The perception of yogis

Attention: This page reflects the state of 2009. It is meant for documentary purposes and will not be updated any longer.

The project dealt with the concept of para- and supra-normal perception in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. This topic constitutes a hitherto neglected theme in the study of Buddhist philosophy of religion, despite its considerable importance inasmuch as para- and supra-normal perception concerns the very basis of the Buddhist religious tradition, namely, the foundational insights of the historical Buddha. In the classical period of Buddhist philosophy, these insights have been classified and interpreted by scholars of the logico-epistemological tradition as instances of yogic perception. It is this notion of yogic perception, its theoretical conceptions, the arguments for and against it, that formed the broader topic of the project.

More specifically, and as a first step, the aim was to investigate the contributions of two of the most important philosophers of the epistemological tradition, that is, Dharmakīrti (7th c.) and his independently minded commentator Prajñākaragupta (9th c.), on yogic perception. Due to the specific situation regarding the transmission and the state of the relevant textual materials, as well as due to the inherent difficulty of the argumentations contained in them, the study of Dharmakīrti's and Prajñākaragupta's ideas about yogic perception has to be preceded by editions and translations (relying partly on unpublished work of M. Pemwieser) of the pertinent passages in their oeuvre as it has come down to us.

Publications

As a part of this project, an international symposium was organized in 2006. The proceedings have been published at: