Roger Jackson

Carleton College, Religion, Faculty Member

Followers

133

Following

Public Views

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Roger Jackson

A Fasting Ritual

Is enlightenment possible? : an analysis of some arguments in the Buddhist philosophical tradition with special attention to the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter of Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika

University Microfilms International eBooks, 1983

Saraha

Routledge eBooks, Jun 22, 2022

Is enlightenment possible? : Dharmakīrti and rGyal tshab rje on knowledge, rebirth, no-self and liberation

... Self-taught, whom should I declare [my teacher]? ... greet him with the same familiar term of... more

On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem

Philosophy East and West, Oct 1, 1988

In completing this work I accumulated intellectual debts to so many people and institutions that ... more In completing this work I accumulated intellectual debts to so many people and institutions that it is now beyond my powers to remember what I learned from whom, much less to fully acknowledge all of it. The acknowledgements that follow are therefore necessarily incomplete. Trinity College, Oxford, provided me with a stimulating intellectual environment for five crucial years , and gave me training in both Theology and Sanskrit, skills which were instrumental in making this work possible. The Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin gave me the freedom to develop my interests in Buddhism in my own way during 1980-83. I am grateful to the Harkness Foundation for generous financial support during 1980 -82, and to the University of Wisconsin for providing me with a University Fellowship in 1982-83. It was this financial support which made possible the speedy completion of my PhD dissertation, on which this book is largely based. Finally, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago has, since August 1984, provided me with an intellectual setting that is both relaxed and exciting: an ideal place for the completion of this study. I am especially grateful to Frank Reynolds, Wendy O'Flaherty and A. K. Ramanujan, all of whom have gone out of their way to make me feel at home in Chicago. My intellectual and spiritual debts are more numerous. Trevor Williams showed me long ago in Oxford that it is possible to both be religious and study religion. Richard Gombrich introduced me to both Sanskrit and Buddhism, and gave me substantial encouragement during my early studies. When I first came to the US Frances Wilson acted as my kalyanamitra and guided me through the administrative complexities of a large American university. Minoru Kiyota was gracious enough to act as my dissertation advisor at the University of Wisconsin in a field far from his own, and to allow me an unusual degree of freedom in pursuing my goals. He also opened my eyes to the range and quality of the work on Indian Buddhism currently being produced in Japan. To him I owe a special personal debt. From Geshe Sopa I learned what Tibetan I know, and learned something also of the depth and range of traditional Tibetan scholarship. Keith Yandell has provided me with continuous philosophical challenges and a personal friendship that has shaped my intellectual outlook in very important ways. Noriaki Hakamaya has been consistently generous in giving me both time and advice, and first showed me, in a series of seminars on the Mahayanasamgraha from 1981 to 1983, how best to study Indian Buddhist texts. Stephan Beyer may recognize many of the ideas in this study as closely related to his own. John Keenan will recognize that our fruitful disagreements about both Buddhism and philosophy continue. Finally, a special debt of gratitude goes to Delmas Lewis; without his conversation and friendship this book would not exist in its present form. My thanks are also due to W. W. Bartley III for reading the manuscript of this work and making helpful comments, and to David Ramsay Steele, Sue Olson and Lisa Zimmerman of Open Court for agreeing to publish this work and for doing so in such an expeditious and helpful manner. Portions of the first chapter of this work (in very different form) have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1981) and Religion (1983). A portion of the second chapter appeared in Philosophy East and West (1983). My wife has neither typed nor proofread this book; my daughter is not yet in a condition to type or proofread anything; but I am indebted to them both for almost everything else. October 1985 We do the tradition a disservice if we refuse to move beyond the exegetical mode of academic discourse to the normative, the judgemental. A close study of the material discussed in this work makes it increasingly apparent that the authors of these texts took themselves to be engaging in a normative enterprise, and one, moreover, that they thought to be capable of support by persuasive, and at times demonstrative, rational arguments. To ignore, as is so often done by historians of religion, this fundamentally important dimension of the material is a failure to seriously consider the intentions of the texts' authors in their own terms, and such a failure necessarily results in partial and inadequate views about the importance of normative discourse in almost all religious and philosophical traditions. It was, in part, an increasingly strong desire to avoid such a partial and inadequate representation of my sources that reshaped what was originally conceived as a historico-exegetical study into what is now also a philosophico-critical study. The presence in the following study of normative elements-of the putting to my sources such potentially unpleasant questions as: Ts that a good argument?' or 'What reason do we have to think that the premisses of that argument are true?'proceeds, then, from the logic of the sources themselves. A full defence and explanation of asking (and the theoretical possibility of answering) such normative questions of texts (or persons) from different cultures and different periods would require the elaboration of (negatively) a critique of the varieties of relativism, and (positively) a theory of rationality and a theory of truth. Aside from these prefatory remarks I shall offer neither, but will content myself for the moment with a utilitarian and hermeneutical defence:

Download

Ambiguous Sexuality: Imagery and Interpretation in Tantric Buddbism 1

Routledge eBooks, May 15, 2017

13. A Fasting Ritual

Princeton University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2007

Review of The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture, by Stephen Batchelor ; A Comparative Study of Early Buddhism and Kantian Philosophy, by S. G. M. Weerasinghe ; New Light on Early Buddhism, by Balkrishna Govind Gokhale ; and Vedic Hermeneutics, by K. Satchidanand...

The TibetanTshogs Zhing(field of assembly): General notes on its function, structure and contents

Asian Philosophy, Oct 1, 1992

The tshogs zhing, or field of assembly, is an important subject in Tibetan religious art. Typical... more The tshogs zhing, or field of assembly, is an important subject in Tibetan religious art. Typically, it focuses on one's own guru, seated at the crest of a great tree, with the gurus preceding him ranged in the sky above him and the deities of one's tradition ranged on the tree below him. The tshogs zhing is an object of

Guenther's Saraha: A Detailed Review of Ecstatic Spontaneity

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Jun 30, 1994

The Ārya-ātajñāna-nāma-mahāyāna-sūtra

Tsongkhapa as Dzokchenpa: Nyingma Discourses and Geluk Sources

The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2021

for their helpful reflections on the issues raised here. Throughout the article, Tibetan terms an... more for their helpful reflections on the issues raised here. Throughout the article, Tibetan terms and names are rendered phonetically; a list of Wylie equivalents is found at the end. Parenthetically indicated Tibetan terms or text-titles, on the other hand, are transliterated into Wylie rather than rendered phonetically.

format_quoteNyingma perspectives emphasize Lekyi Dorjé's profound influence on Tsongkhapa's spiritual development, contrasting Geluk's lesser emphasis on Nyingma figures.format_quote

Download