Ocean of Reasoning: A Great Commentary on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika

Remarkable work. Great book. Carefull edition. Translated into very readable English. A title you must have, if you are interested in Tibetan Buddhism.

I bought this book to have while attending a week of Geshe Sopa's summer course at the Deer Park Buddhist center in July '09. Honestly it is way beyond my understanding, but in the presence of Geshe Sopa and with his powerful teaching, I benefited greatly from this study. It's a very interesting work, but unless you are way farther along this spiritual path than I (easily possible) or have the benefit of a knowledgeable teacher to guide you along, it's extremely deep and steep at the same time. The arguments/debates are mind-bogglingly complex at times and then reduced to what seems absurdly obvious at others. It's an experience to be sure! One morning at Deer Park, it seemed to me that most of the teaching that morning revolved around the point of whether or not a rabbit has/can have horns. Of course the jackalope image came to mind which made the whole argument kind of humorous to me. But it turns out to have very serious implications in this context. This is serious study.

The present generation of well-informed translators are doing the world a great service as they continue to bring the great texts of Buddhist philosophy to us. This is an authoritative translation of one of the greatest philosophical works of all time, which has never before been available in English. About one thousand years ago it took hundreds of years for the Tibetans to translate the early Buddhist works into the Tibetan language. Now, following the Tibetan diaspora that was forced by the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the center of humanity's philosophical consciousness is relocating to the English speaking world. It is now more than one hundred years since the early English translators managed to produce translations of marginal quality. The present generation of translators is providing not only great translations, but also well-informed commentary. This is a great gift to humanity. Thank you.

This is a top-notch and beautiful translation of a key work in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. As far as I am aware, Tsongkhapa's Ocean of Reasoning has not been available before in English translation, so to have it now is a great blessing for those of us who wish to do serious dharma study but whose Tibetan language skills are not up to the task. The text reads beautifully and the whole work is translated with a clarity that shows that the translators' grasp of Tsongkhapa's material. It is also a wonderful companion piece to The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, by Nagarjuna, on which Tsongkhapa's work is a commentary. Since Jay Garfield translated both, there is a welcome consistency in approach to presenting these two classic texts. Ocean of Reasoning is a real treasure.

This book requires many primers to understand because, as far as I can tell, it's almost just as difficult to read Nagarjuna's root text by itself. Perhaps warm up with How To See Yourself As You Really Are by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and make sure you perfectly understand that material before diving into the Ocean. Even then, you'll have trouble getting a foothold. That said, it's painful then worth it when you understand.

This and the Ornament of Reason are two excellent Tibetan translations of the Middle Verses with commentaries. Nagarjuna in China : A translation of the Middle Treatise by Brian Bocking should be studied for it's impact in Asia. I recommend these books for the serious Madhyamika!

A substantially empty treatise of utmost elaboration saying nothing at all! How excellent and precise! But it does give me a headache. Uh, what a rigmarole sometimes! Tsongkhapa minutely examines every line of Nagarjuna, as a platform to dismantle the arguments of opposing schools. He parses for nits with a fine tooth comb of rationality; going half the distance and half the distance and half the distance. Endless cogitations on the existence of non-existence, for example. And then, further: the existence [or not] of essencelessness as a sort of objective correlative of analytic cognition; the way in which even mentative perception tends to reify, attributing existence where there is none. So sometimes, in parsing the existence of non-existence, he seems to be verging on paradoxical absurdity or pointless elaboration, with his extrapolations either side of nothing [or everything]. However, while tearing my hair out, I found it instructive to note that, in several of the philosophical schools of India, absence was a sort of presence; the way you return to your home town and see that a particular building is no longer there. The perimeters of absence are as determinative for perception as presence is and both are reified when some thing-in-itself is grasped as inherently existent or grasped inherently as an existent absence - both attributions are elaborations that require relentless deconstruction to achieve the utter removal of elaborate obfuscation.Tsongkhapa's use of terms of existence sometimes slides around a little and begs its own question - especially in his positive assertions - when nihilism is negated and we have to fill in our own gaps and realise that he is not negating the phenomenality of phenomena nor insisting on the interior existence of dependent origination. Occasionally the text breaks down under the burden of its own tortuosity - in relentlessly pursuing and refuting the arguments of others. Often, in its hounding enthusiasm, the discourse seems to lead into bits that are missing or mere assertiveness in regard to the dead-end of the misguided. Then there are elisions and inchoate gaps in the processes of his logic, which feels disingenuous occasionally, or maybe something merely seems to be missing because it is part of the presumed background of understanding which was his context but that I am ignorant of; who knows! Although this is a vast scholarly work, not everything would hold up were it converted [or consistently convertible] into long equations of symbolic logic: there are elisions in the text and following is sometimes difficult. And not just because my intellect is not as gargantuan as that of the flashy Tsongkhapa. I read a lot of philosophy and this book requires application and patience. And then, suddenly, a whole page will be as clear as day, despite its complexity, with an immediate, immaculate and coherent exposition. This is the reward. His analytic is not to provide a definitive answer but to open a further doorway on the essence-less expanse that is the empty ground of dependent origination.Stuff I'm agog at:The exegesis of the relativity and dependence of time, space and apparent motion. 500 years before Einstein: 'Since the very activity that determines that something is a goer is itself the instrument by means of which the goer goes, the necessity of the goer and the going being sequential arises in the system according to which the activity of going exists inherently, but not in that according to which it exists relatively.'Considerations on Schrodinger's cat...'Is the objective condition the condition of the state of consciousness that exists prior to the object, or of a non-existent state of consciousness? For that which exists prior to the perception of an object, then since it would exist, an objective condition would not be necessary. This is because the objective condition is thought to be that which gives rise to the phenomena, but that phenomena would exist prior to the perception of the object.' And initmations as to the determinative nature of perception in reifying phenomena to apparent particularity.The description of there being no privileged locus of causation in worldy systems, no designable agent other than where you wish to plant your flag, in a deluded fashion, in a putative ground. Again, 500 years before contemporary systems biology and the relativity of systems understandings.Anti-essentialism: 'The second part of the section on the distinct explanations of the selflessness of phenomena and the selflessness of the person is the explanation of the selflessness of the person. It has two parts: the refutation of the essential existence of the person and the refutation of the argument for the essential existence of the person.'And other stuff I shall add here as I wade through it the second time :)The above is to talk about Tsongkhapa's work and not the work of this translation. I have nothing to compare the translation to exactly, but it reads to me like a competent and self effacing job. And, although logically difficult in places, it is not arcane. I believe that when the original text flows with ease, the translation also flows with ease. Sometimes it feels more like an obligation than a pleasure. There are quite a few typographical errors; missing articles, elided adverbs and, most frustratingly, dropped negations or perpexities like this, 'If such a case could occur, then the extreme view that he is niether permanent nor impermanent would make sense; but no such case cannot occur.' Agggh! ;) This is not a book for those who are alienated by the utmost pedantic processes of reason; it is a thorough-going analytic that does not move.

Ein muss für jeden ernsthaften Buddhisten, und auch jene, die alles eimal von einer anderen Seite betrachten möchten.

オンデマンド出版で、少し質が悪いです。

Despite its central importance, however, of Tsong khapa's three most important texts, only Ocean of Reasoning has until now remained untranslated, perhaps because it is both philosophically and linguistically challenging, demanding a rare combination of abilities on the part of a translator. Jay Garfield and Geshe Ngawang Samten bring the requisite skills to this difficult task, combining between them expertise in Western and Indian pliilosophy, and fluency in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and English. The resulting translation of this important text is not only a landmark contribution to the scholarship of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, but will be invaluable to students of Tibetan Buddhism and philosophy, who will now be able to read this work alongside Nagarjuna's masterpiece.Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Smith College and Director of the Five Colleges Tibetan Studies in India Program and also teaches at the Universities of Massachusetts and Melbourne and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in India. He is the author of The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, which is the standard English translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, and Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation.Ngawang Samten is Director and Vice Chancellor, as well as Professor of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in India. He is the editor of the standard critical Tibetan edition of Nagarjuna's Ratnavali(1991).

A substantially empty treatise of utmost elaboration saying nothing at all! How excellent and precise! But it does give me a headache. Uh, what a rigmarole sometimes! Tsongkhapa minutely examines every line of Nagarjuna, as a platform to dismantle the arguments of opposing schools. He parses for nits with a fine tooth comb of rationality; going half the distance and half the distance and half the distance. Endless cogitations on the existence of non-existence, for example. And then, further: the existence [or not] of essencelessness as a sort of objective correlative of analytic cognition; the way in which even mentative perception tends to reify, attributing existence where there is none. So sometimes, in parsing the existence of non-existence, he seems to be verging on paradoxical absurdity or pointless elaboration, with his extrapolations either side of nothing [or everything]. However, while tearing my hair out, I found it instructive to note that, in several of the philosophical schools of India, absence was a sort of presence; the way you return to your home town and see that a particular building is no longer there. The perimeters of absence are as determinative for perception as presence is and both are reified when some thing-in-itself is grasped as inherently existent or grasped inherently as an existent absence - both attributions are elaborations that require relentless deconstruction to achieve the utter removal of elaborate obfuscation.Tsongkhapa's use of terms of existence sometimes slides around a little and begs its own question - especially in his positive assertions - when nihilism is negated and we have to fill in our own gaps and realise that he is not negating the phenomenality of phenomena nor insisting on the interior existence of dependent origination. Occasionally the text breaks down under the burden of its own tortuosity - in relentlessly pursuing and refuting the arguments of others. Often, in its hounding enthusiasm, the discourse seems to lead into bits that are missing or mere assertiveness in regard to the dead-end of the misguided. Then there are elisions and inchoate gaps in the processes of his logic, which feels disingenuous occasionally, or maybe something merely seems to be missing because it is part of the presumed background of understanding which was his context but that I am ignorant of; who knows! Although this is a vast scholarly work, not everything would hold up were it converted [or consistently convertible] into long equations of symbolic logic: there are elisions in the text and following is sometimes difficult. And not just because my intellect is not as gargantuan as that of the flashy Tsongkhapa. I read a lot of philosophy and this book requires application and patience. And then, suddenly, a whole page will be as clear as day, despite its complexity, with an immediate, immaculate and coherent exposition. This is the reward. His analytic is not to provide a definitive answer but to open a further doorway on the essence-less expanse that is the empty ground of dependent origination.Stuff I'm agog at:The exegesis of the relativity and dependence of time, space and apparent motion. 500 years before Einstein: 'Since the very activity that determines that something is a goer is itself the instrument by means of which the goer goes, the necessity of the goer and the going being sequential arises in the system according to which the activity of going exists inherently, but not in that according to which it exists relatively.'Considerations on Schrodinger's cat...'Is the objective condition the condition of the state of consciousness that exists prior to the object, or of a non-existent state of consciousness? For that which exists prior to the perception of an object, then since it would exist, an objective condition would not be necessary. This is because the objective condition is thought to be that which gives rise to the phenomena, but that phenomena would exist prior to the perception of the object.' And initmations as to the determinative nature of perception in reifying phenomena to apparent particularity.The description of there being no privileged locus of causation in worldy systems, no designable agent other than where you wish to plant your flag, in a deluded fashion, in a putative ground. Again, 500 years before contemporary systems biology and the relativity of systems understandings.Anti-essentialism: 'The second part of the section on the distinct explanations of the selflessness of phenomena and the selflessness of the person is the explanation of the selflessness of the person. It has two parts: the refutation of the essential existence of the person and the refutation of the argument for the essential existence of the person.'And other stuff I shall add here as I wade through it the second time :)The above is to talk about Tsongkhapa's work and not the work of this translation. I have nothing to compare the translation to exactly, but it reads to me like a competent and self effacing job. And, although logically difficult in places, it is not arcane. I believe that when the original text flows with ease, the translation also flows with ease. Sometimes it feels more like an obligation than a pleasure. There are quite a few typographical errors; missing articles, elided adverbs and, most frustratingly, dropped negations or perpexities like this, 'If such a case could occur, then the extreme view that he is niether permanent nor impermanent would make sense; but no such case cannot occur.' Agggh! ;) This is not a book for those who are alienated by the utmost pedantic processes of reason; it is a thorough-going analytic that does not move.

Good