LANGUAGE INFO Speech Type: Lecture Situation Method: scripted MASTER TAPE INFO Tape Label: Tape #3 Buddhism Lectures Master Tape Label: NDRP Master 1 Recorded: 2005-04-09

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My UVa dissertation examined an epistemology by which the intellect was understood to be a pathway to nonconceptual understanding. My forthcoming book, Unbounded Wholeness: Bon, Dzogchen and the Logic of the Nonconceptual (Oxford University Press, Winter, 2005, with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche) is a mirror image of this project, a reflection on the intellect’s role when it is not part of the path. In this light I discuss an early Bon Dzogchen text, The Authenticity of Open Awareness (gtan tshig gal mdo rig pa’i tshad ma), and its unique views on the authentic or valid cognition (tshad ma, pramāṇa) famously discussed in Indian Buddhism. Authenticity addresses those seeking to best their opponents verbally in debate, and also practitioners intent on moving beyond the inherent twoness of language. I read this as a text modeling a logic of the nonconceptual; a piece of literature whose mythic and poetic elements carry as much force as its philosophical arguments. Some of this material is also finding its way into my next project, an epistemology of the body.