Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 20-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen introduces valid inference—the second category of valid knowledge after sense perception. He defines it as non-deceptive awareness generated from a correct reason, then walks through three types: inference by the strength of fact (sound is impermanent because produced), inference through renown (the moon called “rabbit possessor” because widely accepted), and inference through conviction (scripture authenticated by three examinations). He includes the Buddhist story of why a rabbit sits on the moon—a tale of past-life self-sacrifice. He stresses that the first type is most important: it rests on the actual nature of the object, and sustained contemplation of correct reasons eventually breaks through to direct understanding. For students studying Buddhist logic and epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 M and C 2001 06 19.mp3
UUID: 49708ef5-1646-4c37-95cc-ca6c42751749
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Mind and Cognition 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 19.8 minutes
Words: ~1,784
Oh, yeah. It actually is not that. Not that. It’s Oh, it’s sometimes, well, it depends on particular convention that pivot is sitting down. That’s okay.
We can come back to that again. Right. So having done valid perception, now we move to the second one. Valid inference. It’s just up over halfway on page sixteen.
New non deceptive other-cognizing awareness arisen directly generated in dependence on its support, a correct reason, is the definition of valid inference. Okay. Right. Now that’s given us the definition of valid inference. It’s new, meaning first moment in general, non deceptive, other cognizance, meaning it cognizes objects other than awareness, external objects in general and so on.
Directly generated. Where the generated means that it’s directed, it’s generated directly in the next moment. Not after a series of moments, but in the next moment. Directly generated. in dependence on its support.
Here the support is the in a way, just as sense powers are supporting sense awareness. What is supporting inference is a correct reason. Just as the sense power support sense awareness, so here a correct reason is supporting valid inference. So we’ve classified there are three. Inference by the strength of fact, inference through renown, and inference through conviction.
The instance of the first, is inference comprehending that sound as a subject is impermanent predicate by reason of being produced. That’s easy enough. By stating that correct reason, take sound. It is impermanent because it’s produced. That correct reason can generate a valid inference.
And that valid inference is directly generated in dependence on that reason. Right. Second one, the instance of the second is inference comprehending that the rabbit possessor what’s the rabbit possessor? No. No.
Sorry. The rabbit possessor is the moon. You probably wouldn’t have gotten that one for a while. The moon is the moon is a rabbit’s observer. There’s a rabbit on the moon.
Always. Because it’s always a one place that’s turned to the earth, isn’t it? Does anyone see the rabbit in the moon? Sorry? Yeah.
That’s right. Sometimes it’s upside down, but it’s always there. Okay. Well, it’s so it’s called the rabbit possessor. Absolutely.
Yes. So we’ve got the same rabbit. Yeah. The rabbit possessor. You know how the rabbit got there?
Oh, you haven’t heard the story? Oh, do you? Well, there’s a story to that thing. We can leave that to the time. Actually, well, roughly, the story is I think the Buddha, in a previous lifetime, was once a Rishi in a forest.
And there were three animal companions. I think there’s a rabbit, an elephant, and a monkey. And you can sometimes see them in paintings here. And one day, they were walking through the forest, and they saw this mendicant seated there, they said, oh, it’d be nice. We really should do a virtuous action and give some food to this this mendicant.
Oh, like a let me know. And so the the elephant thought, oh, I know. I’ll and I’ll get some nice food, some bamboo shoots, whatever. And I’ll get those. And he bought went off to the.
Then the the monkeys thought, oh, you know, I can get some bananas somewhere. He went off to get those. And the rabbit looked around and all he could could see was grass and he said, can’t do this. This human grass, that would be beautiful. Anyway, the friends had come back and they had made their offering of food and the sadhu was seated there in front of a fire.
And the rabbit thought, well, I can’t find anything suitable to give to the Rishi. I’ll offer myself. So he threw himself under the fire and offered his own body, his flesh to the Rishi. And by that act of generosity, his image was imprinted on the moon. Anyway so anyway, here we have the rabbit possessor as the subject.
So in a this goes back also to the structure we’re dealing with before. For a syllogism, we have these three parts: subject, predicate, reason. So here the rabbit possessor is a subject. It’s suitable to be called the moon predicate by reason that it exists as an object of public conception or common conception. Majority of people call it a rabbit possessor.
So therefore, it’s suitable to call it a rabbit possessor. In Africa, they call it a drummer or whatever. That’s suitable as well. But so that is a correct reason there. Okay.
So that type of reason there is or correct awareness that arises in dependence upon that reason is called inference through renown. Right? Because it’s something that’s known by or is held by a majority of the population somewhere, so one can accept it as no. No. It is the rabbit.
It is a rabbit possession. True. But is it invalid to call it a rabbit possession? It’s not. It’s not actually affecting the fact, is it?
That’s right. Well, of course it okay. So inference can arise anyway through through that type of reasoning. Take the rabbit possessing. It is suitable to call it the moon because it exists as an object of public or common conception.
That reason there is sufficient to generate a valid inference. The valid inference is that valid conception that exists internally. Now the third one is inference through conviction. So the instance of the third is inference comprehending that scripture stating from generosity comes resources, from ethics comes happiness as a subject is non deceptive to its stated meaning predicate by reason of being scripture authenticated by the three examinations or the three analyses. Okay, we’ll get to that.
So there’s a reason posited there with a subject, predicate, and a reason. Right? Now, in dependence on that reason, it’s said that one can generate inference through conviction in that statement. That that statement is non deceptive to its its meaning. That from ethics comes resource sorry, from generosity comes resources, from ethics comes happiness.
By reason of it being authenticated by the three examinations. The three examinations are that that it doesn’t contradict perception aware of obvious things. It doesn’t contradict, conception aware of or awareness of hidden things, and it doesn’t contradict awareness comprehending extremely hidden things. If If scripture is authenticated in that way, meaning that whatever stated in scripture does not contradict awareness observing what is obvious. Okay?
So it’s authenticated even by, like our sense awareness, which is aware of the obvious. And even our, conception which is able to comprehend hidden things, that type of conception doesn’t, make null and void those statements. And neither does our conception comprehending or our conception holding extremely hidden objects. Neither does that conception contradict the scripture itself. It can be said that the scripture is authenticated by three examinations.
Right. So there’s three types of inference given there which are inference generated by correct reasons. Alright. So then the inference through now must be inference by the strength of fact. The first one there is actually inference by the strength of fact, and that’s the most important one in a sense for us.
Because simply the strength of by the strength of fact in relation to that object, then inference, excuse me, can be generated. Such as take sound, it’s impermanent because it’s produced. In a sense, two facts about the subject are being stated in order to generate an understanding of the actual state of that object. So inference right at the very last paragraph, inference thereby must be inference by the strength of fact. That’s saying that actually the second type of inference, if you really look at it, it’s coming down to being the first type of inference.
And if perception and if perception it is not necessarily valid perception because the second moment of sense perception holding form is not valid awareness. Oh, anyway, here. That follows because both that and the second moment of inference comprehending sound is impermanent. The subsequent awareness because of subsequent awareness. Here in fact it’s just going on to state that the first moment of these of inference is valid inference.
The second moment and so on is called subsequent awareness. And that occurs for perception as well as conception. And there’s a source for that because one text called Tshad ma. Tshad ma means it’s that which is acceptable. It states, both the first moments of perception and inference have valid awareness.
Because their continuums are not established distinct from them, their latter continuums abandon valid awareness. Now again, what that means is that the first moment of awareness is said to be valid because it has that initial force breaking through to an understanding of the object. And because the second moment and so forth doesn’t possess that special type of force, then the latter moments in the same continuum, whether it’s perception or conception, are said to abandon valid awareness or be non valid awareness. Well, valid inference here must be generated by a correct reason. Yeah.
Oh, well, then if you’re thinking about it, you’re actually thinking about a reason. Or something to be a valid inference, it can only be generated through correct reason. So that’s what we’re doing in fact. We’re thinking about why something is that way, why something is impermanent, and we’re applying reason then to establish that. And when we’re able to assemble the valid reason plus the predicate plus the subject and so forth and understand the inner pervasions within a syllogism, where we could hold all that together conceptually.
We do, after a period of time, break through to the understanding of the meaning, in dependence on that valid reason. Only if it’s a valid reason. If it’s not a valid reason, we can we can contemplate it for eons and have and get no results from it. Alright. So after this it goes into a classification of two other types of inference, inference for self and inference for others.
But we won’t start on that. Today, we let’s leave it there. It’s not good to carry too much material, by the way. Because a lot of this actually, when these these texts are studied in in a monastery, one has a lot of time to debate them and go over them. So it’s not so easy for us because we don’t have the amount of time, the leisure to go over these points in some in greater depth.
So it’s good to do it a certain amount and then contemplate them. Alright. I might have a break there anyway. Just trying to quickly do it.