Roger R. Jackson

Roger R. Jackson

ROGER R. JACKSON, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies and Religion at Carleton College. He has nearly 50 years of experience with the study and practice of Buddhism, particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His special interests include Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and ritual; Buddhist religious poetry; religion and society in Sri Lanka; the study of mysticism; and contemporary Buddhist thought. Roger is a highly respected and beloved scholar, Dharma teacher, and writer. He has authored many scholarly books and articles, and is a frequent contributor to Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, and Tricycle magazines.

Roger R. Jackson

ROGER R. JACKSON, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies and Religion at Carleton College. He has nearly 50 years of experience with the study and practice of Buddhism, particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His special interests include Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and ritual; Buddhist religious poetry; religion and society in Sri Lanka; the study of mysticism; and contemporary Buddhist thought. Roger is a highly respected and beloved scholar, Dharma teacher, and writer. He has authored many scholarly books and articles, and is a frequent contributor to Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, and Tricycle magazines.

3 Items

Set Ascending Direction
per page

3 Items

Set Ascending Direction
per page

GUIDES

Lives of the Masters Series

Lives of the Masters Series

Kurtis Schaeffer, Lives of the Masters series editor, introduces the series with this note:

"Buddhist traditions are heir to some of the most creative thinkers in world history. The Lives of the Masters series offers lively and reliable introductions to the lives, works, and legacies of key Buddhist teachers, philosophers, contemplatives, and writers. Each volume in the Lives series tells the story of an innovator who embodied the ideals of Buddhism, crafted a dynamic living tradition during his or her lifetime, and bequeathed a vibrant legacy of knowledge and practice to future generations.

Lives books rely on primary sources in the original languages to describe the extraordinary achievements of Buddhist thinkers and illuminate these achievements by vividly setting them within their historical contexts. Each volume offers a concise yet comprehensive summary of the master’s life and an account of how they came to hold a central place in Buddhist traditions. Each contribution also contains a broad selection of the master’s writings.

This series makes it possible for all readers to imagine Buddhist masters as deeply creative and inspired people whose work was animated by the rich complexity of their time and place and how these inspiring figures continue to engage our quest for knowledge and understanding today."

Related Titles

The Second Karmapa Karma Pakshi

$27.95 - Paperback

By: Charles Manson

Dogen

$29.95 - Paperback

By: Steven Heine

Xuanzang

$24.95 - Paperback

By: Benjamin Brose

Tsongkhapa

$29.95 - Paperback

By: Thupten Jinpa & Tsongkhapa

Maitripa

$29.95 - Paperback

By: Klaus-Dieter Mathes

Gendun Chopel

$22.95 - Paperback

By: Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Atisa Dipamkara

$24.95 - Paperback

By: Atisha & James B. Apple

S. N. Goenka

$26.95 - Paperback

By: Daniel M. Stuart

About the Books

Tsongkhapa: A Buddha in the Land of Snows

By Thubten Jinpa

H. H. The Dalai Lama introduces this monumental and definitive biography authored by his long-time translator Thubten Jinpa, and released 600 years following Tsongkhapa's parinirvana:

"An important part of Tsongkhapa’s legacy is the emphasis he placed on critical analysis as essential to the attainment of enlightenment. He revitalized the approach, typical of the Nalanda tradition, that takes reasoned philosophical scrutiny as essential to understanding the nature of reality. . . .

Tsongkhapa had a far-reaching impact on Tibetan tradition. In terms of the three higher trainings in ethics, concentration, and wisdom, he wrote, “Those who wish to discipline others have first to discipline themselves.” His strict adherence to the culture and practice of vinaya, or monastic discipline, set a widely admired standard. His thorough and illuminating writings about Madhyamaka philosophy profoundly enriched Tibetan understanding of Nāgārjuna’s school of thought, stimulating critical thinking about the deeper implications of the view of emptiness. Moreover, his systematic exploration of Buddhist tantra, especially the highest yoga systems of Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṃvara, has ensured not only that their practice has flourished but also that they have been more clearly understood."

See more about Tsongkhapa in our Reader's Guide to his life and works.

Here is Thubten Jinpa sharing his experience composing this biography:

Atiśa Dīpaṃkara: Illuminator of the Awakened Mind

By James B. Apple

Atiśa perhaps had the greatest impact on Buddhism in Tibet of all the Indian masters who visited there. A founder of the Kadam school, the origin of the Geluk tradition of the Dalai Lamas, Atiśa was a brilliant synthesizer whose contributions to Madhyamaka, Tantra, Mind Training (lojong), and the lamrim tradition have continued to be fundamental for practitioners and scholars of Tantra and the Mahāyāna.

Enjoy an excerpt from the preface to the book:

"Atiśa’s life and teachings are a Tibetan story, and what an amazing story it is. Atiśa’s life is guided by dreams, visions, and predictions from buddhas and bodhisattvas, including the savioress Tārā. In the story of Atiśa’s life, we enter a world of gold, sailing ships, palm-leaf manuscripts, and mantras, rather than credit cards, automobiles, social media, and cell phones. The story involves transactions in over two million dollars’ worth of gold and travels throughout maritime Buddhist Asia. The Tibetans have faithfully preserved what is known of Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna, the vicissitudes of his life, the struggles in his travels, and the spirit and meaning of his teachings."

Gendun Chopel: Tibet's Modern Visionary

By Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Artist, poet, iconoclast, philosopher, adventurer, master of the arts of love, tantric yogin, Buddhist saint, world traveler—these are but a few of the descriptions of one of Tibet's most famous modern visionaries, now presented in a single, definitive volume. Having written six books on Gendun Chopel, Donald Lopez takes the culmination of his intimate study and six published works on this figure to present in a comprehensive way his achievements, legacy, and journey—from his recognition as a tulku, to his travels throughout Tibet, India, and Sri Lanka, to his controversial imprisonment in Lhasa and death following the communist invasion of Tibet.

In the introduction Donald Lopez Jr. presents Chopel alongside the politically charged atmosphere that shaped the life, travels, and writing of Tibet's modern visionary,

"Indeed, unlike other important figures in Tibetan history, he was a man who made his name abroad, his life beginning and end­ing with the two most consequential foreign invasions in Tibetan history. He was born in August 1903, four months before British troops, under the command of Colonel Francis Younghusband, crossed the border into Tibet. He died in October 1951. On September 9, he was lifted from his deathbed to watch the troops of the People’s Liberation Army march into Lhasa.

. . . Near the end of his life, one of the few disciples who remained loyal after he was released from prison asked him, in the traditional Tibetan way, to compose his autobiography. Rather than do so with a lengthy work characteristic of the genre, he responded spontaneously, with a four-line poem:

A virtuous family, the lineage of monks, the way of a layman,
A time of abundance, a time of poverty,
The best of monks, the worst of laymen,
My body has changed so much in one lifetime."

The most wide-ranging work available on this extraordinary figure, this inaugural book of the Lives of the Masters series is an instant classic.

gendun chopel
...
Continue Reading >>

Kalachakra Tantra Reader’s Guide

shambhala

What Is Kalachakra Tantra?

The Kalachakra, or “Wheel of Time,” tantra and cycles of teachings and practices are, on the surface, well known among practitioners and those interested in Tibetan Buddhism. Yet it is considered one of the highest teachings of tantra—a highly complex one where initiates take many years accomplishing the practice. The visualization for an advanced practitioner involves 722 figures in the mandala.

One of the reasons for its notoriety is that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has bestowed the initiation—which takes several days to complete—dozens of times in over ten countries to literally millions of people. For most in attendance it is considered a great blessing and not a springboard into the practice itself. As the Dalai Lama has said:

“The higher meditations of the Kalachakra tradition can be practiced only by a select few. But because of past and future events, and in order to establish a strong karmic relationship with Kalachakra in the minds of the people, there is now a tradition of giving the initiation to large public gatherings.”

Kalachakra Tantra as a Main Practice

There are many practitioners in the four main Tibetan schools, as well as in the lesser known Jonang tradition, for whom Kalachakra is their main practice, not just a source of connection and blessings. The Gelug and Sakya traditions were heavily influenced by Buton Rinchen Drub. Some of this is detailed in Buton's History of Buddhism in India and Its Spread to Tibet. The Kagyu and Nyingma traditions draw heavily from the Jonang. Some of the more contemporary masters include Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö (whose biography was published in early 2017 by Shambhala), Penor Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Some of the stories about Khyentse Rinpoche’s connection with the Kalachakra—in particular, the teaching he gave to a large group including His Holiness the Dalai Lama—form a very moving section of his biography, Brilliant Moon. When asked to give a formal elaborate teaching at a Long Life ceremony for the Dalai Lama attended by the heads of all the schools and many other lamas, Tenga Rinpoche relates the following story of Khyentse Rinpoche:

“The next morning when the time came to speak in front of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the whole assembly of lamas from the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, speaking for over an hour in an unimpeded flow like a river, Khyentse Rinpoche gave a most detailed and profound explanation of the universe according to the Kalachakra Tantra, in which he mentioned an immense number of quotes, which he obviously seemed to know by heart. At the end of the discourse, he finally approached the throne of His Holiness and offered the mandala plate into His Holiness’s hands. Then he offered the eight auspicious substances, and when offering the conch, a loud thunder crash resounded. This was considered to be a most auspicious event.

Everyone was amazed at Khyentse Rinpoche’s erudition and spoke about his speech for years to come. Afterward I asked him, ‘Did you study the Kalachakra a lot in the past?’ He answered, ‘I didn’t study it much; I read the Kalachakra commentary by Mipham Rinpoche maybe once or twice; that’s all.’”

Recalling Chogyam Trungpa

$24.95 - Paperback

By: Fabrice Midal & Chogyam Trungpa

Coming to the West

The practice’s fame in the West, in particular, is also attributable to the Shambhala teachings introduced widely by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The Shambhala teachings have a strong connection with the Kalachakra tantra as many of the works below detail. In Recalling Chögyam Trungpa, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche explains it in this way:

“You find the teachings on Shambhala in the Outer Kalachakra; it is a branch or section of the Outer Kalachakra. The Outer Kalachakra is also concerned with predicting what good things are going to happen and what bad things are going to happen through an examination of the planets, the lunar mansions, and so on. It includes a description of the physical nature of the world and how the world was formed, and also discusses how the dharma will prosper in the future. So the connection between the Shambhala teachings and the Vajrayana teachings is found in the Outer Kalachakra. There, the text describes how there were the seven dharmarajas, the dharma kings.”

Below you will find a guide to the many works related to Kalachakra that Shambhala and Snow Lion publish.

The Realm of Shambhala

$18.95 - Paperback

By: Shar Khentrul Jamphel Lodrö

A Traditional Account of Shambhala for Modern Times

With the release of The Realm of Shambhala,  we finally have a complete explanation of Shambhala that is at once traditional—from the Kalachakra or Wheel of Time tantra–but completely applicable to all of us today.  Presenting Shambhala as both a place and, especially, as a state of mind accessible to everyone, Khentrul Rinpoche joins practical teachings with a vision of overcoming the challenges of humans and humanity and achieving perfect peace individually and as a society.

Highest Yoga Tantra

$27.95 - Paperback

By: Daniel Cozort

Highest Yoga Tantra: An Introduction to the Esoteric Buddhism of Tibet

In the New Translation schools, it is classified in the Highest Yoga Tantra section of tantra. A comprehensive look at this classification, and one in which the Kalachakra system is compared to the Guhyasamaja, is Daniel Cozort's Highest Yoga Tantra: An Introduction to the Esoteric Buddhism of Tibet. This is a good starting point because most of the extant literature is from the New Translation tradition, in particular the Gelug, which is logical given His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s activity.

Treasures of the Sakya Lineage

Before diving into the works dedicated to this cycle of teachings, there is an excellent overview of the divisions of the tantra in Lama Migmar Tseten’s Treasures of the Sakya Lineage, which is helpful when exploring the works below:

“Kalachakra itself is divided into four types of tantra, giving us an elaborate framework to understand its specifics. First, there is the outer Kalachakra. In large part, these sections are concerned with visualizing and meditating on the Buddha in the form of the meditational deity Kalachakra and chanting his mantra. Second comes the inner Kalachakra, which addresses applying the profound internal meditations on the subtle channels, vital winds, elements, and essential drops that make up the subtle (psychic) body. Third, the secret Kalachakra involves meditating on and within the ultimate meaning of the truth of emptiness. Fourth is “other,” or “alternative,” Kalachakra, which relates to the study of and meditation on the outer cosmos of our realm of existence. Alternative Kalachakra teaches us how all the physical appearances of this world are the manifestation of our collective karma; it teaches us the causes that bring about this universe. It describes the outer universe and how it directly corresponds with and reflects the inner propensities and karmic vision of all the beings within this universe. Thus, the Kalachakra tantra contains the deepest meanings of four types of tantras all within a single tradition.”

The Wheel of Time

An excellent starting point for diving in is The Wheel of Time: Kalachakra in Context. Here His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geshe Sopa, and scholars Roger Jackson and John Newman explore the history, initiation, and practices within this tantric system.

Another overview is The Wheel of Time Sand Mandala: Visual Scripture of Tibetan Buddhism. This volume comes packed with illustrations that give a helpful sense of how the mandala support for this practice is created.

Introduction to the Kalachakra Initiation

For the initiation of the deity Kalachakra, Alexander Berzin’s Introduction to the Kalachakra Initiation is an excellent starting point. Dr. Berzin has researched and written extensively on the subject and this encapsulates his work. It begins with an introduction to tantra generally, the Kalachakra specifically, and then dives deeper and details the initiation itself, what is happening each day. A brief summary of the purpose of the practice is included:

“Properly empowered, we engage in generation and then complete stage meditational practice in the form of the Buddha-figure called Kalachakra. Through these two stages, we access and utilize the subtlest level of our mind to see reality. Remaining continually focused on reality with it eliminates forever confusion and its instincts, thus bringing liberation from the external and internal cycles of time. This is possible because our basis tantra, our individual clear light mind, underlies each moment of experience and, like time, it has no end. Once our subtlest mind is freed from the deepest cause giving rise to the impulses of energy that perpetuate cycles of time and bondage to them, it gives rise, instead, to the bodies of a Buddha, in the form of Kalachakra.”

It includes an explanation of the understanding of the universe and how it differs from the more familiar Buddhist view of the universe. An excerpt appeared in the Snow Lion newsletter, and you can find it here. This work also includes other aspects of the text such as why it is so closely related with the line of Dalai Lamas, its connection with Shambhala, and more.

Dr. Berzin also published the short Kalachakra and Other Six-Session Yoga Texts, which currently available as an eBook.

The Practice of Kalachakra

Another topical work on the tantra is Glenn Mullin’s The Practice of Kalachakra. The first half serves as a comprehensive overview of the tantra and the Kalachakra. The second half includes a set of translations of teachings and practices related to this cycle from the First, Fifth, Thirteenth, and present Fourteenth Dalai Lamas. It also includes works from Buton, the First Panchen Lama, and Lobzang Thubten Chokyi Nyima.

Some of these are also included in From the Heart of Chenrezig: The Dalai Lamas on Tantra.

As Long as Space Endures: Essays on the Kalachakra Tantra in Honor of H.H. the Dalai Lama

A very important work in English on the Kalachakra system is the anthology As Long as Space Endures: Essays on the Kalachakra Tantra in Honor of H.H. the Dalai Lama. With two dozen translations and essays, this contains pieces by Robert Thurman, Thupten Jinpa, Alexander Berzin, Vesna Wallace, and many other scholars and lamas known for their work with these teachings.

There are several other works that include teachings, stories, and other helpful and fascinating information on the Kalachakra and its history and impact in India and Tibet..

A Gem of Many Colors & The Treasury of Knowledge

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye taught extensively on the subject.  He talks about this repeatedly throughout his autobiography, A Gem of Many Colors.

He also wrote about it extensively in his Treasuries. There will be a Kalachakra volume in the Treasury of Precious Instructions, the massive multivolume work from Shambhala Publications.

In his The Treasury of Knowledge, published in English in ten volumes, there are two volumes specifically that contain a lot of detail about the Kalachakra system. The first is in the volume Systems of Buddhist Tantra: The Indestructible Way of Secret Mantra (6.4) and the other is in The Elements of Tantric Practice (8.3).

The Buddha from Dolpo

$39.95 - Hardcover

By: Cyrus Stearns

The Buddha from Dolpo & Mountain Doctrine

The Kalachakra is very central to the Jonang tradition, and a figure who is obviously very prominent in the teachings and propagation of the Kalachakra system was Dolpopa.

Dolpopa’s biography, The Buddha from Dolpo by Cyrus Stearns, contains an immense amount of information on Dolpopa's connection with the Kalachakra practice.

Mo

$24.95 - Paperback

By: Jamgon Mipham

Tibetan Astrology

$34.95 - Paperback

By: Philippe Cornu

Astrological & Divination in Tibet

The Kalachakra system also forms a large part of the astrological and divination techniques in Tibet. A few important sources on this include Mipham Rinpoche's Mo: Tibetan Divination System, and Phillipe Cornu's classic Tibetan Astrology.

The Art of Buddhism

$34.95 - Paperback

By: Denise Patry Leidy

The Art of Buddhism

Finally, The Art of Buddhism contains a short section on the Kalachakra mandala and the image above is from that work.

...
Continue Reading >>

SNOW LION NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE

Is Enlightenment Possible?: Dharmakirti and Gyaltsap Je on Rebirth, No-Self and Liberation

The following article is from the Winter, 1994 issue of the Snow Lion Newsletter and is for historical reference only. You can see this in context of the original newsletter here.

Is Enlightenment Possible?

Dharmakirti and rGyal tshab rje on Knowledge, Rebirth, No-Self and Liberation

by Roger Jackson

 

Is Enlightenment Possible? is an exploration of the most sustained and sophisticated argument for the truth of the Buddhist world-view that of Dharmakirti.


Dharmakirti sets forth a rational demonstration that past and future lives are real, mind is separable from the body, mind's nature is such that enlightenment is possible, and the achievement of enlightenment requires the attainment of the uniquely Buddhist realization of no-self.

These arguments deeply influenced the Buddhist tradition of Tibet and have a cogency that makes them of interest not just to Buddhists, but to anyone concerned with problems of truth.

Is Enlightenment Possible? includes a lengthy introduction that situates Dharmakirti's work within the larger framework of Buddhist thought, against the background of Indian and Western attempts to deal with the problem of truth and truth-claims. It also includes an extensively annotated translation of Dharmakirti's arguments and a commentary upon them by the Tibetan thinker Gyal-shabje. Dharmakirti's thought is challenging and important, and Is Enlightenment Possible? makes it accessible and comprehensible as few works before it have. Here is an excerpt:

Enlightenment (Sk. bodhi, T. byang chub), and such cognates as nirvana (T. my a ngan las 'das pa), vimoksa (T. rnam thar) and vimuk-ti (T. rnam 'grot), all connote for traditional Buddhists the attainment of a state that radically and finally transcends the unsatisfactoriness that pervades existence in the cycle of rebirths known as samsara. Whether enlightenment is conceived of as merely the elimination of attachment, aversion and ignorance, or is invested with such qualities as omniscience, omnibenevolence and miraculous powers, it is a state far beyond anything most of us have ever believed possible, let alone experienced. In the West, in particular, where secular and psychological views of human possibility have by and large replaced religious notions, traditional Buddhist descriptions of enlightenment most often are greeted either with incredulity or with a demythologized reformulation along psychological or existential lines more palatable to the agnostic tastes of the late twentieth century.

Westerners usually must reformulate traditional descriptions in order to assimilate them at all, and Asian Buddhists often choose to so as to ease their communication with an increasingly non-traditional audience. This may be fine, and may simply represent another of the periodic transformations undergone by Buddhism in the course of its adaptation to different cultural circumstances, but it ought to be remembered that the meaning such a concept as enlightenment may have for contemporary Westernized Buddhists is not the meaning it has had for most Buddhists in most places throughout the centuries. For traditional Buddhists, enlightenment was, and is, precisely the radical transcendence of the suffering of samsara outlined above, no more and no less for the simple reason that traditional Buddhists still see the cosmos primarily through the lenses of the samsara nirvana cosmology so pervasive in Asia, particularly among Indians and peoples influenced primarily by India, such as the Sinhalese, Burmese, Thais and Tibetans.

When, therefore, Tibetan lamas expound the four noble truths and describe the enlightenment that is the culmination of the Buddhist path, they are not being fanciful, they are not being metaphorical, and they certainly are not joking; they are describing a set of facts that follow from their paradigmatic assumptions about how the cosmos functions. Now, just as most Westerners do not question the secular-scientific paradigm from which they operate, so most traditional Buddhists have been content to accept the cosmology presented by their culture, satisfied that it bore the weight of tradition, was socially and personally useful, and was not grossly contradicted by experiences they might have. On the other hand, there have been a great many Buddhists who recognized that Buddhist beliefs were not necessarily self-evident, could not simply be accepted on faith, and rested on problematic philosophical assumptions that needed to be defended rather than simply asserted. There were, in short, Buddhists who recognized that the Buddhist world-view, to be regarded as true taken in its most common usage, as corresponding to the way things actually are in the cosmos must be susceptible of validation by an uncommitted observer through the universally accepted means of perception and inference. Not all thoughtful Buddhists have believed that Buddhist religious beliefs can thus be validated some Madhyamikas and later logicians arguably are exceptions but there does exist a tradition that takes such validation seriously, stemming from the Indian pandit Dharmakirti (seventh century C.E.) and continuing to this day in Tibetan schools.

Few truths come unattended; they usually are surrounded by a wraith-like hose of presuppositions. The four noble truths are no exception, for implicit in them are a number of cosmological and philosophical assumptions. In the most general sense, the four noble truths are posited against the background of a two-fold cosmological vision. The universe, in this vision, holds open two, and only two, possible modes of existence for conscious beings: (1) the beginning-less, ignorance-rooted experience in life after life of pain, sorrow, the transience of joys, separation from the pleasurable, encounter with the unpleasant and unfulfilled desires; and (2) the incorruptible peace that is the cessation of suffering, and which results from the eradication of the ignorance and craving that perpetuate that suffering. The universe, in short, holds open the possibilities of samsara and nirvana.

This cosmology, in turn, entails certain philosophical assumptions, which are, above all, assumptions about the nature and function of the mind: (1) the reality of past and future lives, which are contingent on the mind's independence of particular bodies; (2) the existence of a universal moral law, karma, that works with the same predictability in the psychological realm as causality does in the physical realm; (3) the fundamental perfectibility of mind, such that when its adventitious defilements have been removed one attains an undecaying liberated state that is beyond suffering, and makes the greatest of worldly joys seem infernal by comparison; (4) the possibility of control of the causal factors related to the universal moral law such that the liberated state can be attained. Assumption (1) bears most strongly on the truth of suffering, assumption (2) on the truth of origination, assumption (3) on the truth of cessation and assumption (4) on the truth of path. Common sense would dictate that if these four assumptions are true, the four noble truths are true, and that if any or all of them are false, then the four noble truths and thus the Buddha's teaching are at best partially true and at worst simply false.

Here, however, there is a still more fundamental question that must be asked, namely:

In precisely what sense are the four noble truths, along with their cosmological and philosophical presuppositions, "true"?

The answer is not as self-evident as common sense might dictate, for the word "true" is in fact ambiguous - a fact recognized not only in the Western, but also in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. Thus, we find that there are, in fact, at least three possible ways of interpreting the statement, "The four noble truths, along with their cosmological and philosophical presuppositions, are true":

  1. The facts and processes described by the four noble truths are literally true. In other words, such facts and processes as rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., have a reality independent of the terms that describe them or the conceptual schemes out of which those terms arise. Furthermore, even if the terms that describe such facts and processes are limited by their location in a particular cultural-linguistic system, there nevertheless do exist facts and processes corresponding closely enough to those terms that they can be said to be true and true not only for those in the cultural-linguistic world in which the terms are found, but in all possible worlds. In short, statements about the four noble truths and their presuppositions are literally and universally true: such facts and processes as rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., occur just the way Buddhist texts indicate they do, and they occur for every possible person, even if that person has never heard of them.
  2. The facts and processes described by the four noble truths are only figuratively or symbolically true. In other words such facts or processes as rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., either do not reflect realities independent of the terms that describe them, or cannot be ascertained to reflect such realities. Furthermore, such considerations are secondary, for the terms were taught not as a reflection of an inalterable extrinsic reality, but for their utility in providing images, symbols or stories that assist us in finding meaning in our lives, whoever or wherever we may be. Thus, not only is it possible (probable, even) that rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., are not realities in the literal sense in which they are described in Buddhist scriptures, but this probability is unimportant: their value - indeed the value of any truth-claim - is purely heuristic and utilitarian.
  3. The facts and processes described by the four noble truths are true not independently and universally, but only within the context of a particular conceptual scheme, world-view or language-game. In other words, such facts and processes as rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., may in fact be true, but only relative to the particular thought-world out of which they emerge, that of Indian Buddhism. If statements that describe rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc., cohere comfortably within a Buddhist conceptual scheme according to Buddhist standards of rationality, then the statements can be accepted as true, though they may not be true within another thought-world that is based on a different set of presuppositions e.g. that of a Yoruba, Christian or secular humanist. The reason that they can be accepted as true is that we never can discover an independent or neutral world outside the conceptual schemes that merely give us versions of the world. If reality thus is viewed as a collection of partially overlapping, non-ultimate conceptual schemes, then truth never can be more than adequacy to a particular conceptual scheme. Thus, statements about rebirth, karma, nirvana, etc. are relatively true (and, of course, relatively false), and to expect more of them is to misunderstand the nature of truth-statements, which always are limited by and to the world in which they are made.

Readers familiar with Western philosophy will have recognized in each of the preceding interpretations one of the classic theories of truth, namely truth as correspondence, pragmatic utility or coherence. Buddhists, of course, had no exact equivalents to these terms, nor for the majority of terms and issues that have concerned Western philosophers of religion. Nevertheless, I think that it is possible with all appropriate caution and sensitivity to cultural context to argue in general that Buddhists, like religious people everywhere, have had to concern themselves with questions of truth, and therefore to develop explicit and implicit criteria for determining how truth is to be found. Thus, to apply Western theories to Buddhist truth-claims is by no means utterly arbitrary, for as we shall see shortly, each is a possible option from a Buddhist point of view as well. Before we examine Buddhist attitudes toward truth, and decide just what Buddhists mean by the claim that the four noble truths are true, we may do well to explore at least generally the modern Western discussion of the problem of truth, and then see how that discussion bears on the more particular problem of the nature of religious truth-claims of which Buddhist claims are a sub-set.

To read more about the Four Noble Truths, click on the Snow Lion Newsletter article: "The Four Noble Truths" by Ven. Lobsang Gyatso.

To see other works by Roger R. Jackson, click here.

...
Continue Reading >>