Jñānaśrīmitra on Yogic Perception

This workshop will focus on a single Sanskrit text: Yoginirṇayaprakaraṇa (“A Monograph on the Investigation of Yogins”) by the 10th-century Buddhist philosopher, Jñānaśrīmitra. For Buddhist philosophers, the insight that paves the way for liberation is an experience that presents things as they truly are: as suffering, as impermanent, and so on. Buddhist epistemologists in the tradition of Dharmakīrti (7th century) call this experience “yogic perception” (yogipratyakṣa). For Dharmakīrti and his commentators, it is this yogic perception that grounds the Buddha’s omniscience: in particular, his status of being means-omniscient (upāyasarvajña), i.e., knowing everything that is necessary to gain liberation, rather than his status of being all-omniscient (sarvasarvajña), i.e., knowing everything simpliciter. Jñānaśrīmitra defends Dharmakīrti’s view against a range of objections that had been raised by Brahmanical thinkers—both Mīmāṃsakas and Naiyāyikas—toward the end of the first millennium. Our aim will be to read a new critical edition of Jñānaśrī’s text and prepare a working translation of it. Along the way, we will see how Jñānaśrī addresses a range of philosophical questions about the perception/cognition divide, about perceptual skill, and about practical knowledge.

Participants will include Bhikṣu Hejung (Joongang Sangha University), Jed Forman (Simpson College), Elisa Freschi (Toronto), Lawrence McCrea (Cornell), Parimal Patil (Harvard), and Davey Tomlinson (Villanova).

The organizers of this workshop gratefully acknowledge the support of Robert N. Ho Family Foundation.