A Canadian by birth, Tom Tillemans began his academic career studying analytic philosophy before pursuing study of Chinese and Sanskrit in Swiss universities and Buddhism with lamas in India and Switzerland in the 1970s. For many years, while a professor at the University of Lausanne and a visiting professor at a number of other universities, he was coeditor of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Now an emeritus professor, he is editor in chief of 84000, an online translation of the Buddhist scriptures preserved in the Tibetan canon, and co-chair of the editorial board of the Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism series.

A respected professor of Buddhist philosophy brings readers on a fascinating journey through Buddhism's most animating ideas.
Tom Tillemans, who has studied Buddhist philosophy since the 1970s, excels in bringing analytic and continental philosophy into conversation with thinkers in the Sanskrit and Tibetan traditions. This volume collects his writings on the most rarefied of Buddhist philosophical traditions, the Madhyamaka, and its radical insights into the nature of reality. Tillemans' approach ranges from retelling the history of ideas, to considering implications of those ideas for practice, to formal appraisal of their proofs. The 12 essays (four of which are being published for the first time) are products of rich and sophisticated debates and dialogues with colleagues in the field.