Toh 2109Untitled

Exposition of the Treatise Toh 2109 (Tengyur)

Background

Toh 2109 is a work belonging to the Śāstra Piṭaka (Abhidharma) of the Northern Tibetan Mahāyāna tradition, preserved in the Tibetan Tengyur collection. This is one of the important treatises developed on the basis of the fundamental teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially focused on analyzing and clarifying the aspects of the Dharma. The Northern Tibetan tradition, under the training of Buddhist teachers and earlier sages such as Aryadeva, Candrakīrti, and later great Tibetan masters, preserved and developed profound reasoning concerning the Dharma.

The Śāstra Piṭaka in general has the purpose of explaining in detail what is stated briefly in the sutras. It is not dry theory alone, but a bridge between teaching and the practice of cultivation. This work reflects the development of Buddhist thought over many centuries, as Buddhist scholars strove to clarify difficult points and resolve debates among schools.

Main Content

Although the title of this text has not been fully transmitted in translation by the tradition, based on its position in the Tengyur and the methodology of the Northern Tibetan tradition, the work Toh 2109 is highly likely to focus on an aspect of the Dharma teaching (dharma-skandha) or the analysis of the factors that constitute understanding (jñāna). In the Mahāyāna tradition, especially the Yogācāra and Madhyamaka schools inherited by the Northern Tibetan tradition, these treatises often deal with themes such as: the nature of consciousness (citta), classifications of cognition, the relationship between perception and the object perceived, or the religious foundations of liberation (mokṣa).

The commentaries in this tradition often use the logic of cause and condition (pratītyasamutpāda) to illustrate the way in which dharmas exist together, while also clearly revealing the impermanent (anicca) and non-self (anattā) nature of all dharmas.