Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 51-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche opens with the story of Dignāgā, whose inscription for his Compendium of Prime Cognition was repeatedly erased by a rival non-Buddhist master — a provocation that led to a public debate, Dignāgā’s decisive victory through reasoning, and the widespread establishment of Buddhist logic in the region. This story frames the session’s central question: how valid reasoning proves the Buddha’s omniscient mind. Rinpoche then explains the three modes of a correct sign (property of the position, forward pervasion, reverse pervasion), using smoke on a mountain as the working example. The session closes by applying syllogistic inference to karma: an attractive body proves past patience, wealth proves past generosity, animal rebirth proves broken ethics — grounding the abstract framework in the infallible law of cause and effect. Suited to students already following the series on Buddhist epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 AK 1988-11-03.mp3
UUID: 5a71034d-91ab-49aa-8216-4e553de86a90
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1988-11-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 51.4 minutes
Words: ~2,426
So please adjust your motivation such that you’re going to listen to this teaching on the Dharma in order to establish, to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings equal to space. So with respect to prime cognitions, there were two types. There was direct prime cognizers and inferential prime cognizers. And we’ve completed the explanation of direct prime cognizers. And last week we gave a rough overview explanation of inferential prime cognizers.
And because prime cognizers have such importance, that is the inferential prime cognizer of such importance, we’ll spend a little more time on it in this teaching. So the Buddha mentioned both of these types of cognizers, inferential prime cognizers and direct prime cognizers in his discourses, that is in the sutras. But he didn’t speak of these extensively. So, you know, the the Buddha gave many teachings, and and he was often referred to as the Buddha, the enlightened one. There were many non Buddhists who said that you claim to have a there’s a claim that the Buddha had omniscient mind, that is all knowing mind.
And it was in order to establish that the Buddha had an omniscient mind, all knowing mind, it became necessary that we couldn’t just give no reasons. We had to actually develop a method where we could establish this in fact. And therefore, it became necessary to develop, correct lines of reasoning to establish the fact that the Buddha was, had an all knowing consciousness. So to this end, the master Dignāgā, who was an emanation of Mañjuśrī, in order to establish that effect, that the Buddha had an all knowing consciousness in order to be able to prove this to non Buddhists who could not accept this. Then he, through, his, he established through, extensive reasoning and developed a method whereby we could establish the proof that the Buddha, in fact, had omniscient consciousness.
So there’s an account of Dignāgā, about Dignāgā when he wrote the homage to what later became a text called The Compendium of Prime Cognition. Compendium of Prime Cognition by Dignāgā. And he wrote the homage on a stone. He chiseled it in stone. I don’t know, chiseled.
He wrote it on stone. And then he went away to go on his alms round. And it came back and it was erased. And this went on and on and on. He would write it and it would come back and it would be erased.
Finally, he said, Whoever is erasing these words, whether it’s the gods or whether it’s a human, come here and I want to debate with you. We can discuss the Dharma. And so there appeared this non-Buddhist master. And Dignāgā, through debating with him, overwhelmed him with his reasoning and completely defeated him. Due to this, the Dharma spread greatly in this area and he became famous in this area.
So he, through various types of correct reasoning, established what the necessary causes which bring about a Buddha, and the nature of the Buddha himself or herself, the nature of a Buddha. And in dependence upon this, his student, Dharmakīrti, went on to write commentaries, the Seven Commentaries to the Root Text by Dignāgā, the Compendium of Prime Cognition. So he he delineated the the various paths, the grounds, and all the excellent qualities of a Buddha. And he established these through the various reasonings by which one And these were established in such a way that they could be validly known in dependence upon developing inference. One could develop an inference, validly understanding all these details that he set forth.
So in his text there were eight eight sections. The first four sections were the explanations on how one could attain the realizations of all these details that he set forth, the various paths, grounds, and qualities. And then the remaining four sections, established their existence and the method for their attainment. And then the remaining four sections set forth how these could be explained to others to show them that these in fact exist. So the way we can come to understand the method he used to come to an understanding of these of the existence and the methods for attaining these various paths and grounds and qualities was what we have explained thus far.
That is to say, he taught the direct perception as opposed to facsimiles of direct perception. And he taught inferential cognizers as opposed to facsimiles of inferences or facsimiles of inference or cognizers. Yes. So when we talk about correct direct perceivers, we’re talking about the four that explained so far. Sense, mental, self knowing, and yogic direct perceivers.
These are the four direct perceivers. And then we went on to explain what is So we are coming to an understanding of what a correct direct perceiver is, and then we also explained what a facsimile of a direct perceiver is. We explained that there were direct perceivers, facsimiles of direct perceivers which, that is a consciousness which is mistaken with respect to its appearing object. And we there were various types. For example, where the there was an error.
The cause of error was found within the the place or the basis. So now we’ve explained inferential prime cognizers. And these inferential prime cognizers were the three types. That is inferential prime cognizers were through the power of fact, through renown, and through belief. And these are correct inferentials.
These are correct inferences. So then on the other hand, we can talk about facsimiles of inferences. Facsimiles of inferences. These would be, for example, any type of conceptual wrong consciousness. Any type of conceptual wrong consciousness.
For example, the wrong consciousness which apprehends sound as permanent. In fact, it’s impermanent. But there are conceptions which apprehend it as permanent, sound as permanent. This is a conceptual wrong consciousness, or the aggregates, as being permanent. Even though they’re in fact impermanent.
To conceive the thought consciousness perceiving the aggregates as permanent would be an example of a facsimile of an inference. So, we’re seeking to realize that we’re using these various consciousness to attain levels of realization. That is, it becomes necessary to realize various objects in order to attain higher levels of understanding. Now, in coming to an understanding of objects, there are certain types of consciousness that we should rely on and certain types of consciousnesses which if we follow, we will fall into error. Now, if we follow direct prime cognizers, inferential prime cognizers, and in dependence on those, we can come to a correct understanding of what objects, what is to be practiced, what is to be cultivated, and what is to be abandoned, what is to be gotten, what is to be rejected.
But if we were, on the other hand, to follow the facsimiles of prime cognizers, that is these wrong consciousnesses, then we would simply be creating more suffering for ourselves, since these are in fact the sources of suffering. And therefore it’s important to come to understand and be able to differentiate between what is a correct consciousness and what is a faulty consciousness or a wrong consciousness. Ultimately, want to understand the two truths. But we have to, in order to come to that understanding, we have to gradually, through a process of abandoning, cultivating the various objects which are to be practiced and rejecting various objects which are to be abandoned. In this way, we can unerringly come to know the actual nature of things and come to an understanding of ultimately the two truths.
So, these are the practices of the bodhisattva. That is to develop these two correct prime cognizers and ultimately to make use of them in understanding the two truths. But out of his love and compassion and his altruistic aspiration, he goes on to develop the methods whereby he is going to be able to help others to realize the two truths. So therefore, has to cultivate extra abilities. And he does this by developing the methods of coming to the ability to present proof statements.
Proof statements, there are correct proof statements and facsimiles of proof statements. And correct consequences and facsimiles of consequences. He goes on, In order to be able to skillfully to present to others such that they will be able to gain the same realizations. He becomes skilled in correct proof statements, being able to differentiate between correct proof statements and facsimiles of proof statements, and correct consequences, and facsimiles of consequences. So in general, are two types of inferences.
There’s inference for oneself, inference for others. What we’ve been discussing are inference for oneself. And in order to develop inference, we have to depend upon a correct sign. So what is the definition of a correct sign? It is that which is the three modes.
The definition of a correct sign, and dependence upon which we generate inferences, is that which is the three modes. So and and the adverse the adverse of that, that which is a facsimile the the definition of facsimile of a sign is that which is not the three modes. That which is not the three modes. So what are the three modes? The three modes are, the first is property of the position.
Sometimes it’s called agreement, property of the position or agreement. And the second is forward pervasion, or sometimes it’s called pervasion. And the third is reverse pervasion. reverse pervasion. So there’s the property of a position, forward pervasion and reverse pervasion are the three modes.
So if we give an example of how this might operate. There are two people down in the valley, they look on top of the mountain. And they’re wondering, I wonder if there’s fire up on the mountain. If there’s fire up on top of the mountain. One says, There is fire up on the mountain because you see that smoke up there?
So the smoke is a sign. Another word we can use loosely is reason rather than sign. But the smoke is a sign. So in dependence upon being able to see, that is the existence of smoke, in dependence upon that, we can develop an inference. We can infer, ah, there must be fire on top of that mountain.
Even though they don’t, there must be fire on top of that mountain. Even though they don’t see the fire, in dependence upon the sign, the existence of smoke, they can infer the existence of fire. Therefore, can develop an inferential prime cognizer, understanding the existence of fire on top of the mountain and dependence upon the sign smoke, or the existence of smoke. So in dependence upon this reason, that is to say that a sign, a mark, in this case, the existence of smoke, They are able to understand, develop a prime cognizer, understand the existence of fire on top of the mountain. And this type of prime cognizer is an inferential prime cognizer.
So this sign, existence of smoke, the reason that we gave as a reason, the existence of smoke or the sign, is the three modes. Is the three modes. Therefore, it is a correct reason. It is the three modes because it’s a property of the position or the agreement. It is the forward pervasion and it is the reverse pervasion.
Therefore, because it is these three modes, it is the correct reason. So if we present a syllogism, that we, the people who have been So you people, we take you people as the subject, you observed ethics previously because of the reason that you have been born as a human. So some of some of you people are are are attractive people. So we take attractive people as a subject. It follows that you observed, that you accustom yourself to patience previously, because you’re attractive people.
The reason, because you’re attractive people. We can present the syllogism, the cat as the subject. It follows that it did not observe ethics previously because it was born as a bad migration. So another syllogism. Take the snake as a subject.
It did not accustom itself. It did not habituate itself to patience in the past because of the reason that people find it repulsive, and it makes it, when they see it, they become upset. So the a wealthy person is the subject. They practiced generosity in the past because they they have a lot of wealth. The reason?
So dependence upon such types of reasoning, we can understand that we attain a rebirth as a human or a god, in dependence upon observing ethics, way of the reason, observing ethics, train and attaining an attractive body, dependence upon patience, that we have observed patience in the past because we have an attractive body, that we practiced generosity in the past because we have wealth. And then the reverse of that would be that if we do not practice observe ethics, then we will be born in a bad migration. If we do not practice patience, accustom ourselves to patience, we will have repulsive, ugly bodies in the future. If we do not practice generosity, then we’re going to be poor in the future. So this is the operating of the law of cause and effect.
If we take the example of a dog, there are some dogs which are pretty well off. But they have good food, a nice comfortable place to live, they’re well taken care of. The fact that they were born a dog is due to not having observed ethics in the past. But the fact that they have lots of food and a comfortable place to live is the is in dependence upon the fact that they observed at they practiced generosity in the past. And also there are some dogs which are very beautiful.
And this is due to the fact that they accustom themselves to patience. Accustom themselves, habituated themselves to patience in the past. This is the way the cause and effect is operating. Each of the various causes has a particular effect. So is Buddha taught that the the law of cause and effect was infallible.
That is to say, in dependence upon a negative cause, we can only a negative consequence. The result will arise. In dependence upon a positive cause, only a positive result will arise. To the degree that our actions, our activities are good or bad, and to that same degree we will experience good and bad results in the future.