The Madman's Middle Way by Donald S. Lopez Jr

Author:Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

##4-8 GC begins with a large question: what is truth? He addresses it within the context of what in Buddhist philosophy is called valid knowledge (pramana, tshad ma). Although other schools of Indian philosophy identified several sources for accurate knowledge about the nature of reality (including testimony and the Vedas), the Buddhists were renowned for accepting only two: direct perception (pratyaksa) and inference (anumana). As long as direct perception— through the sense consciousnesses, oryogically, through the mental consciousness—was "undeceived" (a term that elicited considerable commentary in the treatises on logic and epistemology), that perception was regarded as a valid source of knowledge about the world. As long as an inference was based on a "correct reason" (again, a term analyzed at great length), that inference was regarded as providing reliable information.

GC was widely read in the scholastic literature on valid knowledge, one of the five topics of the Dge lugs monastic curriculum, and he could easily have explored the question in a traditional scholastic style, with extensive quotations from Dignaga, Dharmaklrti, and their myriad Indian and Tibetan commentators. Instead, however, he approaches the topic in a conversational style, largely free from technical vocabulary. He begins with a simple declaration: "All of our decisions about what is and is not are just decisions made in accordance with how it appears to our mind; they have no other basis whatsoever." That is, apart from our own opinions, there is no objective standard of truth, at least for unenlightened beings: as he says, "This is the case for all common beings." Common being (prthagjana, so so skyes bu) is a technical term here, referring to any being in the universe who has not directly perceived the ultimate truth of emptiness. Beings who have perceived reality directly are called "noble ones" (aryan, phags pa).

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