The Man From Samye: Longchenpa on Praxis, Its Negation and Liberation - Hardcover

Gidi Ifergan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8177421328 ISBN 13: 9788177421323

Publisher: Aditya Prakashan, 2014

Synopsis

This study explores one of Tibet s greatest thinkers, Longchenpa (1308-1364), within the context of the rhetoric of negation , an intense critique of philosophical views and spiritual practices that displays their inability to lead directly to liberation. Like that of his predecessors, Longchenpa s rhetoric of negation aimed to dismantle compulsive conceptualising mental processes, which creates an absence. However, Longchenpa went one step further and overcame the futile liberation of spiritual practices by creatively transforming his rhetoric of negation into a pedagogy capable of facilitating the experience of natural awareness, or liberation. The book attempts to trace and reveal Longchenpa s transformation from negation into an experience of natural awareness, and then explore whether such transformation is compatible with the Two Truths doctrine and Dzogchen s notion of non-duality. Such an inquiry also has broader implications for any method applied within a non-dual soteriological system. The study also emphasizes Longchenpa s role as a teacher of liberation, which has not been explored in academic research of his texts. Additionally, it contextualizes him biographically and historically. The contextualization humanises and depicts a realistic portrait of Longchenpa, and determines his position in the Tibetan realities of his time, questioning whether it had any implications that shaped his rhetoric of negation

About this title

About the Author:

Gidi Ifergan (PhD) completed his MA in Religious Studies at the School of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Ifergan s major studies were in Indian philosophy, including Advaita Vedanta, yoga philosophy, Buddhism, and advanced Sanskrit studies. The theme of negation of praxis within a non-dual system was already researched in his MA dissertation; The Practical Dimension is Sankara s Vedanta. Currently, Ifergan is an adjunct fellow researcher at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Monash University. His areas of interest are the history of Tibet, Buddhism, philosophy, and the practice of Dzogchen, Advaita Vedanta, and yoga and their tangential point.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aditya Prakashan
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 8177421328
• ISBN 13: 9788177421323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 225