Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(Elizabeth Napper) Dependent-Arising and Emptiness
(Elizabeth Napper) Dependent-Arising and Emptiness
Elizabeth Napper
WISDOM PUBLICATIONS
23 Dering Street, London WI, England; and
361 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Acknowledgements VII
Technical Note IX
PART ONE: ANALYSIS
Introduction 3
I An Overview of the Great Exposition 17
2 Interpretation of Scripture 30
3 Dzong-ka-ba's Argument 39
4 Dzong-ka-ba and Modem Interpreters I: Not Negating
Enough 67
5 Dzong-ka-ba and Modem Interpreters II: Negating Too
Much 101
6 Dzong-ka-ba and Modem Interpreters III: Other Issues of
Difference 123
7 Summation: Emptiness and Ethics 143
PART lWO: TRANSLATION OF DZONG-KA-BA'S
GREAT EXPOSITION
Introduction 153
I The Interpretable and the Definitive 158
2 Reliable Sources 164
3 The Stages of Entry Into Suchness 168
4 Misidentifying the Object of Negation 176
5 The Uncommon Feature of Madhyamika 181
6 Dependent-Arising and Emptiness 188
7 Madhyamika Response 198
PART THREE: TRANSLATION OF THE FOUR
INTERWOVEN ANNOTATIONS
Translator's Introduction 219
Introduction 229
I The Interpretable and the Definitive 247
2 Reliable Sources 268
3 The Stages of Entry Into Suchness 284
4 Misidentifying the Object of Negation 311
5 The Uncommon.Feature of Madhyamika 322
6 Dependent-Arising and Emptiness 339
7 Madhyamika Response, 361
APPENDICES
I The Division of Madhyamikas into Reason-Established
Illusionists and Proponents of Thorough
Non-Abiding 403
2 Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 441
3 Jam-yang-shay-ba's Outline 474
4 Emendations to the Delhi Edition of the Four Interwoven
AMOtmions 499
GLOSSARY
I English-Tibetan-Sanskrit 527
2 Tibetan-Sanskrit-English 550
3 Sanskrit-Tibetan-English 574
Bibliography 595
Notes 641
Index 825
Acknowledgements
VII
VIII Dependent-Arising and Emptiness
Throughout the course of this lengthy project I have relied
on the patience imd generosity of Richard B. Martin, South
Asia Bibliographer at the University of Virginia, and am
tremendously grateful to him for his unfailing helpfulness.
The work of many of us at the University of Virginia has been
greatly enriched through his dedication to developing, cata-
loging, and making accessible such an exceptional collection
of Tibetan and Buddhist materials.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to His Holiness
the Dalai Lama, who, during an audience in Dharmsala,
India, provided stimulating answers to my many questions,
demonstrating a unique ability to speak directly to the heart of
my qualms, and whose support for and encouragement of the
translation project I have undertaken provides constant inspi-
ration. In a similar vein I must express my profound gratitude
and indebtedness to the Venerable Geshe Wangyal, teacher of
unparalleled kindness, who set me on the path that has
included this present work.
I thank my husband, Jeffrey Hopkins, who has worked
clo&ely with me throughout every step of this project, checking
au. of my translations against the Tibetan and offering copious
and penetrating editorial suggestions, without whose support
and encouragement this task would never have been brought
to completion.
I would like to thank Professor Paul Groner who, with good
humor and helpful suggestions, assumed the task of being my
thesis director, and to thank the other members of my
dissertation committee, Professors Julian Hartt, Karen Lang,
and Jan Willis, all of whom offered many helpful and stimu-
lating suggestions. Also, I am grateful to Professor Ashok
Aklujkar of the University of British Columbia for his assist-
ance in comparing my translations from Tibetan with the
Sanskrit.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who, at various
stages of this project, provided much needed help in many
fonns, such as proofreading, indexing, and moral support:
Jules Levinson, Karen Saginor, Bill Magee, Ilia Durovic,
Lark Hammond, Leah Zahler, John Powers, Cindy Swiat-
lowski, and Charlene Makley.
Technical N ole
IX
x Dependent-Arising and Emptiness
ka ga . kha ka ga ga nga nga or iiga
T
ca ,a cha cha ,a ,a nya nya or iiya
ta da tha ta cia da na na or iia
pa ba pha pa ba ba rna rna or rna
tsa dza tsha tsa dza dza wa wa
zha sha za sa 'a a ya ya
ra ra la la sha sha sa Sa
ha ha a a
3
4 Anarysis
could be found when sought - but they cannot. In fact, when
sought analytically in this way in meditation, they disappear
altogether. When searching among the parts or collection of
the parts of a table for the table or among the mind and body
for the person and not coming up with the object sought, at
some point the conventional phenomenon drops away and one
is left with only the absence of what was sought, with a mere
vacuity that is emptiness.
This fact of meditative experience might lead to the conclu-
sion that emptiness and the conventional world are incompat-
ible, that emptiness cancels ordinary phenomena, which would
exist only so long as one has not realized emptiness and
would cease to do so once emptiness is realized. Perhaps all
that we see around us is only an illusion, a fabrication of our
lack of understanding of the true nature of reality, which is
only emptiness. But what is one to do then with dependent-
arising? How does such a nihilistic emptiness fit with the
Buddha's carefully formulated teachings such as the doctrine
ofkarma - responsibility for the effects of all one's actions -
ad with the instructions on proper ethics and the
precise delineations of the many varieties of phenomena?
Why bother if all this is false, only illusion?
These are questions with which Buddhists have struggled
over the more than two thousand years since the time of the
Buddha, and numerous different schools and sects have arisen
based on different ways of resolving these and other questions.
The dilemma concerning the relationship of dependent-arising
and emptiness is a particular issue for the Middle Way, or
Madhyamika (dbu rna pa), school. Founded by the great
Indian scholar and yogi Nagarjuna in the early centuries of
our era, Madhyamika has consistendy been a focus of doctrinal
controversy. Other philosophical schools do not take as un-
compromising a stance regarding emptiness and the utter
unfindability of objects, and, as a result, Madhyamika has
been accused by other schools, both Buddhist and non-
Buddhist, of having gone too far and fallen into nihilism.
Even within Madhyamika, varying strands of interpretation
Introduction 5
have arisen as later commentators worked out their own
solutions to the accusations of conflict between emptiness and
conventional phenomena.
The Madhyamika tradition developed in India over several
centuries and was transmitted to Tibet along with the rest of
the Buddhist teachings by the 9th century C.E. Buddhism
underwent a period of repression in Tibet during the late
ninth century and was essentially reintroduced to Tibet during
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The early centuries of
Buddhism's flourishing in Tibet were intellectually lively as
Tibetans newly studied and absorbed the Buddhist teachings,
and during this period a number of different sects developed
based on different traditions of textual study and interpreta-
tion, including varying assessments of the Madhyamika teach-
ings.
A number of individuals stand out during this period of
development, brilliant thinkers whose interpretations gained
them large followings and whose influence has continued up
to the present as their followers have sustained and refined
their views. One such figure is the great scholar and yogi
Dzong-ka-ba (tsong kha pa) who lived from 1357 to 1419.1
Widely acclaimed for his scholarly and meditative achieve-
ments during his lifetime, his followers evolved into the Ge-
luk-ba order of Tibetan Buddhism, an order that has domi-
nated Tibetan religious and political life from the mid-seven-
teenth century to the present.
The tradition of study during Dzong-ka-ba's lifetime was,
for many, peripatetic, as students travelled from monastery to
monastery taking instruction in various topics from many
different teachers, seeking out those renowned as having
special expertise in a particular text or lineage of teaching.
Dzong-ka-ba participated in this tradition and received teach-
ings from numerous teachers, including members of all the
main orders that flourished at the time. Madhyamika was
widely accepted in Tibet as the highest of all the Buddha's
philosophical sutra teachings, and the focus of Dzong-ka-ba's
study, as described in his writings, was his effort to gain a
6 Ana(ysis
correct insight into Madhyamika. Years of intense study
culminated in t398 in a vision during which he experienced a
transfonnative realization of the meaning of the Madhyamika
teachings. 2 This experience radically changed his perception
of the world as well as his understanding of the import of
Buddha's teachings, causing him to disagree with many of the
Madhyamika interpretations prevalent at his time, which he
felt had moved too far in the direction of nihilism, delineating
an emptiness that was antithetical to valid maintenance of the
conventional world.
Dzong-ka-ba undertook to formulate his own Madhyamika
interpretation which focuse~, in contrast, on the importance
of valuing conventionalities within a sweeping negation of any
inherent existence, setting forth a presentation that emphasized
the compatibility of emptiness and dependent-arising. 3 He
wrote five major works on Madhyamika philosophy, of which
the first, and the focus of this work, was his Great Exposition
of the Stages of the Path (lam rim chen mo), written in 1402
when he was 45 years 01d. 4 It includes, as its final section, a
pmleDtatioD of special insight (lJuJg mthong, vipaiyana) that is
his earliest detailed exposition of Midhyamika philosophy.
In.ong-ka-ba also wrote brief and middle length expositions
of the stages of the path. The brief exposition, entitled the
Concise Meaning of the Stages of the Path (lam rim bsdus don),s
is a poem, giving in very condensed - forty-eight stanzas -
and easily memorizable form a synopsis of the entire path to
enlightenment; it contains no detailed treatment of special
insight. The Medium Exposition of the Stages of the Path (lam
rim 'bring),6 written in 1415 when he was fifty-eight, is
considerably shorter than the Great Exposition - 188 folios in
the Peking edition as opposed to 444 folios - in large part
because it omits the copious citation and discussion of Indian
sources that characterizes the Great Exposition. It includes a
section on special insight that is an interesting corollary to that
in the Great Exposition since it is built on the same outline and
contains many topical sentences identical to those in the Great
Exposition, but on the whole was written as a complement to it
rather than a summary, going into detail on topics not covered
Introduction 7
in the longer work and entirely omitting large sections that are
the heart of the Great Exposition.
Between the composition of the Great Exposition and the
Medium Exposition, Dzong-ka-ba wrote in quick succession
two other works focused primarily on Madhyamika - the
Essence of the Good Explanations (legs bshad snying pof and the
Ocean of Reasoning, Great Commentary on (Niigiirjuna's)
"Treatise on the Middle Way" (rigs pa'i rgya mtsho rtsa shes {ik
chen).8 Finally, at age 61, one year before his death, he wrote
his final work on Madhyamika, the Illumination of the Thought
(dgongs pa rab gsal) a commentary on Chandraklrti's Sup-
plementlO (Niigiirjuna's) "Treatise on the Middle Way".9
Each of these works is an independent and cohesive whole,
yet they very much complement each other in that topics
treated only briefly in one are analyzed in detail in another.
For the most part, also, one does not supersede the others
although there are a few points about which Dzong-ka-ba
himself says that something in one text will explain a point in
another. Also, there are a few places where the texts contradict
each other, and the Ge-Iuk tradition has chosen to follow one
rather than the other, usually preferring the later writings as
representative of Dzong-ka-ba's more developed thought. 10
These five works - the special insight sections of the Great
and Medium Expositions of the Stages of the Path, the Essence of
the Good Explanations, Ocean of Reasoning, and Illumination of
the Thought - are the main sources for Dzong-ka-ba's views
on Madhyamika in that they focus on this system as their
primary subject matter, delineating Madhyamika positions in
contrast to other systems. Still, the Madhyamika view, and
from among the two Madhyamika subdivisions, Svatantrika-
Madhyamika and Prasailgika-Madhyamika, that of Prasangika-
Madhyamika, pervades Dzong-ka-ba's writings. His col-
lected writings (gsung 'bum) are comprised of eighteen Tibetan
volumes and contain over two hundred separate works cover-
ing a vast array of topics within both the siitra and tantra
systems; throughout, the view that Dzong-ka-ba himself ad-
heres to, even if he is not specifically writing about it, is
PrasaIigika-Madhyamika. In his writings on tantra, he asserts
8 Anarysis
explicitly that even within the highest tantric system, Highest
Yoga Tantra (Trial 'byor bla med kyi rgyud, anuttarayogatantra),
the emptiness described is not higher to or different from that
set forth in the PrasaIigika-Madhyamika system. 11
In this volume, I consider the Madhyamika interpretation
found in the special insight section of Dzong-ka-ba's Great
Exposition of the Stages of the Path, focusing specifically on
Dzong-ka-ba's delineation of what is and is not negated in the
view of selflessness and his resolution of the seeming conflict
between a view of emptiness and the existence of conventional
phenomena, including ethical actions. Madhyamika philo-
sophy is difficult to underst~nd, especially because the works
of the founder of that system, Nagiirjuna, are exceedingly
terse and subject to a variety of interpretations. Thus, there
has always been debate among those who claim to uphold the
Madhyamika systems as to exactly what that system is.
Although in the Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path,
Dzong-ka-ba newly set forth his understanding in contradis-
tinction to interpretations prevalent in Tibet at that time,
most of which from his viewpoint went too far and fell into
nihilism, his argument also serves to counter the positions of
the non-PrisaDgika Buddhist schools that, from a Madhya-
mika viewpoint, do not negate enough and thus uphold an
extreme of reification. Dzong-ka-ba makes very clear the
"middle way" that he upholds.
As will be discussed in chapters four through six, many
Western writers have concluded that Madhyamika is a system
at best agnostic and at worst nihilistic; that the purpose of the
Madhyamika dialectic is merely to demonstrate the in-
adequacy oflanguage; that they reject all conceptuality what-
soever rather than just a misperception of the nature of reality;
that Madhyamikas merely refute others' systems and have no
position, thesis, or view, of their own; that the Madhyamika
view is not the result of philosophical reasoning; and so
forth. 12 Dzong-ka-ba sought to refute similar understandings
of Madhyamika, widespread during his lifetime, and thus his
text addresses directly the qualms of many contemporary
I nzroduction 9
interpreters and serves as an excellent springboard from which
to examine Madhyamika philosophy.
In developing his Madhyamika interpretation, Dzong-ka-
ba relies heavily on four Indian commentators on the writings
of Nagarjuna - Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, Chandrakirti, and
Bhavaviveka - the chief of these being Chandrakirti. In a
verse work, the Essence of the Good Explanations, Praise of
Munindra (also known as the Praise of Dependent-Arising [rten
'brei bstod paJ), written shortly before the Great Exposition of
the Stages of the Path, Dzong-ka-ba describes his exgerience in
discovering the commentaries of Chandrakirti: 13
17
18 Anao,.sis
The text is structured around the mind-trainings (blo sbyong)
of beings of the three capacities. A being of small capacity is
one who has turned to religious practice, but is focused mainly
on attaining a good rebirth in the future. In the section of the
Great Exposition setting forth the practices shared with trainees
of this capacity, Dzong-ka-ba presents teachings on developing
mindfulness of the definiteness of death and the uncertainty of
the time of death; on the sufferings of the three bad trans-
migrations - as hell-beings, hungry ghosts, or animals; on the
importance, purpose, and benefits of going for refuge to the
Three Jewels of Buddha, Doctrine, and Spiritual Community;
on the relationship of acti(~ms committed and the effects they
induce; on the different types of actions and their effects; and
on the ways to purify negative actions done in the past.
A being of middling capacity is one who, rather than
seeking merely a good rebirth in the future, has developed a
perception of all of cyclic existence as pervaded by suffering,
and has developed an attitude of renunciation - a determina-
tion to become liberated from cyclic existence altogether. In
the section of the Great Exposition presenting the mind-
trainings shared with beings of middling capacity, Dzong-ka-
be discusses the four noble truths, focusing particularly on the
first two, true sufferings and true sources of suffering, describ-
ing the twelve links of dependent-arising and the sufferings
of the six transmigrations; he identifies the afflictions and sets
forth the path to liberation.
A being of great capacity does not stop merely with the
intention to remove himself or herself from cyclic existence,
but, understanding that as much as its suffering is unbearable
for oneself so much so is it for all others as well, generates the
altruistic intention to become a Buddha realistically able to
work effectively to free beings from suffering. In the part of
the Great Exposition describing the mind-training of a being of
great capacity, Dzong-ka-ba sets forth the generation of the
altruistic aspiration to enlightenment and the deeds in which a
Bodhisattva is to train, including an extensive discussion of
the six perfections - giving, ethics, patience, effort, concen-
tration, and wisdom.
An Overview of the Great Exposition 19
The final part of the Great Exposition is a more detailed and
technical explanation of how to train in the last two perfections,
now discussed in terms of calm abiding (zhi gnas, samatOO)
and special insight (IOOgmthong, vipaiyanii). For, taken loosely,
all concentrative states (from a mere one-pointedness, or
focusing, of the mind on a virtuous object on up through the
concentrations [bsam gtan, dhyiina] and formless absorptions
[gzugs med kyi snyoms 'jug, iirupyasamiipatti]) can be included
within the class of calm abiding, and all wisdom (that is, all
virtuous wisdoms differentiating individually either conven-
tional or ultimate objects) can be included within the class of
special insight. 26
30
Interpretation of Scripture 31
which can be accepted literally. ~8 Thus, for example, scriptures
teaching about impennanence or about the four noble truths,
because they are literal, are of definitive meaning; scriptures
such as the one that says, "Father and mother are to be
killed," - which does not in the least mean what it would
seem superficially to indicate, but rather means that existence
(srid pa, bhava) and attachment (sred pa, trPJa), the tenth and
eighth links of the twelve-fold chain of dependent-arising, are
to be eradicated - are non-literal and hence of interpretable
meaning. 49
In the Madhyamika school as presented by the Ge-Iuk
tradition, the criterion shifts, based on the Teachings of
A~hayamati Sutra (blo gros mi zad pas bstan pa'i mdo, ak~a
yamatinirdesa) and supported also by the King of Meditative
Stabilizations Sutra (ting nge 'dzin rgyal po, samiidhiriija), and
the differentiation between scriptures of definitive and inter-
pretable meaning is made by way of the subject discussed.
Those teaching emptiness as their subject matter are of definit-
ive meaning and those teaching other topics require in-
terpretation. The basis for the distinction thus rests on the
ontological status of the subjects discussed: emptinesses, or
ultimate truths, are definitive objects (nges don, nitiirtha), and
the taking of a definitive object as its subject matter will cause a
sutra to be considered a sutra of definitive meaning (nges don
gyi mdo, nitiirthasUtra). (However it should be noted that the
sutra itself is ontologically an interpretable object in that it is a
conventional phenomenon made up of letters, words, and
sentences). so
All phenomena except emptinesses, that is, all conventional
truths, are interpretable objects (drang don, neyiirtha) , and
taking them as the subject of discussion will cause a sutra to be
one of interpretable meaning (drang don gyi mdo, neyiirthasiitra).
This progression is based on a shift in meaning of the
Sanskrit word artha which is mirrored by its Tibetan transla-
tion don. Artha can mean "object" or it can mean "meaning"
or "purpose", and the same is true of don. There not being a
comparable word in English, when translating these terms it is
32 Anarysis
necessary to shift words depending on the context, translating
it as "object" when it refers to emptinesses or conventional
truths as definitive and interpretable objects, respectively, and
translating it as "meaning" when it refers to the scriptures
which are posited as of definitive or interpretable meaning by
way of taking those definitive or interpretable objects as their
subject of discussion.
Another point to be briefly noted is the meaning of the term
neyiirtha; neya and its Tibetan translation drang literally mean
"to be led" or "drawn out", and, thus, scriptures of inter-
pretable meaning (neya-artha, drang ba'i don) are scriptures of
which the meaning must be led - to something other than
what is explicitly taught on the literal level, namely to the final
status of those things taught, their emptiness. As Dzong-ka-
ba points out in his Essence of the Good Explanations S1 one
should not mistake the term as meaning "scriptures that lead"
but rather understand it as "scriptures that must be led".
Although indeed trainees are led by scriptures of interpretable
meaning, they are also led by those of definitive meaning, and
thus this is not the significance of the term. What is under
discussion is whether or not the scriptures themselves need to
be led, or interpreted, in some way so as to get at the final
mode of being of the objects discussed in them.
The Chin:amatra system's use of literalness as the criterion
for detennining definitiveness or interpretability is not aban-
doned by the Madhyamika differentiation but rather sup-
plemented by it. As Kamalashila's Illumination of the Middle
Way (dbu rna snang ba, rnadhyarnakiiloka), a Svatantrika text
relevant, according to Dzong-ka-ba, to both Svatantrika and
Prasailgika Madhyamika, saYS:52
39
40 Analysis
one will engage in actions leading to unfortunate rebirths. A
fall into nihilism is what the other Buddhist tenet systems
accuse the Madhyamikas of, and Dzong-ka-ba felt that many
Tibetans who claimed to be Madhyamikas had, in fact, fallen
into this error. Thus he devotes one quarter of the "Great
Exposition of Special Insight" to a refutation of those who
negate too much. He sets forth their position - that all
phenomena are negated by the Madhyamika reasonings -
along with the reasons and scriptural citations used to support
such a view (see chapter four of the translation) and then
carefully explains why he finds such an interpretation erro-
neous (chapters five through eleven; this volume stops with
chapter seven).
In the course of his refutation Dzong-ka-ba elaborates his
own Madhyamika interpretation. He takes dependent-arising
as the key to understanding Madhyamika; in his verse work
describing his own struggle to understand the meaning of
emptiness, entitled Praise of Dependent-Arising,59 Dzong-ka-
ba lyrically extolls dependent-arising as the means through
which one can realize that things do not have inherent exist-
ence' that is, are empty, and yet, by the very fact of their
being dependent-arisings, can also understand that they are not
utterly non-existent. Thus, in the "Great Exposition of Special
Insight", Dzong-ka-ba begins his refutation of those who be-
lieve that the Madhyamika reasonings utterly negate pheno-
mena with a discussion of the compatibility ofdependent-arising
and emptiness. He cites numerous passages by Nagarjuna,
founder of the Madhyamika system, in which Nagarjuna speaks
of the intimate connection between dependent-arising and
emptiness of praises Buddha for his teaching of these two.
The compatibility of dependent-arising and emptiness is,
in fact, a compatibility of the two truths, conventional truths
and ultimate truths - the dependent-arisings of things such as
sprouts, tables, persons, and so forth being conventional
truths and their emptinesses of inherent existence being ulti-
mate truths. Dzong-ka-ba emphasizes that the ability to posit
these two as compatible such that the understanding of the
Dzong-ka-ba's Argument 41
one acts as an aid to understanding the other is the uncommon
feature of Madhyamika. He makes the key to proper under-
standing of Madhyamika proper understanding of the com-
patibility of dependent-arising and emptiness, of conventional
truths and ultimate truths.
In doing so, Dzong-ka-ba sets up a situation in which he
uses the arguments found in the works of Nagarjuna,
Buddhapalita, and ChandrakIrti against opposing interpret-
ations to support his refutation of the Tibetan interpretations
prevalent at his time - even though the views being argued
against by the great Indian scholars were very different from
those of the Tibetans Dzong-ka-ba was seeking to refute. To
explain this, a little background is necessary.
ultimate establishment
true establishment
establishment as [its own] reality
establishment as [its own] suchness.
inherent establishment
establishment by way of [the object's] own character
existence by way of its own entity
substantial existence
establishment from [the object's] own side.
48 Anarysis
In Chinamatra, the distinction is made that inherent existence
and establisruitent from the object's own side, but none of the
rest, are true of imputations. In other words, existent imputa-
tions - pennanent phenomena - are not ultimately estab-
lished, truly established, established by way of their own
character, established as [their own] suchness, or established
[as their own] reality. However, the entire list is true of other-
powered phenomena - consciousnesses, tables, chairs, and so
forth - as well as of thoroughly established phenomena -
emptinesses.
This distinction of terminology comes down to the question,
"What is found when you analyze an object?" What makes
Prasailgika more radical than any of the other tenet systems is
that it says that nothing is found. 69 Take, for example, the
person. Although all schools assert a selflessness of the person
and say that the person is imputed in dependence upon the
aggregates, nonetheless, all schools except Prasailgika say
there is something that can be pointed to as the person,
something that serves as the basis for karmic continuity from
one lifetime to another.
For the Saquniuya schools, a subdivision of Vaib~,
what is posited as the person is the collection of the aggregates;
for the Kashmiri Vaib~hikas and the Sautrantikas Following
Scripture, it is the continuum of consciousness; for the
Chinamatrins Following Scripture, it is the mind-basis-of-all
(kun gzhi mam shes, oJayavijfuina), and for the Sautrantikas
Following Reasoning, Chittamatrins Following Reasoning,
and Svatantrikas it is the mental consciousness. Based on their
accepting some sort of establishment from an object's own
side, all assert that if something were not found when sought,
the person could not be posited and one would have the fault
of nihilism.
Prasailgika disagrees with this, positing as the person the
mere I which is the object of an awareness thinking "I" in
dependence upon the collection of the aggregates. That I
exists conventionally and is the basis for karmic continuity,
but it is merely imputed by thought and cannot be found at all
Dzung-ka-ba's Argument 49
when sought analytically. One must be satisfied with merely
the verbal designations, "I saw this," "I remember this," and
so forth. The I does not in the least exist from its own side, in
its own right, inherently, truly, and so forth.
Further, PrasaIigika says that such is the case not only with
respect to the I, but is also true of everything else - the
mental and physical aggregates that are the basis of designation
of the I, as well as tables, sprouts, and even emptiness. They
say that when reasoning seeks to find any object, it is not
found. Nonetheless, they maintain that despite this utter
unfindableness, phenomena nonetheless exist conventionally
and are able to perform functions. The challenge for
PrasaIigika is to explain how they can maintain the conven-
tional status of objects within their radical negation. This,
essentially, is the purpose to which Dzong-ka-ba devotes the
portion of the "Great Exposition of Special Insight" entitled
"Identifying the object of negation by reasoning".
DZONG-KA-BA'S ARGUMENT
So-called "Madhyamikas" who negate too much say that in
the Madhyamika system all phenomena are refuted by the
reasoning settling emptiness, that is, by reasoning analyzing
reality. Their reasons in support of such a view, in condensed
form, are: 77
The Tetralemma
The third of the reasons advanced by those who negate too
much to support their claim that the Mlldhyamika reasonings
negate all phenomena is that Buddha refuted all four alter-
natives - existence, non-existence, both, and neither - and
there are no phenomena not included within those four.
Dzong-ka-ba accepts that Buddha made such statements, as
did Nigarjuna in his Treatise on the Middle W~, but he
refuses to accept them at face value.
Demonstrating his commitment to common sense, Dzong-
ka-ba points to the simple grammatical rule concerning double
negatives. Thus he says that if one asserts that something does
not exist (the first alternative), one has asserted that it is
non-existent (the second alternative); if one then asserts that
something is not non-existent (the second alternative), since
one has perforce asserted that it is existent (which is denied by
the first alternative), one has contradicted oneself. Also, if one
asserts that something is not both existent and non-existent
(the third alternative), and then goes on to say that it is not not
both existent and non-existent (the fourth alternative), since
"not not both" equals "both", again one has contradicted
oneself. Thus, when they are interpreted literally, one cannot
logically maintain a position that something is none of the four
alternatives. Dzong-ka-ba is scathing in his indictment of
those who try to maintain a literal interpretation of the four,
taking them as simple negations: 82
Dzong-ka-ba's Argument 61
When ... you [try to] prevent falling to the extremes
of existence or non-existence through putting hope
in just propounding, "We do not propound [such
and such] as non-existent (med pa); we say it is not
existent (yod pa rna yin pa). We do not propound
[such and such] as existent (yod pa); we say it is not
non-existent (med pa rna yin pa)," you are propound-
ing only a collection of contradictions and do not set
forth even slightly the meaning of the middle way.
Dzong-ka-ba is firmly committed to the "law of the excluded
middle" which T .R. V. Murti believes Madhyamika rejects. 83
Dzong-ka-ba asserts a definite enumeration of the possibilities
to be considered. That number can vary from situation to
situation; often the situation is a dichotomy in which the
possiblilities are limited to two and something must be one or
the other. This is the case with inherent existence; whatever
exists must either be inherently existent or not inherently
existent. There are no other choices. In other situations as in
the refutation of production from the four extremes, the
possibilities are limited to four - production from self, other,
both, or neither. The four are the only possibilities for
inherently existent production, and when all four are rejected,
this means that an inherent existence of production has been
refuted and the absence of inherent existence affinned. Some
Madhyamika interpretations reject this, feeling that it is pos-
sible to just eliminate - not this, not that - without there
being any positive inclusion. They see this as a psychological
process of transcending conceptuality, a means of forcing the
mind to a different plane. In Ge-Iuk-ba also conceptuality is
eventually transcended, but not by means of ceasing verbal
conventions; rather, conceptuality is used to develop a level of
insight which upon repeated meditative familiarization can be
brought to the point of direct non-conceptual, non-imagistic
perception.
Were one not to accept a definite enumeration in which the
possibilities were limited, then analysis could never lead to
certainty. One would only be left with doubt, waiting for new
62 Ana{ysis
systems to com.e along and be refuted. This is not Dzong-ka-
ba's position, and he offers his own interpretation of the four
positions of the tetralemma, focusing on the first two (see
chapter seven of the translation).84 He makes a careful differ-
entiation between existence, inherent existence, no inherent
existence, and utter non-existence, and says that when the
first of the four alternatives, existence, is denied, what is
meant is that there is no inherent existence. When the second
of the four alternatives, non-existence, is denied, what is
denied is utter non-existence. Thus, when it is said that
phenomena are neither existent nor non-existent, what is
meant is that they are neither inherently existent nor utterly
non-existent. Phenomena do exist - conventionally - but
they do not exist inherently.
Dzong-ka-ba finds support for his interpretation in the
writings of Chandraltirti. For example, ChandrakIrti's Clear
Words saYS:85
We are not Nihilists .... We do not propound,
"Actions, agents, effects, and so forth do not exist."
What do we propound? "These do not inherently
exist."
Also Chandrakitti's Commentary on (Aryadeva's) "Four
Hundred" saYS:86
CONCLUDING REMARKS
lIDs brief summary of Dzong-ka-ba's refutation of
Midhyamika interpretations that he says take negation too far
and deny the validity of conventional presentations provides
an overview of Dzong-ka-ba's line of reasoning. Included
within this volume is translation of Dzong-ka-ba's condensed
exposition of the fallacious arguments of those who negate too
much (chapter four of the translation), his delineation of the
compatibility of dependent-arising and emptiness as the un-
common feature of Madhyamika (chapters five and six of the
translation), and his presentation of how a Madhyamika
responds to those who do not see or accept this compatibility
(chapter seven of the translation).
In the remainder of his refutation of those who negate too
much, Dzong-ka-ba considers in detail the meaning and func-
tions of reasoned analysis, the meaning of valid establishment,
how conventional existence is upheld, the way in which mere
production is not refuted, and the way the four positions of
the tetralemma require qualification.
Dzong-ka-ba's Argument 65
He then moves on to a refutation of those Madhyamika
interpretations that negate too little. Dzong-ka-ba's refutation
of those who negate too much, because of the way it is framed
around the compatibility of dependent-arising and emptiness
and relies on Nagarjuna's and Chandrakirti's refutations of
the Proponents of True Existence, has already expressed a
general refutation of non-Madhyamikas who from the
Madhyamika viewpoint do not negate enough and fall into an
extreme of reification, or etemalism. In the portion of his text
labelled "a refutation of those who negate too little", Dzong-
ka-ba considers a specific Madhyamika interpretation that he
says negates too little, namely, that based on what Dzong-ka-
ba considers a misunderstanding of the fifteenth chapter of
Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way, the investigation of
nature (rang bzhin, svabhava), which says that the object of
negation by ultimate analysis is merely the nature (svabhava)
possessing the three attributes of (I) its entity not being
produced by causes and conditions; (2) its not depending on
another positor; and (3) its status not changing to something
else.
After refuting this view, Dzong-ka-ba presents at some
length his own identification of the object of negation and then
concludes the section on the object of negation with a brief
explanation of when PriisaIigika does or does not use a
qualifying term such as "ultimately" in its negations; this
includes spelling out the difference between the Svatantrika
and Prasruigika schools in this respect.
The discussion of the object of negation along with the
introductory material leading into it occupies 43% of the
"Great Exposition of Special Insight". The next 18% of the
text is devoted to a discussion of the difference between the
Svatantrika and PrasaIigika schools based on whether they say
the view realizing emptiness is generated through use of
autonomous syllogisms (rang rgyud kyi sbyor ba, svalantra-
prayoga) or whether only consequences (thai ba, prasanga) can
be used. It includes a detailed discussion of whether there is or
is not a commonly appearing subject to both parties in a
debate. Along with a similar discussion in Dzong-ka-ba's
66 Anarysis
Essence of the Good Explanations, it is the basis of the Ge-Iuk-
ba differentiation between the philosophical views of the
Svatantrika and Prasailgika schools. 89
The final 39% of the "Great Exposition" is devoted to a
description of the reasonings used in generating realization of
emptiness and some concluding material. Dzong-ka-ba de-
scribes the sevenfold reasoning set forth by ChandrakIrti for
realizing the selflessness of the person and explains how this
realization is to be transferred to all other phenomena as well.
He discusses the illusion-like mode of appearance of conven-
tional phenomena that remains after emptiness has been
realized, briefly states the different types of special insight,
and describes how it is to be cultivated in meditation, includ-
ing refutation of several, from his viewpoint, mistaken opin-
ions on this point. Dzong-ka-ba concludes the Great Exposi-
tion of the Stages of the Path with a summary of the entire path
to be followed by one wishing to train in the Bodhisattva
practices and with an exhortation to enter into the tantric
vehicle as it offers the quickest way to the attainment of
Buddhahood.
4 Dzong-ka-ba and Modem
Interpreters I: Not Negating Enough
DZONG-KA-BA'S POSITION
I THE PURPOSE OF THE "TREATISE"
A response to these three interpretations of what Nagarjuna
was refuting must be built around an assessment of Nagar-
juna's purpose in his analytical works such as the Treatise on
the Middle Way. Many who hold views such as those cited
above assess Nagarjuna's effectiveness and conclude either
that he did not succeed in his purpose or that his purpose was
not terribly profound. Richard Jones sums up a generally
perceptive article by saying: lIS
Showing that the reality lies not in the conceptual
understanding or that there is a linguistic basis to the
idea of identity does not entail that what is labeled by
our concepts is "unreal" in any nonnal sense of the
tenn. . .. All of this shows I think that Nagarjuna
succeeds at best within a very limited scope. As
Robinson also concludes, his procedure is a variation
on the old shell game. Serious doubts thus arise
about whether he can accomplish his religious inten-
tion by his method of stilling our conceptual pre-
occupation (and thereby ending suffering), once
these problems are pointed out.
And Douglas Daye, finding Madhyamika realization of empti-
ness to be merely a "therapeutic ploy by which one may
realize the differences between languages and things (includ-
ing the thing called 'self')," states as its result: 116
Thus Madhyamika tends to generate epistemic nim-
bleness, linguistic respect, a new sense of human
wonder, and an alert suspicion of the conventional
78 AnaOrsis
view of the world which we have projected through
our lingUistically and culturally colored glasses.
If this were all that the Madhyamika analyses achieved,
Dzong-ka-ba would be the first to agree that their effectiveness
was limited. However, he does not see such limited results
primarily because he does not accept the above assessmer.ts of
what Madhyamika seeks to refute.
For Dzong-ka-ba, Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way,
far from being an "intellectual riddle" , as described by Richard
Robinson,117 is a religious text with profound transformative
purpose. He says, "All the reasoned analyses set forth in the
Treatise on the Middle Way are only so that sentient beings
might attain liberation,,,118 and finds support for this view in
the writings of Buddhapalita and Chandraklrti: 119
Buddhapalita says, "What is the purpose in teaching
dependent-arising? The master [Nagarjuna] whose
very nature is compassion saw that sentient beings
are beset by various sufferings and assumed the task
of teaching the reality of things just as it is so that
they might be liberated. Therefore, he began teach-
ing dependent-arising." Also, Chandraklrti's Sup-
plement to (Ntigdrjuna's) "Treatise on the Middle Way"
(VI.II8ab) says, "The analyses in the Treatise were
not done for the sake of attachment to debate; such
was taught for the sake of liberation."
Liberation is the goal - not merely the "removal of the
'linguistically colored sunglasses' with which we see the
world",120 but complete emergence from cyclic existence and
all of its attendant suffering.
2 IDENTIFYING IGNORANCE
Since the purpose of Nagarjuna's Treatise is not merely to
refute other systems, but to teach a technique for the attain-
ment of liberation, the Treatise must, from Dzong-ka-ba's
Not Negating Enough 79
viewpoint, be refuting something of sufficient potency to
obstruct liberation. Although the wrong ideas of other systems
fall within the scope of the refutation, they are not what bind
beings in cyclic existence, and thus are not the main object of
negation by the path. What are primarily to be refuted are a
practitioner's own innate wrong ideas, specifically, the ignor-
ance that is considered to be the root, or basic cause, of cyclic
existence. Although Dzong-ka-ba would disagree with T.R.V.
Murti's identification of "dogmatism", he would, if one sub-
stitutes "ignorance" for "dogmatism", accept Murti's assess-
ment of a Madhyamika's purpose: 12l
The Madhyamika is exorcising the devil of dogma-
tism from his own soul. The outward form of refuta-
tion is employed by him so that he can the better
dissociate himself from the inherent dogmatic tend-
ency of the hwnan mind. The Madhyamika dialectic
is actuated by the spiritual motive of purifying the
mind and freeing it of the cobwebs and clogs of
dogmatism.
Ignorance (1110 rig pa, avidya), which literally means "non-
knowing" is, for Dzong-ka-ba not just lack of knowledge in
general, but the opposite of knowledge - and not just any
knowledge, but knowledge of reality. 122 It is a specific mis-
conception: the conception of inherent existence where there
is no inherent existence. The way to overcome ignorance is to
refute - that is, to recognize as non-existent - its object.
Thus, what Nagarjuna's Treatise refutes is the object adhered
to by ignorance, and, in his Madhyamika system, that object
is inherent existence. Inherent existence is the meaning of the
svabhava that Nagarjuna denies, and its refutation is not a
casual or easy thing that one must merely notice, as Christian
Lindtner implies when he says: 123
By pointing out that nothing within the domain of
experience can be conceived in and by itself inde-
pendently of something else, Nagiirjuna merely
80 Analysis
intends tp call attention to the fact that nothing has
svabhiiva (or, of course, parabhiiva etc., cf. MK
XV, 3).
Rather, the conception that things inherently exist, the adher-
ence to svabhiiva, is an ingrained, innate, misconception that
operates within everyone within cyclic existence - educated,
uneducated, human, animal, etc. It can be overcome only
through extensive and prolonged effort and meditation. Hence
Nagarjuna's twenty-seven chapters of "limitless forms of reas-
oning", attacking the object of this conception again and again
from many different approaches. For, it must utterly be
overcome in order to achieve the religious goal of liberation
from cyclic existence.
3 DZONG-KA-BA'S SOURCES
Dzong-ka-ba went through several steps to reach this position,
and he attempts to support each one with the writings of the
Indian Madhyamika masters. That Nagarjuna's basic intention
is soteriological can be understood not just from the passages
by Buddhapilita and Chandrakirti cited above, but also in
Nagarjuna's own writings. For instance, in the final verse of
his Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning, cited by Dzong-ka-ba in the
Great Exposition (see below, p.181), he dedicates the merit
from composing the text for the sake of all beings attaining
Buddhahood. This is so much the message of Nagarjuna's
Precious Garland that it is almost too obvious to be said, this
perhaps being the reason why Dzong-ka-ba did not cite it on
this point. However, there are a wealth of passages available,
beginning with opening stanzas (2-4):124
o King, I will explain practices solely
Virtuous to generate in you the doctrine,
For the practices will be established
In a vessel of the excellent doctrine.
In one who first practises high status
Definite goodness arises later,
Not Negating Enough 81
For having attained high status one comes
Gradually to definite goodness.
High status is thought of as happiness,
Definite goodness as liberation,
The quintessence of their means
Are briefly faith and wisdom.
Following this, Nagarjuna goes on to explain both virtuous
practices leading to good rebirths within cyclic existence and
teachings on selflessness, the realization of which leads to
liberation from cyclic existence.
There are two ways to approach the topic of what prevents
beings' liberation: objectively, by way of the object miscon-
ceived, or subjectively, by way of the misconceiving con-
sciousness. Both are objects of negation. The objective -
inherent existence - is the object of negation by reasoning;
reasoning refutes inherent existence in the sense that through
reasoning the absence of inherent existence is demonstrated,
or made known, and one comes to disbelieve in inherent
existence. The SUbjective object of negation - the ignorance
misconceiving inherent existence - is the object of negation
by the path; a path consciousness - a wisdom consciousness
realizing emptiness - acts as a direct antidote to the ignorance
misconceiving the opposite of emptiness and eradicates it such
that it will not reoccur. For Dzong-ka-ba, the former object of
negation is primary, for it is by way of refuting it that the
latter is overcome. He explains: 125
This [former] object of negation must be one that
does not exist among objects of knowledge because if
it did exist, it could not be refuted. Nonetheless
[that is, even though it does not exist], because
superimpositions which apprehend it to exist are
generated, it must be refuted. That refutation is not
like destroying a pot with a hammer, but is a case of
generating an ascertaining consciousness that recog-
nizes the non-existent to be non-existent. When one
generates ascertainment of it as non-existent, the
82 Analysis
mistaken. consciousness apprehending it as existent
will be overcome.
In the Great Exposition, the main focus in considering the
object of negation is on the object of negation by reasoning,
inherent existence, and Dzong-ka-ba's comments on ignor-
ance, the misconceiving consciousness, come only near the end
of the lengthy section on the object of negation, after the
refutation of those who negate too much or too litde, when
setting forth his own identification of the object of negation. 126
To show the nature and pervasiveness of ignorance he cites
numerous passages from Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, and Chandra-
klrti. For instance, Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness
says: 127
The Teacher said that that which conceives
Things produced from causes
And conditions as real is ignorance.
From it, the twelve links arise.
Knowing well that things are empty because
of seeing
The real, one is not obscured.
That is the cessation of ignorance,
Whereby the twelve branches cease.
Aryadeva's Four Hundred (VI. 10) saYS:128
Just as the physical sense power [pervades] the
body,
Delusion abides in all.
Therefore, through destroying delusion
All afflictions will also be destroyed.
Ignorance - or delusion (gti mug, moha), these being equival-
ent terms - is thus the root cause of all other afflictions, and
its eradication is the key to their eradication.
In a very clear statement of just what that ignorance is,
Chandraklrti's [AutoJcommentary on the "Supplement to
(Niigarjuna's) 'Treatise on the Middle Way'" saYS:129
Not Negating Enough 83
Ignorance superimposes an existence of things by
way of their own entities that they do not have. It
has a nature of obstructing perception of the nature
[of things]. It is a concealer (kun rdzob, sartrV[tt).
Ignorance is a superimposition of existence by way its own
entity (rang gi ngo bo, svarUpa), and "existence by way its own
entity" is a synonym of inherent existence.
That inherent existence is what is being refuted is stated
explicitly by Nagarjuna and his Indian commentators on
numerous occasions. Dzong-ka-ba cites a strikingly clear
statement by Nagarjuna in his {Auto] commentary on the
"Refutation of Objections": 130
. .. because beings are obscured with respect to the
lack of inherent existence - the lack of a real entity
- of all things which are like beings [emanated by] a
magician, [the statements that things lack inherent
existence] cause understanding that there is no in-
herent existence in those things which childish
common beings, due to the obscuration of ignorance,
superimpose as having inherent existence.
Also, Chandrakirti says, identifying the object of the Madhya-
mika analyses, ". .. our analysis is intent upon seeking out
inherent existence. We [Madhyamikas] are here refuting that
things are established by way of their own entities."l3l
Shared Understandings
My thesis with regard to the first point mentioned above is
that many of what are often labelled "Madhyamika" under-
standings are in fact not unique to Madhyamika but are
realized by lower Buddhist tenet systems as well, often being
positions primarily worked out by epistemologists of the
Dignaga-Dharmaklrti schools oflogic. 142 They may be accept-
ed by the Madhyamikas as well, for Dzong-ka-ba, with his
emphasis on the unity and coherence of the Buddhist teach-
ings, sees no conflict in the tenets of one system being
accepted by another so long as the tenets of the lower system
do not conflict with those of the higher. However, being
shared, they cannot be what sets Madhyamika apart.
Not Negating Enough 91
For example, if it is being said that Madhyamika teaches
that words cannot describe and thought cannot know imper-
manent objects exactly as they are, this is asserted even by the
Sautrfultika tenet system. Nga-wang-bel-den (ngag dbang dpal
/dan, b.1797), describing the two truths in the Sautrantika
system, explains, based on a passage from Dharmaklrti's
Commentary on (Digniiga's) "Compendium of Valid Cognition"
(tshad rna rnam 'grel, pramarJaviirttika), that specifically charac-
terized, that is, impermanent, phenomena are those whose
entity cannot appear fully to a mind merely from an expres-
sional term. 143 In other words, direct perception knows its
objects with a richness, vividness, and specificity that words
cannot express and of which thought is incapable.
Also, that names do not inhere in objects but are designated
arbitrarily is a concept realized and articulated in the Ge-Iuk-
ba literature commenting on the Sautriintika system. 144 That
phenomena do not naturally exist as bases for the affixing of
names is identified as the subtle object of negation in the
Chittamatra system. 145 Thus neither of these can serve as un-
common Madhyamika understandings.
Similarly, the idea that emptiness cannot be described
exactly as it is and that direct realization of it is a non-verbal
experience with profound transfonnative effect for the practi-
tioner is not unique to Madhyamika, but rather, with variations
in the identification of emptiness, is a basic aspect of the path
structure of all four tenet systems. 146 In both Chittamatra and
Madhyamika, ultimate truth (don dam bden pa, paramartha-
satya) is described as inexpressible and inconceivable, and
Dzong-ka-ba takes such statements as indicating that at the
time of directly realizing emptiness, all dualistic appearance as
well as all conceptuality have disappeared,147 not as showing
that there are realms where language simply does not apply.
Linguistic Anarysis
The question of whether or not linguistic analyses accurately
represent Madhyamika requires careful consideration. Such
92 Anarysis
interpretations, frequently based upon comparison with the
writings of Lutlwig Wittgenstein, are currently a very popular
way of looking at Madhyamika, so much so that David Loy in
a recent article in Philosophy East and West identifies it as one
of two major streams of significant Western interpretations of
Madhyamika. 148 There is much in such compansons that fits
closely with Dzong-ka-ba's views. For example, Robert
Thurman says: 149
101
102 Ana~sis
logical paradox inherent in thought. 169
The idea that conceptuality is equivalent to ignorance and
as such is what is to be removed, or negated, undoubtedly
stems not only from passages in the writings of Nagarjuna and
Chandrakirti that seem to suggest such, but also from the facts
that (I) direct realization of emptiness is described as a non-
dualistic cognition, totally free from conceptuality, and (2) a
Buddha, a fully realized being, is said to be completely
without conceptuality. Both of these points are widely accepted
within the various Buddhist traditions, and Dzong-ka-ba has
no disagreement with either. What he does disagree with, and
he is not alone in this, it having been a primary topic of the
Sam-yay debate mentioned in chapter one, is to draw the
conclusion from this that all thought is bad and simply to be
stopped and that the cessation of thought marks the attain-
ment of liberation. Such is what Dzong-ka-ba describes as the
position of the Chinese monk Hva-shang Mahayana, whom he
sees as having been defeated by Kamalashila in the debate at
Sam-yay, and it can be found in modern manifestations as
wdl. Ben-Ami Scharfstein writes: 170
. .. since all these thoughts [analyzing self] like the
world itself, are so troublesome, it is best to stop
thinking. Plurality will then cease (and unity) and
we (though not exactly) will remain (in a non-
temporal sense) in a state of bliss.
Scharfstein has set forth exactly the view to which Dzong-ka-
ba strenuously objects. For Dzong-ka-ba, non-conceptuality
certainly does not constitute liberation. Were this so, then it
would absurdly follow that non-conceptual states - fainting,
deep sleep, and so forth - would be liberation. Further, the
mere ceasing of conceptuality is also not sufficient for realiza-
tion of emptiness; rather, emptiness must initially be realized
through analysis, which entails conceptuality. Dzong-ka-ba
supports this view with citations from Kamalashila and from
siitra - the King of Meditative Stabilizations Sutra (ting nge
'dzin rgyal po, samiidhiriija) and the Scriptural Collection of
Negating Too Much 103
Bodhisattvas (byang chub sems dpa'i sde srwd, bodhisattva-
pi{aka). He opens the "Great Exposition of Special Insight"
with this issue (see the Introduction of the translation), and he
returns to it again near the end of his presentation when he
discusses how to meditate on special insight, a topic he
commences with a refutation of mistaken assertions. 171
There are two basic aspects to the discussion of why
thought, or specifically, analysis, is needed. The first is con-
cerned with how the process of eradicating ignorance is
conceived - not as a mere stopping of thought, but as the
active realization of the opposite of what ignorance miscon-
ceives. Ignorance is not just mere absence of knowledge, but a
specific misconception, and it must be removed by realization
of its opposite. In this vein, Dzong-ka-ba says that one cannot
get rid of the misconception of inherent existence merely by
stopping conceptuality any more than one can get rid of the
idea that there is a demon in a darkened cave merely by trying
to not think about it. Just as one must hold up a lamp and see
that there is no demon there, so the illumination of wisdom is
necessary to clear away the darkness of ignorance. 172
Although Dzong-ka-ba's main Madhyamika source expli-
citly addressing, and refuting, the idea that progress can be
made through a mere ceasing of conceptuality is a late Indian
Madhyamika, Kamalashila (c.740-795), who in later exegesis
is recognized, not as a Prasa.rigika, but as a Sviitantrika, the
sense of an active removal of wrong conceptions by way of
"seeing" reality rather than through a mere ceasing of con-
ceptuality is also found in the writings of the early Miidhya-
mikas, as in the following passage from Aryadeva's Four
Hundred (XIV.25):173
The seed of cyclic existence is a consciousness;
Objects are its sphere of activity.
When one sees selflessness in objects,
The seeds of cyclic existence are stopped.
Since a mere stopping of thought will not, in Dzong-ka-ba's
sYstem, lead to a realization of emptiness, one is led to the
104 Anarysis
second aspect of the discussion: that at present thought is our
only way to gain access to emptiness. One of the ways of
dividing phenomena is into the manifest (mngon gyur,
abhimukhi) and the hidden (lkog gyur, parok~a). The manifest
are those things presently accessible to direct perception, such
as external forms, sounds, tastes, and so forth. The hidden are
those things that must be initially realized conceptually, in
dependence upon a process of reasoning. The division of
phenomena into the manifest and the hidden is an all inclusive
one; whatever exists must be one or the other, and emptiness
falls within the latter. (See below, pp.I26-33, for a discus-
sion of the inclusion of emptiness among phenomena.) Empti-
ness is clearly not a manifest phenomenon; if it were, everyone
would be perceiving it now, and obviously they are not.
Rather, it is a hidden phenomenon, one which ordinary non-
conceptual consciousnesses cannot reach. As such, conceptu-
ality, reasoning, is our only avenue of initial approach to it.
It is undeniable that there are passages in Nagarjuna,
Chandrakirti, and so forth - even in siitras of the Buddha -
that seem to reject all conceptuality. Dzong-ka-ba's response
to these passages is that, just as the refutations of existence
must be Wlderstood with qualification, as meaning "inherent
existence", so also the refutations of conceptuality must be
understood with qualification. Conceptions of inherent existence
are being refuted, not all conceptions. Only one type of
conceptuality - a very specific misconception - is being
refuted, not the whole class. He finds support for this in
Chandrakirti who, commenting on a passage of Aryadeva's
Four Hundred (XVI.23cd), "Conceptuality sees [and] one is
bound; it is to be stopped here," glosses conceptuality as "that
which superimposes a meaning of inherent existence which is
not correct". 174
In this way Dzong-ka-ba saves conceptuality from total
denial, preserving the viability of scripture and reasoning as
aids for spiritual progress and maintaining a valid distinction
between good thoughts and bad thoughts - virtues and non-
virtues. He would not quarrel with valuing non-conceptuality
Negating Too Much 105
over conceptuality in tenns of realizing a particular object, for
his Madhyamika interpretation does not override the Sautran-
tika tenet system description of the way in which, whether the
object is mundane or supramundane, direct perception exceeds
conceptuality in richness and vividness. 175 However, this does
not mean that non-conceptuality is per se better, for some
objects such as emptiness could never be known without prior
conceptual realization. One must understand the uses and
limitations of both conceptual and non-conceptual cognition
and make use of conceptuality to reach the higher non-
conceptual states.
That the goal of Buddhahood is a non-conceptual state does
not, for Dzong-ka-ba, imply any unsuitability in using con-
ceptuality to reach that goal, a position he supports by citing
the Kiishyapa Chapter Sutra ('od STUng gi le'u'i mdo, kiiSya-
paparivarta): 176
Kashyapa, it is like this: For example, fire arises
from the rubbing together of two branches by the
wind, and once arisen, the two branches are burned
up. Similarly, Kashyapa, if you have the correct
analytical intellect, a Superior's faculty of wisdom is
generated. 1brough its generation, the correct ana-
lytical intellect is conswned.
At higher levels of the path, conceptuality - the correct
analytical intellect - is conswned by the fire of wisdom.
Nonetheless, it is the fuel that makes the arising of wisdom
possible. Prior to reaching the highest level, it is necessary to
distinguish between different types of conceptuality and to
make use of correct conceptuality in the struggle to remove
the incorrect.
123
124 Anao/sis
hp.tween reasoning and realization of emptiness, Fenner sees
more imputation of strength to that relationship than do I; I
see a gradual lessening of negativity, but not much statement
of positive relationship. 230
Fenner's thesis, which he believes to be Chandrakirti's
view, is that "analysis is meant to be a direct and efficient
cause for producing the insight into emptiness, ... analysis
induces the very realizations which are understood to free
yogins from the bonds of sa1?lSiira".n 1 This thesis is very
much Dzong-ka-ba's viewpoint, although whether he would
accept all that Fenner says is less clear, since Fenner's argu-
ment seems to be predicated on the fact that since thought is
eventually transcended, thought is the object of negation, and
this, as discussed above (see pp.IOI-5), is not Dzong-ka-ba's
view. 232
Most of those who do not describe a strong relationship
between reasoning and realization of emptiness do not dispute
that the reasonings set forth by Nagarjuna are soteriological in
intent and have, in a religious sense, positive results. What
seems to be in question is the mechanics of the process,
specifically whether reasoning can lead directly, or causaUy, to
wisdom (jfuina), knowledge of the highest reality, and the
basis of such qualms seems to be twofold: one is the percep-
tion of analysis and meditation as two distinct and even
incompatible activities; the other is the idea that emptiness, or
reality, or, as some refer to it, the Absolute, is in no way
whatsoever contactable by discursive thought.
Neither of these is Dzong-ka-ba's view. For him, reasoning
and meditation are compatible: meditation is divided into two
types, analytical and stabilizing, and reasoning can be included
within analytical meditation. Not all analysis is meditation,
and Dzong-ka-ba is aware of and warns against analysis being
mere discursiveness, engaged in only out of love for argument.
Nonetheless, a major component of meditation is analytical,
and the analyses used are those such as are set forth in
Nagarjuna's Treatise. 233 As discussed in chapter one, the
Other Issues of Difference 125
highest meditative states are unions of stabilization and analy-
sis - of cam abiding and special insight - and thus it is not
the case that the state of wisdom realizing emptiness is totally
dissimilar from the analysis that has led to it. Also, although
the supreme realization of emptiness is non-conceptual and
non-dualistic in nature, prior to the attainment of such a level,
emptiness can and, in fact, must be realized in a dualistic
fashion by a conceptual consciousness.
Dzong-ka-ba's views on these points are undoubtedly
heavily influenced by Kamalashila's three Stages of Meditation
and, even more, by the epistemological treatises of Dignaga
and Dharmaklrti, and, in fact, in this instance he does not
have explicit statements from Nagarjuna or Chandraklrti to
cite in his support. Kamalashila's arguments against the
Chinese monk Hva-shang Mahayana provide the Indian
Madhyamika sources for the general framework of the need
for both stabilizing and analytical meditation and the central
role of reasoning in the attainment of wisdom. For instance,
Kamalashila says in the second of his Stages of Meditation: 234
is the fact that for him emptiness exists. Far from being
neither existent nor non-existent, or indeterminate, or merely
a linguistic convention, emptiness is an existent (yod pa,
bhiiva), an object of knowledge (shes bya, jfieya), an object
(yul, v4aya), a phenomenon (elws, dhamuz), for all of these
tenns are synonymous in the Ge-Iuk epistemological schema.
This position is controversial not only in tenns of Western
scholarship on Madhyamika (contradicting the opinions of
Etienne Lamotte, Jacques May, Edward Conze, Frederick
Streng, Richard Robinson, Douglas Daye, G.C. Nayak,
Mervyn Sprung, and Fernando Tola and Carmen Dragonetti
among othersi40 but was, and is, also disputed by other
Tibetan traditions. 241
Dzong-ka-ba's case that emptiness exists is based on his
equating a number of tenns - emptiness (stong pa nyid,
sunyata), ultimate trUth (don dam bden pa, paramiirthasatya),
[final] nature (rang bzhin, svabhiiva), reality (ehos nyid,
dhamuzta), and suchness (de nyid or de klw na nyid, tattva).
Unlike l.W. de long, who sees these as merely metaphors,242
for Dzong-ka-ba these are equivalents; whatever is the one is
the other, and he finds it legitimate to apply a discussion of
such things as existence and so forth carried out in terms of
one to another. Hence, in the Great Exposition, he uses
Nagarjuna's discussion in chapter fifteen of the Treatise on the
Middle Way of the inherent, or final, nature (rang bzhin,
svabhiiva) and Chandraklrti's discussion of the 33l1le topic in
his [AutoJeommentary on the "Supplement to (Nagarjuna's)
'Treatise on the Middle Way'" as the locus for his proof that
ultimate trUth, that is, emptiness, exists. 243
As Dzong-ka-ba sees it, Nagarjuna indicates in chapter
fifteen, the Analysis of Svabhiiva (rang bzhin), two distinct
meanings of the tenn svabhiiva: one is inherent existence, the
object of negation, which does not exist in the least; the other
is emptiness, the final nature of each and every phenomenon. 244
Final nature is what Dzong-ka-ba, following Chandraklrti,
sees as intended by the last two lines of the second stanza of
chapter fifteen: 245
128 Analysis
It is not t::easonable that an [inherent, or final] nature
(svabhiiva)
Arise from causes and conditions.
If it did arise from causes and conditions
That [inherent, or final] nature would be something
made.
How could it be suitable
For an [inherent, or final] nature to be "made"?
An [inherent, or final] nature is non-fabricated
And does not depend on another. (XV. I - 2)
Numerous modern interpreters, not distinguishing in this way
two separate meanings for svabhiiva, see such passages as
paradoxical,246 whereas for Dzong-ka-ba, again, paradox and
even misunderstanding are avoided by a careful delineation of
terminology .
Having identified the referent of the svabhiiva in the last
two lines of the above stanzas as the final nature of phenom-
ena, Dzong-ka-ba finds in Chandraltirti's [Autoleommentary
on the "Supplement. to (Nagiirjuna's) 'Treatise on the Middle
Way''' a definite statement that this final nature exists.
Chandraltirti says:247
Does a nature, as asserted by the master [Niigarjuna],
that is qualified in such a way [as described in
XV.2cd, which Chandrakirti has just cited] exist?
The "reality" (ehos nyid, dhannaUi) extensively set
forth by the Supramundane Victor - "Whether the
Tathiigatas appear or not, the reality of phenomena
just abides" - exists. Also, what is this "reality"? It
is the nature (rang bzhin, svabhiiva) of these eyes and
so forth. And, what is the nature of these? It is their
non-fabricatedness, that which does not depend on
another, their entity which is realized by knowledge
free from the dimness of ignorance. Does it exist or
not? If it did not exist, for what purpose would
Bodhisattvas cultivate the path of the perfections?
Other Issues of Difference 129
PATH STRUCTURE
A final point that warrants discussion is the tendency among
many modern interpreters to equate "ultimate truth" with
"ultimate state" and, as a consequence, for there to be no way
to incorporate into the Madhyamika system the path structure
descriptive of progress towards the attainment of Buddha-
hood. T.R. V. Murti equates realization of emptiness with
134 Anabosis
Buddhahood - he says, "Prajfia is Nirv~ - the state of
freedom. It is alSo the attainment of Buddhahood,,,264 and he
sets forth an interpretation that reawakens the sudden versus
gradual enlightenment controversy:265
The Madhyamika conception of Philosophy as
Prajfiiiparamitii (non-dual, contentless intuition) pre-
cludes }1rogress and surprise. Progress implies that
the goal is reached successively by a series of steps in
an order, and that it could be measured in quantita-
tive terms. Prajfiii is knowledge of the entire reality
once for all, and it does not depend on contingent
factors as a special faculty, favourable circumstances
or previous information. A progressive realisation of
the absolute is thus incompatible. . .. The concept
of progress is applicable to science, not to philosophy.
It is however, possible to conceive of the progressive
falling away of the hindrances that obstruct our
vision of the real. But there is neither order nor
addition in the content of our knowledge of the real.
Karl Potter cites this passage of Murti's and saYS:266
In this passage Murti seems to waver to a certain
extent. He says that prajflij is not reached by steps,
but adds that it is possible to see it as a progressive
series providing we do not draw the wrong inferences
from that way of looking at the matter. This wavering
is symptomatic of the issues which divide Nagiir-
juna's Miidhyamika descendants. It would seem that
what we may call the "pure" Madhyamika position
holds the no-progress interpretation, but there are
attempts to construe the gaining of insight, iUnya,
nirva1jil, freedom - for these are the same, according
to Niigiirjuna - as a progressive approximation, too.
Potter seems to be taking the position that Nagiirjuna's system
was one of "sudden enlightenment" and that the writings of
subsequent Madhyamika commentators who describe a more
Other Issues of Difference 135
gradual development have fallen from Nagftrjuna's initial
purity.
This is not Dzong-ka-ba's understanding. Dzong-ka-ba
never addresses the sudden vs. gradual controversy as such.
Even though the preponderance of modem scholarship con-
siders the famous Sam-yay debate (also called the Council of
Lhasa and the Council of Tibet by numerous scholars) to have
been primarily a debate about just that controversy, 267
Dzong-ka-ba (who mentions it frequently) refers to it only as
concerning how emptiness is to be meditated on - by a mere
stopping of conceptuality, which he rejects, or with analysis.
However, Dzong-ka-ba is very much in the gradualist camp in
as much as he sees the attainment of enlightenment as a
gradual process that involves the sequential eradication of
progressively more subtle levels of obstructions.
This is not to say that Dzong-ka-ba would describe a
"partial" realization of emptiness. When emptiness is realized,
it is realized fully, even by a conceptual consciousness; further,
it is said that at the time of direct realization of emptiness,
even though it is realized in tenns of a specific phenomenon,
that realization is a realization of the emptinesses of all
phenomena. Nonetheless, there are differences in the potency
of the wisdom consciousness realizing emptiness; with re-
peated familiarization, the wisdom consciousness becomes
stronger and able to eradicate more subtle afflictions, the
removal of which demarcate progress towards enlightenment.
Thus, the ultimate truth, emptiness, is not the ultimate state
but is the object which, through being taken to mind again
and again in combination with the practices of method, makes
possible the attainment of the ultimate state.
From Dzong-ka-ba's viewpoint, Nagiirjuna, too, pro-
pounded gradual progress towards enlightenment, as evi-
denced by his lengthy discussion in the Precious Garland of
the ten Bodhisattva grounds (sa, bhiimi), which dearly indicate
a progressive development culminating in the attainment of
Buddhahood, and by his dedication in the Sixty Stanzas of
Reasoning in which he speaks of beings accumulating the
136 Anarysis
collections of merit and wisdom so that they might attain the
Truth and Forni Bodies of a Buddha. 268
However, Nagarjuna does not layout the details, or the
mechanics, of this process. These the Ge-Iuk-ba tradition
finds elsewhere, the main siitra source being the Siitra on the
Ten Grounds (mdo sde sa bcu pa, dasabhiimikasiitra) and the
main astra, or treatise, sources being Chandraklrti's Supple-
ment to (Niigiirjuna's) "Treatise on the Middle Way" and auto-
commentary, Maitreya's Ornament for Clear Realization (mngon
rtogs rgyan, abhisamayiilarrzkiira) and Haribhadra's comment-
ary on it, as well as Asailga's Levels of Yogic Practice (rnal
'byor spyod pa'i sa, yogiiciiryabhiimi) and Compendium on the
Mahayiina (theg pa chen po bsdus pa, mahayiinasarrzgraha).
Dzong-ka-ba's writings on this topic are primarily found in
his Golden Rosary of Eloquence, his first major work, and in his
Illumination of the Tlwught, a commentary on Chandrakirti's
Supplement to (Niigiirjuna's) "Treatise on the Middle Way". The
Ge-Iuk-ba tradition has subsequently developed a genre of
separate works on path structure which are used as adjuncts to
the swdy of Maitreya's Ornament for Clear Realization. 269
1be understanding derived from later sources undoubtedly
colors Dzong-ka-ba's understanding of Nagarjuna. However,
in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary of Dzong-ka-
ba's understanding and given that Maitreya's Ornament for
Clear Realization is based on the Perfection of Wisdom Siitras
just as is Nagiirjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way, it is not
necessarily the case that it has caused Dzong-ka-ba to distort
Nagiirjuila's meaning.
A basic assumption Dzong-ka-ba makes about Nagiirjuna's
meaning that is at variance with the opinion of Mervyn
Sprung is that enlightenment is achieved by way of the
realization of emptiness. Sprung writes, "Nagarjuna's truth -
that the way of things is not given in terms of being or
nonbeing - can be realized only by an enlightened person.'>270
This is exactly opposite of Dzong-ka-ba's view and would
from his viewpoint make religious effort pointless. If only an
enlightened being could realize emptiness, there would be no
reason to make effort at realizing emptiness and no way for
Other Issues of Difference 137
the unenlightened to reach that state. Realization of emptiness
eradicates ignorance and its latencies; initial direct cognition
of emptiness is the boundary line between being an ordinary
being and being a Superior ('phags pa, iirya) and subsequent
enhancements of that realization with resultant eradication of
more and more subtle levels of ignorance are the demarcations
of progress on the Bodhisattva grounds. Liberation, enlight-
enment' is attained with the complete removal of ignorance.
Similarly, Sprung's description of a Bodhisattva as "an
enlightened being, transcendent and immanent,,,271 confuses
one who has achieved the result with one who is working to
achieve it. Only a Buddha is fully enlightened (Foe Destroyers
can be said to have achieved the enlightenment of their
respective vehicles but are notfully enlightened). Bodhisattvas
are those working to achieve enlightenment by way of the
Mahayana Vehicle. Becoming a Bodhisattva is not determined
by one's realization of emptiness, but rather by one's motiva-
tion, and one is said to become a Bodhisattva, and attain the
level of the Mahayana path of accumulation, at the time that
one initially develops non-artificial, or spontaneous, experience
of a mind that seeks unsurpassed enlightenment for the sake
of others. 272
Finally, related with the mixing of ultimate truth with
ultimate state, many authors equate the ultimate with the
"silence of the Aryas" spoken of in the writings of Nagarjuna
and Chandraklrti and then suggest that silence, a non-dual,
non-conceptual state, is the final goal of the Madhyamika. For
example G.c. Nayak says, "Candrakirti's answer is simply
meant to point out that silence is the highest end for a
philosophically enlightened person. ,,273 This suggests a quiet-
ism that Dzong-ka-ba would not accept. The goal of a
Mahayanist is Buddhahood, and such is said explicitly by
both Nagarjuna and Chandraklrti. A Buddha has no con-
ceptuality it is true, but the special feature of Buddhahood is
the ability simultaneously to perceive both emptinesses and
conventional phenomena. 274 Without ever rising from non-
dualistic meditative equipoise, a Buddha is able to teach living
beings in the manner most appropriate for each and thus is the
138 Ana{ysis
supreme source of help and happiness for others. The goal is
not mere silence, but rather a state of active participation in
which others can truly and effectively be helped.
CONCLUSION
These three chapters have demonstrated at considerable length
ways in which Dzong-ka-ba's Madhyamika interpretation
differs significantly from much that can be found in current
literature on the topic: For Dzong-ka-ba, Madhyamika is not
a refutation of merely other systems, of language, or of
reasoning, nor is it a refutation of all conventionalities or all
conceptuality; it is not a "systemless system" with no views or
theses of its own, but rather is a positive system directed
towards realization of the Madhyamika view by means of a
refutation of inherent existence, inherent existence being
defined as independence, or an existence of things in their
own right or from their own side. The Madhyamika view is
sought as an antidote to ignorance, the innate misconception
that is the root cause of all the sufferings of cyclic existence,
for through the removal of ignorance, a state of liberation can
be attained.
For the purposes of this discussion, attention has been
focused primarily on those points where Dzong-ka-ba's in-
terpretation differs significantly from current Madhyamika
interpretations, and it must be emphasized that there are also
many significant points of agreement between his and those
interpretations. However, the differences are substantial and
should not be minimized.
In some cases Dzong-ka-ba's interpretation may differ be-
cause he brings to it perspectives gained from topics of
Buddhist philosophy, such as epistemology and the structure
of the path, articulated subsequent to the time of Nag3rjuna.
However, Dzong-ka-ba was very aware of his sources; he
understood the need, if he was to succeed in his claim to be
giving an authentic Madhyamika interpretation, to base it on
Other Issues of Difference 139
authentic Madhyamika texts. Thus, he was careful to :support
each specific point of his Madhyamika interpretation with
citation of passages from the writings of Indian Madhyamikas
widely accepted to be valid proponents of the Madhyamika
tradition.
Dzong-ka-ba did not base his interpretation only on the
writings of Nagarjuna, but relied heavily on his later followers,
Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and, most of all, Chandrakirti.
Thus, those who think that a correct understanding of
Madhyamika must be sought solely from the writings of
Nagarjuna may not accept Dzong-ka-ba's basic approach.
However, such an attitude seems unnecessarily limited, first
because, to borrow a point from Alex Wayman,275 it must be
pointed out that Western interpreters who, in seeking to
understand Madhyamika, would disallow interpretations of
Nagarjuna by later'Madhyamika authors as being too late, too
far removed from the subject, too likely to introduce their
own opinions, and so forth, might just as well rule out
themselves as well, since they are even later. Of course, it is
important to distinguish between what was actually said by
Nagarjuna and what Th later commentary; nonetheless to
refuse the assistance of trained scholars close to Nagarjuna
and steeped in the same intellectual and cultural milieu seems
both arrogant and short-sighted, to say nothing of unlikely to
succeed. Furthermore, Madhyamika is not just Nagarjuna,
even though he was the founder of the system, but is the
tradition that evolved and matured based on his writings,
which includes the works of Aryadeva, Buddhapalita,
Bhavaviveka, Chandrakirti, Kamalashila, Shan~hita, and
others.
In any case, the majority of current scholarly opinion on
Madhyamika seems theoretically willing (past descriptions of
Madhyamika based only on Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle
Way and Refutation of Objections notwithstanding) to include
all the various writings of Nagarjuna as well as the writings of
later Madhyamikas in efforts to understand that system.
140 Anarysis
Thus, on the whole, Dzong-ka-ba was relying on much the
same sources as are modern scholars. That is to say, most of
the sources accepted by modern scholars (with the exception
of those texts that have survived only in Chinese) were known
and used by Dzong-ka-ba. However, the body of texts relied
on by Dzong-ka-ba goes far beyond that worked on by any
single contemporary scholar that I know of, simply because
there is so much ground that has not yet been coverer; in the
field of Buddhist Studies.
Dzong-ka-ba used all the works widely accepted as authen-
tically by Nagarjuna. He used Aryadeva's Four Hundred
and Buddhapalita's commentary on Nagarjuna's Treatise on
the Middle Way as well as Bhavaviveka's Lamp for (Niigiirjuna's)
"Wisdom" and his Blaze of Reasoning. He relied heavily on
Chandrakirti's Clear Words, his Supplement to (Niigiirjuna's)
"Treatise on the Middle Way", Chandrakirti's own commentary
to the Supplement, his Commentary on (Aryadeva's) "Four
Hundred", his Commentary on (Niigiirjuna's) "Sixty Stanzas of
Reasoning", and his Commentary on (Niigiirjuna's) "Seventy
StanzIIS on Emp~'.
Of those texts, the writings of Niigirjuna have received
considerable attention from Western scholars, and a significant
advance in availability is represented by Christian Lindtner's
recently published Niigiirjuniana, which brings together in
one volume all those texts he considers to be authentically
composed by Nagarjuna - except for Nagarjuna's Treatise
and his Precious Garland - with edited texts in Tibetan as
well as Sanskrit where available and including English transla-
tions of those works previously not translated into a major
European language. The Precious Garland is available in
English translation by Jeffrey Hopkins and Lati Rinbochay.
However, there is not yet a reliable English translation of
Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way in spite of several
attempts. 276
As far as the writings of Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and
Bhavaviveka are concerned, an English translation of
Aryadeva's Four Hundred by Karen Lang is just now becom-
ing available. 277 As Christian Lindtner says of Buddhapalita's
Other Issues of Difference 141
and Bhavaviveka's commentaries on Nagarjuna's Treatise,
these works "have not yet received the general recognition to
which their merits entitle them," and thus far, only two out of
twenty-seven chapters of Buddhapalita's commentary have
been published in English translation 278 and none of Bhava-
viveka's, although three chapters (18, 24, and 25) are available
in David Eckel's as yet unpublished doctoral dissertation, "A
Question of Nihilism: Bhavaviveka's Response to the Funda-
mental Problems of Madhyamika Philosophy". Of the por-
tions that pertain to Madhyamika, all that has been published
in English of Bhavaviveka's Blaze of Reasoning and the Heart
of the M iddle Way, on which it is a commentary, is a substan-
tial portion of chapter three, translated by Shotaro Iida in his
Reason and Emptiness. 279
Concerning Chandrakirti's writings, except for the Clear
Words, none of these has received thorough attention in the
West, although in the case of the Supplement and its auto-
commentary, the work of young scholars such as Peter Fenner
and C.W. Huntington, Jr. begins to remedy that situation.
Even the Clear Words, which is one of the Midhyamika texts
most studied by modern scholars, is not available in a complete
one volume translation, but rather one must seek chapters
from here and there in various European languages, and the
same is true for Chandrakirti's Supplement and its auto-
commentary.280 Of the others, there are as yet no published
European language translations.
Thus, Dzong-ka-ba was working from a wider body of texts
than are modern interpreters, but most would consider them
all valid sources. This is not to suggest that upon studying
those sources everyone would - or should - draw the same
conclusions as did Dzong-ka-ba. However, access to them
would enrich our understanding as we saw the sources that
Dzong-ka-ba has chosen to emphasize. Given that Dzong-ka-
ba was a rigorously trained scholar who devoted his life to the
study of these topics, it is evident that his interpretation must
be considered as we seek to penetrate the meaning of the
Madhyamika teachings. Further, given the many differences
even among Madhyamika interpretations current in Buddhist
142 Ana{ysis
scholarship as well as the differences from the interpretation
of a great Tibetan Madhyarnika whose works cannot be
discounted by responsible scholars, it is clear that the topic of
Madhyarnika studies has not yet been closed. Our present
understanding of that system is not definitive.
A basic need is more translations into Western languages of
the Madhyarnika texts we are seeking to understand. F~r, the
system will'not be truly and widely understood until more
reliable translations of the Madhyarnika texts are available. An
ongoing debate between members of the scholarly community
working in areas touched on by this discussion is whether the
best mode of procedure is careful, philological translation,
neutral in tone and aimed at presenting as clearly as possible
the thought of the original author, or whether what is needed
are interpretive and judgmental studies providing access to
these ideas through vocabularies familiar to the West, often
through comparisons with Western thinkers or through the
application of methods such as linguistic analysis, and so
forth. I would argue that the latter, though worthwhile, can
only be successful when based upon a more extensive body of
material than currently exists, made available by the former
approach, for otherwise such attempts are much too likely to
be compromised by inaccurate or incomplete understanding
of the primary source materials.
7 Summation: Emptiness and Ethics
143
144 Anarysis
being who then showed his path to others. Further, each of
Dzong-ka-ba~ major points of interpretation are supported
from the basic texts of the Buddhist tradition, either of
Buddha himself or the great Indian commentators.
However, the tradition also places strong emphasis on
analysis and reasoning, and thus there is a great deal of leeway
for individual interpretation, refinement, and so forth.
Further, that Dzong-ka-ba's system is rationally ordered
does not mean that all aspects of it are readily graspable by
ordinary analysis and conceptuality. The heart of the system
lies in non-verbal, non-dualistic meditative experiences. The
religious system is structured around these experiences, and
is, in fact, justified and validated by them; although that
structuring is rational and logical, the basic thrust of the
system is that at some point ordinary conceptuality must be
transcended and a new level of experience achieved. How this
is to be achieved is a major theme in Dzong-ka-ba's writings,
since it is his assertion that a careful and correct use of
reasoning and conceptuality can lead directly to non-
conceptual realization. Still, it must be kept in mind that
Dzong-ka-ba's is a system based upon and only fully realized
by non<onceptual experiences gained only through prolonged
religious practice and meditation.
Thus, Dzong-ka-ba was not writing abstract philosophy,
but rather was seeking to provide a correct verbal under-
standing that could serve as a basis for further thought and
meditation, as a result of which its truth could and presumably
would be ascertained in profound meditative experience. His
text is often personal in tone with frequent bits of direct
advice, and he emphasizes again and again how very difficult
it is to gain a correct understanding of the middle way. In
spite of a great deal of abstraction and technical detail, he was
not writing out of mere love for scholarly quibble but was
setting forth an interpretation he hoped would be taken to
heart and put into practice.
An important aspect that must be considered is the figure of
Dzong-ka-ba himself. As quickly becomes apparent from
Summation: Emptiness and Ethics 145
reading the biographies relied on by the Ge-luk-ba tradition,281
Dzong-ka-ba was more than a scholar. Although he studied
throughout his life, training under numerous great teachers
from all the different Tibetan orders that flourished during his
lifetime, he was, above all, a religious practitioner. He was
initiated into tantric teachings from a very young age, and
maintained their practice throughout his life; he spent years in
meditative retreats and engaged as well in many other religious
techniques directed towards purification and the accumula-
tion of merit, such as prostrations, circumambulation of holy
places and shrines, ritual offerings, and so forth.
Many of the fine distinctions that characterize Dzong-ka-
ba's Madhyamika interpretation have to do with differences
between varying levels of experience: for instance, the fact
that in our ordinary state we cannot distinguish between mere
existence and inherent existence; the fact that at a time of
direct realization of emptiness, all conventional phenomena
vanish, such that one might erroneously come to think that
they did not exist at all; the fact that subsequent to realization
of emptiness, a difference between existence and inherent
existence can be known and one realizes conventional
phenomena as like illusions, appearing to inherently exist
whereas they do not in fact; and so forth. Dzong-ka-ba
describes these different levels, setting forth verbal distinc-
tions such as between existence and inherent existence, be-
tween not being seen by a consciousness and being seen to be
non-existent by a consciousness. These cannot now be verified
in experience, in that they are things whose final verification
comes only upon the attainment of advanced levels of realiza-
tion. Never directly said, but implicit, is the suggestion that
Dzong-ka-ba had verified them for himself.
There is a considerable supramundane aspect to the figure
of Dzong-ka-ba. The traditional biographies report that an
important aid to Dzong-ka-ba's development of the insights
that led to his Madhyamika interpretation were meetings with
Maiijushri, the incarnation of wisdom, that took place initially
with a yogi, the Lama U-ma-ba, serving as an intermediary,
146 Analysis
and later in direct conversation. 282 It was Maiijushri who
originally told'him that what Dzong-ka-ba thought was the
Madhyamika view was no view at all - that is, who told him
that he was holding just that sort of misunderstanding that
Dzong-ka-ba expended so much effort in the portion of the
''Great Exposition" translated here to refute. It was also
Maiijushri who told him to value conventionalities, thus
leading to Dzong-ka-ba's emphasis on valid establishment
which relies so much on the epistemological system of Dignaga
and Dharmakirti.
Dzong-ka-ba was considered by his contemporaries to have
attained very high levels of spiritual realization and his reputa-
tion has only increased with the passage of centuries. How-
ever, a point worth making is that even though Dzong-ka-ba
is accorded tremendous personal reverence by the tradition he
founded, and to a certain extent has been "deified", sometimes
called "the second Buddha" and often described as an incar-
nation of Maiijushri, the embodiment of wisdom, this does
not mean that his writings are accepted completely uncritically,
any more than he accepted uncritically the Indian sources
from which he worked,
The educational system in the Ge-luk-ba monasteries is
based on critical analysis as embodied in a structure of formal
debate. Monks debate each other for hours every day, taking
all sides of all issues, so that at times they are vigorously
defending Dzong-ka-ba's positions but at others are just as
vigorously attacking them, In no way is Dzong-ka-ba's in-
terpretation unquestionable just because he said it. To be
accepted, his points must be able to withstand probing and
penetrating attack. As a result of such analysis, there has
developed a large body of commentarial literature that criti-
cizes, defends, explains, and elaborates on the interpretations
set forth by Dzong-ka-ba, portions of which form the basic
textbooks of the Ge-Iuk-ba monastic universities.
Dzong-ka-ba's interpretive grid, his hermeneutic of con-
sistency and coherence, is not without its price. Much of the
shock value of the original Madhyamika writings is lost.
Summation: Emptiness and Ethics 147
There is not the spontaneity found in other Madhyamika
interpretations that focus on the transcendent quality of real-
ization of emptiness, the sense of simply shifting perspective
and turning away from mundane descriptions.
Even more serious than mere loss of spontaneity is the
danger that, because Dzong-ka-ba chose to emphasize a verbal
distinction between existence and inherent existence which
cannot be realized in ordinary experience, people will miss the
Madhyamika message altogether. They will not understand
that Madhyamika is attacking and refuting our very sense of
existence and, misled by the verbal emphasis on inherent
existence, will see Madhyamika as refuting something merely
intellectual, "out there", not immediate. In spite of cautions
from within the Ge-Iuk.-ba tradition that inherent existence
should not be seen as like a hat to be put on the head and then
taken off again, it is almost impossible to read Dzong-ka-ba
without falling into such error, and Dzong-ka-ba has been
criticized on this point even from within the Ge-Iuk.-ba
tradition. 283
Also, there is a question of emphasis, of whether Dzong-ka-
ba truly reflected the intentions of the Indian Madhyamika
authors. His gridwork of system and consistency assumes
similar intentions for those authors, even if they did not make
such clear in their writings. In the absence of detailed and
clear expositions, Dzong-ka-ba felt justified in basing key
points of his interpretation on small and often passing com-
ments, and at times the evidence is slim. 284 Because the
Indian Madhyamikas did not write detailed systematic exegesis
of the sort that Dzong-ka-ba's interpretation assumes they
would have accepted, we have no way to know if he is right or
wrong in his assumption, if he drew out what was in their
minds or if he has simply added his own ideas. On the one
hand, it is certainly true that most writing is not done in the
encyclopaedic fashion of setting down on paper all that one
knows, thinks, and assumes; people tend to write thematically,
addressing a particular question or argument, and much
about an author's basic assumptions must be inferred from
148 Ana{ysis
passing comments, argumentative structure, what is not said,
and so forth. On the other hand, the Indian Madhyamikas
were brief, often cryptic, and maybe chose to write that way
in a conscious rejection of excess systematization. It can be
argued either way.
What is gained through Dzong-ka-ba's approach is an
ability to posit validly established conventional truths. This
then allows for an integrated system in which the earlier
teachings and practices are supported and validated by the
higher and, above all, one in which ethical norms are justified
and maintained. It is essential for the system to preserve
ethics, a valuing of correct actions based upon the Buddhist
doctrine of kanna, that virtuous actions lead to good results
and non-virtuous ones to bad results. Ethics are the basis of
the religious system as a whole; even more are they the
religious basis of an individual, for one's deeds determine
one's future experiences, and it is taught that a loss of belief in
kanna will lead to unethical actions which will bring about
great personal suffering in the future. All Buddhist practices
can be included within the threefold trainings (bslab pa gsum,
~) - the training in higher ethics, higher meditative
stabilization, and higher wisdom - and the latter two can only
be developed upon a foundation of the former. Dzong-ka-ba
says: 285
As causes for gaining the view, you should take as a
basis the pure maintenance of the ethics you have
promised [to maintain], and thereupon strive by way
of many approaches to accumulate the collections
and purify obstructions and, relying on the wise,
make effort at hearing and thinking.
The emphasis within the training in wisdom is on philsophical
understanding that not only leads to release from cyclic exist-
ence, but also sustains and validates the training in ethics.
Expressing concern about the difficulty of this, Dzong-ka-ba
says: 286
Summation: Emptiness and Ethics 149
Thus, in the system of the masters Buddhapalita and
Chandrakirti, inherent existence, that is, establish-
ment by way of the object's own entity, is refuted
even conventionally. Hence it appears to be very
difficult to posit conventional objects. If one does
not know how to posit these well, without damage
[by reasoning], one does not gain ascertainment well
with respect to the class of deeds whereby it appears
that most fall to a view of deprecation.
To avoid the nihilism to which emptiness misunderstood
easily leads, Dzong-ka-ba is cautious in teaching emptiness
and in his interpretation always emphasizes the valid estab-
lishment of conventionalities. The special insight section of
Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition comes only after 364 folios
describing essential Buddhist practices. Similarly, in the Ge-
luk-ba monastic universities, Madhyamika is begun only after
years of study built on a foundation of what are called "The
Collected Topics of Valid Cognition" (bsdus grwa), in which
all the different types and categories of phenomena are ana-
lyzed and learned, and also only after study of path structure.
This suggests the importance of being strongly based in what
does exist before one commences the Madhyamika negations
that seek to eradicate adherence to a seeming concreteness of
phenomena that does not exist, so that subsequent to what
may in experience seem a total denial of everything, there is
something to be left as an illusion-like but validly established
appearance.
Dzong-ka-ba says again and again that a compatibility of
emptiness and conventional presentations is the uncommon
characteristic of Madhyamika: 287
Hence, the allowability of asserting all the presenta-
tions of cyclic existence and nirv3.Qa - objects pro-
duced, producers, refutation, proof, and so forth -
within the non-existence of even a particle of inher-
ent existence, that is to say, establishment by way of
150 Ana{ysis
[object's] own entities, is a distinguishing feature of
Madhyamika.
He also says that as long as realization of emptiness and
realization of the ineluctable relationship between actions and
their effects are not realized in such a way that the realization
of the one assists and enhances the realization of the other, one
has not yet realized the thought of the Buddha: 288
As long as the two, realization of appearances - the
inevitability of dependent-arising -
And realization of emptiness - the non-assertion [of
inherent existence] -
Seem to be separate, there is still no realization
Of the thought of Shiikyamuni Buddha.
The two realizations must be seen not only to work together,
but to facilitate and enhance each other, and it is said that if it
is not possible to realize both, then it is better to give up
emptiness than to give up belief in karma, the cause and effect
of actions. The present Dalai Lama has said: 289
Knowledge of the final mode of subsistence of
phenomena must be within the context of not losing
the cause and effect of actions conventionally; if in
an attempt to understand the final mode of subsist-
ence one lost the presentation of conventionally
existent cause and effect, the purpose would be
defeated. . .. It is so important to be able to posit
and have conviction in cause and effect that it is said
that between giving up belief in the cause and effect
of actions and giving up belief in emptiness, it is
better to give up the doctrine of emptiness.
Dzong-ka-ba would certainly agree. However, the purpose of
Dzong-ka-ba's lengthy identification of the object of negation
in the "Great Exposition of Special Insight" is to show that if
the Madhyamika system is correctly understood, there is no
need to make that choice.
Part Two
Translation of a Portion of
Dzong-ka-ba's
Great Exposition of
the Stages of the Path
153
154 Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition
Although worldly persons cultivate meditative
stabiliZation,
They do not destroy the discrimination of self.
For them the afflictions return and disturb [the
mind],
Just as Udraka 294 cultivated meditative stabiliza-
tion here.
[In the scripture cited above] the phrase, "although [worldly
persons] cultivate meditative stabilization" means "although
[persons] cultivate a meditative stabilization possessing the
features of non-conceptuality, clarity, and so forth as explained
before". The phrase, "They do not destroy the discrimination
of self," means that although they cultivate such, they cannot
abandon the conception of self. The fact that the afflictions
will still be generated due to not having abandoned the
conception of self is indicated by "the afflictions return and
disturb [the mind]".
Through what sort of cultivation is liberation attained?
Immediately following [the above passage], the scripture, as
was cited earlier,295 says:
If selflessness is analyzed with respect to phenomena
[And if one meditates in accordance with that indivi-
dual analysis,
This is the cause of the fruit, the attainment of
nirvID)a.
There is no peace through any other cause]. (IX.37)
[The first line means], "If, having analyzed individually
phenomena which are selfless, one generates the wisdom
understanding the meaning of selflessness ... ". [The second
line,] "If one meditates [in accordance with] that individual
analysis," refers to sustaining and meditatively cultivating the
view of selflessness that has been gained. [The third line,]
"That is the cause of the fruit, the attainment of nirvID)a"
means that such is the cause of attaining the fruit which is
nirvID)a, or liberation.
Introduction 155
Can liberation be attained through cultivating some other
path without that [wisdom realizing selflessnessf96 in the way
in which it is attained through cultivating it? [The fourth line
of the above scripture] says, "There is no peace through any
other cause", meaning that although one cultivates a path
which is other than that [of the wisdom of selflessness], [366a]
without that [wisdom] there is no pacification of suffering and
the afflictions. This scripture teaching very clearly that only
the wisdom of selflessness severs the root of mundane exist-
ence was quoted in Kamalashila's Miidhyamika Stages of
M edilalion 297 in order to damage [the assertions of the Chinese
abbot] Hva-shang. Therefore, you need to gain ascertainment
with respect to this, for although even the Forder sages have
many good qualities such as meditative stabilization, the
clairvoyances, and so forth, since they do not have the view of
selflessness, they cannot cross beyond cyclic existence even a
little. In this way, the Scriptural Collection of Bodhisattvas
(byang chub sems dpa'i sde mod, bodhisattvaP4aka), which was
cited earlier, says that: 298
One who, without knowing the meaning of suchness
explained in the scriptures, is satisfied with mere
meditative stabilization might develop manifest
pride299 [mistaking] that for the path cultivating the
profound meaning. Through that, such a person is
not released from cyclic existence. I, thinking that,
said that one who hears another will be released from
aging and death.
The Teacher himself explains clearly [i.e., interprets] his own
thought [when he earlier made the statement that one who
hears another will be released from aging and death. Buddha
explains that] "hear another" means to hear the explanation of
selflessness from another. Therefore, it is unquestionable that
Buddha said, "hears another," in order to stop the conception
that [the profound view] is generated naturally without the
hearing and thinking involved in listening to the meaning of
selflessness from an external holy spiritual guide.
156 Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition
In general, pf all the Conqueror's scriptures, some teach
suchness directly and even those that do not directly teach it
indirectly only flow to and descend to it. [366b] Since the
darkness of obscuration is not overcome until the illumination
of the knowledge of suchness arises, but is overcome when
that arises, through mere calm abiding which is a one-pointed-
ness of mind there is no pure exalted wisdom and the darkness
of obscuration is also not overcome. Therefore, you should
unquestionably seek wisdom, thinking, "I will seek the
wisdom ascertaining the meaning of selflessness - suchness."
KamalashIla's middle Stages of Meditation says:300
Then, having achieved calm abiding you should
cultivate special insight, and should think, "All the
sayings of the Supramundane Victor were spoken
well; they all manifestly illuminate suchness directly
or indirectly and flow to suchness. If one knows
suchness, one will be separated from all nets of
views, just as darkness is cleared away through the
arising of illumination. Through mere calm abiding
there is no pure exalted wisdom, and also the dark-
ness of the obstructions is not cleared away. How-
ever, if, with wisdom, one meditates on suchness
well, there will be very pure exalted wisdom and
suchness will be realized. Only through wisdom are
the obstructions thoroughly abandoned. Therefore,
I, abiding in calm abiding, will, by means of wisdom,
thoroughly seek suchness. I will not be satisfied with
mere calm abiding." What is this suchness? Ulti-
mately all things are just empty of the two selves -
of persons and phenomena.
From among the perfections, suchness is realized by the
perfection of wisdom. Since it cannot be generated by con-
centration and so forth [367a], you should, without mistaking
mere concentration for the perfection of wisdom, generate
wisdom. The Sutra Unravelling the Thought (mdo sde dgongs
,grel, sarrulhinirmocana)30 1 says:
Introduction 157
"Supramundane Victor, through what perfection
should a Bodhisattva apprehend just the non-entity-
ness of phenomena?"
"Avalokiteshvara, it should be apprehended
through the perfection of wisdom."
Thinking this, the Siitra of Cultivating Faith in the Mahiiyana
(theg pa chen po la dad pa sgom pa'i rruio, mahiiyanaprasiidapra-
bhiivana), quoted earlier, says that: 302
If they do not abide in wisdom, I do not say that
those who have faith in the Bodhisattva Mahayana
are delivered, no matter how much they engage in
the Mahayana.
I The Interpretable and the
Definitive
Since this is so, [that is, since it is the case that mere cahn
abiding is not sufficient and special insight is needed], with
respect to the second,303 how to train in special insight, there
are four parts: fulfilling the prerequisites for special insight,
the divisions of special insight, how to cultivate special insight
in meditation, and the measure of having achieved special
insight through meditative cultivation.
168
The Stages of Entry Into Suchness 169
necessary to refute that self. Gaining ascertairunent in de-
pendence on scriptures and reasonings which damage the
existence and prove the non-existence of that self is the
indispertsable method for one who is intent upon liberation.
Having gained the view ascertaining in this way that the self
and mine do not in the least have inherent existence, [372a]
through familiarizing with that meaning the Truth Body will
be attained.
ChandrakIrti's Clear Words saYS:322
If all these afflictions, actions, bodies, agents, and
effects are not [their own] suchness but nonetheless
- like a city of scent-eaters (dri za, gandharva) and
so forth - while not being [their own] suchness
appear to childish [common persons] in the aspect of
[being their own] suchness, then what is here such-
ness and how does one enter to that suchness?
Answer: Here suchness is the extinguishment in all
forms of the apprehension of [inherently existent] I
and the apprehension of [inherently existent] mine
with respect to the internal and external on account
of the non-apprehension of internal and external
things. With respect to entry into suchness, [my
own] Supplement to (Ndgdrjuna's) "Treatise on the
Middle Way" (VI.I2o) says:
Yogis see with their minds that all afflictions
And faults arise from the view of the transitory
And having realized that the self is the object of
That [view], refute self. (VI.120)
Thus, [a description of how to enter suchness] should
be sought from such statements there.
[ChandrakIrti's Clear Words] also saYS:323
Yogis who wish to enter into suchness and wish
thoroughly to abandon all afflictions and faults in-
vestigate, "What does this cyclic existence have as its
170 Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition
root?" When they thoroughly investigate in this
manner, they see that cyclic existence has as its root
the view of the transitory collection, and they see
that the self is the object of observation of that view
of the transitory collection. They see that the view of
the transitory is abandoned through non-observation
of self and that [372b] through abandoning that
[view], all afflictions and faults are overcome. Hence,
at the very beginning they investigate with respect to
just the self - "What is this 'self', the object of the
conception of self?"
Although many reasonings refuting inherent existence were set
forth with respect to immeasurable individual subjects, when
yogis [initially] engage [in practice], they meditate in an
abridged way within settling the lack of inherent existence in
tenns of I and mine. The master Buddhapalita says that this is
the meaning of the eighteenth chapter of Nagarjuna's Treatise
on the Middle Way, and in dependence on his statement, the
master Chandrakirti presents [the stages of entry into suchness
thus in his Supplement to (Ndgdr'juna's) "Treatise on the Middle
W~']; the teachings on the selflessness of the person in
Chandrakirti's Supplement to (NdgQrjuna's) "Treatise on the
M iddle Way" also are extensive explanations of just the eight-
eenth chapter [of Nagarjuna's Treatise].
Qualm: Is this not [an occasion of] teaching the mode of
entry into the suchness of the Mahayana? In that case, the mere
extinguishment of the conception of [inherently existent] I and
mine is unsuitable to be the su,:mess that is to be aruU'led. 324
Also, since within the mere settling of the absence of inherent
exi~.tence of I and mine, there is no settling of the selflessness of
phenomena, it is not suitable to posit [just the fonner] as the
path for entering into suchness.
Response: There is no fault. For, with respect to the extin-
guishment, in all ways, of the conception of I and mine, there
are two types of which [the first,] the utter abandonment of the
afH.ictions in the manner of their not being produced again,
does indeed exist among Hinayanists; however, [the second,]
The Stages of Entry Into Suchness 171
the abandonment by way of utter non-apprehension of all signs
which are elaborations [even of the appearance of inherent
existence] with respect to external and internal phenomena, is
the Truth Body. Furthermore, when you realize that the self
does not exist inherently, [373a] the conception also that the
aggregates which are the branches of that [self] exist inherently
is overcome. It is like the way in which when a chariot is
burned, the wheels and so forth which are its parts are also
burned. 325 Chandraldrti's Clear Words saYS:326
Those wishing liberation analyze whether [the self]
which is imputed dependently, which serves as a
basis for the strong adherence to self by those pos-
sessing the error of ignorance, and of which the five
aggregates are seen to be the appropriated, has the
character of the aggregates or does not have the
character of the aggregates. When it is analyzed in
all ways, those wishing liberation do not observe [a
self having the character of the aggregates] and
therefore, in those [aggregates, as Nagarjuna's Treat-
ise (XVIII.2ab) says:]
If the self itself does not exist
How could the mine exist?
Because the self is not observed, also the mine,327
the basis of designation as the self, will very much
not be observed. When a chariot is burned, its parts
also are burned and thus are not observed; similarly,
when yogis realize the self as not [inherently] exist-
ent, they will realize the selflessness also of the mine,
the things that are the aggregates.
181
182 Dzang-ka-ba's Great Exposition
excellent Truth Body and the excellent Form Body, depends
upon accumulating on the occasion of the path, as explained
earlier [in the discussion of Bodhisattvas' training, not inclu-
ded in this translation], the immeasurable collections of merit
and exalted wisdom, that is, on inseparable method and
wisdom. This, in turn, definitely relies upon attaining ascer-
tainment with respect to the varieties, an ascertainment indu-
ced from the depths with respect to the relationship of cause
and effect, [an understanding] that such and such beneficial
and harmful effects arise from such and such causes, these
being conventional causes and effects. [377a] It also definitely
relies on attaining ascertainment with respect to the mode [of
existence], an ascertainment gained from the depths that all
phenomena are without even a particle of inherent existence,
that is to say, establishment by way of their own entities. For,
without both of these, a training from the depths of the heart
in the complete factors of the path of both method and
wisdom will not occur.
Not mistaking the essentials of the path causing attainment
of the two bodies in that way at the time of the effect depends
upon settling the view of the bases; the mode of settling the
view upon which this depends is the gaining of ascertainment
with respect to the two truths as has just been explained. With
respect to this, except for Madhyamikas, other persons do not
know how to explain these [two truths as interpreted by
Madhyamikas] as non-contradictory, seeing them as only a
collection of contradictions. However, those skillful persons
possessing subtle, wise, and very vast intelligence, called
"Madhyamikas", through skill in the techniques for realizing
the two truths, have settled [them] as without even a scent of
contradiction, [thereby] finding the finality of the Conqueror's
thought. In dependence on that, they generate wonderful and
very great respect for our teacher and his teaching and with
pure speech and words induced by that respect proclaim again
and again with great voice, "Knowledgeable Ones, the mean-
ing of emptiness, that is to say, the emptiness of inherent
existence, is the meaning of dependent-arising; it does not
The Uncommon Feature of Madhyamika 183
mean the non-existence of things, that is to say, an emptiness
of capacity to perfonn functions."346
Scholars of our own [i.e., Buddhist] schools, Proponents of
True Existence, even though they have great training in many
topics of learning, [377b] do not accept this Madhyamika
view, and their dispute with the Madhyamikas is just this
thought: "If all phenomena are empty, without any inherent
existence, that is to say, establishment by way of their own
entities, then there is no way to posit all the presentations of
cyclic existence and nirvfu).a - bondage, release, and so
forth." For, Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way (XXIV. I),
[citing an objection by the Proponents of True Existence],
says: 347
If all these are empty,
There would be no arising and no disintegration;
It would follow that for you [Madhyamikas]
The four noble truths would not exist.
Thus they say that if [phenomena] are empty of inherent
existence, then production, disintegration, and the four truths
would not be feasible. Also Nagarjuna's Refutation of Objec-
tions (rtsod bzlog, vigrahavyavartani, stanza I) [sets forth an
objection by the Proponents of True Existence]:348
If an inherent existence of all things
Does not exist in anything,
Then your words also are without inherent existence
And cannot refute inherent existence.
Saying that if words are without inherent existence, then they
cannot refute inherent existence nor prove a lack of inherent
existence, [the Proponents of True Existence] debate [with
the Madhyamikas] within the thought that if there is no
inherent existence, then objects produced, producers, as well
as activities of refutation and proof would not be feasible.
With this [mode of debate], they debate within understanding
that the reasonings refuting inherent existence refute all
activities.
184 Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition
Therefore, when Proponents of True Existence and Miidh-
yamikas debate with respect to their uncommon tenets, they
debate only about the suitability or unsuitability of positing all
the presentations of cyclic existence and nirviiI}.a within an
emptiness of inherent existence. Hence, the allowability of
asserting all the presentations of cyclic existence and nirviiI}.a
- objects produced, producers, refutation, proof, and so
forth - within the non-existence of even a particle of inherent
existence, that is to say, establishment by way of [objects']
own entities, is a distinguishing feature of Miidhyamika. The
twenty-fourth chapter of Niigiirjuna's Treatise on the Middle
Way (XXIV.13-14) says:349 [378a]
The consequence [expressing] the fallacy [that ac-
tions, agents, and so forth are unpositable]
Is not correct with respect to [the Miidhyamika]
emptiness;
Thus, your abandonment of emptiness
Is not correct with respect to me.
In that [system] in which emptiness is
Suitable, all is suitable;
In that [system] in which emptiness is not
Suitable, all is not suitable.
[Nagiirjuna] says that not only does the fallacy [expressed
above by the Proponents of True Existence, XXIV. I], "If all
these are empty, [there would be no arising and no disintegra-
tion] ... " and so forth, not arise for those who propound an
absence of inherent existence, but also production, disintegra-
tion, and so forth are suitable within a position of emptiness of
inherent existence, whereas they are not suitable within a
position of non-emptiness of inherent existence. Thus,
Chandrakirti's Clear Words [making the transition between
XXIV.I3 and 14] also saYS:350
188
Dependent-Arising and Emptiness 189
which arise dependently are sufferings, not those
which do not arise dependently. Since those [which
arise dependently] are without inherent existence,
they are empty.
When suffering exists, the sources of suffering,
the cessation of suffering, and the paths progressing
to the cessation of suffering are suitable. Therefore,
thorough knowledge of suffering, abandonment of
sources, actualization of cessation, [380a] and culti-
vation of paths are also suitable. When thorough
knowledge and so forth of the truths, suffering and
so forth, exist, the fruits are suitable. When the
fruits exist, abiders in those fruits are suitable; when
abiders in the fruits exist, approachers to [those
fruits] are suitable. When approachers to and abiders
in the fruits exist, the spiritual community is suit-
able.
When the noble truths exist, the excellent doc-
trine is also suitable, and when the excellent doctrine
and spiritual community exist, then Buddhas are
also suitable. Therefore, the Three Jewels are also
suitable.
All special realizations of all mundane and supra-
mundane topics (dngos po, padartha) are also suitable
as well as the proper and improper, the effects of
those,361 and all worldly conventions. Therefore, in
that way, [Nagarjuna says, XXIV.Ib], "For that
[system] in which emptiness is suitable, all is suit-
able."362 For that [system] in which emptiness is not
suitable, dependent-arising would not exist, whereby
all is unsuitable.
219
220 Four Interwoven Annotations
Ba-so but one of his later incarnations. Written confirmation
of their opinion is supplied by A-gya-yong-dzin (dbyangs can
dga' ba'i blo gros, a kyayongs 'dzin, eighteenth century), who
says that the author of the first set of annotations was the fifth
incarnation of Ba-so Cho-gyi-gyel-tsen, named Ba-so Hla-
wang-chO-gyi-gyel-tsen (ba so lha dbang clws kyi rgyal mtshan).
Further support for this identification is found in a record of
teachings received (gsan yik) by A-ku-ching Shay-rap-gya-tso
(a khu ching shes rab rgya mtslw, 1803- 1875) who refers in his
description of the transmission of the lineage of the annota-
tions to Ba-so Hla-wang-cho-gyi-gyel-tsen.
A final bit of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the
fonner Ba-so was not the author is the fact that none of three
lists of his works - one in the Yellow Cat's Eye Gem (vaidurya
ser po), a history of the Ge-Iuk-ba monasteries in Tibet by
Sang-gyay-gya-tso (sangs 'ID'as 'ID'a mtslw, 1653- 1705), another
in the Biographies of Eminent Gurus in the Transmission Lin-
eages of the Teachings of the Graduated Path by Ye-shay-gyel-
tsen (ye shes rgyal mtshan, 1713-93), and a third in Long-dpl
La-rna's (klong rdol bla rna, 1719- 1794) Catalogue of the
Collected Works of Certain Principal Ga-dam-ba and Ge-luk-ba
Lamas - mentions a commentary on the Great Exposition.
The Ba-so Annotations are a sufficiently well-known work that
had he been the author, it would probably have been included
in a list of his writings. 418
However, taking the fifth incarnation of Ba-so Cho-gyi-
gyel-tsen as the author is also problematic since Sang-gyay- gya-
tso says in the Yellow Cat's Eye Gem that the fourth incarna-
tion was reputed to be alive at the time of his writing the text
- in 1693. This would place the fifth Ba-so in the eighteenth
century, making this set of annotations later than the second
set and probably even the third, those of Jam-yang-shay-ba;
this seems unlikely since they are widely reno'Nned as the first
set of annotations and since, as described below, Ba-so's
annotations are included in a lineage of oral transmission of
teachings that commences in the sixteenth century. Thus, the
authorship and dating of the first set of annotations remains an
open question.
Translator's Introduction 221
About Nga-wang-rap-den, identified in the Delhi edition as
the second annotator, almost no information is available. The
preface to the Delhi edition reports that he wrote down the
explanation by his teacher, Jam-yang Gon-chok-cho-pel ('jam
dbyangs dkon mchog chos 'phel), of an oral tradition descended
from Dak-Iung-drak-ba (stag lung brag pa). Jam-yang Gon-
chok-cho-pel was the thirty-fifth holder of the throne of Gan-
den; a very famous teacher of his time, he lived from
1573- 1646 and transmitted the lineage of the Great Exposition
of the Stages of the Path to the fifth Dalai Lama. Dak-Iung-
drak-ba himself was the thirtieth holder of the throne of Gan-
den and lived from 1546- 1618. Although known as Dak-
lung-drak-ba, the name of a place in Western Tibet, his given
name was Lo-dro-gya-tso (blo gros rgya mtsho). He was a monk
of the Jang-dzay (byang rtse) College of Gan-den Monastery
who did a great deal to further that College and one of the
main details mentioned about him in the Yellow Cars Eye
Gem is that he was someone who held the lineages of Dzong-
ka-ba's Great and Small Expositions of the Stages of the Path.
The Berkeley edition of the Annotations identifies Dak-
lung-drak-ba Lo-drO-gya-tso as the second annotator; how-
ever, this is probably a loose identification, referring to the
tradition of the annotations rather than the actual person who
wrote them down since other sources support the Delhi text
identification. A-ku-ching says that Nga-wang-rap-den wrote
down explanations by GOn-chok-cho-pel of the oral lineages of
Gung-ru-cho-jung (gung ru chos 'byung) and Dag-Iung-drak-
ba. A-gya-yong-dzin says that what is known as the anno-
tations of Dak-Iung-drak-ba is a lineage descended from his
teaching, set down at a later time by either Yar-lung-chO-dzay
Losang-den-dzin (yar klung chos mdzad blo bzang bstan 'dzin)
or Ka-rok Nga-wang-rap-den (kha rog nga dbang rab brtan).419
Jam-yang-shay-ba Nga-wang-dzon-drii, the third anno-
tator, lived from 1648-1721, and is the textbook author for
the Gomang College of Dre-bung Monastic University. He
was born in Am-do, in eastern Tibet, and studied at the Go-
mang College of Dre-bung as well as the Tantric College of
Lower Hla-sa. From age fifty-three to sixty-two he served as
222 Four Interwoven Annotations
abbot of Go-mang, and then, returning to Am-do, founded a
monastery at" Dra-shi-kyil (bkra shis 'khyil), where several
years later he also founded a tantric college. He wrote prolific-
ally on the full range of topics of Ge-Iuk-ba studies. According
to A-gya-yong-dzin, he also served for a time as abbot of Pa-
bong-ka (pha bong kha) Monastery, and it was during that
period that he wrote his annotations to Dzong-ka-ba's Great
Exposition of the Stages of the Path, entitled The Golden Wheel
(gser gyi 'khor 10).420
The dates of the fourth annotator, Dra-di Ge-shay, are
unknown, but the English preface to the Delhi edition places
him in the seventeenth century. The biography of Jang-gya
Rol-bay-dor-jay (lcang kya rol ba'i rdo rye, 1717- 1786) men-
tions a Dra-di Ge-shay who was involved in putting forward
an alternate candidate for recognition as the eighth Dalai
Lama. This occurred in the period from 1758-65, which
would place him in the eighteenth rather than the seventeenth
century if he is the same person as the author of these
annotations. Also supporting an eighteenth century date is the
fact that Dra-di Ge-shay is one of the latest authors catalogued
by Long-dol La-rna, who himself lived from 1719- 1794.
Dra-di Ge-shay was from Am-do, and was associated with the
Jay (byes) College of Se-ra Monastic University. His annota-
tions, entitled Annotations Cumpletely Un~ng All the Difficult
Points of (Dzong-ka-blfs) Text (gzhung gi dka' gnad thams cad
lhug par bkrol blfi mchan bu mams) deal only with the special
insight portion of Dzong-ka-ba's text. 421
The text developed into its present form over a period of
centuries. A-ku-ching's record of teachings rec~ived, which
was written in 1875, describes the lineage of the oral transmis-
sion of teaching of the Four Interwoven Annotations that he
received: The lineage begins in the sixteenth century with the
twenty-eighth holder of the throne of Gan-den, Gen-dun-gyel-
tsen (dge 'dun rgyal mtshan, 1532-1607) with just two sets of
annotations - those of Ba-so and Nga-wang-rap-den. It then
becomes a lineage of three, adding in those of Jam-yang-shay-
ba, and finally, with the addition of Dra-di Ge-shay's annota-
tions, becomes four. Ge-shay Tsul-trim-nam-gyal (dge bshes
Translator's Introduction 223
tshul khrims rnam rgyal), the person who corrected the Tsay-
chok-ling blocks and prepared the blocks from which the
Delhi edition was printed, mentions checking the text against
versions of the Annotations having one annotation, three anno-
tations, and four annotations. 422 However, it seems that none
of the earlier versions have survived to the present. Also, none
of the annotations seem to exist as independent works; for
instance, Jam-yang-shay-ba's Annotations do not appear in the
edition of his collected works printed in New Delhi by
Ngawang Gelek and are not mentioned in catalogues of his
writings found in Lokesh Chandra's Materials for a History of
Tibetan Literature nor are Dra-di Ge-shay's mentioned in
Long-dol's catalogue of his writings.
TECHNICAL NOTE
The chapter breaks are my own, added to facilitate under-
standing. Also I have occasionally inserted some explanation
- both my own and that of contemporary scholars - into the
228 Four Interwoven Annotations
body of the text. These additions are substantially indented
and easily identifiable.
Page numbers to the Delhi edition of the Tibetan text have
been inserted into the translation in square brackets. Only
brief references to texts cited by Dzong-ka-ba are given here.
For full references and discussion, including Sanskrit where
available, see the citations of the passages in the translation of
Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition.
Introduction
229
230 Four Interwoven Annotations
In his section heading Jam-yang-shay-ba speaks of
four' factors that qualify meditative stabilization
whereas Dzong-ka-ba mentions only three. The dif-
ference comes because the third of Dzong-ka-ba's
qualifications, benefit, which he explains to mean
joy and bliss, can be treated as two separate qualifi-
cations - joy and bliss.
[The first] feature is that of non-conceptuality, the imprint of
being free from excitement. [It is a non-conceptualizing] of
any other object on which to set the mind, which stays just
where it was put, in the way that you want, for as long as you
intend, on the single object of observation. [139] [The second]
feature is that of clarity, the imprint of freedom from laxity,
due to the great intensity of the mode of apprehension. [The
third] feature is that of effect, or benefit, of those [first] two
features when you have familiarized with them - the mental
joy of physical and mental pliancy as well as the bliss of
physical pliancy.
A person who has achieved calm abiding should, taking it
as a basis, initially seek and generate the special wisdom that
ascertains and realizes the meaning of suchness, that is,
emptiness, non-erroneously in the sense of not mistaking
something else for it.
Ge-shay Wangdrak identifed this as meaning that
one should ascertain emptiness as posited by the
Pr3saIigika system, not mistaking the emptinesses
posited by the lower tenets systems to be the empti-
ness to be realized here.
Then you should cultivate the special insight which is a
sustaining [of meditation] by means of that wisdom in just the
way that [the meaning of emptiness] was sought.
In dependence upon having achieved a meditative stabiliza-
tion of calm abiding, you should cultivate special insight.
Otherwise, if you hold the mere attainment of calm abiding to
be sufficient, since that mere meditative stabilization of calm
abiding is also attained by Forders, it is shared with Forders.
Therefore, no matter how much you familiarized with that
Introduction 231
mere meditative stabilization, just as through the paths of
Forders, except for only temporarily abandoning most of the
manifest afflictions of the levels below the peak of cyclic
existence, it is not possible to abandon seeds of afflictions
forever, so you [could] not abandon forever the seeds of the
afflictions. Hence, you could not be released from mundane,
that is, cyclic, existence.
The Buddhist position is that through meditative
stabilization - advanced levels of concentration - it
is possible for someone, Buddhist or non-Buddhist,
to abandon temporarily the manifest gross form of
the afflictions associated with the first eight of the
nine levels of cyclic existence: the desire realm, the
four concentrations, limitless space, limitless con-
sciousness, and nothingness. However, one cannot
get rid of those associated with the ninth level, the
peak of cyclic existence, at all, and even those
temporarily abandoned with respect to the lower
levels will eventually reoccur. Only through realiza-
tion and subsequent meditation of emptiness can
one utterly abandon the afflictions and gain release
from cyclic existence.
THlRD~
CITATION OF A DEFINITIVE sOTRA WHICH IS A SOURCE
FOR1HAT
That such could not be done was also set forth by the
Supramundane Victor in a siitra [the King of Meditative
S tabilizations S utra (ting nge 'dzin gyi rgyal po, samadhiraja)] in
which he said that: 425
Some worldly common beings cultivate the actual
meditative stabilizations of calm abiding, or calm
abiding and [mundane] special insight, of the peak
of cyclic existence and below, without realizing
suchness. However, without realizing suchness,
those cultivators of a meditative stabilization which
is a concentration or formless absorption utterly do
not, no matter how much they meditate, destroy and
abandon through that path the root of cyclic exist-
ence - the discrimination apprehending self - due
Introduction 233
to not possessing the quintessential instructions of
the Buddha's teaching. Although temporarily they
can suppress manifest afflictions,426 due to not having
abandoned the conception of self, the afflictions -
with the conception of self as their basis - [141]
return and, having increased, thoroughly disturb
their minds again. Having been caused to lack in-
dependence, they accumulate actions whereby they
circle in cyclic existence. For example, although the
Forder Udraka cultivated here, in this world, a
meditative stabilization having the aspect of [viewing
a lower level as] gross and [a higher level as] peace-
ful, a calm abiding and [mundane] special insight
that is an actual meditative absorption of the peak of
cyclic existence, his meditative absorption deteri-
orated.
This siitra is cited in Kama1ashila's Stages of Meditation.
The fact that the afflictions will still again, at some future
time, be generated and increase due to not having abandoned
234 Four Interwoven Anrwtations
the conception of self is indicated by "the afflictions return
and disturb [tht: mind]".
Not only that, but also the second line says, "If one meditat-
ively cultivates and sustains that view again and again in
Introduction 235
accordance with how ascertainment was gained upon investi-
gating individually the meaning of selflessness ... ". This
refers to sustaining the view of selflessness that has been
gained and meditatively cultivating special insight.
As the cause of what does the meditative cultivation of such
special insight serve? The third line says that such special
insight is the cause of the attainment of nirvfu)a, which is
posited as [its] effect. This line means that the cause of
attaining the fruit of nirvfu)a, or liberation, is just special
insight into suchness.
Chandrakirti's Supplement to (NagaTjuna's) "Treatise on the
Middle Way" (dbu ma la 'jug pa, madhyamakavaliira) says,
" ... a yogi will be released.,,427 NiigaI"juna's Precious Garland
(rin chen phreng ba, ratntivali, stanza 365) saYS:428
Knowing thus truly and correctly
That all animate beings are not [their own] reality,
Not being subject [to rebirth] and without grasping,
One passes from suffering like a fire without its
cause.
Dharmakirti.'s Commentary on (Dignaga's) "Compendium on
Valid Cognition" (tshad ma rnam 'grel, pramaT)ll'lJtirltika)
says: 429
Therefore, all you who wish for release
Should remove from the root the view of the transi-
tory collection
Which arises from seeds of similar type,
Having its cause from beginningless time.
Aryadeva's Four Hundred (bzhi brgya pa, calUl#ataka, VIII.2I)
[143] says:430
When one sees correctly, one has the supreme of
situations.
When one sees a little, one [gains] a good trans-
migration.
Therefore, contemplating the self within
The wise always generate intelligence.
236 Four Interwoven Annotations
Ge-shay Wangdrak identified the meaning of "con-
ten1plating the self within" as identifying selflessness
in tenns of oneself, looking within.
Chandrakirti's commentary on this [in his Commentary on
CAryadeva's) "Four Hundred" (bzhi brgya pa'i 'grei pa, catulJSa-
taka(ika)] saYS:431
When one sees suchness through the knowledge of
the ultimate, one attains the supreme of situations,
nirvaJ.la. When one sees it slightly, that is, a litde,
one has a good transmigration as a god or human.
247
248 Four Interwoven Annotations
accordance with the scriptures of the Conqueror. Further-
more, the generation of the view realizing the meaning of
suchness decisively by means of the wisdom of definitively
hearing quintessential instructions from those spiritual guides
[15 I] and the wisdom of thinking until you gain ascertainment
yourself with respect to the meaning of the quintessential
instructions as they have been heard is the indispensible
prerequisite for special insight. For, if you do not have such a
view realizing decisively the meaning of suchness, the mode of
being, you can never generate the special insight type of
realization realizing the mode [of being of phenomena], that is
to say, suchness.
(With respect to the meaning of [the term] "decisively"
[phu thag chod pa, more literally "decisive with respect to the
full extent", which was used above], if in a particular area one
lost, for instance, a horse, when one searches through the full
extent of that area and comes to a decision that the horse is not
there, one can speak of the search as decisive with respect to
the full extent of that area. Similarly, in searching out the
meaning of suchness, one is "decisive" with respect to such-
ness when one decides that the self which is the object of
negation does not exist upon searching [for it] with complete
forms of reasonings that involve modes of seeking it in all
ways.)
Second, the extensive explanation of the body [of this text, the
"Teachings ofA~hayamati SUtra"]
Question: What is the mode of teaching the establish-
ment of conventional entities?
Anwer: Conventionalities, such as persons,
Buddhas, and so forth, which are different even in
fact [not just in words] are false natures that appear
as various objects; therefore, they must be indicated
by way of various words that are their means of
expression as well as letters, "a", "b", etc., the bases
of those words. [156] Since [what is taught in] siitras
that mainly and explicitly teach those is not suitable
to be the mode of subsistence of those phenomena,
[those siitras] are called siitras of interpretable mean-
ing. This is like, for example, [using the words] self,
sentient being, and so forth with respect to persons.
256 Four Interwoven Annotations
Ken-sur Denba Dendzin: Each of these terms used
with respect to persons conveys a different meaning.
They are not all getting at the same meaning in the
way in which the synonyms of emptiness are.
Question: What is the mode of teaching the estab-
lishment and positing of ultimate entities?
Answer: The teaching of a mere elimination of the
elaborations of the object of negation is the mode of
teaching the positing or establishment of the ulti-
mate entity. Hence, that which is taught by scrip-
tures which mainly and explicitly teach such - i.e.,
teach what is profound because its depth cannot be
realized in the sense that it is difficult to fathom,
what is difficult to view by way of methods such as
examples, reasons, and so forth since it is difficult to
see, and what is difficult to realize because it must be
comprehended by the mind alone, and because al-
though by way of those [examples and reasons] one
knows the mere measure of how [the profound]
exists, it is difficult to understand in the sense of
being able to think, "The entity itself of this mean-
ing is just like this," - is the mode of being of those
phenomena, whereby those siitras teaching such are
called siitras of definitive meaning. This is because
self, sentient being, and so fof!h are undifferentiable
in the sphere of reality.
The final nature of all phenomena is equally their
emptiness of inherent existence.
Seventh, therefore, not only the non-literal but also the liural
[162] the [final] mode of subsistence of which must be
interpreted otherwise are of interpretable meaning
From the description of siitras of definitive meaning in Kamala-
shila's IllumiTUltion of the Middle Way, one can implicitly
understand what sutras of interpretable meaning are. They
are sutras in which, seeing damage to the meaning as it is
taught, it is unsuitable to believingly hold it just as it is, it
needing to be changed and interpreted to another meaning,
explaining, "The aim of [Buddha's] thought in the explana-
tion by this sutra is such and such other meaning."
This is referring to non-literal sutras, such as
Buddha's saying that one should kill one's father
and mother - meaning that one should eradicate
existence (srid pa, bhava) and attachment (sred pa,
tmra), the tenth and eighth links, respectively, in
the twelve-fold cycle of dependent-arising. Buddha
264 Four Interwoven Annotations
did not in the least mean that one should kill one's
physical father and mother, and hence the sutra is
non-literal.
Or, in a case in which one can believe what is literally taught
just as it is, such as the statement, "From giving, resources;
from ethics, a happy [transmigration]," it is permissible to
hold it as being literal, but because merely such is taught
mainly in terms of conventional truths, it is not the final mode
of subsistence, that is to say, suchness; one must still seek the
suchness that is the final status of that object as something
other than this falsity which is a mere appearance of an object.
Therefore, [these two types of sutras] are those the meaning
of which is to be interpreted, or those which require
interpretation.
TRANSITION
Thus, the scriptures that mainly teach the final view realizing
that all phenomena are without any inherent establishment
whatsoever, that is, are without inherently existent produc-
tion, inherently existent cessation, and so forth, are the
Mahayana scriptures of definitive meaning - the Perfection of
Wisdom Siitras and so forth. Since the supreme valid being
prophesied and praised by the Conqueror himself as com-
menting non-erroneously on the thought of those scriptures is
the master, the Superior Nagarjuna, what is the chronology of
the commentators who commented on that master's [i.e.,
Nagarjuna's] thought?
268
Reliable Sources 269
to be valid like the master, the Superior Nagarjuna, was taken
as a believable source even by innumerable thoroughly re-
nowned great upholders of the Prasailgika-Madhyamika and
Svatantrika-Madhyamika systems such as the masters Buddha-
palita, the great founder of Prasailgika; Bhavaviveka, the
great founder of Svatantrika; [166] Chandrakirti, the chief
upholder of the Prasailgika system; and Shantarak~hita, the
great founder of the Yogachara-Svatantrika system, and so
forth. Therefore, by reason of the fact that both the father, the
Superior Nagarjuna, and his [spiritual] son, Aryadeva, are
sources for the other Madhyamikas - Prasailgikas, Svatant-
rikas, and non-partisans - earlier scholars of Tibet called these
two, father and son, the Madhyamikas of the "model",
"root", or "basic" texts - the "straight" texts of the Madhya-
mika system that do not lean to one side or the other - and
they used the verbal convention "partisan Madhyamikas" for
the others - Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, and so forth.
ASSERTIONS
Also, [certain earlier scholars said that] there are also two
[divisions of] Madhyamikas when names are designated by
way of different ways of asserting the ultimate object: Madh-
yamikas who are Reason-Established Illusionists, who assert
that the illusion-like object that is a composite of the two -
appearance and emptiness - about which reasoning has
refuted true establishment with respect to the appearance of a
subject is an ultimate truth; and Thoroughly Non-Abiding
Madhyamikas who assert that not such a composite of two
factors, but a non-affirming negative that is a mere elimination
of the elaborations of true existence with respect to appearances
is an ultimate truth. 469 [Those earlier scholars] asserted that
illustrations of the former of these two Madhyamikas [when
divided] by way of how they assert the ultimate, that is, those
who assert that a composite of appearance and emptiness is an
ultimate truth, are the masters Shantarak~hita, Kamalashila,
and so forth.
The verbal conventions of Illusion-Like Madhyamikas and
Thoroughly Non-Abiding Madhyamikas are asserted not only
by Tibetan scholars, but also by some Indian masters - the
master Shiira, the KashmIri Lak~hmi, and so forth. 470
THIRD, A SUMMARY
Not only that, but also for the appearance factor of both a
non-conceptual reasoning consciousness and a conceptual reas-
oning consciousness, there is no true establishment. Hence,
great Madhyamikas other than Shantaralqihita also do not
assert that for the appearance factor of either a conceptual or
non-conceptual reasoning consciousness the mere composite
of the two, appearance and emptiness, the object with respect
to which the elaborations of the object of negation, that is to
say, true establishment, are eliminated by reasoning with
respect to an appearing subject - an affinning negative which
is a positive inclusion from among the two, the [mere] elimin-
ation and the positive inclusion - is an ultimate truth.
For, Dzong-ka-ba's Medium Exposition of the Stages of the
Path saYS:474
QUESTION
ANSWER
Third, the need for those of sharp faculties to realize that one can
abandon the view of the transitory, the root source
Then you must see that overcoming that view of the transi-
tory, the cause of cyclic existence, definitely depends upon
generating the wisdom realizing well the way in which self
[i.e., inherent existence] as it is conceived by the view of the
transitory is utterly non-existent. Further, having seen such,
since that self cannot be known to be non-existent through
just staying as you are, you should see that it must be refuted
by means of correct reasoning. Further, it not being sufficient
just to see that [reasoning is necessary], you need to gain
definite ascertainment, deciding in dependence on stainless
The Stages of Entry Into Suchness 287
scriptures and reasonings that damage its existence and prove
its non-existence that such a self does not exist. Such ascer-
tainment is an indispensible method for one who is intent on
liberation.
First, a questUm
There are two questions, the first of which is as follows: If just
that awareness realizing the person as without inherent exist-
ence' that is, as not established by way of its own entity,
realizes the aggregates also as without inherent existence, that
is, as not established by way of their own entities, there would
be the fault that the two awarenesses realizing the two selfless-
nesses would be one.
We do not assert such, and the damage [to that assertion] is
that if the two [awarenesses] were one, then there would be
the fault that the subjects - phenomena and persons - that
are the bases of the two selflessnesses would also be one. [190]
Therefore, the two, phenomena and persons, are separate,
and since that is the case, the two awarenesses realizing those
300 Four Interwoven Annotations
two as without inherent existence are also established as
separate, just as, for example, an awareness realizing a pot as
impermanent and an awareness realizing a pillar as imperma-
nent are separate.
The second question is that if just that awareness realizing
the person as without inherent existence does not realize the
aggregates as without inherent existence, then how can one
posit the meaning of ChandrakIrti's statement in the Clear
Words that when one realizes the selflessness of the person,
one realizes the absence of inherent existence of the aggregates?
One cannot.
Third, an assertion
That person might say that he accepts that the Proponents of
True Existence realize the absence of inherent existence of
eyes, and so forth.
First, not only would this contradict your own assertion [that
Proponents of True Existence do not realize the absence of inherent
existence of pherwmena] but also as a reason [why such cannot be
accepted], it would [absurdly] folluw that Haribhadra's explana-
tion in his "Small Commentary" [his "Clear Meaning Cammentary
on (Maitreya's) 'Ornament for Clear Realization"'] of the absence
of true existence to Buddhist Proponents of True Existence would
not be correct [because it would be absurd to prove the absence of
true existence to them if they already realized it]. If you accept
such, then it contradicts your own assertion; previously you
306 F (JUT Interwoven Anrwtations
flung to the opponent the unwanted consequence that [the
Proponents of True Existence] would realize the absence of
inherent existence of eyes and so forth; thus it is your own
assertion that Proponents of True Existence do not realize that
eyes and so forth do not inherently exist, and you are contra-
dicting that.
Not only that, it would not be necessary for Madhyamikas
to prove to Proponents of True Existence that sprouts and so
forth do not truly exist. Further, complete paths of virtuous
or non-virtuous actions are posited as continuums of moments;
since a continuum is similar to a gross object, which is a
composite of minute particles, the Proponents of True Exist-
ence would have to assert virtues and so forth to be without
inherent existence by reason of their being continuums. If the
Proponents of True Existence did assert such, then there
would be no purpose in the Proponents of True Existence
objecting to and disputing the propounding by Svatantrika-
Madhyamikas such as Haribhadra and so forth that all phenom-
ena, virtues, non-virtues, and so forth, are like dreams,
without true existence, refuting that these are posited through
the force of appearing to a non-defective awareness. [195] The
objection by the Proponents of True Existence is set forth in
Haribhadra's CleaT Meaning Commentary ('grel pa don gsal,
spu(iirthii) as follows: so1
Fourth, therefore, as long as one has not forsaken the tenet that
the aggregates are substantially existent, that is, are not just
nominally imputed, one has a conception of the person as substanti-
ally existent. Therefore, this master [Chandrakirti] asserts that
as long as one has not forsaken the tenets of a system asserting
that the aggregates are substantially existent, one conceives
the person also to be substantially existent in the sense of
being established inherently.
310 Four Interwoven Annotations
SECOND, ALTHOUGH [EVEN IN THIS SYSTEM,
pRASANGIKA, PRACTITIONERS OF] THE 1WO
VEHICLES MEDITATE ON THE 1WO
SELFLESSNESSES INDIVIDUALLY [FIRST THE
SELFLESSNESS OF PERSONS AND THEN OF
PHENOMENA], THE MODE OF REALIZATION [IN
MADHYAMIKA] IS DIFFERENT FROM THAT
AMONG THE PROPONENTS OF TRUE EXISTENCE
Therefore, until those [Proponents of True Existence] forsake
tenets asserting true establishment, that is to say, the substan-
tial existence, of the aggregates, there is no occurrence of their
realizing that the person does not ultimately exist.
4 Misidentifying the Object of
Negation
3I I
312 Four Interwoven Annotations
of inherent existence", you must identify well the self or
inherent existence that does not exist - you need to think, "If
it did exist, it would be like this." The reason for this is that if
the meaning-generality, or aspect, of that object of negation
does not appear as an object of the mind by way of having
been identified well, then you will also not unerringly ascertain
and realize selflessness and so forth, the non-affirming nega-
tive which is the negative of that object of negation. For,
Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds (bodhisattva-
caryiivatilra, IX.14oab) says that: S05
Without contacting and ascertaining, by way of its
aspect appearing to the mind, the entity (dngos po,
bhiiva) that is the object of negation, true establish-
ment, which is erroneously superimposed by the
conception of true existence, one cannot apprehend
the absence of that entity, that is, the non-existence
of that true establishment, by way of realizing the
absence of true existence with the mind.
This has two parts: stating others' assertions [200] and showing
that those assertions are incorrect.
314 Four Interwoven Annotations
FIRSf, STATING OTIIERS' ASSERTIONS
.
This has eleven attributes.
Ninth, among those, there are two types, those who do and do rwt
assert production conventionally
Those who claimed to be Madhyamikas at that time [i.e.,
Dzong-ka-ba's time] mostly propounded such [that produc-
tion and so forth are refuted by the Madhyamika reasoning
and hence do not exist], and among those who did so, two
different types are seen, some saying that they do not assert
production and so forth even conventionally and some assert-
ing that production and so forth exist conventionally.
Misidentifying the Object of Negation 319
Tenth, all accord in refuting inherent existence
Except for that [difference - some saying that production
exists conventionally and some saying that it does not], all of
those systems accord in propounding the following: It is
undeniable by anyone that it is the system of this master
[Chandrakirti] that an inherent existence, that is, an establish-
ment by way of their own entities, of phenomena such as
production and so forth is refuted by reasoning engaged in
ultimate analysis; for, the inherent establishment of phenom-
ena is refuted in terms of both truths.
322
The Uncommon Feature of Madhyamika 323
no inherent existence; and the way in which emptiness and
dependent-arising are of one meaning.
This has three parts, the first of which is the need to assert
that the fruits, the two bodies [a Buddha's Form Body and
Truth Body], arise from the two collections [of merit and
wisdom].
The following three paragraphs are a summary by
Nga-wang-rap-den of the explanation that is to come.
Even though it is easy to understand how these [assertions
of the misinkrpreters of Madhyamika] are to be refuted, let
me state it briefly in one place in accordance with my lama's
words: In order to achieve the fruit, the two bodies, you must
[at the time of] the path, accumulate the two collections. For
that, you must know the view of how to posit the bases, the
two truths. And, for that, not only must two factors - I)
ascertainment induced from the depths with respect to the
relationship of cause and effect in the sense of [knowing] that
such and such an effect arises from such and such a cause,
[207] and 2) [understanding] that all phenomena are without
even a particle of inherent establishment - be non-contra-
dictory for your mind, but also [understanding of] the one
must serve to assist [understanding of] the other. Since this is
a distinguishing feature of only the wise Madhyamikas, it is
difficult for others to realize it.
Furthermore, Madhyamikas assert that emptiness is the
meaning of dependent-arising: because of being dependent-
arisings, [things] depend on causes, conditions, and so forth
and thus, since they do not exist as self-powered entities, they
are empty of existing from their own sides or of being
established inherently.
Such an uncommon Madhyamika system is refuted by the
earlier faction [of misinterpreters] because they refute the
system of the non-contradiction of the two factors: the non-
existence of even a particle that inherently exists and the
324 Four Interwoven Annotations
feasibility of production, cessation, and so forth. This is
because they; saying, "If there is no inherent existence, what
does exist?" propound that if there is no inherent existence,
then production, cessation, and so forth must not exist.
Furthermore, they propound in a manner opposite to the
statement in Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way that
dependent-arisings are necessarily empty of inherent existence.
For, their proposition that if there is no inherent existence,
one must then assert that production, cessation, and so forth
do not exist, amounts to propounding that if production and
so forth exist, they must inherently exist.
Nagarjuna's Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning (rigs pa drug cu pa,
yukt4a~tikii, stanza 60) says that: 511
339
340 Four Interwoven Annotations
suffering must be posited with respect to that which arises in
dependence on causes and conditions; suffering is not suitable
in that which does not arise in dependence on causes and
conditions. This is because suffering does not arise without
causes and conditions.
Ge-shay Wangdrak: In other words, the arising of
suffering involves change; thus it cannot occur in
the permanent, but can only arise when there are
causes and conditions.
The following paragraph is a summary by Nga-
wang-rap-den.
Suffering is under the other-influence of [contaminated] ac-
tions and afflictions. When dependent-arising is feasible, re-
liance on causes and conditions is feasible, whereby it [suffer-
ing] is feasible. If dependent-arising were not feasible, [suffer-
ing] would be under its own power, not relying on causes and
conditions, in which case it would not be feasible for it to be
under the other-influence of [contaminated] actions and afflic-
tions. Therefore, when dependent-arising is feasible, the
sources [of suffering] and so forth are feasible.
When the existence of such true sufferings that arise in
dependence on causes and conditions is feasible, then the
sources from which those sufferings arise, the cessations that
are the stopping of those sufferings, and the paths proceeding
to those cessations are feasible, whereby the presentations of
the four truths definitely exist. When the four truths exist,
then, respectively, the knowledge of suffering, the abandon-
ment of its sources, the actualization of cessation, and the
cultivation of the paths are suitable and feasible. When those
- knowledge [of suffering], abandonment [of sources], and so
forth - exist, then all, the Three Jewels and so forth, are very
feasible and suitable.
First, although actions and so forth are not refuted, their inherent
existence is.
Not only do we Madhyamikas illuminate those
[paths to nirvfu:1a], we also do not at all propound
the non-existence of the definiteness of actions that
are causes [of effects], agents of those actions, the
effects of those actions, and so forth. What do we pro-
pound? We propound and posit that these phenom-
ena, actions and so forth, do not exist inherently.
Fifth, if actions and so forth did rwt exist, there would be that
fault, but we assert actions and effects
With respect to the indication, by the remaining words, of
how [the extremes] are avoided, through [Chandraklrti's]
saying, "We Madhyamikas do not propound that actions,
their effects, and so forth do not exist," he indicates how
propounding the extreme of non-existence is avoided:
Miidhyamika Response 371
Whereas we would, as you Proponents of True Existence say,
become Nihilists having a vie\y'of an extreme of annihilation if
we did assert actions, ~ects, and so forth as non-existent,
[250] we Madhyamikasdo not assert that actions and so forth
do not exist. That is his answer.
If you [the opponent] say, "We assert that some things such as
s' (yin) and 'is not' (min) do not have third possibilities such
Miidhyamika Response 381
as both and neither (gnyis yin dang gnyis min)," it is the same in
all respects also for existence (yod) and non-existence (med),
and hence there is no third possibility.
EIGHTII, A SOURCE THAT THE THESES ALSO ARE NOT THE SAME
FIRST, THE OB}ECfION THAT THE VERBAL THESES ARE THE SAME
SIXTH, A SOURCE FOR THE EXAMPLE THAT NOT ONLY OOES THE
MATERIALIST NOT REALIZE [EMPTINESS] BUT ALSO THIS IS VERY
BAD
FIRSf, AN OBjECfION
ONE INTERPRETATION
Most of the scholars of the Ge-Iuk-ba tradition who have
written on this point - Jam-yang-shay-ba, Jang-gya, A-gya-
yong-dzin, and Pa-bong-ka (as well as implicitly the Annotation
author Dra-di Ge-shay since he did not disagree with Jam-
yang-shay-ba's interpretation) - have come down on the side
of the interpretation initially advanced by Kay-drup Nor-
sang-gya-tso (mkhas grub nor bzang rgya mtsho): (I) that
Dzong-ka-ba is refuting merely misinterpretations of the Reason-
Established lliusionists and Proponents of Thorough Non-
Abiding by earlier Tibetan scholars who posit that they
represent a way of dividing Madhyamikas into two groups
differentiated by way of how they assert the ultimate; and (2)
that Dzong-ka-ba is not objecting to a correct interpretation of
these two in which the Reason-Established lliusionists are the
Svatantrikas and the Proponents of Thorough Non-Abiding
are the Prasangikas.567 This position is summarized succinctly
by A-gya-yong-dzin: 568
[Dzong-ka-ba's] statement that the great translator
[Lo-den-shay-rap's] refutation of earlier spiritual
guides' positing the designation of names to Madhya-
mikas as twofold by way of their mode of positing
conventionalities and twofold by way of their mode
of asserting the ultimate was very good does not
mean that he [Dzong-ka-ba] asserted that in general
408 Appendices
such verbal conventions for Madhyamikas are incor-
rect. For, ... with respect to the latter, the master
Shiira, in his Precious Lamp, Essay on [the Stages of}
Cultivating the Ultimate Mind of Enlightenment (don
dam pa byang chub kyi sems bsgom pa'i yi ge rin po
ehe'i sgron ma, ratnapradipa-paramiirthabodhicittabJui-
varui), called the Svatantrikas "Reason-Established
Illusionists" and the Prasatigikas "Proponents of
Thorough Non-Abiding". Hence, [Dzong-ka-ba] is
not asserting that merely such verbal conventions are
incorrect ....
Nonetheless, the interpretation [by earlier schol-
ars] of the mode of assertion of the Reason-Estab-
lished Illusionists and the Proponents of Thorough
Non-Abiding is very incorrect. For, [in fact] the
Reason-Established Illusionists assert that the illu-
sion-like object that is a composite of the two,
appearance and emptiness - the appearance of the
quality (coos), an absence of true existence, in terms
of a subject (coos can) such as a sprout - is an object
of comprehension of an inferential reasoning con-
sciousness, whereby that composite of appearance
and emptiness is asserted to be an actual conventional
truth and an imputed ultimate truth. There is no
Madhyamika at all who asserts it to be an actual
ultimate truth.
[Dzong-ka-ba] in his Medium Exposition of Special
Insight speaks of the two, [mere] elimination and
positive inclusion, with respect to the mere elimina-
tion of elaborations regarding appearances. Hence,
since the Thoroughly Non-Abiding Madhyamikas
assert that the [mere] elimination, a non-affirming
negative, is an ultimate truth but do not assert that
the positive inclusion, the affirming negative which
is the composite of the two, appearance and empti-
ness, is an ultimate truth, the [earlier scholars']
mode of positing the Proponents of Thorough Non-
The Division of Madhyamikas 409
Abiding is also incorrect.
Therefore, in the system of the Svatantrikas, or
Reason-Established Illusionists, since an inferential
reasoning consciousness that realizes a sprout to be
without true existence takes as its object (yul) an
object (don) that is a composite of a sprout and non-
true existence, it is asserted that the subject, the
sprout, also appears [to it]. And, even though that is
the case, this does not contradict that this inferential
consciousness has a mode of apprehension of a non-
affinning negative; for, it apprehends [its object]
within the thought, "The sprout is without true
existence" and the non-true existence of the sprout is
a non-affinning negative.
Since in the system of the PrasaIigikas, or Thor-
oughly Non-Abiding [Madhyamikas], an inferential
reasoning consciousness does not take such a com-
posite object as its object, it has a mode of apprehen-
sion of only a non-affinning negative.
The root of there arising such a difference between
the two, Svatantrika and PriisaiJ.gika, is said to meet
back to whether they do or do not assert that
phenomena are established from their own sides.
Therefore, it appears to be subtle.
This presentation of the position of those who accept the
terms "Reason-Established Illusionist" and "Proponent of
Thorough Non-Abiding" as alternate names for Svatantrika and
PrasaIigika can serve as a basis for analyzing the issues in-
volved in the controversy and from which to explain the reasons
advanced by other scholars for rejecting any correct usage of
the terms, an interpretation favored by Jam-yang-shay-ba's
annotator, Nga-wang-bel-den, and by Sha-mar-den-dzin as
well as by the Great Exposition annotator Nga-wang-rap-den.
The main advantage of the above position is that it is straight-
forward and relatively simple; the main disadvantage is that it
does not hold up well when subjected to detailed scrutiny.
410 Appendices
REASON-ESTABLISHED ILLUSIONISTS
Because most of the argument focuses on the Reason-Estab-
lished Illusionists, we will begin there. Two main questions
are involved: (I) Is this tenn used by any valid Madhyamika,
and, in particular, is it used as a mode of subdividing Madh-
yamika followers? (2) What do the Reason-Established Illu-
sionists assert? In seeking to answer these questions, one
immediately encounters the major reason for the controversy:
lack of sufficient infonnation. A secondary reason is undoubt-
edly the fact that Dzong-ka-ba himself is not merely brief, he
is also not particularly clear in setting forth his position,
dismissing it as minor. As will be discussed below, some of his
statements might even be considered misleading.
Also:
SUMMARY
To summarize the main points of the above presentation,
Dzong-ka-ba, in discussing the subdivisions of the Madhya-
mika tenet system, briefly indicated and rejected an assertion
by earlier Tibetan scholars that Madhyamikas, when divided
by way of their assertions about the ultimate, are of two types:
Reason-Established Illusionists and Proponents of Thorough
Non-Abiding. Among Dzong-ka-ba's Ge-Iuk-ba followers
there is disagreement as to whether Dzong-ka-ba's intention
was merely to reject those terms as misinterpreted by the
earlier Tibetan scholars or whether he rejected them entirely
on the grounds that the actual assertions of Reason-Estab-
lished Illusionists and Proponents of Thorough Non-Abiding
are such that they cannot be accepted as true Madhyamikas.
Nga-wang-bel-den and Sha-mar-den-dzin p~nt a very
convincing case for the latter position. They say that Reason-
Established Illusionists are those who assert (I) that an illu-
sion-like composite of an appearing subject and its emptiness
of true existence appears to an inferential consciousness realiz-
ing emptiness and (2) that such a composite is an ultimate
truth. They say that Proponents of Thorough Non-Abiding
are those who (I) assert that a consciousness realizing empti-
ness apprehends no object at all, since for them emptiness
cannot be taken as an object of the mind, and (2) therefore
assert that the term "realizing an ultimate truth" is merely
designated for others with respect to a consciousness that in
fact is apprehending nothing at all.
438 Appendices
Chart 1.
*ultimate truth
I
441
442 Appendices
intelligible even at the cost of departing from the
words, introducing new material that does not cor-
respond to the original text, and so on, is palming off
his supposed "insight consisting of pondering" upon
the unsuspecting reader. (p.168)
Also he emphasizes the importance of consistent translation
of Tibetan technical terminology by non-interpretive transla-
tion equivalents that can be used in English in the same way as
they are used in Tibetan. (For instance, in a well taken point,
he criticizes Stcherbatsky's translation of Siinyatii (emptiness,
or voidness) as "relativity" and sunya (empty, or void) as
"relative" since these translation equivalents are unworkable
in a sentence such as "All dharmas are sfmya of svabhava"
(P.189). Finally, Wayman says that it is important not to skip
over any part of the text, but to translate everything, even if
the translation of some portions is tentative.
Wayman's translation of Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition is
faithful to the principles he has articulated. It is very literal
and reflects Dzong-ka-ba's text phrase by phrase, neither
adding new material, except as indicated by parentheses, nor
omitting difficult portions. The closeness with which it ad-
heres to the Tibetan original, in fact, makes it particularly
easy to check for accuracy, and such a check reveals that in
terms of accuracy, Wayman's translation is severely flawed.
A number of problems with Wayman's translation have
already been discussed by Geshe Sopa in a lengthy review. 603
However, a subsequent review by Robert Kritzer seems
unaware of the seriousness of the problems with the transla-
tion, and, although the language is carefully couched, on the
whole it is highly laudatory, calling Wayman's translation "a
meticulous piece of scholarship". 604 Also Paul Williams re-
marks, in an article setting forth Dzong-ka-ba's views on
conventional truths, on Wayman's ''fine translation".60s Thus,
it seems appropriate to adduce further evidence of how flawed
that translation is.
Alex Wayman's Translalion Considered 443
The major source of error in Wayman's translation is his
misunderstandings of Tibetan grammar; other causes of diffi-
culty are misconceptions about the meanings and uses of
specific terms and a willingness to attempt translation that
includes all the words of the Tibetan original but does not
make sense of them in English. These will be discussed
individually with representative samples of each.
GRAMMATICAL ERRORS
To show how quickly meaning can be distorted by a few
simple errors in grammar and to give an idea of the sheer
number of errors that can be found throughout Wayman's
translation, let me cite the following passage. It is one that is
fairly straightforward, difficult in neither syntax or meaning.
Dzong-ka-ba is making the point that because both Nagarjuna
and Aryadeva were considered valid and used as sources by
the Indian Madhyamikas who came after them, earlier Tibetan
scholars called those two "Madhyamikas of the model texts"
(gzhung phyi mo'i dbu rna pa) whereas they called the others
"partisan Madhyamikas" (phyogs 'dzin pa'i dbu rna pa). He
says (see P.164):606
Even the great Madhyamikas such as the masters
Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Chandrakirti, and Shiin-
tarak~hita took Aryadeva to be valid like the master
[Nagarjuna]. Therefore, since both the father [Nagar-
juna] and [his spiritual] son [Aryadeva] are sources
for the other Madhyamikas, earlier [Tibetan schol-
ars] used the verbal convention "Madhyamikas of
the model texts" for those two and used the verbal
convention "partisan Madhyamikas" for the others.
Wayman (p.181) translates this passage as follows:
In this regard, the great Madhyamikas Aryadeva,
444 Appendices
acarya BUddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Candrakirti,
Santarak~ita, and others became authoritative like
the acarya (Nagarjuna); but the Master and his
disciples (Nagarjuna and Aryadeva) are the source
for the other Madhyamikas, so the early teachers of
Tibet called the texts of these two the "grandmother
Madhyamika" and applied the term "partisan
Madhyamika" to the others.
In this short passage Wayman has made five separate errors:
I) Not seeing that Dzong-ka-ba is saying that Buddhapalita,
Bhavaviveka, Chandrakirti, Shantarak1jhita, and so forth took
Aryadeva to be just as authoritative as Nagarjuna, Wayman
has Dzong-ka-ba saying that Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, Bhava-
viveka, and so forth all became authoritative. He misidentifies
"Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Candrakirti, Santarak~ita, and
others" as the object of the verb "to hold" or "to take" (mdzad
pa, Wayman's "became") rather than as the agents. Accord-
ing to Wayman, these became authoritative for someone else,
whereas Dzong-ka-ba is saying that they took Aryadeva to be
authoritative.
Wayman makes this error first by ignoring a separative
particle (ni) which sets Aryadeva off from the other names in
the list as the object of the verb "hold" (the "logical" subject)
and by then ignoring an instrumental (kyis) which establishes
the others in the list as the agents who take Aryadeva to be
authoritative. Thus, it is not that Aryadeva, Buddhapalita,
Bhavaviveka, Chandrakirti, Shiintarak1jhita, and others be-
came authoritative; rather, Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Chan-
drakirti, Shantarak~hita, and so forth took Aryadeva to be
authoritative.
2) Wayman does not take the term "acarya" or "master"
(slob dpon) as modifying "Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Chan-
drakirti, Shantarak~hita, and so forth", but as referring only
to BUddhapalita, whereas it is better understood as referring
to all of them. Since the term appears only once at the head of
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 445
the list that begins with Buddhapalita, it is by context that one
should understand that it applies to all members of the list.
Additional support for applying it to all members of the list is
the fact that Dzong-ka-ba uses the term in the pages immedi-
ately following the passage in question in reference to each of
the individuals named in the list.
3) Because those masters took Aryadeva to be authoritative
just as they took Nagarjuna to be authoritative, earlier Tibetan
scholars called Nagarjuna and Aryadeva "Madhyamikas of the
model texts". Thus the first sentence or clause (whatever way
one translates it) serves as the reason for the second one.
Wayman, however, has not seen this, but has taken them to
be in opposition, using the word "but". This reading is
entirely unjustified because the Tibetan instrumental (mdzad
PAS) is clearly an instrumental of reason.
4) Perhaps Wayman's phrase, "the Master and his disciples
(Nagarjuna and Aryadeva)," is a misprint for "the Master and
his disciple (Nagarjuna and Aryadeva)". If not, Wayman's
parenthetical addition, "(Nagarjuna and Aryadeva)", would
be glossing "disciples", in which case Dzong-ka-ba would be
referring, with the word "Master", to a third person who was
a teacher of both Nagarjuna and Aryadeva. It is clear, how-
ever, by its frequent use throughout the text, that yab (''father''
or "Master") refers to Nagarjuna and sras ("son" or "disciple")
refers to Aryadeva. Any ambiguity might have been avoided
had Wayman translated the term gnyis ka ("both") which
modifies the term yab sras ("father and son", or "master and
disciple"), making it unmistakably clear that only two individ-
uals are the referents - "both the father [Nagarjuna] and his
[spiritual] son [Aryadeva] ... " .
5) In the last clause Dzong-ka-ba is saying that earlier
Tibetans therefore called Nagarjuna and Aryadeva "Madhya-
mikas of the model texts" since they were accepted as valid by
all the other Madhyamikas - Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka,
Chandrakirti, Shantarak~hita, and so forth - whereas those
scholars were called "partisan Madhyamikas". Thus, persons
446 Appendices
are the referents of the verb "called", being called "Madhya-
mikas of the model texts" or "partisan Madhyamikas".
Wayman, however, sees Dzong-ka-ba as saying that the
term is applied to the texts of Nagarjuna and Aryadeva rather
than to the scholars themselves. He does this by mistransla-
ting the grammatical particle la, which indicates those for
whom the term was used ("earlier [Tibetan scholars] used the
verbal convention 'Madhyamikas of the model texts' for those
two"). In his translation, Wayman inappropriately treats the
particle la as if it were a genitive particle ("the early teachers of
Tibet called the texts of these two the 'grandmother Madhya-
mika'''). It should also be pointed out that here Wayman is
inconsistent since in the final phrase of the passage ("and used
the verbal convention 'partisan Madhyamikas' for the others"),
a parallel construction to the one under discussion here, he
does translate the particle correctly ("and applied the term
'partisan Madhyamika' to the others").
(I also disagree with Wayman's literalness in using the
translation equivalent "grandmother" (in "grandmother
Madhyamika") for the tenn phyi mo. Although "grand-
mother" is found in the dictionary, the tenn is also used to
translate the Sanskrit miitrkO, as in Nagirjuna's Precious
Garland, verse 394, where it refers to a model of the alphabet
which a grammarian uses in first teaching his students. Its
usage thus as a basis, or model, or guide is more appropriate
to the present context; these are "Madhyamikas of the model
texts" because they are taken to be valid, authoritative, by all
the other Madhyamikas. (See note 313.)
The net effect of all these errors is to obscure the basic point
that all Madhyamikas, whether Svatantrikas (Bhavaviveka
and Shantarak~hita) or Prasailgikas (Buddhapalita and Chan-
drakIrti), accept Aryadeva to be as valid as Nagarjuna and use
both as sources. Almost all the later Madhyamikas are differ-
entiated into partisan camps as Svatantrika-Madhyamikas or
Prasailgika-Madhyamikas, and members of one camp would
not necessarily accept the works of members of the other as
reliable.
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 447
This passage is indicative of general types of errors found in
Wayman's translation - misidentification of the subjects and
objects and misuse or ignoring of the grammatical particles
that determine the syntax of a sentence. I would like now to
cite examples of classes of specific grammatical errors that
Wayman makes on mUltiple occasions.
Since that was said, you think it over and say, "That
. not n.ght, ... "
IS
MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF TERMS
Often passages of Wayman's translation are obscured due to
his not understanding the meaning of particular terms.
Wayman mistranslates a number of such terms, frequently
based on a very literal rendition of the parts of the term in
situations where such literalness not only does not convey the
sense of the term but introduces elements of error.
Wayman translates srid mtha' which means "almost not
occuring" and might very literally be rendered as "an extreme
of existence", as "The one who proceeded to the summit of
the world" (P.I98). Thus a sentence which should read, (see
P.I92) "Since this composite of the two, inducing ascertain-
ment with respect to such appearance and emptiness, almost
does not occur, the view of the middle way is very difficult to
gain," comes out as, "The one who proceeded to the summit of
tire world with the double collection of certainty guidance in
that sort of appearance and the void recalled the extraordinary
difficulty of attaining the Madhyamika view." Wayman per-
haps is mixing the term srid mtha' with another, srid rtse, "the
peak of cyclic existence" which refers to the highest realm
within cyclic existence, the fourth of the four fonnless absorp-
tions.
Wayman translatesgtan med, "completely non-existent", as
"not continuous" (P.203). Thus a passage which should read,
(see P.I99), ''you ... propound that if [sprouts] are utterly
without establishment by way of their own entities, they are
utterly non-existent," is translated as, " ... and you are asserting
that if the accomplishment by own nature is not continuous, it
is not continuous."
Wayman translates med rgyu, which is the Tibetan way of
mirroring the Sanskrit gerundive and means "to be non-
existent" or in English often simply "non-existent", as ''with
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 463
his cause for absence" (p.I88) Thus a passage which should
read (see p.n6):
Just as, for example, in order to ascertain that a
certain person is not here, you must know the
person who is wt here, so in order to ascertain the
meaning of "selflessness", or "non-inherent exist-
ence", you also must identify well that self, or
inherent existence, which does wt exist.
is translated by Wayman as:
For example, to be certain about thinking that a
(certain) person is not present, it is necessary to
know this person 'With his cause for absence. In the
same way, to be certain about the meaning of nonself
and nonself-existence, it is also necessary to deter-
mine that "self" and "self-existence" with cause for
their absence.
Wayman similarly translates chad rgyu, "annihilated" as "cause
of annihilation" (P.2IO). Thus, the phrase, "if, in order to
have a view of annihilation, it were necessary to have asserted
fonnerly whatever thing was annihilated . .. " (see P.2(9) be-
comes, in Wayman's translation, "if it is necessary to accept a
prior entity as a cause of nihilism for the nihilism view, ... ".
Wayman translates the phrase "med bzhin du" which means
''whereas [such and such] does not exist" or ''while [such and
such] does not exist" as "in that way it does not happen that".
Thus the phrase, "in that case, since there comes to be no way
to take cause and effect as illusion-like, appearing to exist
inherently whereas they do wt, you fall to an extreme of
pennanence," (see p.200) becomes, in Wayman's translation,
(P.203), "in that way it does wt happen that one regards as
illusory-like the appearance there, which in fact is the cause
and fruit without self-existence, and so one falls into the
extreme of eternalism."
Also, Wayman seems not to understand that the tenn rang
gi sde pa, or, in abbreviated fonn, rang sde, literally means
464 Appendices
"our schools" and hence "Buddhist schools". He sometimes
ignores it aitogether, as on P.I87 where he translates the
phrase "Even the Proponents of True Existence of our own
[Buddhist] schools" (see p. 173) as "the Sautriintika realists";
(also, limiting the term dngos smra ba, Proponents of True
Existence to just Sautriintika does not accord with Dzong-ka-
ba's intentions as discussed previously, PP.50-I). Another
mistranslation of this term occurs on P.I92 where he trans-
lates the phrase "Scholars of our own [i.e. Buddhist] schools,
Proponents of True Existence," (see P.I83) as "The learned
realists with their own position."
Finally, as mentioned above, the term nges pa can mean
"definite" or it can mean "to ascertain"; Wayman does not
distinguish these two and thus mistranslates the phrase "gain
ascertainment of the two truths" (see p.I82) as "achieve the
(two) certainties", (p. 192).
NON-EVOCATIVE TRANSLATION
A final criticism of Wayman's translation is his willingness to
translate the words of the Tibetan without making a decision
as to their meaning, so that one is left with a string of phrases
in English from which it is difficult to gain any understanding
at all. To cite an example, in what is admittedly a very difficult
passage, Dzong-ka-ba saYS:620
CONCEPTUAL ERRORS
Finally, in addition to errors of translation and understanding
of particular tenns, it appears, from his translation, that
Wayman has not always grasped points that are central to
Dzong-ka-ba's presentation and argument. Some have already
been mentioned. Another, most basic, and one that has already
been discussed by Geshe Sopa in his review of Wayman's
translation (see PP.70-2), is Wayman's misidentification of
who and what are intended by Dzong-ka-ba's refutation of
those who negate too much or not enough. Given that Way-
man, in his response to Geshe Sopa's review,621 flatly denied
that his identification of these was in error, it is appropriate to
pursue the subject further.
Wayman says in the introduction to his translation of
Dzong-ka-ba's text, (p.6I) "He [Dzong-ka-ba] first treats the
overpervasion in lengthy fashion (40 folios), then the non-
pervasion rather briefly (4 folios), where the first of these
466 Appendices
fallacious positions, the overpervasion, affirms svabhiiva (self-
existence); and the second, the nonpervasion, denies svabhii-
va." As specific identifications of who is included within the
scope of these refutations, Wayman says (p.6I), "The op-
ponents thus judged to be guilty of overpervasion are espe-
cially the realists, called the vastu-satpadiirthaviidin ... Other
opponents are the mind-only (cittamiitra) persons of the Yoga-
cara school of Buddhism as well as the Madhyamika-Svatan-
trika of which Bhavaviveka is the most famous exponent,"
and he says (p.63), "Under the nonpervasion, TSOli-kha-pa
places the insider of the Madhyamika, Prasangika school who
has quite properly denied svabhiiva as a principle and then
falsely denies svabhiiva in the Buddhist path, i.e., takes it as
the refutable of the path."
The starting point for Wayman's error in this section is the
fact that he takes the terms "overpervasion" (khyab ches pa)
and "under pervasion" (khyab chung ba) as technical logical
terms. Geshe Sopa in his review (PP.70-I) correctly points
out that while these terms do have technical meaning in
Buddhist logic, they are also used in a non-technical way to
mean "too broad" and "too narrow", and that this is how they
are used by Dzong-ka-ba. Wayman, in his response to Geshe
Sopa (Pp.95-6), refuses to accept this, citing in his own
support the fact that Dzong-ka-ba in the "Great Exposition of
Special Insight" frequently uses other technical terms of logic
in their technical sense. Except for pointing out that Wayman's
argument is logically inconclusive since the mere fact that
Dzong-ka-ba uses technical terms elsewhere in no way neces-
sitates that that is his intention here, and that, furthermore, the
whole weight of the Geluk-ba scholarly tradition is on the side
of the more general usage, I will not pursue this line of
discussion.
Rather, I will address the dispute from the viewpoint of the
content of those sections of Dzong-ka-ba's discussion that
proceed under the headings in question. For surely what
Dzong-ka-ba talks about in those sections is the key to under-
standing what he means by his section headings.
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 467
Dzong-ka-ba divides his section refuting an overly broad
identification of the object of negation - which Wayman calls
"refutation of overpervasion in detennining the refutable" -
into two parts, (I) stating the assertions of such persons and
then (2) indicating their incorrectness. His introductory sen-
tence to the first part is, "Nowadays, most who claim to
propound the meaning of the middle way say that all phenom-
ena ranging from forms through to exalted-knowers-of-all-
aspects [omniscient consciousnesses] are refuted by the rea-
soning analyzing whether production and so forth are or are
not established as [their own] suchness ... " (see P.I78). This
certainly suggests that Dzong-ka-ba saw as those he was
refuting his contemporaries, by implication, Tibetans, who
considered themselves to be Madhyamikas and not Propo-
nents of True Existence, especially since, in this section
setting forth the assertions of the opponents who are to be
refuted, the term Proponents of True Existence (which Way-
man translates as "realists" and whom he takes to be the
opponents herein) is never once mentioned.
Dzong-ka-ba divides the second section, indicating the
incorrectness [of those assertions], into two parts, (I) showing
that those systems refute the uncommon distinguishing fea-
ture of Madhyamika and (2) showing that the damages ex-
pressed do not overwhelm [our position]. He identifies the
distinguishing feature of Madhyamika as the ability both
utterly to refute inherent existence and at the same time to
make all the presentations of conventional phenomena and
says that his contemporaries in Tibet who claim to be Madh-
yamikas and yet find these two incompatible are no different
from Proponents of True Existence.
In this portion of the "Great Exposition" Dzong-ka-ba
makes far more mention of Proponents of True Existence
than he does of Tibetan erstwhile Madhyamikas, which per-
haps explains Wayman's misconception that the Proponents
of True Existence are the intended objects of Dzong-ka-ba's
refutation. I think it could fairly be admitted that Dzong-ka-
ba has a secondary purpose, in that having equated those
468 Appendices
Tibetans who negate too much with the Proponents of True
Existence, he is in fact negating both. Furthennore, since the
ammunition for his argument is provided by the writings of
Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, and Chandraltirti, who were negating
Proponents of True Existence - who in fact negate too little
- and were not negating those who negate too much, it could
appear that the Proponents of True Existence were his pri-
mary referent and that Wayman's technical interpretation of
the tenn khyab ehes pa was justified.
However, to take it thus is to ignore the structure of Dzong-
ka-ba's argument, which initially sets up as the assertions to
be refuted those of Madhyamikas in Tibet who claimed that
all phenomena were refuted by the reasonings refuting inherent
existence and then in the refutation of those assertions, pro-
ceeds one by one through a rebuttal of reasons advanced by
Madhyamika interpreters, not by Proponents of True Existence,
to show why all phenomena are negated by the Madhyamika
reasonings. Dzong-ka-ba's primary purpose is to negate mis-
interpretations ofMiidhyamiko by Madhyamikas, not the views
of other schools of Buddhism.
Wayman has correctly translated numerous occasions where
Dmng-ka-ba equates "erroneous" Midhyamikas with Pr0po-
nents of True Existence, so that a refutation of the one is a
refutation of the other, and thus it seems that his error is
basically in the identification of the primary referent of
Dzong-ka-ba's refutation, perhaps because of his initial mis-
conception that the tenn khyab ehes pa is being used as a
technical logical tenn. Wayman's statement, "the first of these
fallacious positions, the overpervasion, affirms svabhava (self-
existence)" would be true were the primary and not the
secondary object of Dzong-ka-ba's refutation the Proponents
of True Existence. However, the true primary referent of
Dzong-ka-ba's argument is those who claim not only to refute
svabhava but along with it would refute all conventional
phenomena as well.
Wayman says of the second aspect of Dzong-ka-ba's refuta-
tion of those who misidentify the correct measure of the object
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 469
of negation, "Under the nonpervasion, TSOli-kha-pa places
the insider of the Madhyamika, Prasailgika school who has
quite properly denied svabhiiva as a principle and then falsely
denies svabhiiva in the Buddhist path, i.e., takes it as the
refutable of the path." (p.63) Again, Wayman seems to be
confusing what Dzong-ka-ba discusses within the section
refuting those who negate too little, (or as Wayman labels it,
"nonpervasion"), with the basic structure of that argument.
He also shifts Dzong-ka-ba's terminology with the result that
he makes statements which, while understandable, do not, I
believe, correctly reflect Dzong-ka-ba's intentions.
What Wayman sees as a two-staged progression in the
opponent being refuted by Dzong-ka-ba, from proper denial
of svabhiiva as a principle and then false denial of svabhiiva in
the Buddhist path, describes the two major topics that Dzong-
ka-ba addresses in this section. However it is clear that
Wayman has not correctly understood Dzong-ka-ba's argu-
ment. First, what Wayman calls a "proper" denial of sva-
bhiiva is not so for Dzong-ka-ba. For, Dzong-ka-ba argues that
these particular opponents have defined svabhiiva in too nar-
row a fashion. They do deny the svabhiiva they have so
defined, but it is inconsequential. Not having gone far enough
in their negation, they have not succeeded in refuting any-
thing that would overcome innate afilictions. Hence their
negation will not lead to release from cyclic existence and is
hardly a "proper" denial. Wayman, in speaking of it as
"proper", ignores Dzong-ka-ba's criticism of such a position.
Wayman is correct in pointing out that Dzong-ka-ba em-
phasizes the existence of a svabhiiva that is realized on the
Buddhist path, this svabhiiva being reality, the final nature of
each and every phenomenon. His mistake, as I see it, is to
think that Dzong-ka-ba is refuting opponents who deny this
svabhiiva. This second aspect of Dzong-ka-ba's discussion,
rather than being part of his argument against those guilty of
under, or non, pervasion, is, I believe, in essence a digression,
albeit one that flows naturally out of the material which
preceded it. Let us look into this point in detail.
470 Appendices
Those who negate too little take svabhiiva as the object of
negation, bur they define it, based on two verses of Niigar-
juna's Treatise an the Middle Way, as that which has the
threefold qualities of not being produced by causes and
conditions, not changing into something else, and not depend-
ing on something else. Dzong-ka-ba refutes that svabhiiva
identified thus - rather than as inherent existence, or estab-
lishment by way of an object's own entity - is the Miidhyamika
object of negation, on the grounds that it is inconsequential.
However, having concluded his refutation, further explana-
tion of what those verses from Niigiirjuna's Treatise mean, as
he understands them, is necessary, and this is the subject
matter of the rest of the section. In explaining those verses,
Dzong-ka-ba is able to elaborate his view that emptiness
exists. He explains that the two verses do not concern merely
the object of negation, but also indicate, with the last two lines
of stanza two, the final nature, svabhiiva, that does exist,
realization of it being the purpose of the Miidhyamika path.
This final nature is unchangeable, permanent, and not depend-
ent on another consciousness as its positer.
This difference between the two parts of Dzong-ka-ba's
explanation, the first, in which he is setting forth a wrong view
and refuting it, and the second, in which he is raising hypo-
thetical qualms and answering them, can be seen in the
Tibetan, where the former is set forth by the standard "Some-
one says" (kha cig na re) construction622 and the latter are
phrased simply as questions, "Does such a nature exist?" ('0
na ... she na) and "Did you not earlier refute an inherent
establishment with respect to all phenomena?" ('0 na . . . rna
bkag gam snyam na).623 Wayman's error comes because he
runs these two sections together. 624
His description of this section as a whole as involving
proper denial of svabhiiva as a principle and then false denial
of svabhiiva in the Buddhist path additionally confuses things
because he is mixing terminology. Dzong-ka-ba does speak of
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 471
two types of object of negation, one by reasoning and one by
the path. These Wayman translates (misleadingly, as discussed
above) as "the refutable of the principle" and the "refutable
of the path". Presumably because svabhiiva when understood
as inherent existence is the object of negation, or refutable,
Wayman has supposed a parallel situation and, substituting
svabhiiva for "refutable", come up with "svabhiiva as a prin-
ciple" and "svabhiiva in the Buddhist path". (These terms are
entirely Wayman's; Dzong-ka-ba does not use them.) Wayman
then sees the argument in Dzong-ka-ba's refutation of those
who negate too little as concerning whether svabhiiva is
refuted as a principle or in the path. He has obscured the
whole verbal point that, of the two meanings of svabhiiva -
inherent existence and the final nature of phenomena - only
one, the former, is the object of negation. Svabhiiva as
meaning inherent existence is the object of negation by reas-
oning, and adherence to it is the object of negation by the
path. Svabhiiva in its second meaning, as the final nature of
phenomena, is not an object of negation at all, but the reality
that is to be realized.
The fact that only the first meaning of svabhiiva can be
called the object of negation is further evidence of why only
the first part of Dzong-ka-ba's discussion in this section
involves his basic argument, which is a refutation of those who
assert too narrow an object of negation. Having dealt with that
question, Dzong-ka-ba moves on to another important issue
that evolves out of the same passages in the Indian texts as
does the first question: whether svabhiiva, when taken in its
meaning of the final nature of phenomena, can be said to
"exist" or not, given Madhyamika refutations that seem on
the surface to deny "existence" altogether. Proving that it
does exist is the purpose of the second part of Dzong-ka-ba's
exposition here and, although a very important argument, is
in terms of the structural outline of the "Great Exposition of
Special Insight" essentially a digression.
472 Appendices
CONCLUSION
As should be evident from the preceding, lengthy discussion
of errors to be found in Wayman's translation, I find it to be
severely flawed and feel that one seeking to understand
Dzong-ka-ba's "Great Exposition of Special Insight" could
not rely on it with confidence. There are too many cases of key
distinctions of Dzong-ka-ba's finely woven argument being
distorted by mistranslation, as well too little clarity in reveal-
ing the structure of Dzong-ka-ba's argument due to misidenti-
fication of which passages set forth Dzong-ka-ba's own system
and which indicate the opinions of others.
Among the introductory materials Wayman includes with
his translation, the section entitled "Uses of Buddhist Logic",
in which he discusses his ideas of who and what Dzong-ka-ba
was refuting, is erroneous as was discussed above. However,
other sections of the introduction are good and useful, such as
Wayman's discussion of the lam rim lineage, his biography of
Dzong-ka-ba, and his section, "Discursive Thought and the
bSam-yas Debate".
One has to admire Wayman's courage and perseverance in
tackling such a momentous task as the translation of the entire
"calm abiding" and "special insight" sections of the Great
Exposition of the Stages of the Path, for it is no small under-
taking. Having myself begun with the intention of translating
the whole "special insight" portion of the Great Exposition and
having been forced to draw a line, for purposes of this
volume, at something more like one-sixth of it, I am aware of
the magnitude of Wayman's accomplishment. However, had
Wayman attempted less, he might have been more successful
in the final result.
I agree with much of Wayman's philosophy about transla-
tion. I, too, feel that translations 'should be quite literal,
translating just what is in the Tibetan original with any
clarifying material that is added clearly demarcated by par-
entheses or brackets. I also agree with Wayman that consistent
translation of technical terminology is extremely important,
although I take this point less literally than he does since I
Alex Wayman's Translation Considered 473
think it is important to translate the meaning of a term, and if a
term has more than one meaning, then multiple translation
equivalents will be required.
Professor Wayman is an important figure in the field of
Buddhist Studies, particularly that of Tibetan Buddhism,
where he has been a pioneer. He was one of the first to work
with indigenous Tibetan texts, particularly those of the Ge-
luk-ba school and has been an effective and articulate voice
speaking for the inclusion of the viewpoint of the Tibetan
tradition in contemporary efforts to understand Buddhism.
As such, his contributions should not be minimized. He has
done much to lay a foundation for later scholars to build on.
3 J am-yang-shay-ba' s Topical
Outline
Two texts were used. The first is that published in New Delhi
in 1972 by Chos-'phel-Iegs-Idan, which states in the prefatory
matter that it was reproduced from a print of the corrected
Tshe-mchog-gling blocks of 1842. It is referred to in abbrevi-
ated form as "Delhi".
The other is a text held at the University of California,
Berkeley, of which I was able to obtain a microfilm. It has no
pUblication data, but appears to have been printed for use in
China as the pages are numbered on the right side in Chinese
characters. It is referred to in abbreviated form as "Berkeley".
1be following emendations are a list of all corrections made
to the Delhi edition - the text from which the translation was
made - plus indication of points where the Berkeley text
differs in a significant way from the Delhi edition, but the
Delhi edition was determined to be either the correct reading
or an acceptable alternate reading. Numerous minor differ-
ences that have no effect on the meaning or translation are not
noted.
Also, the outline headings in the Berkeley text are totally
different from those in the Delhi edition in that the latter are
by Jam-yang-shay-ba, whereas the compiler of the Berkeley
edition says that he used Jam-yang-shay-ba's as a basis to
write his own; accordingly no attempt has been made to note
differences in the outlines.
In cases where the point of an emendation is to distinguish
between Dzong-ka-ba's text and an added annotation, Dzong-
ka-ba's text is transliterated in all capital letters md the
498
Emendations to the Delhi Edition 499
annotation in small letters. In all other cases the transliteration
is in small letters.
52 7
528 Glossary
analysis dpyodpa vicara
analytical meditation dpyadsgom
animal dud 'gro tiryak
annihilationist chad Ita ba ucchedadarSika
annotations mchanbu
antidote gnyenpo pratipak~
appearancdapperuITng snangba pratibhasa
apprehension of signs mtshan mar 'dzin pa nimittagraha
approacher to the 'bras bu la zhugs pa phalapratipannaka
fruit
appropriated nye bar len pa/nye upadana
bar blang bya
appropriator nye bar len pa po upadatr
arbitrarily 'dod rgyal yadrcchika
argue rgol par byed pa codya
ansmg 'byungba udaya
anWficialignorance kun btags pa'i rna rig *parikalpiravidya
pa
ascertain ngespa nis-cilni-yam
ascertaining ngesshes *nicayajiiana
conscIOusness
assert 'dod pa/khas blangs i~yatdabhyupagama
assertion 'dodpa abhimata/abhila~
iccha
attachment chags pa/sred pa sneha/~I).a
attribute khyadchos
autonomous rang rgyud kyi sbyor svatantraprayoga
syllogism ba
awareness blo buddhi
falsity rdzun pa ~
familiarization goms pa bhavitalabhyasa
fault nyes pa d~
feasible/feasibility 'thad pa upapadyate
feature khyad par/khyad ~
chos
feeler tshor ba po vedaki
feding tshor ba vedani
[final] nature rang bzhin svabhiva
final nature rang bzhin mthar *svabhivaparyanta
thug
final subtle essential gnad mthar gtugs pa'i
phra ba
finality mthar thug pa paryanta
Foe Destroyer dgra bcom pa arhat
follow rjes su 'brangs pa anUSl1I'aQ3
Forder mu stegs pa tirthika
form/visible fonn gzugs rOpa
Fonn Body gzugs sku rOpakiiya
formless absorption gzugs med kyi iirOpyasamiipatti
snyoms 'jug
forsaken the tenet grub mtha' dor ba
forward pervasion rjes khyab anvayavyapti
forward process lugs 'byung anuloma
found to be non- rigs shes kyis med
existent by a par rnyed pa
reasoning
consciousness
English-Tibetan-Sanskril 535
founder (lit. opener srol 'byed
of the way)
four alternatives mu bzhi catu!!koti
four concentrations bsam gtan bzhi catvari dhyaniini
four noble truths 'phags pa'i bden pa catvari aryasatyiini
bzhi
four possibilities mu bzhi catu!!koti
four reliances rton pa bzhi catvari pratisarru;tiini
four seals phyag rgya bzhi caturmudra
free from dust rdul bral viraja
free from e1abora- spros bral aprapaiica
tions
frighten 'jigs bhayaI!lkarllQl
fruit 'bras bu phala
fulfilling the tshogs bsten pa
prerequisites
functioning thing! dngos po bhava
thing
I nga aharp.
identifying ngos 'dzin byed paJ
ngos bzung ba
identifying the object dgag bya ngos bzung
of negation ba
ignorance rna rig pa avidya
illusion-like sgyu rna Ita bu mayopama
immeasurable dpag tu med paltshad aprameyaJapa~a
med
impermanence! mi nag pa anityaJanityam
impermanentl
impermanent
phenomenon
implicit contradic- brgyud 'gal
tories
implicit realization shugs rtogs
implicitly don gyislshugs kyis arthatltarasa
imprint lag rjes
improper chos ma yin pa adharrna
imputation btags pa/kun brtags parikalpita
impute rtog pre~te
imputed btags pa ba
imputed dependently brten nas brtags pa upadaya prajiiapya-
mana
imputed existent btags yod prajiiaptisat
imputed ultimate don dam btags pa ba
incontrovertible mi slu ba avisarp.vadin
incorrect mi'thad anupapannaJayukta
incorrectness mi 'thad pa anupapatti
indispensible med du mi rung ba
individual analysis so sor rtog pa pratisarp.khyana
E nglish-Tibetan-Sanskrit 537
inferential cognition rjes dpag amunana
inferential reasoning rigs shes rjes dpag
conSCIOusness
inferential valid rjes dpag tshad rna anumanapramiiI).a
cognizer
inherent establish- rang bzhin gyis grub svabhavasiddhi
rnent pa
inherent existence rang bzhin svabhavalsvariipa
inherent existence of dngos po'i rang bzhin bhavasvariipa
things
innate than skyes sahaja
instance bye braglkhyad par viSe~
Instructions on the dbu ma'i Ita khrid
view of the Middle
Way
intention sems pa cetana
interpretable object! drang don neyartha
interpretable
meaning
intrinsic entity rang gi ngo bo svariipa
investigation brtags pa/rtog pa vitarka
isolate ldog pa vyatireka
550
Tibetan-S anskrit-English 551
skye ba med pa anutpada no production
skye ba tsam mere production
skyes bu puru~ creature
skyes bu chung ngu adhamap~ being of small
capacity
skyes bu chen po mahapuru~ being of great
capacity
skyes bu 'bring madhyamapuru~ being of middling
capacity
skyes bu gsum beings of the three
capacities
skyon do~a disadvantage!fault
nga ahatp I
nga yi ba mama mine
ngan 'gro durgati bad transmigration
nges don nitartha definitive object!
definitive meaning
nges don gyi mdo nitarthasOtra sOtra of definitive
meanmg
nges pa niS-cilniyatalniyama ascertain/definite!
limited
nges 'byung ni\lsanqta renunciation
nges shes *niScayajiiana ascertaining
consciousness
ngo bo gcig *ekarOpata one entity/same
entity
ngo bo nyid rna mchi asvabhavalsvabha- non-entityness!
pa nyid/ngo bo nyid vato nastikaql without entityness
medpa
ngos 'dzin byed pal identify
ngos bzung ba
554 Glossary
dngos rnaula actual
dngos 'gal dichotomy/explicit
contradictories
dngosrgyu sak~t.kanu)a direct cause
dngos gnyen direct antidote
dngos bstan explicit teaching
dngos po bhiivalvastu/padartha entity/functioning
thing/thing/topic
dngos po rang dbang bhiival). svatantral). self-powered things
ba
dngos po'i rang bzhin bhavasvarupa inherent existence of
things
dngos por smra bal vastusatpadartha- Proponent of True
dngos po yod par vadin Existence
smra ba
dngos med abhiiva non-thing
dngossu vastutas/sak~t explicitly
dngos su bstan pa explicitly teaches
dngos su sbyar ba explicitly affixed
mngon gyur abhimukhi manifest/manifest
phenomenon
mngon du bya ba ~~ actualization
mngon pa'i nga rgyal abhimina manifest pride/pride
of conceit
mngon par 'du byed anabhisaIpskara no composition
pamedpa
mngon par zhen pa abhiniveSa manifest conception!
strong adherence
mngon par shes pa abhijfia clairvoyance
mngon sum praty~ direct perception
sngon med pa apiirva unprecedented
ji snyed pa varieties
ji Ita ba yathii mode [of existence]
'jam dpal mafijusri Maiijushri
'jam dbyangs mafijugho~ Maiijugho~ha
'jig vinaSa destroy
'jig rten rgyang phan lokiiyata Worldly Materialists
pa
'jig rten pa laukika mundane
'jig rten pa'i tha laukikasarp.vyavahara worldly conventions
snyad
'jig rten las 'das pa lokottara supramundane
55 6 Glossary
'jig pa vyayaivinaSa disintegration
'jig tshogs la Ita ba satkaya~ti view of the transitory
'jigs bhayaJ!1karaJ!1 frighten
'jug pa'i rim pa stages of entry
'jog sgom stabilizing meditation
rjes khyab anvayavyapti forward pervasion
rjes dpag anumana inferential cognition
rjes dpag tshad rna anumanapramfu).a inferential valid
cognizer
rjes su 'brangs pa anusaraJ).a follow
rjod byed vacakalabhidhana means of expression
brjod bya vacyalabhidheya subject discussed!
subject matter
574
S anskrit-Tibetan-English 575
anav~ lhag moo without remainder
anagamya mi lcogs moo not unable
anaIaya gnas med pa baseless
anitya/anityatl mi rtag pa impermanent/
impermanent
phenomenon/
impermanence
animitta mtshan rna med pa signlessness
anukflla mthun pa concordant
anuttara bla na med pa unsurpassed
anuttarayogatantra mal 'byor bla med Highest Yoga Tantra
kyi rgyud
anutpada skye ba med pa no production
anupapatti/ mi rigs palmi 'thad unreasonable!
anupapanna pa/mi'thad incorrectness!
incorrect
anumana rjes dpag inferential cognition
anumanap~ rjes dpag tshad rna inferential valid
cognizer
anulorna lugs 'byung forward process
anuSaJpsa phan yon benefit
1IlusaraI)3 rjes su 'brangs pa follow
IOta mtha' alternative/extreme
lIlyonyaparihara- phan tshun spang 'gal contradictories in the
virodha sense of mutual
exclusion
anvayavyapti rjes khyab forward pervasion
aparimaI.la dpag tu med pa immeasurable
aparyaya rnam grangs rna yin non-metaphoric
pa
apavada skur pa 'debs pa deprecation
apalqta rnam par bead pa elimination
apOrva sngon med pa unprecedented
apraJ}ihita smon pa med pa wishlessness
apratima mtshungs pa med pa unequalled
aprati~putanirviiQa mi gnas pa'i mya non-abiding nirviiQa
ngan las ' das pa
aprapaftca spros bral free from
elaborations
apramiiQa tshad rna rna yin pa not valid
aprameya dpag tu med paltshad immeasurable
med
576 Glossary
abhava med palmi srid pal non-existence/
dngos med non-existent /
non-thing
abhijna mngon par shes pa clairvoyance
abhidharma chos mngon pa knowledge
abhidhana rjod byed means of expression
abhidheya brjod bya subject discussed/
subject matter
abhiniveSa mngon par zhen pa manifest conception/
strong adherence
abhimata 'dod pa assert /assertion
abhimana mngon pa'i nga rgyal manifest pride/pride
of conceit
abhimukhI mngon gyur manifest /manifest
phenomenon
abhil~ 'dod pa assert /assertion
abhyasa goms pa familiarization
abhyupagata/ khas blangs bal'dod promise/assert /
abhyupagama pa assertion
ayukta mi 'thad /mi rigs pal unfeasible!
mi rung ba unreasonable!
incorrect/unsuitable
anha don object /meaning/
purpose
arthakriyiSakti don byed nus pa capacity to perform a
function
arthit don gyis implicitly
arhat dgra beom pa Foe Destroyer
avagacchati khong du chud pal understand /realize
nogs pa
avabodha khong du chud pal understand!
nogs pa realization
avayava yan laglcha shas part
avayavin yan lag can parts-possessor/whole
ava~ lhag ma Ius pa remainder left over
avasya gdon mi za bar/nges unquestionably/
par definitely
avasaya khong du chud pa understand
avikala ma tshang ba med complete
pa/tsang ba
avikalpa mi rtog pa non-conceptuality
avidya ma rig pa ignorance
S anskrit-T ibetan-E nglish 577
aviparyaya/avipar- phyin ci rna log par non-erroneously
yasa
aviruddha mi 'gal ba non-contradictory
avisarpvadin mi slu ba incontrovertible
avyabhiciirin mi 'khrul ba non-mistaken
aSaik~iirga mi slob lam path of no more
learning
asat rned pa/yod pa rna non-existence/non-
yinlbden pa rna yin existent/not true
asadhiiraJ)a thun rnong rna yin pa uncommon
asvabhava rang bzhin gyis rned absence of inherent
pa /ngo bo nyid rned existencelnon-
pa/ngo bo nyid rna entityness/without
rnchi pa nyid/ entityness
ahaq1 nga I
ahatpkara ngar 'dzin/bdag 'dzin conception of self
gzhan dag the tshom 'di ltar skyes tel skabs 'DIR NI
theg chen gyi lam gyi rim pa ston pa'i skabs yin pas
THEG CHEN PA'I dbang du byas pa'i DE KHO
NA NYID LA 'JUG PA'I TSHUL STON PA MA
YIN NAM
INTRODUCTION
424 See note 292.
425 See note 293.
426 Ba-so's commentary on this point, if one follows the
Berkeley text, is that, if one has not realized emptiness,
one can suppress temporarily the manifest conception of
self but cannot abandon the seeds of that conception.
That the word "afflictions" is modified by "manifest" is
not found in that edition (see 3a.2-4), and it is clear
that Ba-so is saying that the seeds for the discrimination
of self are not destroyed even though they might be
temporarily suppressed. Jam-yang-shay-ba disagrees
with this, saying that one cannot overcome even the
manifest form of the conception of self, the root of cyclic
existence, if one has not realized suchness. The contro-
versy is avoided in the Delhi edition where the word
"afflictions" is added in and becomes that which is
modified by "manifest", for everyone agrees that mani-
fest afflictions can be temporarily suppressed by concen-
trative states even though their seeds are not abandoned.
427 Jam-yang-shay-ba is citing the last line of VI. 165, found
in Louis de la Vallee Poussin's edition of the Madhya-
makiivatJira (Madhyamakiivatara par Candrakirti, Biblio-
theca Buddhica IX, Osnabrock: Biblio Verlag, 1970) on
p.287. The line before that it is:
Four Interwoven Annotations 783
de phyir bdag dang bdag gi stong Ita zhing.
Thus the entire passage reads," Therefore, viewing the
emptiness of I and mine, a yogi will be released." La
Vallee Poussin's translation is in Museon 12 (1911),
p.328. Dzong-kaba cites this line from ChandrakIrti in
his Illumination of the Thought, Sarnath edition, p.62.
428 This translation is taken from J. Hopkins and Lati
Rimpoche, trans., The Precious Garland and the Song of
the Four Mindfulnesses, New York: Harper & Row,
1975) P.7I. The Tibetan cited in the Delhi edition of
the Annotations has been corrected in three places, as
shown below, to accord with the version of the Precious
Garland found in the Peking edition of the Tibetan
Tripitaka (P5658, Vol. 129, 180.4.4-5). The latter two
of those changes are also supported by the Berkeley text
of the Annotations. Version cited in the Delhi text
(P.1425-6):
de ltar yang dag ji bzhin du
'gro ba'i don byed shes nas ni
rgyu med pa yi de bzhin du
gnas med Ian med mya ngan 'da'.
Corrected to:
de ltar yang dag ji bzhin du
'gro ba don med shes nas ni
rgyu med pa yi me bzhin du
gnas med len med my a ngan ' da'
The Sanskrit, as cited in Michael Hahn, Niigiirjuna's
Ratniivalf, Vol. I, The Basic Texts (Sanskrit, Tibetan, and
Chinese), Bonn, Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1982, p.1I6
reads:
vyartham evam jagan matva
yathabhiityiin niraspadal)/
nirvati nirupadiino
nirupadiinavahnivaU/
Professor Ashok Aklujkar suggested the following read-
ing as more closely mirroring the Sanskrit:
Having thus considered all the world substanceless,
784 NOles
He, being one without basis because of [the state of]
being real [i.e., out of his knowledge of what reality
is],
Passes beyond utterly [i.e., attains nirvfu).a]
Like a fire that has no material cause.
429 Occurring near the end of chapter two, this verse is
found on 68.20-69.2 of the 1974 Pleasure of Elegant
Sayings Printing Press edition of the Tibetan. The first
line of the verse as cited in the Delhi edition of the
Annotations has been corrected from de phyir grol 'dod
thams cad pa'i to de phyir grol 'dod thog med pa'i in
accordance with the Berkeley text and the Pleasure of
Elegant Sayings edition. The Sanskirt for the verse is:
tasmad anadisantiinatulyajatiyabijakamJ
utkhatarniiliiIp. kuruta sattva~!iIP mumuk~vaIy'
Verse 258cd and 259ab, pp.87-8 of Pramat}ilviirttika of
Acharya Dhannakirtti, Swami Dwarikadas Shastri, ed.
(Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, 1968). The Sanskrit satLVa-
d~# - view of existence, or entity - has been translated
into Tibetan as 'jig tshogs Ita (view of the transitory),
usually used to translate satkiiyad~#.
430 The Sanskrit for this verse (as found on p.612 of Karen
Lang, "Aryadeva on the Bodhisattva's Cultivation of
Merit and Knowledge", Ann Arbor: University Micro-
films, 1983) is:
samyag ~!e panup stharuup kificid ~!e 8ubha
gaotihI
tasmad adhyatmacintayiiIp. karya nityaIp. matir
budhaiQ/1
Following the Sanskrit, the second part of the stanza
says, more simply, "Therefore the wise engage the mind
in thought relating to the self."
Lang's translation on p.322.
431 Toh 3865 (P5266), bodhisatLVayogiiaira catulJiatakapkii,
byang chub sems dpa'i mal 'byor spyod pa bzhi brgya pa'i
rgya cher 'grel pa, Tokyo sde dge Vo1.8, 142b.2- 142b.4.
The wording of the first phrase is slightly different
Fernr Interwoven Anrwtations 785
there, and serves as a better gloss of the verse. Rather
than saying don dam pa'i shes pas de kho na nyid mthong
ba yod na, as is found in both the Delhi and Berkeley
editions of the Annotations, that text says don dam pa'i
shes pas de nyid yang dag par mthong ba yod na, "When
one sees suchness correctly through the knowledge of the
ultimate ... ". The Sanskrit for this is found in Hara-
prasad Shastri, ed., "Catu.Q.Satika of Arya Deva,"
Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, III no 8
(1914), P.478, and mirrors the wording found in the
Tokyo sde dge:
paramarthajfianena khalu samyagdr.:;!e paramarthe
param sthanrup. prapyate nirvfu)am/ i~t kificit dr.:;!e
subha devamanu~yagatir bhavati
432 Sanskrit (Lang, p.638, English translation on
PP427- 8):
advitiyrup. sivadvaram kudr.:;pnatp bhayatpkaram
The Sankrit term bhayatflkaram means "to frighten" or
"scare away" rather than "to destroy" as does the
Tibetan 'jig byed. Thus, following the Sanskrit, the
second line would be translated, "That which scares
away bad views," or "Frightening to holders of bad
views". The Tibetan 'jig (to destroy) is orthographically
very close to the verb for frighten - 'jigs. Thus, it is
possible that the shift from 'jigs to 'jig, rather than being
deliberate, was a spelling or scribe's error. However,
more probably the translator was following a gloss given
by Chandrakirti in later commentary on the verse (Tibe-
tan, 19Ia.4-5; Sanskrit, 498.3-5) in which Chandraki-
rti says, "Because it is seen to utterly destroy (Sanskrit
viniisa) all bad views that are based on thorough imputa-
tion of an own-entity of things ... ". In any case, as
interpreted by Chandrakirti and by Gyel-tsap (rgyal
tshab) , one of Dzong-ka-ba's two chief disciples, bad
views and not the holders of those views are the object
of the verb. Gyel-tsap's gloss of the line in his Essence of
Good Explanation, Explanation of (Aryadeva's) "Four
786 Notes
Hundred" (bzhi brgya pa'i rnam bshad legs bshad snying
po, Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Printing Press, Sarnath,
1971), chapter 12, P.9, is: "It is that which when
realized destroys the bad views that are conceptions of
extremes."
433 Tokyo sde dge Vol. 8, 19Ob.2. Commentary on XII.13
continu~s until 19Ia.6. Sanskrit for the passage (Hara-
prasad Shastri, P.497.22-23) is:
yat advitiyarp. sivadvaram tan nairatmyarp. yat kudn;!-
inarp bhayaIikaram tan nairatmyarp.
434 P5658, Vol. 129, 174.3.6-7. The Sanskrit for this verse,
as found on P.14 of Hahn is:
skandhagriiho yavad asti
tavad evaham ity api/
aharpkiire sati punal}.
karma [janma tatal}. punal}/I]
Translation by J. Hopkins in The Precious Garland and
the Song of the Four Mindfulnesses, p.22.
435 There are two different translations of Nagiirjuna's
Sevemy Stanzas on Emptiness found in the Tokyo sde
dge. Just the verses themselves were translated by Shon-
nu-chok (gslum nu mchog), Dar-ma-drak (dar rna grags),
and Ku (khu) - the Sev~ Stanzas on Emptiness (stong
pa nyid bdun cu pa'i tshig le'ur byas pa, sunyatasaptatikii-
rika) Toh 3827, VoL!. A slightly different translation of
the verses by Jinamitra and Ye-shay-day (ye shes sde) is
found within their translation of Nagarjuna's own
Commentary on the "Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness" (stong
pa nyid bdun cu pa'i 'grel pa, sunyatiisaptativrtti), Toh
3831, Vol.!.
The version of this verse cited here corresponds to
that found in Jinamitra and Ye-shay-day's (ye shes sde)
translation of Nagiirjuna's Commentary on the "Seventy
Stanzas on Emptiness", Vol.1 of the Tokyo sde dge,
120a.5. As cited in the Tokyo sde dge edition of the
Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness (stong pa nyid bdun cu pa'i
tshig le'ur byas pa), VOl.I, 26b.3, the verse differs slightly
Four Interwoven Annotations 787
in wording, though not in meaning. It reads:
rgyu rkyen las skyes dngos po mams
yang dag nyid du nog pa gang
de ni ston pas rna rig gsungs
de las yan lag beu gnyis 'byung
Chr. Lindtner has also noted this difference in his
N agarjuniana, Indiske Studier 4, Copenhagen: Akade-
misk Forlag, 1982, p.62. Lindtner's translation of this
verse is on p.63.
436 He says this very clearly in VI. 120, (P.233 of La Vall&!
Poussin's edition):
Yogis see with their minds that all afflictions
And faults arise from the view of the transitory
And having realized that the self is the object of
That [view] they refute self.
nyon mongs skyon mams rna Ius 'jig tshogs la
Ita las byung bar bio yis mthong gyur zhing
bdag ni 'di yi yul du nogs byas nas
mal 'byor pa yis bdag ni 'gog par byed
(See chapter three of the translation, p.I69.)
437 See Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, (London:
Wisdom, 1983) PP.2-304.
438 In the Berkeley text, 4b.6, Ba-so is identified as the
commentator making this identification. I have chosen
to follow the Delhi edition based on the fact that this is
the second time the Scriptural Collection of Bodhisattvas
has been mentioned by Dzong-ka-ba; the first reference
was in the introduction to the calm abiding section,
which is where Ba-so would likely have made such an
identification. Since Dra-di's commentary only begins
with the special insight portion of the text, this is, for
him, the first reference, and thus he seems the more
likely author.
See note 298 for references for this siitra passage and
Dzong-ka-ba's earlier citation of it.
439 Aryadeva refers to this same siitra statement in his Four
Hundred, XII.II. (See Lang, P.425.) ChandrakIrti's
788 Notes
commentary on it is found in Toh 3865, Tokyo sde dge
Vol. 8, 189b.5-1900.5. His essential point is that the
effects of even a minor falling from the view are far
more severe than those of falling from ethics.
Gyel-tsap's Essence of Good Explanation, Explanation
of (Aryadeva's) "Four Hundred" (Chapter 12, p.8) says
that because deprecating emptiness brings great harm to
oneself and others, the deterioration of ethics is not so
bad, but one should not allow deterioration of the view
of emptiness in the least. Through ethics, one attains
the effect of proceeding to high states; through the view
realizing reality, one proceeds to the supreme states of
liberation and omniscience. (stong pa nyid la skur pa
'debs pa rang gzhan la gnod pa shin tu che bas tshul
khrims las ni nyams pa sla yi stong pa nyid kyi Ita ba las
cis kyang nyams par bya ba rna yin tel tshul khrims kyis
ni 'bras bu mtho ris 'gro la de kho na nyid rtogs pa'i Ita
bas thar pa dang thams cad mkhyen pa'i go 'phang
mchog tu 'gro bar 'gyur roll)
440 Sanskrit: (Lang, p.641, English, P.433):
dharmaJp samasato 'hiIpsiIp van;uayanti tathigatab/
slinyatiJn eva nirvi9mP kevaiaIp tad ihobhayamll
Chandrakirti cites this verse in his Clear Words, La
Vallee Poussin edition of the Sanskrit, 351.13-14.
441 Toh 3865, Tokyo sde dge Vo1.8, 194b.3. His commen-
tary on the entire verse goes from 19.4 to 194b.4.
Chandraklrti explains that the doctrine of the Tathagatas
can be said, in brief, to be non-harmfulness because
non-harmfulness means the opposite of any actions or
thought of harm and hence includes the path of the ten
virtues, as well as all help to others. Because the fruit of
non-harmfulness is rebirth in high status and the fruit of
realization of emptiness is the attairunent of nirviiQa, it
is said that there are "only" these two doctrines, "only"
meaning that these two are complete - no others are
needed.
442 I have not been able to locate this passage in the sUlra.
Fcrur Interwoven Annotations 789
443 P6016, Vol.153, 38.1.1-38.1.3. Translation by Geshe
Wangyal in The Door ofLiberation (New York: Lotsawa,
1978), p.122; by Robert A.F. Thunnan in The Life and
Teachings of Tsang Khapa, P.104.
444 Toh 3916, Tokyo sde dge Vol. 15, 48a.4-7.
445 For the siitra reference, see note 301.
446 For the siitra reference, see note 302.
dvayanisritam eke~
g.u bhiram
n . bhirubhisanam
. .
siinyat:akartu;liigarbham
ek~ bodhisiidhanam//
As Sha-mar-den-zin, 31.2-3, points out, although these
verses do seem to be indicating implicitly that the
Chittamiitra view is superceded by that of Madhyamika,
such is not clear in the literal words. Thus he feels that
this passage also does not contradict Ye-shay-day's state-
ment that it was not made ckar in the Madhyamika
treatises of the Superior Nag3rjuna whether external
objects exist or not.
482 A-gya-yong-dzin gives a somewhat fuller explanation,
167.3-5. Although Dzong-ka-ba says here in the Great
Exposition that the chronology is evident to be thus, in
the Medium Exposition (rje tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu ma'i
Ita ba'i skoredition, 670.9; Thurman's translation, p. 117,
Hopkins' p.6), he qualifies this statement, saying, "the
chronology of the clarification [of the texts by N iigiirjuna
and Aryadeva] through great treatises is evident to be
thus". The reason for this qualification is that there
were great Madhyamikas of similar assertion who pre-
ceded both Bhiivaviveka and Shantarak~hita, and thus
one can consider Ye-shay-day's account to be a chrono-
logy of the founding of those systems - i.e., setting
798 Notes
them forth in contradistinction to other systems - but
not as a mere chronology of the persons who assert
tenets in accordance with those systems.
483 See Kay-drup's Thousand Dosages, Gurudeva edition,
4Ib.5-43a.4, for his discussion of this topic. Quite
aside from seconding the very specific objection brought
up by Dzong-ka-ba concerning Chandrakirti - saying
that he cannot be considered to make assertions in
accordance with any of the lower tenet systems - Kay-
drup makes a broader objection (42a.2 - 3). He says that
even Bhavaviveka and Jftanagarbha - famed as Sautran-
tika-Madhyamikas - cannot be considered to accord
with the Sautr3ntikas in their presentations of conven-
tionalities because they have many great dissimilarities
from that system, such as not asserting self-knowers
even conventionally. If something were posited as ac-
cording with something else merely because of according
in some partial way, then it would absurdly follow that
all tenet systems accorded with each other.
484 In the Berkeley text, this paragraph was placed con-
siderably earlier, at 17a.I-2; this would be P.401 of the
English translation, coming just before the beginning of
the heading, "Fifth, a further unsuitability ... ".
485 P5380, Vo1.103, 187.2.3. This is translated by Chr.
Lindtner in "AtiSa's Introduction to the Two Truths,
and Its Sources", Jounuzl of Indian Philosophy 9, 1981,
P.194. He has interpreted the Tibetan syntax a bit
differently. The entire passage (15 - I6ab) reads:
stong nyid gang gis rtogs she naf
de bzhin gshegs pas lung bstan zhingl
chos nyid bden pa gzigs pa yil
kIu sgrub slob rna z1a grags yin!
de las brgyud pa'i man ngag gis/
chos nyid bden pa rtogs par 'gyur/
My translation of it is:
Through what is emptiness realized?
Through the quintessential instructions transmitted
from
Four Interwoven Annotations 799
Chandrakirti, student of Nagar;una
Who was prophesied by the Tathagata
And who perceived reality, the truth,
Reality, the truth, will be realized.
Lindtner's translation (P.I94) is:
But who has [actually] "understood" emptiness? -
Nagarjuna who was predicated (vyakrta) by the Tatha-
gata, [and his] disciple (Siya) ChandrakIrti who
[also] saw the absolute truth (dharmaUisalJla). The
absolute truth (dharmatiisalJla) may be understood by
means of the instructions (upadea) hailing from him.
Lindtner has interpreted the interrogative pronoun in
the phrase stong nyid GANG gis rtogs as referring to a
person, "Who has realized emptiness?" I feel that my
interpretation of it as what - "Through what is empti-
ness realized?", is supported by the answer given in
16ab - "Through the quintessential instructions trans-
mitted from him, reality, the truth, will be realized."
Also, Lindtner has split the two lines, "Who was pro-
phesied by the Tatbagata" (de bzhin gshegs pas lung bstan
zhing), and "And who perceived reality, the truth" (eMS
nyU! bden pa gzigs pa yi), so that the first applies to
Nagarjuna and the second to both Nagar;una and
Chandrakirti. Such a split is not justified by the Tibetan
connective zhing, and given that only Nagar;una was
prophesied by the Buddha, it is clear that both lines
must refer to him.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX ONE: THE DIVIS ON OF MADHYAMIKAS
INTO REASON-ESTABLISHED ILLUSIONISTS AND
PROPONENTS OF THOROUGH NON-ABIDING
562 Sanskrit tenns supplied by David Ruegg in his Literature
of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India, P.58-
9, as corresponding to the Tibetan tenns cited above.
The Sanskrit tenn miiyopamiidvayaviidin actually trans-
lates the Tibetan sgyu ma Ita bu gnyis su med par smra ba:
"proponent of illusion-like non-dualism", a Tibetan
tenn used far less frequently in this context than is sgyu
ma rigs grub. See below, note 577, for a reference on its
use. The Tibetan CHOS TRAMS CAD rab tu mi gnas par
smra ba, which I have not actually seen used, would
correspond more exactly to the Sanskrit sarvadhamui-
pra~(iinaviidin.
563 The following discussion is primarily an interweaving of
five sources:
1 Sha-mar-den-dzin, Lamp Illuminating the Profound
Thought, Set Forth to Purify Forgetfulness of the Difficult
Points of (Dzong-ka-ba's) "Great Exposition of Special
Insight", 19.4-30.2 (Sha-mar's discussion includes an
extensive paraphrase of Kay-drup Nor-sang-gya-tso's
(mkhas grub nor bzang rgya mtsho) assertions (19.4-21.6)
which served as the source for that scholar's views);
2 Nga-wang-bel-den's Explanation of the Conventional
and the Ultimate in the Four Systems of Tenets (usually
referred to as the Presentation of the Two Truths, the full
title is grub mtha' bzhi'i lugs kyi kun rdzob dang don
dam pa'i don rnam par bshad pa legs bshad dpyid kyi dpal
mo'i glu dbyangs, New Delhi: Guru Deva, 1972),
188.5-200.1;
3 Nga-wang-bel-den's Annotations for (Jam-yang-shay-
814 Notes
ba's) "Great Exposition of Tenets", Freeing the Knots of
the Difficult Points, Precious Jewel of Clear Thought (grub
mtha' chen mo'i mchan 'grel dka' gnad mdud grol blo gsal
gces nor, Sarnath: Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Printing
Press, 1964,) dbu 59b.7-62a.1 (note nya);
4 A-gya-yong-dzin'sABriefExplanationofTerminology
Occurring in (Dzong-ka-ba's) "Great Exposition of the
Stages 01 the Path", 165.4-167.3;
5 Pa-bong-ka's About the Four Interwoven Annotations
on (Dzong-ka-ba's) "Great Exposition of the Stages of the
Path to Enlightenment", Set Forth In Very Brief Form
to Purify Forgetfulness and Nourish the Memory,
103.1-104.3.
See also Kay-drup's Thousand Dosages (Opening the
Eyes of the Fortunate, Treatise Brilliantly Clarifying the
Profound Emptiness, stong thun chen mol zab mo stong pa
nyid rab tu gsal bar byed pa'i bstan bcos skal bzang mig
'byed), 4Ia.6- 41b.5 in VOl.I of The Collected Works
of the Lord Mkhas-grub rje dge-legs-dpal-bzaiJ.-po
(New Delhi: Gurudeva, 1980) and see the Four Inter-
woven Annotations, Delhi edition, 166.4-170.6 and
173.6- 174.2.
564 Great Exposition, Dhannsala edition, 370a.2-370b.2.
565 Medium Exposition ofSpecial Insight, edition found in rje
tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu rna'i Ita ba'i skor, Vol.2, 669. 13-
20. English translation by Robert Thunnan on p. I 17 of
The Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa, Robert A.F.
Thunnan, ed., Dharamsala, Library of Tibetan Works
and Archives, 1982. English translation by Jeffrey Hop-
kins on P.5 of an unpublished manuscript, "Special
Insight: From Dzong-ka-ba's Middling Exposition of the
Stages of the Path to Enlightenment Practiced by Persons of
Three Capacities with supplementary headings by Trijang
Rinbochay" .
566 Medium Exposition of Special Insight, edition found in rje
tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu rna'i Ita ba'i skor, Vo1.2, 732.8-
II and 732.18-733.2. See p.l69 of Thurman's transla-
Appendices 815
tion, PP.1I7 and 118-19 of Hopkins' translation.
567 It is clear that Jam-yang-shay-ba accepts the tenn "Pro-
ponent of Thorough Non-Abiding" as another name for
PrasaIigika-Madhyamika. He says in the root text of his
presentation of tenets: "They are known as PrasaIigikas,
Only-Appearance Madhyamikas, and Non-Abiding
Madhyamikas," and elaborates on this in his Great
Exposition of Tenets, "Thus, because [PrasaIigikas] do
not abide in even any of the extremes of pennanence or
annihilation, they are called Non-Abiding Madhyamikas
or Thoroughly Non-Abiding Madhyamikas." (Transla-
tion from Hopkins' Meditation on Emptinss, PP.586 and
587.)
There is no similarly clear statement that he accepts
the Reason-Established Illusionists as Svatantrika. Nga-
wang-bel-den says in his Presentation of the Two Truths,
189.3-4, that since Jam-yang-shay-ba said in the Great
Exposition of Tenets that the PrasaIigikas are Thoroughly
Non-Abiding Madhyamikas, one can implicitly under-
stand that the Svatantrikas are Reason-Established Illu-
sionists. Also, in his Annotations to the "Great Exposition
of Teneri', Nga-wang-bel-den says that it appears that
Jam-yang-shay-ba accepts that the Reason-Established
Illusionists are Svatantrikas since he says that those texts
which refute the Reason-Established Illusionists are re-
futing Svatantrika.
Jang-gya's position can be found in his Presentation of
Tenets, 289.18-290.13. English translation in Lopez,
"The Svatantrika-Madhyamika School of Mahayana
Buddhism," (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1982),
pp. 388-9. A-gya-yong-dzin's interpretation is cited
almost in its entirety below (see next note); Pa-bong-
ka's position is found in the pages cited above.
568 A-gya-yong-dzin, 165.4-167.2. A few sentences - in-
dicated by ellipses - that deal with the division of
Madhyamikas by way of how they assert conventional-
ities have been omitted in the interest of addressing the
816 Notes
issue at hand. A-gya-yong-dzin's including the twofold
division of Miidhyamikas by way of how they posit
conventionalities within the scope of that rejected by
Lo-den-shay-rap seems to be unfounded. Dzong-ka-ba,
in both the Great and Medium Expositions, mentions Lo-
den-shay-rap only within his discussion of a twofold
division by way of assertions regarding the ultimate, and
the division of Miidhyamikas into Reason-Established
Illusionists and Proponents of Thorough Non-Abiding
is the only one discussed and rejected by Lo-den-shay-
rap at the point in his Epistolary Essay, Drop ofAmbrosia
to which Dzong-ka-ba refers.
569 See Ruegg's Literature of the Madhyamaka School, p. 119,
for references in Tiiraniitha to the Tibetan view that Ash-
vagho~ha, Shiira, Miiqcheta, and Dharma/Dhiirmika-
Subhiiti are all names referring to the same person as
well as to Western scholars' views on the topic.
570 This text is not found in the Peking edition of the
Tibetan canon among the works attributed to Atisha
but is available as a separately published work from
Bhutan (paro: Lama Ngodrup and Sherab Drimey,
1979). It contains numerous short works by Atisha as
well as works by other authors including Niigiirjuna,
Vasubandhu, Shiira, and others. Included within it are
works attributed to both Ashvagho~ha and Shiira. The
text in question, the Cultivation of the Ultimate Mind of
Enlightenment, is found in the Hundred Short Doctrines
from 418.6-422.6 and is attributed to Ashvagho~ha.
571 P5431, Vo1.103, 246.4.7-246.5.1 and 246.5.2-3. The
passage is found in the Hundred Short Doctrines, 42 13 - 5
and 421.6. Translation is in accordance with commen-
tary by Sha-mar-den-dzin, 20.1-21.3, who claims to be
giving Nor-sang-gya-tso's interpretation. The last four
lines are translated in Hopkins' Meditation on Emptiness,
P587
572 Nor-sang-gya-tso's position and interpretation of the
above passage are reported by Sha-mar-den-dzin,
195-21.6.
Appendices 817
573 Sha-mar-den-dzin, 22.1-22.2 and 23.4-23.6.
574 rtag brtan chos 'byung seems to be another name for
Taranatha's History of Buddhism in India (rgya gar chos
'byung). Taranatha was a member of the Jo-nang-ba
school and its chief monastery was called Dak-den-pun-
tsok-ling (rtag brtan phun tshogs gling). See P.284 of the
translation of Taranatha's text by Lama Chimpa and
Alaka Chauopadhyaya (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Com-
pany, rpt. 1980):
Roughly speaking, the time of the death of this king
was the same as that of the Tibetan king Khri-ral
(Ral-pa-can). During the reign of this king lived iiciirya
Anandagarbha, the Madhyamika-prasaIigika Asva-
gho~, who wrote Sarpvrti and Paramartha Bodhicitta-
bhiivanii-krama ...
King Tri-rel-wa-jen (khri gtsug Ide bstan ral ba can)
reigned during the first half of the ninth century, which
would indeed place the Ashvagho~ha who wrote the
Stages of Cultivating the Ultimate Mind of Enlightenment
considerably later than Nagirjuna.
575 dbu 62a.I-3, note tao Ruegg in his Literature of the
Madhyamaka School, p.120, says that the Paramiirtha-
bodhicittabhiivaniikrama ascribed in Tibetan tenets lit-
erature to Arya-Sl1ra is clearly a later composition, but
offers no reasons.
576 See Hopkins' Meditation on Emptiness, P.588.
577 I was unable to locate the above text by Jftanavajra in
either the Peking or sde dge editions of the Tibetan
Tripitaka. It is cited by Sha-mar-den-dzin 22.5-6.
Chandrahari's Precious Garland is P5297, Vol.IOI. The
first passage cited by Sha-mar-den-dzin is 145.5.8; the
second is 146.2.2. It should be noted that the first
passage from Chandrahari is remarkably similar to the
passage from Shl1ra cited above. Chandrahari's text also
says, 144.5.5-6, "Buddhists are of seven types: Vai-
bha~hikas, Sautrantikas, Solitary Realizers, Aspecta-
rians, Non-Aspectarians, Illusionists, and Those Thor-
oughly Not Abiding."
818 Notes
Ruegg, in his Literature of the Madhyarnaka School,
P.58, gives another reference to the usage of the terms
by an Indian scholar, the Precious Garland of S uchness
(de kho na nyid rin po che'i phreng ba, tattvaratniivali,
PP.14, 19 seq.) by the eleventh century scholar Advaya-
vajra, in which he divides Madhyamikas into those two
groups. Thjs is not cited by any of the Ge-Iuk.-ba
commentato~s writing on this controversy. In the Peking
bstan 'gyur this text is P3085, Vo1.68. The references
Ruegg must be referring to are from 277.5.4-277.5.8.
Again there is no clear statement that this is a way of
dividing Madhyamikas by way of their assertions re-
garding the ultimate nor is there use of the term
"reason-established illusionist"; rather, the term used
is "proponent of illusion-like non-dualism" (sgyu rna Ita
bu gnyis su med par smra ba). An interesting point for
further study is the transformation of the Tibetan term
sgyu rna gnyis med into sgyu rna rigs grub.
578 See Kay-drup's Thousand Dosages, Gurudeva edition,
4Ib.2-3, and Pa-bong-ka's About the Four Interwoven
Annotations on (Dzong-ka-ba's) "Great Exposition of the
Stages of the Path to Enlightenment", 103.2-3.
579 Sha-mar-den-dzin, 255
580 Golden Rosary, Ngawang Gelek edition, Vol.tsa,
548.4-5. Cited in Sha-mar-den-dzin, 25.1-2.
581 The first passage cited below is found in Gyel-tsap's
Ornament for the Essence, Gelugpa Student's Welfare
Committee edition, 231.12-15. The second is found on
P.504.4-7. Both are cited in Sha-mar-den-dzin,
253-5
582 Ornament for the Essence, Gelugpa Student's Welfare
Committee edition, 504.7-8. Cited in Sha-mar-den-
dzin, 26.2-3.
583 Presentation of the Two Truths, 189.5-7.
584 Medium Exposition, edition found in rye tsong kha pa'i
gsung dbu rna'i Ita ba'i skor, Vo1.2, 732.8- 10.
585 Great Exposition, Dharmsala edition, 370a.2 - 3.
Appendices 8 I 9
586 See his Presentation of the Grounds and Paths of Mantra
(sngags kyi sa lam, rgyud smad par khang edition, no
other data), p.IO.2, where he says, ". .. it must be
asserted that the conceptual reasoning consciousness
that realizes emptiness perceives the subject - the basis
of emptiness .... " and cites as his reason the fact that
such is stated in Dzong-ka-ba's Ocean of Reasoning,
Explanation of (Niigiiryuna's) "Treatise on the Middle
Way" and Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path.
Nga-wang-bel-den cites those passages from Dzong-ka-
ba in his Presentation of the Two Truths, 216.5-218.4;
the first portion of the passage from the Great Exposition
is given in the next note.
587 See for example 418a.4-5 where Dzong-ka-ba says:
That emptiness - i.e., the emptiness of inherent
existence with respect to which it is now being settled
that a nature of phenomena established by way of its
own entity is not established, not even a particle -
exists as an attribute of those phenomena, fonns and
so forth, which serve as substrata. Thus, it is not
contradictory that both those [that is, substrata and
attribute] exist for one awareness.
In the last sentence, Dzong-ka-ba speaks of both the
substrata and the attribute, that is, the phenomena
qualified by emptiness and emptiness itself, existing for
one awareness. This clearly suggests that both an object
and its emptiness appear to that one awareness realizing
emptiness.
588 Great Exposition, Dharmsala edition, 370a.3 and
370 b.I-2.
589 Presentation of the Two Truths, 1937- 195.3.
590 The first passage in found on 669.16-17 of the Medium
Exposition, edition found in rye tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu
rna'i Ita ba'i skor, VOl.2; the second passage is found on
732 . 18 -733. 2 .
591 Great Exposition, Dharmsala edition, 370a.6- 370b. I.
592 Medium Exposition, edition found in rye tsong kha pa'i
820 Notes
gsung dbu ma'i Ita ba'i skor, Vol.2, 732.8- 1I.
593 These two passages are cited in the Medium Exposition,
edition found in rje tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu ma'i Ita ba'i
skor, Vol.2, 730.13-15 and 730.11-13, respectively.
See Thunnan's translation, P.167 and Hopkins' transla-
tion, p. 114.
594 Cited in the Medium Exposition, edition found in rje
tsong kha pa'i gsung dbu ma'i Ita ba'i skor, Vol.2, 731.6-8.
See Thunnan's translation, p.168 and Hopkins' transla-
tion, P.1I5.
595 Great Exposition, Dharmsala edition, 370a.6- 370b. I.
596 Four Interwoven Annotations, 170.1-2.
597 Medium Exposition, edition found in rje tsong kha pa'i
gsung dbu ma'i Ita ba'i skor, VOl.2, 732.8-11.
598 Cited in Sha-mar-den-dzin, 28.4-5.
599 28.6-29.3. See Nga-wang-bel-den's Presentation of the
Two Truths, 125.5-129 for a discussion of these two
modes of interpretation and their implications as well as
citation of the passage from Kay-drup's Thousand Dos-
ages that Sha-mar-den-dzin referred to above.
600 Nga-wang-bel-den, Presentation of the Two Truths,
I~.7-I26.7. An Indian precedent for this sort of
division of the ultimate can be found in Maitreya's
Differentiation of the Middle Way and the Extremes
(III.nab), which says:
The ultimate is asserted as of three aspects -
Object, attainment, and practice.
In this context, "object ultimate" refers to emptiness,
"attainment ultimate" to nirvfu.1a, and "practice ulti-
mate" to the path, specifically an exalted wisdom of
meditative equipoise. (For the Sanskrit of the above
passage, see the Madhyiinta-vibhiiga-siistra, R. Pandeya,
ed., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971, P.95.)
601 See Tenzin Gyatso's Buddhism of Tibet and the Key to the
Middle Way (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), P.77
for a description of emptiness and the qualities of the
cognition realizing it.
Appendices 82 I
Guy Newland
COMPASSION: A TIBETAN ANALYSIS
A Buddhist Monastic TextbOok
168pp., 6.751$12.95
Jeffrey Hopkins
MEDITATION ON EMPnNESS
1024PP., hardback, 17.951$35.00
Dudjom Rinpoche
THE NYlNGMA SCHOOL OF TIBETAN BUDDIDSM
Its Fundamentals and History
Translated and edited by Gyurme Dorje with the collaboration of
Matthew Kapstein 2,ooopp. approx., hardback, 120/$240
Publisher's Acknmvledgement