Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is not the hero’s journey as George Lucas previously conceptualized it. Instead, the story line of The Force Awakens leads me to believe that it creates a new iteration of the hero myth. It follows the contemporary heroine’s journey while conforming to the essential construct of the hero monomyth. First, the contemporary heroine’s journey focuses primarily on the greater good and secondarily on her own personal journey, which is the converse of the traditional (...) hero’s journey. Second, the contemporary heroine’s self is awakened and called to adventure in a different way than the traditional hero. Third, the traditional hero receives guidance on his journey, while the contemporary heroine pushes ahead alone, striving to save her society from despair. (shrink)

Based on newly discovered texts, this book explores the barely known but tremendously influential thought of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü.This Tibetan Buddhist master exercised significant influence on the interpretation of Madhyamaka thinking in Tibet during the formative phase of Tibetan Buddhism and plays a key role in the religious thought of his day and beyond. The book studies the framework of Mabja’s philosophical project, holding it up against the works of both his own Madhyamaka teachers as well (...) as those of central authors of the later "classical period". The emerging account of the evolution of Madhyamaka in Tibet reveals a striking pattern of transformative appropriations. This, in turn, affords us insights into the nature and function of tradition in Tibetan religious culture and Mahāyāna Buddhism at large. Innovation is demanded for both the advancement and consolidation of tradition. This ground-breaking book is an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan philosophy. It is of great interest to Buddhist practitioners, specialists in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism. (shrink)

In the Nyāya school of Classical Indian Philosophy, the concept of word meaning is described in detail; however, the theory of metaphor seems to clash with the theory of word meaning. This paper explores the theory of meaning in the early Nyāya theory and whether metaphor is compatible with it. The Nyāya theory of meaning is a 'basis for application' (pravrttinimitta) model: words pick out references because of the conventions and practices of use. Yet, these words can come to refer (...) to something completely different by pushing off its conventional usage and taking on a metaphorical meaning. If the referent is determined on the basis of the properties it possesses, how it is possible that only some properties are applied to a referent in metaphorical cases when, conventionally, a referent must possess all of the properties before the word is applied to it? This paper will investigate three main questions: 1) what is the nature of a referent according to the Nyāya?; 2) what is the mechanism for metaphorical transfer that allow some properties to transfer and not others?; and 3) what are the philosophical implications of the Naiyāyikas understanding of meaning? (shrink)

This chapter suggests that Sellars' account of subjectivity as socially constructed, and hence conceptual at its illusory roots, presents a crisp and compelling perspective on cognitive life that captures Buddhist conceptions of transformative non-duality.

As a Madhyamaka philosopher, Taktsang Lotsawa Sherab Rinchen 1 is perhaps most widely known for his claim to have identified eighteen major contradictions in the thought of Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa, a polemic discussion that appears in the Madhyamaka chapter of his encyclopedic Freedom from Extremes through Comprehensive Knowledge of Philosophy.2 In this article we will not pursue this critique, both renowned and infamous, but instead focus on Taktsang Lotsawa's own pragmatic hermeneutics of emptiness in context. Taktsang Lotsawa argues that *Svātantrika (...) 3 Mādhyamikas, in their drive to furnish the two... (shrink)

In this case-study, I examine examples which fall within the five categories of the re-use of texts in the Nyāya Sūtra, Nyāya Bhāṣya, and Nyāya Vārttika and note the form of quoting and embedment. It is found that the re-use of texts is prominent and that the category and method of embedding the re-used passages varies from author to author. Gautama embeds the most interlanguage quotations without acknowledging his sources and Uddyotakara re-uses the most quotations and paraphrases while acknowledging his (...) sources. Vātsyāyana re-uses the most direct quotations but only acknowledges his sources about half the time. Each author re-uses textual material for two reasons: to demonstrate his authority in this field; and to support his own arguments and to critique objections and opposing theories. Differences crop up in the methodologies of Gautama, Vātsyāyana, and Uddyotakara as the concept of an authority shifts over time, as the body of literature grows, and as new objections and opponents arise. (shrink)

In the acquisition of verbal knowledge, the Nyāya school outlines four conditions of a linguistic utterance that must be met: āsatti (temporal proximity), ākāṅkṣā (syntactic expectancy), tātparya (speaker intention), and yogyatā (semantic fitness). I will follow the traditional Nyāya view that is it one of the four necessary conditions that enable a hearer to gain verbal knowledge. The reasoning behind retaining tātparya as a condition (or cause) of verbal knowledge, is that it provides a resource with which to clarify ambiguity (...) when contextual factors cannot. It also provides a context for a hearer so that the primary (abhidhā) or secondary (lakṣaṇā) meaning of the word, or sentence is understood. In this sense, tātparya imparts the meaning of a work. Examples such as “Bring saindhava” or “Hari” make the case for the importance of tātparya in that the meanings of these terms are ambiguous unless the context is provided or the speaker intends to mean one referent rather than another. In this paper, I present the case that tātparya is the most important component of an accurate paraphrase, and it must be retained in order to preserve the original intention of the work. In other words, tātparya should be the primary constraint of an acceptable paraphrase. As a side comment to my aim, I discuss the notion of why paraphrase only needs to be sufficiently similar to the original work. (shrink)