In a triad of practice manuals collectively titled _The Process of Meditation_ (_Bhāvanākrama I, II, III_), the eight century Indian Buddhist philosopher Kamalaśīla singles out _vipaśyanā_ (insight meditation) to be of particular importance on the early stages of the Buddhist path. This paper provides a reconstruction of _vipaśyanā_ based on how it is depicted in that work. I make two primary claims. First, _vipaśyanā_ is a technique for facilitating the direct perceptual ascertainment of a select set of properties, and second, (...) it accomplishes this by reconditioning the practitioner’s conceptual habitation. I further enrich this reconstruction by suggesting a series of stages that a practitioner progresses through, based on a list of intrinsically and extrinsically epistemic cognitions that Kamalaśīla gives in his _Commentary on the Compendium on Reality_ (_Tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā_). I end the paper with a potential method to use during meditation for altering one’s conceptual habitation. Kamalaśīla does not explicitly state these claims, but they can be inferred based on the theories on cognition found in both Kamalaśīla’s other works as well as the works of the Pramāṇavāda philosophers who influenced him. This reconstruction of _vipaśyanā_ thus remains consistent with Kamalaśīla’s own philosophical commitments, and is, I argue, the best way to explain the cognitive function of _vipaśyanā_ given those commitments. (shrink)

From the perspective of Heilsgeschichte, Gerhard von Rad saw clearly that Genesis 22 deals with the possible annihilation of the covenant promise. A fresh approach to Genesis corroborates this view and demonstrates that innerbiblical exegesis has shaped the message of Genesis 22.

Protestant Ethics can supply Orientierungswissen as well as Verfügungswissen. Beyond that it can and must also formulate »Evangeliums«-Wissen, a knowledge about the condition of life that precedes all notions of what we can and should do. There is no reason why this knowledge should not be a fundamental part of the cosmos of sciences. For Protestant Ethics this mode of reasoning is interesting because Protestant Ethics can thus operate in an area of its own while at the same time being (...) more than a pseudo-science of politics, economics or medicine. (shrink)