This book confronts two ways of approaching an Indo-Buddhist text with one another. The first is the historico-philological method, which takes the Cartesian ideal of certainty as its starting point. The second approach follows the lead of the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. This approach assumes that all human understanding is finite. In this light, it raises questions such as: what are the preliminary assumptions with which a buddhologist addresses a buddhist text? In analogy with these two ways of looking at a text, the book is divided into two parts. Part One is a historico-philological study of the Sanskrit compound sva-citta-dr'sya-matra as it is represented in the second chapter of the Indo-Buddhist text Lankavatarasutra (fifth century). Part Two then examines the unquestioned acceptances of this buddhological research from a philosophical point of view. The book opens up an entirely new perspective on methodological problems concerning any study of an alien culture.

After presenting a general survey of spiritual practice in the different schools of Indian philosophy, the author focuses on the Trika School, popularly called Kashmir Shaivism. He deals clearly and exhaustively with such topics as Shaktipat (the descent of Divine Grace), Diksha (initiation), and the role of the Guru. His treatment of the various paths (upayas) appropriate for the different types of practitioners is especially useful. The book ends with a chapter on enlightenment (jivanmukti). This chapter not only presents the meaning of self-realization-in-this-lifetime, but offers material on this topic for the first time in English.

Are mystical experiences formed by the mystic's cultural background and concepts, as ""constructivists"" maintain, or do mystics sometimes transcend language, belief, and culturally conditioned expectations? Do mystical experiences differ throughout the various religious traditions, as""pluralists"" contend, or are they somehow ecumenical? The contributors to this collection scrutinize a common mystical experience, the ""pure consciousness event""--The experience of being awake but devoid of intentional content--in order to answer these questions. Through the use of historical Hindu, Buddhist,

This book is a coverage of the Mahayana Buddhistic logic of the school of Dignaga. It is in fact the most important work on Buddhist logic ever published. A classic of oriental research, it is founded on a thorough study of original Indian and Tibetan compositions by the great Buddhist logicians. The author was one of the leaders of the St. Petersburg school that did monumental work in the field of Indology during the first quarter of this century.

The Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy is a unique one-volume reference work which makes a broad range of richly varied philosophical, ethical and theological traditions accessible to a wide audience. The Companion is divided into six sections covering the main traditions within Asian thought: Persian; Indian; Buddhist; Chinese; Japanese; and Islamic philosophy. Each section contains a collection of chapters which provide comprehensive coverage of the origins of the tradition, its approaches to, for example, logic and languages, and to questions of morals and society. The chapters also contain useful histories of the lives of the key influential thinkers, as well as a thorough analysis of the current trends.