Kennard Lipman
Rabbi Kennard Lipman, Ph.D., received rabbinic ordination in 2002 from the Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, and was rabbi in State College, PA, Napa, CA, and Santa Maria, CA. He is currently a Lecturer in the Dept. of Humanities at San Jose State University.
During college he traveled to India and then studied for the next 20 years with some of the foremost teachers of Tibetan Buddhism. He received his Ph.D. in Far Eastern Studies under Prof. H.V. Guenther. In that same year he also met his principal Tibetan teacher, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Ken taught in, and was also Program Director of, the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. (Source Accessed March 31, 2020)
Library Items
Nītārtha, Neyārtha, and Tathāgatagarbha in Tibet
D. S. Ruegg, in his La Théorie du Tathāgatagarbha et du Gotra and other works,[1] has mentioned the need for further study of the various Tibetan exegetical traditions involved in the controversies surrounding the tathāgata-garbha doctrine. He has relied extensively on the exegesis developed by dGe lugs-pa scholars. This paper is an initial attempt to address this need voiced by Ruegg, by presenting the views of a bKa'-brgyud-pa and two rNying-ma-pa scholars. In particular, the focus will be on elucidating how they applied the interpretive devices of nītārtha (nges-don, certain, definitive meaning) and neyārtha (drang-don, indirect meaning which is to be established) to texts dealing with the tathāgatagarbha.[2] One of the basic philosophical problems the Tibetans faced in this regard was the relationship between the concepts of sûnyatā and tathāgatagarbha emphasized in the second and third "turnings of the wheel of Dharma" (dharmacakra-pravartana) respectively.
Lipman, Kennard. "Nītārtha, Neyārtha, and Tathāgatagarbha in Tibet." Journal of Indian Philosophy 8, no. 1 (1980): 87–95.
Lipman, Kennard. "Nītārtha, Neyārtha, and Tathāgatagarbha in Tibet." Journal of Indian Philosophy 8, no. 1 (1980): 87–95.;Nītārtha, Neyārtha, and Tathāgatagarbha in Tibet;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Tibetan Buddhism;tathāgatagarbha;Kennard Lipman; 
Affiliations & relations
- Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche · teacher
