ACI 13
The Art
of Reasoning
with
Venerable Gyelse & Venerable Utpala
Online Course
Sept 1 - Oct 3, 2024
Have you been avoiding learning logic? If you agree to study it, you will help keep Buddhism safe in the world. Can you guess why this is? Come find out.
ACI 13
The Art
of Reasoning
ACI 13, The Art of Reasoning, uses The Key to the Logic Machine, a 19th century work on Buddhist logic, as well as Dharmakirti's famous Commentary on Valid Perception, to help us better understand this important Buddhist tool and learn to use it. Get the key to the logic machine, as Ven. Gyelse and Ven. Utpala take us through ten classes that help us keep Buddhism safe in the world. Why is this? Because people who see the logic are likely to accept the ideas of Buddhism more deeply. Learn not to judge others, using logic. Buddha said, "Only I, or someone like me, is able to judge another person. No other person should ever judge another, for they will surely fall." Did you know the definition of a reason is "Anything put forward as a reason"? Find out what valid perceptions are, the difference among changing, unchanging, and working things, and why impermanent is not the best word to use in describing changing things. (Hint: it's because everything is constantly blinking in and out of existence, many times each instant.) Find out why a person is neither mental nor physical. If you've ever wondered about what distinguishes one Buddhist school from another, ACI 13 will help you find out. And explore more deeply what the concepts chi and jedrak mean, concepts that Geshe Michael Roach tells us will get us much closer to a direct perception of emptiness. Explore why there is no real difference between causes and results. Find out how syllogisms work on the debate ground.
Geshe Michael often tells us that the way we bring objects into focus is by looking at what is appearing to us, and eliminating from our extensive mental databases everything that appearance is not. That's how we identify what we're looking at. Or, put another way, what is appearing to our eye consciousness. Along with chi jedrak, using the negative--focusing on what things are not--is a crucial, if counter-intuitive, way to approach the direct perception of emptiness. You’ll learn more about negatives and cessations in ACI 13.Join Ven. Gyelse and Ven. Utpala as they give us the key to the logic machine. ACI 13, The Art of Reasoning, is the second level of Buddhist logic and perception. It's rarely taught. Here is your opportunity to add this to the collection of tools in your Buddhist toolkit. ACI 13 is free and open to everyone. Sign up today.
One traditional school--the logic part of the second school, the Sautrantika--says the past and future do not even exist. ACI 13 will contrast this with the position of the highest school, the Prasangika, who say the past does exist, and help us explore why they each hold these positions.
If you've taken ACI 4, Proof of Future Lives, or even if you haven't, ACI 13, The Art of Reasoning, will take you higher up the path of using logic to prove, to yourself and others, the truth of Buddhist ideas. It's one of the main courses that explores some of the important differences between lower and higher schools. It's known as one of the most challenging of the ACI courses because of the depth and breadth of the knowledge it explains. Take the challenge! Learn how to work the logic machine. Join us for ACI 13, Sept 1-Oct 3, taught by Ven. Gyelse and Ven. Utpala, free online to everyone.
VENERABLE LOBSANG GYELSE
“Ever since I was a young girl I wanted two things: to make others happy, and to know why I came into this world–what was my purpose and what was I supposed to do with this life?” Studying Buddhism for over 30 years has helped Venerable Lobsang Gyelse find answers to these questions. She has studied with many great Tibetan masters. Her main teacher is Geshe Michael Roach. Ven. Gyelse is the Diamond Mountain Board president, a three-year retreatant, an ordained nun and the mother of a grown son. She has been an ACI teacher for 20 years. 
Venerable Utpala
Venerable Utpala has studied and practiced Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan language, and meditation since 1995, and completed a three-year meditation retreat in 2014.She joined the Diamond Cutter Classics translation team, led by popular author and teacher Geshe Michael Roach, at its inception in 2017. Her first translation with Geshe Michael—Emptiness Meditations, a book on how to meditate on the lack of a self-nature to things, written by Tibetan author Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup—was published in 2022. Class 1 - September 1
Class 2 - September 5
Class 3 - September 8
Class 4 - September 12
Class 5 - September 15
Class 6 - September 19
Class 7 - September 22
Class 8 - September 26
Class 9 - September 29
Class 10 - October 3