war on ABC, CBS, and NBC. Now, we see at best sanitized footage with grim journalists standing in other countries reporting on the latest war news. So, the effect of the anti-war movement was to cause the US military to end press access to war zones. This is one reason we stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for so long. As for the latter, many people in the US had no idea we were still there when Biden finally pulled us out.
Heartwarming, this.
Générosité de l’invisible.
Notre gratitude est infinie.
Le critère est l’hospitalité.

Edmond Jabès
User avatar
Matt J
Posts: 1440
Joined: Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:29 am
Location: Denver, CO

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Matt J »

Norwegian wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:41 am So a bunch of nobodies who are not representatives of the continental school, at least not like actual philosophers, as say Deleuze, Lyotard, and similar.
That's not a very post-structuralist narrative about the spread of post-structuralism. It is not about individual people and direct causation chains. It is more about culture and paradigm shifting. These "nobodies" at the time are now professors spreading the ideas and inculcating the values into a new generation of grads and undergrads. And people who have imbibed these ideas, directly or indirectly, are not limited to the academy. People may not read Lyotard et al, but they read the Watchmen, watch Pulp Fiction and the Matrix, etc.
And as for your incredibly silly Trump argument above, it is dealt with rather nicely in this article, although there are many other sources one could use for the same purpose: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... story.html
It wasn't an argument more than an observation. And if it were silly, that WaPo article never would have been written. One story that can be told is that the post-structuralist attitude, filtered via countless ways through higher learning, may have shifted the intellectual (and eventually the popular) culture in such a way that people are more open to Trumpian (and Putinian) forms of discourse.
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
--- Muriel Rukeyser
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

Matt J wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:01 pm It wasn't an argument more than an observation. And if it were silly, that WaPo article never would have been written. One story that can be told is that the post-structuralist attitude, filtered via countless ways through higher learning, may have shifted the intellectual (and eventually the popular) culture in such a way that people are more open to Trumpian (and Putinian) forms of discourse.
And this relates directly to why Madhyamaka isn't a challenge to conventional knowledge, unlike deconstruction and other post-modernist trends, for which it is consistently mistaken.

Madhyamaka, if anything, does not seek to dismantle conventional knowledge, so much as site it appropriately in the context of liberation. It makes strong arguments against incoherent, essentialist claims which undermine conventional knowledge, in order to show that knowledge requires functionality in order to be considered knowledge at all. Its appeal to the illusory nature of phenomena and knowledge is not an argument for pure subjectivity, as it is often mistaken for. Instead, its appeal to the illusory nature of phenomena and knowledge is an argument for consensus and convention, while at the same time, negating the irrationality of imputing essences to dependently originated things.

I would argue that the present interest in Yogacāra, for example, is as much a function of the penetration of postmodernism into Buddhist studies as it is a function of increased linguistic understanding of Buddhist texts and so on. It is not an accident that in America and England, the continental fascination with yogacāra has met with quite a bit of resistance.

Now that we have scholars moving from being disinterested coroners of religion to invested proponents, this is changing, and it is not surprising that the strongest proponents of gzhan stong and yogacāra are Europeans. Frankly, a lot of argument between modern Mādhyamikas such as myself and those who adhere to various species of yogācara can be traced to a divide between how knowledge is handled by analytical and continental philosophy in general.

On the other hand, I can't tell you how many dissertations I have read in Buddhist studies over the years complete with accounts of methodologies derived from Said, Tambiah, etc. and so on. It seems that modern professors in Buddhist studies departments are demanding 100 pages or so filled with bullshit about the student's methodology and approach rooted in some postmodern drivel.

It is also not surprising that we have modern lamas who seem to have grasped onto Nietzschean moral nihilism with respect to the behavior of "mahāsiddhas," especially of the modern variety, whose main siddhis seem to be gathering students and bilking them of their money, just to bring this whole exchange :focus:
User avatar
Konchog Thogme Jampa
Posts: 1175
Joined: Sun Oct 01, 2017 4:48 am
Location: Saha World/Hard to Take

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Konchog Thogme Jampa »

I studied for a Philosophy degree at an English University dropped out halfway became a monk

Through my teenage years I had this drive to know the meaning of life

So when I studied Philosophy that was driving it I remember studying Husserl that was hard but came to the conclusion that the meaning of life can’t be grasped by thinking alone just relying on the intellect so left it went to Theravada with its ascetic approach

Kant was good with the two truths of phenomenon and noumenon that rang true at the time when they lectured that I remember all the students being inspired whereas Husserl left everybody perplexed
User avatar
Matt J
Posts: 1440
Joined: Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:29 am
Location: Denver, CO

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Matt J »

I suppose it depends on what side of Yogacara/Shentong you focus on. If you focus on the "no externality" side, you get solipsism.

But what Yogacara/Shentong presents to my mind is the basic, underlying goodness, which is about as far from PoMo as you can get. In fact, this line of teaching is often justified as a corrective to nihilistic Madyamaka misinterpretations.
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 5:23 pm I would argue that the present interest in Yogacāra, for example, is as much a function of the penetration of postmodernism into Buddhist studies as it is a function of increased linguistic understanding of Buddhist texts and so on. It is not an accident that in America and England, the continental fascination with yogacāra has met with quite a bit of resistance.
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
--- Muriel Rukeyser
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

PeterC wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:27 am He also wasn't really a nihilist, the first few sections of Zarathustra make that very clear, he found meaning in the transformation of the individual, but he rejected finding meaning in the collective.
He was definitely a nihilist. His argument that the superior man was not obligated by the moral constraints imposed upon rest of us is a nihilism of narcissistic vanity.

He would be thrilled with the interpretation that some Vajrayāna wannabes promote that there are superior humans who may transgress the moral restrictions imposed on the herd because of their spiritual accomplishments.
Malcolm
Posts: 42974
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:19 am

Re: Some Observation on the Guru-Chela Relationship by Tulku Sherdor

Post by Malcolm »

Matt J wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 7:07 pm I suppose it depends on what side of Yogacara/Shentong you focus on. If you focus on the "no externality" side, you get solipsism.

But what Yogacara/Shentong presents to my mind is the basic, underlying goodness, which is about as far from PoMo as you can get. In fact, this line of teaching is often justified as a corrective to nihilistic Madyamaka misinterpretations.
Malcolm wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 5:23 pm I would argue that the present interest in Yogacāra, for example, is as much a function of the penetration of postmodernism into Buddhist studies as it is a function of increased linguistic understanding of Buddhist texts and so on. It is not an accident that in America and England, the continental fascination with yogacāra has met with quite a bit of resistance.
It's a correction without an error to correct.

But my point really is that Yogacāra offers much more of a narratology than Madhyamaka. It's loaded with many more concepts, fine distinctions, and path narratives than Mādhyamikas typically offer.

There just isn't much juice for the POMO scene to squeeze out of Madhyamaka. Madhyamaka is more akin to ordinary language philosophy than anything else in the Western scene.
Post Reply

Return to “Tibetan Buddhism”