Three kinds of perception
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card![]()
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏

The three kinds of perception (Tib. སྣང་བ་གསུམ་, Wyl. snang ba gsum) appear in the preliminaries for the Lamdré practice of the Sakya tradition:
- impure perception (Tib. མ་དག་པའི་སྣང་བ་, ma dag pa'i snang ba)
- mixed perception experienced by yogis through practice (Tib. རྣལ་འབྱོར་ཉམས་ཀྱི་སྣང་བ་, rnal 'byor nyams kyi snang ba)
- pure perception (Tib. དག་པའི་སྣང་བ་, dag pa'i snang ba)
Further Reading
- Deshung Rinpoche, The Three Levels of Spiritual Perception (Boston: Wisdom, 1995, 2003)