Abstract
Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological UnionThe Indian religious traditions, including Buddhism, are generally characterised by an understanding of the problematic character of the human condition as ignorance (avidya) instead of sin, as in Christianity.1 The centrality of ignorance in defining the problematic character of the human condition creates a dramatically different religious dynamic—a religious dynamic that is fundamentally concerned with epistemological issues rather than with moral ones. In Indian discussions of the limits of religious knowledge, the shared intellectual framework was the idea of means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa). While other religio-philosophic traditions in India accepted testimony (śabda) as an autonomous (i.e., irreducible) means of valid knowledge, Buddhist epistemologists rejected it. Having rejected the idea that testimony is an autonomous means of valid knowledge (śabdapramāṇa), an alternative explanation for the authority of the Buddha had to be created. Against this background of epistemological discussion, particular attention is given here to Dharmakīrti’s views on the authority of the Buddha as a means of valid knowledge regarding the ground of human existence, the path of religious practice, and the goal of awakening.
Highlights
As part of the broader Indian religious culture, Buddhist philosophy for the most part cast the problematic of human existence in terms of our ignorance about how the world works
What we find is that the approach of Dharmakīrti and the other Buddhist epistemologists is much more measured and continues to employ the two means of valid cognition as the criteria for the authority of scriptures said to be spoken by the sambhogakāya and dharmakāya as well
One of the things that seems to make Indic thought relevant to modern philosophy is the centrality of the concern with epistemology for both
Summary
As part of the broader Indian religious culture, Buddhist philosophy for the most part cast the problematic of human existence in terms of our ignorance about how the world works. That strain of Indian Buddhist thought associated with the figures of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, which I will refer to here as the Buddhist epistemologists (pramāṇikas), asserted what might be considered a radically individual epistemology.12 In terms of the varieties of valid means of knowledge (pramāṇa), the epistemologists only accepted perception and inference, rejecting dependence on any other person (usually couched as the ‘speech’ of another, śabda).
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