European phenomenology has historically helped articulate Buddhism's rigor and depth as philosophy. But analytic philosophy is now philosophy's dominant mode, as well as an advantageous medium to flex Buddhism's philosophical strengths. Is phenomenology's relationship to Buddhist philosophy still valuable? We argue “yes,” emphasizing that the two have (1) a shared method of elucidating experience immanently, (2) a shared aspiration (and problematization) that such inquiry be presuppositionless, and (3) a shared preoccupation with unconditioned knowing as identical to ethical transformation. We distinguish phenomenology qua method versus qua tradition, advocating for phenomenology as a transhistorical method whose early instances are pre-modern Buddhist (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese) and late instance is late-modern European. We ask how ritual, text, and body figure in phenomenological insight, exploring the philosophy-religion distinction. And, building on recent discourse on Buddhism and ‘critical phenomenology,’ we continue the conversation on Buddhism and phenomenology as such, and unto new horizons.
This presentation examines the relationship between presupposition and understanding, through Vasubandhu’s discussions of perception (*saṃjñā, *pratyakṣa) and the Three Natures (trisvabhāva) in The Proper Mode of Exposition (Vyākhyāyukti). It details Vasubandhu’s phenomenological investigation, beginning with an interpretive experience where one’s perception conflicts with a text’s claim. Analyzing his notion of the Three Natures as the underlying structure of perception, it interprets that Vasubandhu affirms three irreducible kinds of perception and the ultimate validity of enlightened perception. Based on this interpretation, I argue that, for Vasubandhu, understanding arises from abandoning and accepting certain presuppositions about perception. Specifically, one must abandon privileging shared perception and assume the existence and validity of other minds whose perceptions transcend one’s scope. This argument suggests that certain presuppositions can be a path towards understanding.
Apoha (exclusion) theory, developed by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, has been widely interpreted as a nominalist solution to the problem of universals. However, scholars increasingly recognize that purely nominalist readings struggle to provide a fully satisfactory account of meaning and inference. As Prabala Kumar Sen notes, for instance, apoha requires an alternative explanation that avoids both the defects of nominalism and the pitfalls of realist universals. In this paper, I explore whether a phenomenological approach to apoha, particularly through the lens of the constitution, can provide a more coherent account. In Husserlian terms, objects and relations do not merely exist but are structured through acts of consciousness. I argue that apoha functions similarly—constituting objects and inferential relations through exclusion rather than positive construction. This reinterpretation clarifies how apoha secures the necessity of meaning and inference, not through implicit similarity but by eliminating all alternative possibilities in lived experience.
The relationship of self and world and of body and mind are central to Buddhism. In this paper, I demonstrate how one thirteenth-century Tibetan thinker addresses paradoxes within these relationships. In his treatise on the inseparability of saṃsāra and nīrvāṇa, Drakpa Gyaltsen uses a diverse repertoire of techniques to guide the practitioner in realizing that all phenomena are included in the body and mind. In conversation with the work of Merleau-Ponty and critical phenomenologists responding to his legacy, I illuminate the role of paradox in approaching appearances, experience, and nonduality within the ritual and philosophical perspectives of the Sakya Path and Fruit tradition. In the process, I interrogate what “body” and “mind” mean in this context and where and how they are situated in relationship to one another.
| Zachary Joachim | joachimz@denison.edu | View |