On the Experience of Awakening

Two very different approaches to understanding the Buddhist goal of awakening are analyzed and contrasted-Paul Griffiths' recent study based on a logic of the proposition and Ilkka Pyysiainen's more context-sensitive phenomenological account. Though the former seems to this author to raise more questions than it answers, the reading of both works together constitutes a rapid and often brutal introduction to the complex of issues surrounding awakening. In deference to Griffiths' somewhat neological usage, this review will continue his practice of distinguishing buddhalogy- a theory concerning the nature and person of the Buddha-from buddhology: the academic study of Buddhism in its various aspects

Chinese history and philosophy · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Theology and Philosophy of Evil