 Finally, what of the Buddhist religion? While Dharmakīrti has sometimes been depicted as a dry practitioner of an essentially secular philosophy, this seems hardly defensible. Technical logical and epistemological discussions on sources of knowledge were not just pursued for their own sake. They were also used to establish Buddhist religious doctrines, like the Four Noble Truths, the proofs of the Buddha being an authoritative/reliable person (pramāṇapuruṣa, Tibetan tshad ma’i skyes bu), the law of retribution of acts (karman), reincarnation, compassion, omniscience, the innate Buddha-nature, absence of real personal identity,  etc.[53]  All these topics are treated in extenso in the second chapter of Pramāṇavārttika, and some form the subject of independent treatises by later Epistemologists. There is also a concern with direct perception of religious truths and the methods leading to that extraordinary type of knowledge. In the third chapter of Pramāṇavārttika and in the perception chapters of the Nyāyabindu and Pramāṇaviniścaya, for example, Dharmakīrti seeks to explain and rationalize the perception of a yogin (yogipratyakṣa). He advocates a quite remarkable method of meditation—more literally “cultivation” (bhāvanā; abhyāsa)—in which philosophical analysis plays an indispensable role (see e.g., Taber 2009; see Tillemans 2016, chapter 10, on Dharmakīrti-style meditation, its epistemological challenges and the contrast with Chan Buddhist approaches).