Tsongkhapa’s Coordination of Sūtra and Tantra: Ascetic Performance, Narrative, and Philosophy

in the Creation of the Tibetan Buddhist Self

Edward A. Arnold

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
under the Executive Committee
of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2021
 © 2021

Edward A. Arnold

All Rights Reserved

 Abstract

Tsongkhapa’s Coordination of Sūtra and Tantra: Ascetic Performance, Narrative, and Philosophy
in the Creation of the Tibetan Buddhist Self

Edward A. Arnold

The dissertation examines the life narrative of Tsongkhapa Losang Dragpa (1357-1419),

the influential founder of the Ganden school of Tibetan Buddhism, primarily through the lens of

the bodhisattva path to enlightenment, a topic that animates much of Indian Buddhist literature

and Tsongkhapa’s own writings. Over the course of five chapters, the dissertation (1)

contextualizes Tsongkhapa’s social, political, and historical circumstances, the limiting factors

for that narrative; (2) explores the social nature of life narratives themselves, particularly Tibetan

Buddhist ones, and the many sources on which Tsongkhapa drew in creating a self in relation to

the bodhisattva ideal; (3) analyses the topic of asceticism as a constellation of practices that

embody traditional ideals, which the dissertation uniquely relates to both monastic and, perhaps

surprisingly, tantric discipline in the construction of a bodhisattva/would-be buddha self; (4)

synthesizes several themes within Tsongkhapa’s oeuvre in relation to the bodhisattva path to

enlightenment, highlighting the irreducibly social nature of embodied enlightenment; and (5)

proposes that Tsongkhapa’s social activities, specifically his so-called Four Great Deeds,

instantiate the ideal of the enlightened self’s acting within society, specifically his context of

fifteenth-century Central Tibet. The dissertation relies primarily on Tsongkhapa’s brief

intellectual autobiography, Excellent Presence, his earliest biography, Haven of Faith, a number

of Tsongkhapa’s systematic writings, and a variety of primary and secondary sources that

contextualize elements of the historical, sociological, religious, and theoretical analyses

presented throughout the five chapters.

 In biographies of Tibetan Buddhist figures, emphasis on the hagiographic tends to

obscure the social, political, and historical contexts in which their subjects act, which in turn

tends to reinforce the Weberian notion of Buddhism as an individualist path. Emphasis on

individual achievement (simultaneously including yet excluding lineages, practices,

philosophical positions, and so on) tends to reinforce the inverse, Foucauldian notion that this is

a deliberate attempt to obscure various power struggles that actually define religious actors and

institutions. In the case of Tsongkhapa, modern scholarship has tended to present the remarkable

success of his Ganden school either to his individual genius in advancing (allegedly) unique

philosophical positions or to social facts (e.g., his efforts at monastic reform), political facts (e.g.,

Phagdru dominance over rival Sakya), and historical facts (e.g., Mongol allegiance to his

successors) largely unrelated to his personal charisma, erudite scholarship, or social impact. As a

sort of middle way between these extremes, it is possible to locate within these contexts the

specific achievements of the individual who is—according to both general Buddhist

understanding and contemporary theorists in philosophy, psychology, literary studies, and

sociology—deeply socialized. As social documents, life narratives, inclusive of biography and

hagiography, function as indices of tradition, just as do practices of monastic and tantric

asceticism, all with goals of embodying the principles articulated in the systematic literature

within the social, political, and historical contexts to be transcended. This ideal, then, proves to

be fully situated within social contexts, and Tsongkhapa’s Four Great Deeds instantiate it in

relation to both individual achievements of asceticism and the institutionalization of communal

and educational capacities to replicate the processes engendering this ideal, buddhahood. In sum,

Tsongkhapa’s life narrative expresses the expectations and ideals of Tibetan Buddhist culture in
a way that proves complementary to systematic presentations and to “lived” practices of

monastic and tantric asceticism.

 Table of Contents
List of Charts, Graphs, Illustrations .............................................................................................. i

Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................ii

Timeline: Events in Tsongkhapa's Life and Indian & Tibetan History Reflected in the
Dissertation......................................................................................................................................1

Figures 1&2: Maps ..................................................................................................................... 6

A Note on Terminology…………………………………………………………………………...8

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………11

Chapter One: Tsongkhapa's Formative Matrix: Cultural, Historical, Social & Political

Contexts………………………………………………………………………………………….47

Chapter 2: Sources of the Tibetan Buddhist Self: Narrative and Systematic Literature.............104

Chapter 3: Creating the Tibetan Buddhist Self: Emulation, Appropriation and

Asceticism....................................................................................................................................172

Chapter 4: Articulating the Tibetan Buddhist Self: The Coordination of Sūtra and Tantra…....229

Chapter 5: Performing the Tibetan Buddhist Self: The Four Great Deeds……………………..309

Epilogue: Placing the Dissertation within the Field of Religious Studies……………………...393

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………409

Appendix One: A Brief Biography of Khedrup………………………………………………...444

Appendix Two: Translation of Haven of Faith…………………………………………………450

Appendix Three: Translation of Realization Narrative: Excellent Presence……………………..499

i
 List of Charts, Graphs, Illustrations

Timeline: Events in Tsongkhapa’s Life and Indian & Tibetan History Reflected in Dissertation

Figure 1: Map of Indian and Tibetan Sites with Approximate Distances

Figure 2: Map of Relevant Central Tibet (U-Tsang) Sites

i
 Acknowledgments

This project owes an enormous debt of gratitude to an incalculable number of people who

have influenced its trajectory over the past decade or more. Foremost among these is Robert A.F.

Thurman, whose groundbreaking work on Tsongkhapa and interdisciplinary ways of

approaching Buddhist thought and practice have inspired my thinking and writing in ways I

cannot begin to appreciate fully. It has been a great honor to serve as his final graduate student

and to attempt, however imperfectly and unartfully, to approach the scope of his thought. With

both peaceful and wrathful demeanors employed appropriately, Bob allowed me the latitude to

explore these topics and to articulate their salience in ways that reflect a confidence in my

capacity that I had not earned. And because of that, and because of his special concern for the

topic, I worked with great diligence to produce a study worthy of his oversight. Rachel

McDermott has taken exceptional effort, over several years, to read these chapters with great

care and to encourage me to reach beyond the narrow audience such a dissertation might interest.

Her advice has been invaluable from beginning to end. Gray Tuttle, Michael Como, and

Courtney Bender provided stimulating comments that have improved the final product

significantly.

I should thank in particular Geshé Lobsang Dhargyé of DNKL Tibetan Buddhist Center

for Universal Peace (Redding, CT) and Gyumé Khensur Lobsang Jampa for providing insight

into various aspects of the dissertation, but perhaps more importantly for embodying personally

the exemplary qualities that characterize the spiritual guide devoted to monastic and tantric

asceticism referenced throughout. Many friends from Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist

Studies (Ithaca, NY) deserve thanks of various types, but I will single out only Ven. Tenzin

Thutop, an important teacher and friend for many years. There are many, many others

ii
elsewhere—whether related to Columbia, Cornell, Namgyal, or otherwise—to thank, but I owe

enormous gratitude to far too many to attempt to name individually.

Finally, I must thank my immediate family—Gwen, Nate, and Noah, who have endured

thanklessly the extended process of this project’s life, from the years of the long Columbia

commute to the homebound period of the Covid pandemic. Tsongkhapa has become an indelible

part of their lives, and I hope that this proves to be a good thing.

iii
Timeline of Events in Tsongkhapa’s Life and Indian & Tibetan History Reflected in the Dissertation*

c.566-c.486BCE Life of the Buddha, Śākyamuni

268-232BCE Reign of Aśoka

150/200CE-? Life of Nāgārjuna, Centrism (Madhyamaka) founder and Guhyasamāja exegete

c. 200-? Life of Āryadeva, Nāgārjuna's immediate student and Guhyasamāja exegete

c.4thCE Lives of Asanga and Vasubandhu, Yogic Practice/Idealism (Cittamātra) founders

c.600-c.650 Life of Candrakīrti, Conventionalist Centrism founder and Guhyasamāja exegete

c.600-c.660 Life of Dharmakīrti, influential Buddhist logico-epistemological philosopher

c.600-c.900 Yarlung Dynasty rules Tibet

618/27-650 Reign of Songtsen Gampo, retrospectively considered Avalokiteśvara emanation

641 Princess Wencheng, bride for Songtsen Gampo, arrives from China, bringing
Jobo Śākyamuni image, initially installed at Ramoché but later moved to Jokhang

650-850 Early Diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet

755-797/804 Reign of Tri Songdetsen, retrospectively considered Mañjuśrī emanation, who

officially converts empire to Buddhism and sponsors cultural transformation

c.770 - 788 Śāntarakṣita, Nālandā Monastery abbot, in Tibet at Tri Songdetsen's request

779 Founding of Samyé Monastery, institutionalizing monasticism among Tibetans, with

Śāntarakṣita acting as preceptor, Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya ruled official code

793/4 Samyé debate/s between Kamalaśīla, representing winning Indian gradualist view,
and Hvashang Mohoyen, representing Chinese Ch'an simultaneist view characterized
as denigrating ethics and discursive thought/conceptuality in general

815-838 Reign of Ralpacan (Tri Tsukdetsen), retrospectively considered Vajrapāṇi

emanation, assassinated (allegedly) for his excessive patronage of Buddhist causes

838-842 Reign of Langdarma (Üdumtsen), characterized as persecutor of Buddhism,

assassinated by Samyé abbot

842-c.900 Reign of Ösung and his son Pelkortsen as empire disintegrates

900-1250 The Age of Fragmentation: regional struggles for political control

c.950 Formation of kingdom of Gugé by imperial descendants, including Yeshe Ö

(c.959-c.1036), who invited Atiśa from Vikramaśīla Monastery in Bihar

1
late 900s-1250 Later Diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet: Rinchen Zangpo, the Great Translator,
travels to India (c.975/6) and Eastern Vinaya monks return to Central Tibet

c.992-c.1072 Life of Drokmi, progenitor of the Sakya tradition

c.1002/12-1096/7 Life of Marpa, founder of the Kagyu order and teacher of Milarepa

c. 1016-1100 Life of Nāropā, Indian Buddhist scholar and great adept, source for important
unexcelled yoga tantra lineages for Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṁvara, Kālacakra and
six dharmas (or yogas) of Nāropā, especially Guhyasamāja for Tsongkhapa

1042-1054 Atiśa (958-1054) in Tibet (1045 travels to Central Tibet from Gugé)

1056/7 Formation of Kadam tradition, with founding of Reting Monastery by Atiśa's

disciple Dromtönpa

1073 Formation of Sakya tradition, with founding of Sakya Monastery by Khon Konchok
Gyalpo

1073 Founding of Sangphu Monastery by Ngog Lekpai Sherab, disciple of Atiśa, and
uncle of famed translator Ngog Loden Sherab

1079-1153 Life of Gampopa, who instituted monasticism with Kagyu tradition

1175 Founding of Tshal Gungtang Monastery outside Lhasa by Lama Zhang, where
Tsongkhapa would spend four years immersed in the canon

1179 Founding of Drigung Thil Monastery by Jigten Sumgön, where Tsongkhapa first
studied upon his arrival in Central Tibet from Amdo

1193-c.1207 Destruction of all major Indian Buddhist monastic institutions

1246 Sakya Pandita (Sapan) meets with Mongol leader Köden Khan in China to negotiate
Tibet’s existential status

1264 Phagpa designated ruler over Tibet by Qubilai Khan

1264-c.1350 Sakyapa rule over Tibet under Mongol authority

1271-1368 Mongol Yuan Dynasty rules China

c.1330-1350s Butön Rinchen Drub compiles the Tibetan Buddhist canon

1357 Tsongkhapa is born in Amdo, on the eastern frontier bordering China

1360 Tsongkhapa is blessed and given the name Kunga Nyingpo by the Fourth
Karmapa, Rolpai Dorjé, returning from China

1363 Dondrub Rinchen, a Kadampa master educated in Central Tibet, takes charge
of Tsongkhapa, moving him to Jakhyung Monastery for his education

2
1362/4 Darma Rinchen (Gyaltsab Jé), Tsongkhapa’s immediate successor, the first
Ganden Tripa, is born

1368-1642 Ming Dynasty rules China

1372 Tsongkhapa departs for Central Tibet, taking with him (but promptly losing) the
words of advice regarding what topics to study

1373 Tsongkhapa arrives in Central Tibet, at Drigung Thil Monastery

1375 Tsongkhapa undertakes formal examinations at various monasteries

on the topic of the perfection of wisdom

1376 Tsongkhapa is introduced to Rendawa, who becomes his primary teacher

1378 Tsongkhapa considers returning to Amdo at his mother’s insistence, but resolves
instead to remain in Central Tibet to continue his education

Tsongkhapa composes first two works, on a specialized perfection of wisdom

topic (the twenty sanghas) and on the Mind-Only eight consciousnesses

1379 Tsongkhapa takes the remaining formal examinations in the drakhor (grwa ’khor,
college rounds), becoming a master of four topics (bKa’ bzhi pa): perfection of
wisdom (prajñāpāramitā, phar phyin); monastic discipline (vinaya, ’dul ba); higher
knowledge (abhidharma, mngon pa); and logic and epistemology (pramāṇa, tshad
ma)

Tsongkhapa, following a retreat, has a vision of Sarasvatī (dbyangs can ma), the
goddess of wisdom, a link for which he becomes well known

1381 Tsongkhapa receives full monastic ordination

1381-85 Tsongkhapa immerses himself in the Indian Buddhist classics contained in Buton’s
recently completed canon at Tsal Gungthang Monastery library

1385 Birth of Khedrup, author of Haven of Faith, and second Ganden Tripa, successor to
Gyaltsab Jé, Darma Rinchen; death of Dondrub Rinchen, Tsongkhapa's first teacher

1385-88 Tsongkhapa composes the two-volume opus Golden Rosary, an analysis of the
twenty-one Indian commentaries on Maitreya’s Ornament of Clear Realizations

1389 Tsongkhapa teaches seventeen Indian Buddhist texts in one extensive session

1390 Tsongkhapa meets Lama Umapa, an illiterate shepherd able to communicate

directly with Mañjuśrī

1391-92 Tsongkhapa stays at Shalu Monastery and receives Buton’s entire transmission of
tantric lineages, especially Kālacakra and Guhyasamāja, from his successor

1392 Tsongkhapa reunites with Umapa, who acts as medium for his questions to Mañjuśrī
and eventually has direct vision and ongoing communication himself

3
1392 Tsongkhapa, following Mañjuśrī’s advice, enters an extended retreat, focused
initially on the bodhisattva transcendences, with eight students in Olkha Valley

Tsongkhapa has two visions of Maitreya, leading to his restoration of nearby

Dzingji Monastery and its famed Maitreya image, his first great deed

1395 Tsongkhapa ends the Olkha Valley retreat and meets with Lhodrak Namkha
Gyaltsen, who channels Vajrapāṇi and convinces Tsongkhapa not to travel to India

1396 Tsongkhapa is warned by Sarasvatī he will die at age fifty-seven (1413)

1397 Tsongkhapa experiences profound spiritual breakthrough regarding the identity

of emptiness/dependent origination, composes In Praise of Dependent Origination

1398 Tsongkhapa composes Three Principles of the Path

1399 Tsongkhapa returns to Dzingji Monastery and conducts fifteen-day festival to

commemorate the Buddha’s miracles at Śrāvastī, precursor to the Great Prayer
Festival of 1409

1400 Tsongkhapa, after a decade, reunites with Rendawa, who treats his student as equal

1401 Tsongkhapa, along with Rendawa and Lochen Kyabchok Palsang, supervises six
hundred monks in an event committed to rejuvenating dedication to the monastic
code, his second great deed

1401-2 Tsongkhapa composes Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment
([skyes bu gsum gyi rnyams su blang ba’i rims pa thams cad tshang bar ston pa’i
byang chub lam gyi rim pa] lam rim chen mo), a massive exposition on the stages of
the exoteric path to enlightenment

1403 Tsongkhapa composes commentaries on Fifty Stanzas on the Guru and the ethics
chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi along with a treatise on tantric ethics

1404 Tsongkhapa composes his first tantric text, a commentary on Nāgabodhi’s

Stages of Arrangement (Guhyasamājasādhana-vyāvasthāli), at Mañjuśrī's urging

1405 Tsongkhapa composes Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra (Sngags rim chen
mo), a massive exposition on the stages of the esoteric path to enlightenment

1406 Khedrup, author of Haven of Faith, becomes Tsongkhapa’s student

1407 Tsongkhapa composes Essence of True Eloquence:Differentiating the Provisional

and the Definitive Meaning (drang ba dang nges pa’i don rnam par ‘byed legs bshad
snying po) upon Mañjuśrī’s insistence in a vision

1408 Tsongkhapa composes Ocean of Reasoning (rig pa’i rgya mtsho), an enormous
commentary on Nāgārjuna’s seminal Centrist text, Wisdom

1409 Tsongkhapa produces and oversees the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo),
his third great deed and authorizes construction of Ganden Monastery

4
1410 Ganden Monastery construction completed, Tsongkhapa returns from giving
extensive teachings at Sera Chöding for its consecration

1411 Tsongkhapa composes Brilliantly Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages (rim lnga
rab tu gsal ba’i sgron me), a detailed explanation of Guhyasamāja perfection stage
practice and Practical Guide on the Five Stages of Guhyasamāja Perfection Stage in
One Sitting (Dpal gsang ba ’dus pa’i rdzogs rim rim lnga gdan rdzogs gi dmar khrid)

1412 Tsongkhapa, fallen ill the prior year, receives news of Rendawa’s death

1413 Tsongkhapa remains gravely ill as overcoming his prophecy of death (1396)
consumes Ganden community, and he finally recovers

1414 Tsongkhapa composes his annotated commentary (mchan ’grel), based on

Candrakīrti’s commentary, on the Guhyasamāja Tantra and teaches at Sera Chöding
the Four Combined Commentaries on the Guhyasamāja Tantra

1415 Tsongkhapa composes Milking the Wish-Granting Cow (dpal ’khor lo sdom pa’i
mngon par rtogs pa rgya cher bshad pa ’dod pa ’jo ba), an exposition of the
Cakrasaṁvara sādhana, and Middle-Length Treatise on the Stages of the Path

1416 Construction begins on Yangpachen Tantric Temple and Drepung Monastery, the
second institution in the Ganden monastic network

Tsongkhapa composes a guide to Nāropā’s “six dharmas,” the quintessence of

father and mother category of unexcelled yoga tantra, Guide Possessing the Three
Convictions (zab lam na ro’i chos drug gi sgo nas ’khrid pa’i rim pa yid ches gsum
ldan zhes bya ba)

1417 Yangpachen Tantric Temple, with its three-dimensional maṇḍalas of two principal
unexcelled yoga systems (Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṁvara) of the Ganden tradition,
construction is completed

c.1400-1417 Through composition and construction, Tsongkhapa institutionalizes his unique

coordination of sūtra and tantra, his fourth great deed

1418 Tsongkhapa composes Illuminating the Intent, an extensive commentary on

Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism (Madhyamakāvatāra), his final “sūtra” exposition

1419 Tsongkhapa composes Illuminating the Hidden Meaning (bde mchog bsdus pa’i
rgyud kyi rgya cher bshad pa sbas pa’i don kun gsal ba), a voluminous commentary
on the Cakrasaṁvara Tantra, his final tantra exposition

Sera Monastery, the third institution of the Ganden monastic network, is founded

Tsongkhapa dies on the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month

1427 Khedrup composes The Haven of Faith (dad pa’i ’jug ngogs), the official biography
of Tsongkhapa

*Sources: Haven of Faith, Jinpa 2019, Tuttle & Schaeffer, eds.

5
 Figures 1&2: Maps

Figure 1: Map of Indian and Tibetan Sites with Approximate Distances

Tabo Monastery, Gugé (now H.P., India) to Ganden Monastery: distance appr. 800 miles

Tabo Monastery to Bodhgaya: distance appr. 1150 miles

Bodhgaya to Vikramaśīla Monastery: distance appr. 130 miles

Tsongkha region, Amdo to Drigung Monastery: distance appr. 800 miles

6
Figure 2: Map of Relevant Central Tibet (U-Tsang) Sites

Major Central Tibetan Sites in Red:

Far Left: Sakya Monastery, seat of Sakya school

Zhalu Monastery, seat of Buton Rinchen Drub

Center: Ganden Monastery, Tsongkhapa’s first monastery

Tsel Gungtang, Kagyu monastery where Tsongkhapa
spent four years immersed in the canon

Center North: Drigung Til, Kagyu monastery where Tsongkhapa

first studied when arriving in Central Tibet
Reting Monastery, Kadam flagship monastery where
Tsongkhapa composed Lam rim chen mo

Right: Dzingji Monastery, site of Tsongkhapa’s first of the

four great deeds

7
 A Note About Terminology

There is no lack of writing about the art and craft of translation, and I do not intend to try

to offer anything substantive on the topic. However, even deciding what terms (e.g., karma) need

to be translated, in light of their penetration of a target culture, remains an important

consideration with respect to the study of Buddhism. Terms and concepts, whether native or

foreign, are not self-evident in their meaning; they require some amount of engagement with

their specific context/s for clarity, and even then one can go down a rabbit-hole of sources in

which divergent understandings of complex terms or concepts may exist. An example of this

would be the Sanskrit madhyamaka, which is simply “that which is of the middle or center” and

has been reasonably glossed as “middle way” in its context as a “position” situated against

extremes of eternalism and nihilism.

Already there, however, lies a substantial amount of context, especially insofar as

virtually all Buddhist thinkers, the Buddha forward (and backward, presumably), would lay

claim to such a position. Yet “Madhyamaka” is well known as the particular philosophy of

Nāgārjuna, who famously held no position, or view (dṛṣṭa, lta)—whatever that might mean for a

philosopher. What that does mean, however, is critical to Tsongkhapa’s articulation of

Nāgārjuna’s philosophy and how he understands the commentarial traditions stemming from his

work. In brief, what is in a name, or term, and the conceptual terrain that is its context/s proves to

be no small matter; that is likely no surprise to anyone reading this dissertation.

This is simply an introduction to the surprisingly difficult decision of choosing

terminology to convey how I interpret how Tsongkhapa interprets the philosophical terrain of

Indian Buddhism. Fortunately, by Tsongkhapa’s time the trademark, as it were, for the term

“Madhyamaka” (dbu ma) belongs to Nāgārjuna and his commentarial tradition, and a further

8
distinction between (at least) two strands of that tradition, one (Svātantrika) which relies on the

formal Dignāga-Dharmakīrtian epistemological tradition and another (Prāsaṅgika) whose

primary methodological practice relates to adducing fallacious consequences from others’

arguments. Tsongkhapa argues at length that the former position, through its commitment to

autonomous syllogisms (svātantras), entails a commitment to the necessity of intrinsic identity

conventionally—it would not count as Madhyamaka if the commitment were on an absolute

level—that distinguishes it sharply from the latter. That is, the Svātantrika (rang rgyud pa)

insistence on a commonly appearing subject to both parties of a debate displays a belief in there

being some intrinsic identity that the subject possesses that thereby allows debate to proceed; this

is the fault line between Bhāviveka’s Svātantrika and Candrakīrti’s Prāsaṅgika.

This specific line of discussion, however, is not of concern in this study; rather, what

exactly distinguishes Tsongkhapa’s understanding of Prāsaṅgika (and specifically Candrakīrti’s

writings) from that of his predecessors in Tibet is of concern. In particular, the force accorded to

social and linguistic conventions in establishing the authority of reasoning, religious practice,

causality, and objects of knowledge in general—against any appeal to essential/intrinsic identity

or existence (subjective or objective)—sets apart Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of Candrakīrti’s

interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s interpretation of the middle way. Hence, in determining what

English terms to use in characterizing this specific constellation of concerns, I feel compelled to

move away from both the Autonomist/Consequentialist pair favored by Jeffrey Hopkins and the

Dogmaticist/Dialecticist pair favored by Robert Thurman. Neither is problematic in any way, but

in trying to capture the specific concerns that motivate Tsongkhapa (as I understand them) with

respect to the critical elements of Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Madhyamaka—which,

following Thurman, I translate as Centrism—I hope to emphasize the place of convention and

9
consensus in the construction of relative reality. Hence, I use “Formalist/ism” for Svātantrika and

“Conventionalist/ism” for Prāsaṅgika—the former suggested by Prof. Thurman.

I hope the choice of Conventionalist/ism for Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Centrism, as

understood by Tsongkhapa (as I understand both, that is) becomes clear in chapter four. The

insights of Wittgenstein, as Thurman has observed, and both Hume and Sellars, as Garfield has

observed, pertain to various elements of the philosophy of Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa. But

Wittgenstein, Hume, and Sellars are not interpreted univocally—nor are Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti,

and Candrakīrti. In offering an understanding of what (I think) Tsongkhapa thinks that

Candrakīrti thinks that Nāgārjuna intends in his systemization of the Buddha’s perfection of

wisdom teachings in treatises such as Wisdom, I put forward one particularly influential

interpretation that, when coupled with the Centrist exegetical tradition of Guhyasamāja (Esoteric

Community, the unexcelled yoga tantra system that Tsongkhapa privileges), coordinates the

exoteric sūtra teachings regarding conventions and causality at a relatively coarse level with the

esoteric tantra teachings regarding conventions and causality at a relatively subtle level. This

coordination of sūtra and tantra, which Tsongkhapa understands to be the quintessence of the

Buddha’s teaching and that synthesizes the principal features of the Indo-Tibetan tradition, is the

primary focus of this study.

10
 Introduction

Tsongkhapa in Tibetan Buddhist Social and Religious History

The Tibetan Buddhist scholar-yogi Tsongkhapa Losang Dragpa (1357-1419) ranks

among the most important figures in the social and religious history of the Tibetan cultural

region. This is due to the enormous influence of his comprehensive systemization of the

classical Indian Buddhist tradition and to his vision of Tibet as a potential buddha-landscape

whose cultural orientations and social formations could serve as foundations for individual and

communal spiritual progress. These two elements, the philosophico-religious and the social, are

inseparably related for Tsongkhapa, according to both his standard life narrative, The Haven of

Faith (dad pa’i ’jug ngogs), and his voluminous collected works, which this study considers

together as complementary resources, along with Tsongkhapa’s brief autobiography, Realization

Narrative: Excellent Presence (rtogs brjod mdun legs ma), in order to examine how he draws

upon Indian Buddhist ideals to fashion his own life and to articulate in his writings the unique

coordination of sūtra and tantra (mdo sngags zung ’brel).1 This coordination, which entails the

full scope of the path to enlightenment in Tsongkhapa’s writings, takes two forms in his lived

experience: an extensive process of study and meditation that draws on those “timeless”

1
Here, when I say “unique,” I do not mean to say that Tsongkhapa is innovative or original, which would suggest of
a traditional scholar like him, or a scholastic tradition like that of Tibetan Buddhism, a deviation from the accepted
truths of the great geniuses of prior times; that is, I do not intend this pejoratively. Jinpa 2002 16-18 takes up the
topic of Tsongkhapa’s alleged originality, which he relates (17) to “the intensity of the criticism Tsongkhapa’s
thought attracted from Tibetan scholars, particularly from within the Sakya school” and the extent to which that
thought relied on Mañjuśrī, the transcendent embodiment of wisdom in the Buddhist tradition, as opposed,
presumably, to those great geniuses. Tsongkhapa does not attribute anything but inspiration and advice to Mañjuśrī,
however, although certain brief texts, verses or lines are attributed to him. By “unique,” I mean that his fitting
together as a coherent whole the entirety of the teachings in a hierarchical sequence proves, for his time, a singular
achievement in Tibet.

11
traditional ideals; and his four great deeds (mdzad pa chen po bzhi)2 that, as results of that

process, express his specific social context.

Better known to Tibetans as Jé Rinpoché (precious master), Tsongkhapa is the founder of

the Ganden school of Tibetan Buddhism, whose third hierarch, Khedrup Gelek Palsangpo (1385-

1438, mkhas grub dge legs dpal bsang po), authors Tsongkhapa’s earliest complete life narrative,

Haven of Faith, which serves as the primary source for this study. The devotional tone of Haven

of Faith (hereafter Haven), which tone is typical of the life narrative (rnam thar) genre, need not

distract from the historical facts or religious concerns that animate the Tibetan Buddhist life

world in which Tsongkhapa operates.3 Indeed, this tone represents the social reality that the life

narrative exemplifies, one in which elite spiritual agents stand at the cultural center and Buddhist

principles and ideals structure societal expectations and actions.4 It is a truism in Buddhism that

life narratives of spiritual masters, beginning with the Buddha himself, serve as teachings that

complement and elucidate the systematic presentations of Indian Buddhist literature. This is of

heightened importance in Tibetan Buddhism, especially in terms of the narration of esoteric

vajrayāna5 visions and practices, which tend to set the goals for later practitioners. Such life

2
As Thupten Jinpa 2019 418n.222 observes, the four great deeds as a designated set seems to be so named first in
Desi Sangye Gyatso’s history of the Ganden order, but clearly referencing a traditional grouping.
3
From among the three types of Tibetan Buddhist life narrative (rnam par thar pa, literally liberation story), which I
consider in chapter one – that is, outer, inner, and secret – Haven of Faith (written within a decade of Tsongkhapa’s
death) represents the outer, or historical, account of Tsongkhapa’s life, and Khedrup also writes a brief secret
biography of his teacher, narrating his spiritual experiences and visions.
4
The norms of the Tibetan Buddhist life narrative (rnam thar) genre, shown in chapter one, dictate that adulation is
the appropriate tenor of such works, for the expectation is that a life narrative is written only of someone, almost
always a famed spiritual figure, worth celebrating.
5
Throughout this study, I use vajrayāna, secret mantra/mantra, and tantra interchangeably to refer to the esoteric
bodhisattva practices that require some form of initiation (Skt. abhiṣeka, Tib. dbang) process. From Tsongkhapa’s
perspective, these practices and their textual sources derive directly from the Buddha in some way, and so
distinguishing a well-developed, coherent adamantine (vajra, dorjé) vehicle (yāna, theg pa) from its formative
strands makes no sense in this context. I prefer to leave the particular tantric systems (Tsongkhapa does regard them
as coherent presentations, delivered by enlightened agents and explicated by authoritative exegetes) untranslated, for
the most part, not because of any presumed exotic content but in order to acknowledge or to signal the extent to

12
narratives act as maps for spiritual journeys travelled, charting individual experience against

standard frameworks for practice. Tsongkhapa’s life narrative, as documentation of his

coordination of sūtra and tantra, acts as a particularly detailed and compelling example of the

genre, one that can give clear insight into the enormous range of Tibet’s Indian Buddhist

systematic literature as it impacts Tibetan social history through the lives of the elite spiritual

agents who embody that literature.

The primacy of the social nature of Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, together with

Tsongkhapa’s particular insistence on the irreducibly social nature of Buddhist philosophy and

practice, undermine the interpretations—both emic and etic—of Buddhism as asocial, thoroughly

transcendent, mystical, or otherwise detached from the concerns of mundane existence. These

interpretations, whether explicit or implicit, underlie the contentions in this study that the social

nature of Buddhism has been overlooked or undermined and that Tsongkhapa’s writings serve as

the foremost articulation against such interpretations. From an emic perspective, Buddhist

interpretations tend to propose some form of consciousness utterly detached from or untainted by

mundane reality that experiences enlightenment; many of Tsongkhapa’s systematic writings

accomplish the work of refuting these throughout this study. From an etic perspective, two

interpretations concern are a concern: first, that which dismisses Tibetan Buddhist life narratives

as unrelated to social factors, as they are merely obsequious statements of devotion or documents

of mystical religious experience unmediated by traditional norms or expectations; and, second,

that which dismisses the Buddhist project writ large as asocial and otherworldly, following

which they should be regarded as requiring care in terms of their semantic density—just like the term “tantra,”
which derives from the verb tan, to weave and so resonates with “sutra,” which refers to a thread (of discourse or
thought, etc.). Tantra, in general, often has been approached as mystical or non-rational in content and hence
appropriable and commodifiable with little regard to context or dismissable precisely as mystical or non-rational.
Tsongkhapa’s position is quite the opposite and considers tantric theory and practice as continuous with principles
elaborated in the exoteric context.

13
Weber’s famous judgment.6 Over the course of five chapters—drawing on Tsongkhapa’s own

narrative and systematic writings, Khedrup’s Haven, as well as pertinent contemporary academic

sources—I challenge the premises of these interpretations.

Tsongkhapa’s writings on the bodhisattva path to enlightenment serve as the thread with

which I weave my analysis of the relationship between his writings and biography. Haven

presents Tsongkhapa’s life as a culmination of that path, and Realization Narrative: Excellent

Presence (hereafter, Presence) narrates his own spiritual development as the result of his

adherence to the pithy guidelines for bodhisattva practice articulated by his role model, the

Indian Buddhist master Atiśa. According to Tsongkhapa, the roles of both bodhisattva and

buddha focus primarily on the short- and long-term welfare of limitless other beings and

secondarily on their own release from cyclic existence. He follows the Indian tradition in

highlighting this as the critical distinction between the bodhisattvas’ vast, other-oriented efforts7

and the circumscribed, self-oriented efforts of the saint (arhat) of the individual vehicle.8 It

6
See chapter five for a discussion of Weber’s now-debunked claims and how they represent the opposite of
Tsongkhapa’s claims.
7
Here, “the vast” is a way of referring to the bodhisattva deeds in general, which are said to be limitless in response
to the vast types of persons who need a given sort of therapeutic teaching. Vast becomes shorthand for these deeds,
in conjunction with “the profound,” which refers to the meditative insight into selflessness or emptiness. At some
time in late Indian Buddhism, these two complementary aspects of the aspiring bodhisattva’s tasks to be fulfilled (to
become a buddha) become represented as distinct lineages coming from, respectively, Maitreya to Asanga and
Mañjuśrī to Nāgārjuna, though both initially from the Buddha himself. As the two aspects are said to be inseparable
elements of perfect enlightenment, their distinction is a heuristic one. For Tsongkhapa, however, the danger of
emphasizing one over the other (typically, the profound over the vast) appears very real in the Tibet of his time.
8
Although Tsongkhapa specifies in his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment that the
meditations appropriate to the individual vehicle, such as contemplation of impermanence and death’s certainty, are
pertinent to the bodhisattva of the universal vehicle, the bodhisattva by definition does not emphasize the goal of his
or her own individual liberation from cyclic existence, which is the goal of the saint or, literally, “Worthy One”
(Arhat) who has transcended karma and, according to Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa, understood both personal and
phenomenal selflessness. An Arhat does not, in contrast to the bodhisattva, take responsibility for liberating all other
living beings as well, a responsibility that entails becoming a fully enlightened buddha, according to the universal
vehicle scriptures. Chapter two elaborates on this, but the point for Tsongkhapa is that a bodhisattva or buddha is
distinguished by this profound responsibility for others, and those Tibetans who ignore the other-oriented deeds of
the bodhisattva (e.g., generosity, forbearance, ethical behavior) in their power-accomplishing religious practices

14
becomes apparent that Tsongkhapa’s success during his own life and his enduring popularity

among Tibetans comes from his articulation of the path to enlightenment as a replicable,

sequential process of mind-body development whose goal of buddhahood is universally available

and critically related, on his interpretation, to the causal processes uniquely expressed in the

Centrist Conventionalism equating of emptiness and dependent origination.9 I explore this in

relation to a specific understanding of asceticism that specifies such development in relation to a

sophisticated cosmological religious tradition, as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism proves to be. I show

that this topic, the bodhisattva’s path to enlightenment—with its gradualist model of education

and transformation—unifies all of Tsongkhapa’s writings, integrating his positions on ethics,

epistemology, metaphysics, and contemplative methodology.

My exploration of how Tsongkhapa understands and presents his vision of the path to

enlightenment, in conjunction with how he enacts it, provides the conceptual framework10 by

which I analyze ways in which Tsongkhapa’s soteriology pertains to: (1) Tibetan life writing

narratives and their relationship to systematic philosophical presentations; (2) the processes of

(siddhis)—especially those of secret mantra, which is predicated on the bodhisattva resolve—pervert the essence of
the Buddha’s supreme teachings.
9
Throughout this study, I use “dependent origination” and “relativity” to refer to the same basic concept,
pratītyasamutpāda/rten ’brel. Each has its useful connotation, the former stressing the lack of independence of a
given phenomenon and the latter the inter-relation among phenomena. The phrase “dependent arising” has become
popular as a translation equivalent and is useful as a singular nominal form, but I otherwise do not care for it. And I
prefer “emptiness” to “voidness” for śūnyatā/stong pa nyid for no reason other than the connotation of “the Void” in
contemporary popular usage to refer to the putative lack of existential continuity after death.
10
By “conceptual framework” I mean the overarching (or underlying) singular concern that animates Tsongkhapa’s
philosophy, in this case soteriology, in the sense that Isaiah Berlin famously indicates in his The Hedgehog and the
Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History, in which he refers to an ancient Greek proverb to distinguish between
thinkers who focus on a plethora of things (the fox) or one thing exclusively (the hedgehog). Here, I would portray
Tsongkhapa as a hedgehog, in that his singular concern is soteriology, as evinced by the stages of the path genre,
which concedes the possibility for innumerable access points by which to orient oneself toward enlightenment. Of
course, as Berlin acknowledges immediately, this binary is a useful analytical tool only when not subjected to deep
scrutiny—and while Tsongkhapa acknowledges the provisional usefulness of certain views or practices, he also
holds only certain ones to be completely efficacious. See chapter four, with its discussion of provisional and
definitive views articulated in his Essence of True Eloquence, for more on this.

15
emulation and role modeling that, as the relationship between spiritual teacher and disciple,

predicate such narratives and for Tsongkhapa ground the very efficacy of the path, from its first

moment until buddhahood; (3) the integrated nature of individual liberation, universalist

perfections, and esoteric vajrayāna contemplative disciplines and practices, linking the social

roles of monk, bodhisattva, and tantric adept; and (4) the manner in which these connected

practices stand out among Tsongkhapa’s social contributions as his celebrated “four great

deeds.” These so-called four great deeds represent the distinct forms of Buddhist social activism

that necessarily characterizes the career of the bodhisattva and his emphasis on them serves as a

dramatic counterexample that undermines the mis-interpretations discussed above. Hence,

foregrounding these four deeds in relation to the full narrative in Haven and Tsongkhapa’s own

writings provides the analytical purchase needed to appreciate Tsongkhapa’s unique

contributions to Tibetan Buddhist religious thought and social history.

Tsongkhapa draws upon two millennia of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist narrative and systematic

literature to construct in his writings the ideal of the scholar-yogi and to create of himself for

Tibetan society an example of that very ideal, which he then institutionalizes in Ganden

Monastery and its network, which take shape in the final years of his life. This ideal, as displayed

by Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds, serves as the consummate expression of Buddhist social

engagement, whereby the future state of perfect enlightenment is invoked and embodied as

present, through the bodhisattva deeds and the vajrayāna practices. Hence, my investigation of

the life narrative of Tsongkhapa focuses on the powerful impact that he exerts on Tibetan

Buddhism and Buddhist Tibet, an impact that has been left unexplored and under-theorized. I do

not dismiss his legacy as simply the result of political convenience, whereby the Phagmodru

16
rulers of Central Tibet use him as a pawn for their hegemony over their Sakya rivals;11 nor do I

reduce his impact to the unique but powerful articulation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism system that

his tradition attributes to a mysterious and complicated relationship with Mañjuśrī, whom a later

critic would identify as, rather, a demon. Instead, I draw upon and connect Tsongkhapa’s own

writings to the earliest strata of his life narrative, including the standard resource, Khedrup’s

Haven, and Tsongkhapa’s own autobiographical explanation of his spiritual development,

Presence. In so doing, I connect Tsongkhapa’s ideal of the bodhisattva scholar-yogi as presented

in the Buddhist narrative and systematic literature to his own self-presentation as that ideal, and I

focus on his four great deeds that represent his social impact to emphasize the complex and

multifaceted nature of that impact. Neglecting neither the sociopolitical circumstances of his

historical context nor the appealing coherence of his thought and writings, I explore how these

elements contribute to these social deeds that epitomize both.

Tsongkhapa’s life narrative in brief (see timeline above)12

Tsongkhapa was born in 1357 in the locality of Tsongkha (Onion Valley) in the

northeastern region of Amdo, from where, four hundred years earlier, the Eastern Vinaya monks

11
While Tsongkhapa received substantial support from Lhasa’s political leaders, it appears that he had no aspiration
for political power at all, nor did Tsongkhapa appear to suspect ulterior motives in Phagmodru support. At a time
when other religious leaders were actively courting Mongol and Ming influence, Tsongkhapa refused twice
invitations from the Ming emperor, finally sending an emissary in his stead, as Haven details. See chapters one and
five for discussion of these issues.
12
As I clarify in chapter two, Tibetan Buddhist life narratives do not serve as “objective” statements of fact that
report dispassionately publicly known events. Life narratives are social documents, and the modern objective
biography and the Tibetan Buddhist hagiography participate in the expectations of their respective audiences.
Therefore, I recount the events of Tsongkhapa’s life and experiences, drawn from Khedrup’s Haven of Faith, in a
manner consistent with that source. This includes the expectation that spiritual elites—those about whom such
documents would be produced—may interact with enlightened beings and that those elites either are themselves
enlightened beings or are close to becoming so. To disregard any of this as irrelevant would be to perform a
disservice to the material and to the culture whose expectations participate in its construction, to say nothing of the
ethnocentric assumptions that might be involved in that disregard.

17
returned the transmission of monastic discipline to Central Tibet. At the age of three, he received

from the Fourth Karmapa the lay Buddhist vows and the new name Kunga Nyingpo; his name

before this, interestingly, is not given. Prior to taking the novice monastic vows at age seven, he

received initiations into the unexcelled yoga tantra systems Cakrasaṁvara, Hevajra and

Yamāntaka from his teacher Dondrup Rinchen, who, tradition claims, returned from Central

Tibet to Amdo to find Tsongkhapa, who had been prophesied as his disciple. At this time, he

received the secret name Donyö Dorjé and, upon taking the novice vows, was given the name

Losang Dragpa, the name by which he is typically known. From this early age, it should be

noted, he engaged in the advanced self-initiation rite of Yamāntaka, thus integrating monastic

discipline with secret mantra practice throughout his life. At sixteen (1372) he left Amdo to

study in Central Tibet, with the advice from his teacher to focus initially on Maitreya’s cryptic

but influential map of the bodhisattva path, Ornament for Clear Realization.

In Central Tibet, he first studied a range of topics, including medicine, with the head of

the Drigung Kagyu subschool.13 He continued his studies with a number of teachers and within a

few years, due to his prodigious memory and fast learning, became known as a top scholar of the

perfection of wisdom literature, of which Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realization is a crucial

commentary. Thereafter he undertook an extensive tour of monasteries, including Samyé,

throughout Central Tibet, receiving important tantric initiations at Zhalu and Sazang, both Sakya

affiliates, and taking the perfection of wisdom examination at Sakya. He soon came under the

tutelage of the Sakya scholar Rendawa Zhonnu Lodrö (red mda’ ba gzhon nu blo gros), who

13
Chapter one explores the major Tibetan Buddhist traditions that developed prior to Tsongkhapa’s Ganden
tradition, the three most important for this study being the Kagyu, Sakya, and Kadam. The Nyingma tradition,
representing the transmission prior to the Tibetan empire’s dissolution, played little role in Tsongkhapa’s spiritual
formation. Tsongkhapa studied extensively with teachers from each of these three, and each impacted his
coordination of sūtra and tantra in important ways, as should become clear.

18
figured as his foremost teacher, from whom he received instructions on higher knowledge

(abhidharma) and Centrism, including Rendawa’s own commentary to Candrakīrti’s

Madhyamakāvatāra (Entry to Centrism). Tsongkhapa continued to travel to other teachers for

specialized study on topics such as monastic discipline, and soon gave his own first teaching, in

Nenying, on the two Indian higher knowledge classics, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakoṣa

(Treasury of Higher Knowledge) and Asanga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya (Manual of Higher

Knowledge).

At age twenty-one, Tsongkhapa wrote his first treatise, on a subtopic of the perfection of

wisdom literature but incorporating higher knowledge material, entitled Stairway Taken by Those

of Lucid Intelligence.14 He returned to Sakya and received further instruction in the major

treatises and soon completed the examinations on the topics—monastic discipline (vinaya, ’dul

ba), logic and epistemology (pramāṇa, tshad ma), and higher knowledge (abhidharma, mngon

pa)—that, with the perfection of wisdom, constitute the typical Tibetan scholastic education.

Now in his early twenties and recognized as a prodigy, Tsongkhapa took the full monastic vows

and continued studying intensively for the next decade, in particular under the guidance of the

Drigung abbot, who taught him extensively in the Kagyu lineages, especially Drigung Jigten

Sumgon and Phagmodrupa as well as tantric topics and the famed six dharmas of Nāropā.

Tsongkhapa’s deep immersion in the teachings of various Kagyu communities warrants much

more attention than it has received.15

14
Apple 2013 24.
15
An important feature of Tsongkhapa’s early education absent from this timeline is his study of the epistemological
literature, which plays a tremendously important role in the development of the monastic educational system in
Tibet and which Tsongkhapa specifies in Excellent Presence as critical to his intellectual development. According to
Indian Buddhist history as received in Tibet, the Buddhist epistemological tradition initiated by Dignāga and
extended by Dharmakīrti and his commentators directly challenged the Orthodox (proto-Hindu) thinkers with
syllogistic logic, rather than the consequentialist logic deployed by Nāgārjuna against the early Nyāya tradition.
Candrakīrti, a contemporary of the Buddhist epistemologists, champions this consequentialist logic against his

19
 In 1388, at age thirty-one, Tsongkhapa completed his first major treatise, The Golden

Rosary of Eloquence (legs bshad ser phreng), an enormous synthesis of the twenty-one Indian

commentaries on Maitreya’s Ornament—the result of three years of work. After this he began

teaching and giving initiations widely, even as he himself continued receiving instructions,

particularly in Kālacakra, from Butön Rinchen Drub’s disciples, and other tantric systems, while

also undertaking short, intensive retreats.16 He began to focus on the teachings and initiations for

the four classes of tantras, whose practices were scattered among the various schools. He met the

semi-literate shepherd Lama Umapa Pawo Dorjé, who had a special relationship with Mañjuśrī,

the embodiment of wisdom. Tsongkhapa formed a special bond with Umapa, traveling with him

and receiving special teachings on Mañjuśrī. Umapa served as the medium for Tsongkhapa’s

questioning of Mañjuśrī until, after an intensive retreat, Tsongkhapa could interact with the latter

directly; from this time on, Tsongkhapa relied extensively on Mañjuśrī for knowledge and

advice.

On Mañjuśrī’s advice, Tsongkhapa determined—despite massive crowds attending his

teachings and his fame spreading throughout Central Tibet—to enter an extended retreat with

eight disciples at Olkha Chölung, near Tsethang. In the early 1390s, the nine engaged in grueling

Indian Buddhist colleagues, arguing that they had fallen into a form of non-Buddhist reification much like their
opponents by (though perhaps unwittingly) acknowledging the autonomy of syllogism members. Tsongkhapa argues
against his Tibetan Buddhist colleagues, who understand Candrakīrti to reject all logic and analysis, rather than just
this reificationist sort. This key distinction, I argue in chapter four, forms an important part of Tsongkhapa’s
understanding of Centrism and how it necessarily fits with secret mantra.
16
Although Buton’s Zhalu Monastery is occasionally considered a distinct tradition, it usually is considered part of
the Sakya order. Although this transmission of Buton’s lineage proves very important to Tsongkhapa’s presentation
of the vajrayāna path, equally important are the lines of transmission from the Kagyu order. Tsongkhapa counts
Nāropā and Marpa, Milarepa’s teacher, as critical links in the Guhyasamāja teachings, but Kagyu traditions tend to
see themselves, presumably because of Milarepa’s own practice and reputation, as primarily Cakrasaṁvara
practitioners. This is especially pronounced in the work of Tsangnyon Heruka, who authors the authoritative
(auto)biography of Milarepa and champions Cakrasaṁvara as the Kagyu practice. Nāropā also figures importantly in
the transmission of Kālacakra from India to Tibet. Thus, Tsongkhapa’s reliance on Nāropā underlines his
commitment to tantra as a unified whole, with no single practice superior in nature to any other. I explore these
issues below.

20
purification practices, Tsongkhapa himself presenting nearly two million maṇḍala offerings and

three and half million prostrations, focused on the thirty-five confessional buddhas, which caused

his impression to be worn into the temple floor. Among the visions that appeared to Tsongkhapa

was that of Maitreya, the future buddha, who became an important symbol for Tsongkhapa.17

Having emerged from retreat, the group went to Dzingji Ling temple during the auspicious

period known as Chötrul Duchen, which commemorates the miracles that the Buddha displayed

in competition with six non-Buddhist teachers at Śrāvastī, and found a Maitreya statue in a

desperate state of disrepair and neglect. With the assistance of a large number of people, who

committed themselves to the lay vows for the duration of the work, they refurbished the statue

and held extensive consecration rituals, attracting large crowds of monks and laypeople. This is

regarded as the first of the four great deeds in which Tsongkhapa engaged.

Soon afterward Tsongkhapa traveled to Lhodrak Drawo Monastery at the invitation of the

abbot, Khenchen Namkha Gyaltsen, a Nyingma/Kadam master who passed to Tsongkhapa the

oral instructions on the two Kadam lineages, the stages of the path (lam rim) and guideline

instructions (man ngag), that he did not possess.18 These had been given by Atiśa to his main

17
In East Asia, the figure of Maitreya typically has been invoked as a millenarian symbol against oppressive
political regimes, relating to the theme of “the decline of the Buddhist Dharma” that appears in some Mahāyāna
literature. The decline rhetoric is hardly absent from the Tibetan Buddhist world, but is often invoked as an
explanation for (1) why antinomian secret mantra practices are most effective “now”; (2) why social decay and
unethical behavior are rampant “now”; (3) why diligent practice and faith are required “now”; and (4) why there
should be lowered expectations of the capacity for spiritual progress “now” inasmuch as (2) diminishes the overall
social climate for spiritual practice. The now is, of course, a rhetorical “now” to be deployed in context for
motivational purposes. This concept of the social climate for spiritual practice, elaborated in the early part of
Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, expresses the interdependence of person
and environment that is most vivid in the secret mantra practices of unexcelled yoga tantra wherein these two are
transformed simultaneously into buddha and buddha-field. See chapter five for the importance of Maitreya in
Tsongkhapa’s life narrative.

18
See Jinpa (2008) 8-9 for the ways in which the lineages stemming from Atiśa to Drom and then onward to Potowa
(po to ba rin chen gsal, 1027-1105), Chengawa (spyan nga tshul khrims ’bar, 1038-1103), and Phu-Chungwa (phu
chung ba ghzon nu rgyal mtshan, 1031-1106) or to Potowa, Chengawa, and Gönpawa (dgon pa ba dbang phyug
rgyal mtshan, 1016-1083) have been distinguished. Jinpa 2019 420n237 and 421n.240 notes that Tsongkhapa also
received transmissions of the Kadam mind training instructions (blo syong) and instructions from three lam rim

21
disciple Dromtönpa, the founder of Reting (rwa sgreng) Monastery, who in turn gave each to a

different disciple. Tsongkhapa thus reunited the three lineages and then began an extensive study

of the lam rim text by Drolungpa (Geshé Trinlé) that would influence his own Great Treatise on

the Stages of the Path. Khenchen Namkha Gyaltsen—with the counsel of Vajrapāṇi, the

embodiment of spiritual power and protector of the tantric teachings—persuaded Tsongkhapa

not to travel to India, for Tsongkhapa considered seeking out Nāgabodhi and Maitrīpa for further

instructions on Centrism and the Guhyasamāja (Esoteric Community) magic body practice. With

a group of disciples Tsongkhapa traveled on pilgrimage southeast to Tsari, an important location

for Cakrasaṁvara (Bliss Wheel) practice and then undertook a retreat on Kālacakra (Wheel of

Time).

It was soon after this that Tsongkhapa, dissatisfied with his understanding of Centrism,

undertook his famed one-year retreat above Olka Chölung, the site of his earlier extended retreat,

and gained the decisive breakthrough into Nāgārjuna’s system. In a dream or vision of Indian

Centrist masters, Buddhapālita touched Tsongkhapa’s head with his commentary on Nāgārjuna’s

Wisdom; on reading the commentary the next day, Tsongkhapa attained the direct apprehension

of emptiness as relativity. From this experience Tsongkhapa composed spontaneously his brief

Essence of True Eloquence, known as In Praise of Relativity, praising the Buddha for his

teaching of relativity, and he emerged from retreat with a radically different view of reality, one

that would influence profoundly the shape of Tibetan intellectual history.

Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, having studied in Central Tibet for a

quarter century, Tsongkhapa now embraced fully his role as teacher. Having come to a

distinctive appreciation of Atiśa’s Kadam tradition and a profound certainty about the Centrist

lineages derived from Potowa, Gönpowa, and Neusurpa (sNe’u zur pa ye shes ’bar, 1042-1118). See Vetturini for
extensive details on the early Kadampas.

22
view of reality, he set out for Reting Monastery, the flagship Kadam institution, to compose The

Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. Receiving, according to tradition,

Atiśa’s visionary blessing for the composition and also Mañjuśrī’s exhortation to complete the

section on special insight, in which he articulated his Conventionalist view, Tsongkhapa revealed

just how far from standard Sakya thought he had departed: the special insight section is clearly a

rejection of the mainstream Sakya interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s tradition.19 Prior to this

composition, however, Tsongkhapa gave extensive discourses on monastic discipline, presaging

the focus on vow-based treatises that he took up after The Great Treatise, to a gathering of six

hundred monks at Namtsé Deng Monastery—a rejuvenation of rigorous monastic discipline that

is regarded as the second of his four great deeds.

While continuing to teach widely, including tantric topics and his own Great Treatise,

Tsongkhapa composed works on the three vows—Essence of the Ocean of Vinaya, explaining

the individual liberation vows; The Basic Path to Awakening, a commentary on Asanga’s

Bodhisattvabhūmi ethics chapter, and Fruit Clusters, an explanation of the tantric vows.

Additionally, he composed a commentary on The Fifty Stanzas on the Guru, the famed Indian

treatise that clarifies the teacher-student relationship in the vajrayāna context. Tsongkhapa’s

fame around Lhasa was such that the Phagmodru leaders were well aware of him years earlier,

having funded his retreat hermitage Olkha Chölung, and he was invited by Dragpa Gyaltsen, the

Phagdru head and thus the ruler of Tibet, to give teachings on a number of occasions. Their

relationship, well established previously, now flowered with the patronage that would establish

19
Although too complex an issue to detail here, refer to chapters one and four for more. Briefly, a prominent
interpretation among Sakya scholars of the fourfold analysis of how subjective and objective phenomena exist,
drawn from Nāgārjuna’s Wisdom, holds that a sort of non-committal skepticism should emerge as a result of that
analysis, whereby the workings of logic and reasoning are suspended and nothing regarding conventional existence
should be asserted. Tsongkhapa argues very strongly otherwise.

23
the Great Prayer Festival and Ganden Monastery in the coming years, during the relative peace

of the first portion of what Karl Ryavec terms the Pakmodrupa Period (1354-1642).20

Tsongkhapa then focused on teaching tantra, entering a retreat during which he composed

his first such text, a commentary on Nāgabodhi’s Twenty-Verse Rite on the Guhyasamāja

Maṇḍala. Next he composed his encyclopedia on the four tantra classes, The Great Treatise on

the Stages of Mantra, which sets forth the critical importance of deity yoga and conceptual

thought within the tantric context. He then took on the task of writing his own commentary to

Nāgārjuna’s seminal Wisdom, but paused at the first chapter in order to write his hermeneutical

masterpiece The Essence of True Eloquence: Differentiating the Interpretable and the Definitive,

having perceived the need to explain how to distinguish between Idealistic (Mind Only) and

Centrist interpretations, especially refuting Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s problematic

interpretation of both.21 During this period, Tsongkhapa was visited by emissaries with a request

from the Ming emperor to travel to teach in China, but citing his advancing age—he was now

over fifty—he declined, sending in his place his leading disciple Shakya Yeshe when a second

invitation arrived five years later. Indeed, at the beginning of the following year, 1409,

20
Ryavec 116 suggests that the conflict that arises during the latter portion of this period may derive, in part, from
megadroughts afflicting Central Tibet during this early period, leading to scarcity of resources.
21
It is well known that Tsongkhapa, like his teacher Rendawa, finds Dolpopa’s other-emptiness theory a massive
error of interpretation, and not infrequently other proponents of different other-emptiness theories are quick to
distinguish theirs from Dolpopa’s. It may be noted that part of Dolpopa’s arguments for his other-emptiness view
hinges on his understanding of the classical Indian Centrist treatises to represent teachings for a lower mentality,
appropriate to the Kali Yuga, whereas his sources represent an earlier, Treta Yuga corpus of teachings, appropriate
for superior intellects, on which see Sheehy. Many tantras, too, are claimed to be and are accepted as concise
versions of the “real” thing, abbreviated for dullards, which appears to be most humans. This widespread appeal to a
cosmological ebb and flow of general intellectual capacity aside, Dolpopa’s nostalgia, lamenting the inherent
incapacity of contemporaneous Tibetans to achieve meaningful spiritual progress, is the inverse of Tsongkhapa’s
progressive mentality, represented by the four great deeds. This unsubstantiated position of Dolpopa may explain,
in part, Tsongkhapa’s concern to cite and comment upon these Indian Buddhist classics, reading them as fully
capable of leading to perfect enlightenment. Here I treat the issue of the potential for spiritual progress and its
relationship to textual resources as a sociological issue in addition to a philosophical one. See chapter four for more.

24
Tsongkhapa’s followers insisted that he curtail his wandering lifestyle, and plans were made for

the construction of his own monastery, with the financial support of the Phagmodru rulers. Built

on Nomad Mountain outside Lhasa, Ganden Monastery was completed within the year.

Following the completion of these two large treatises, Essence of True Eloquence and

Ocean of Reasoning, Tsongkhapa conceived the idea of the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam

chen mo), a community event in Lhasa to mark the new year with a collective aspiration for

social harmony and prayers directed to the future buddha Maitreya. He had rehearsed this event

earlier on a smaller scale, and conditions now allowed for a grand event. This festival would

create the short- and long-term social conditions for spiritual development within Tibet and the

karmic conditions for meeting Maitreya, either in his Tuṣita heavenly realm or—if the prayers

prove potent enough and the karmic conditions suitable—in Lhasa itself, immediately, thus

ushering in an age of peace. At dawn on the festival’s first day, in the Jokhang Temple, the

religious heart of Tibet, with several thousand monks in attendance, Tsongkhapa presented to the

Jowo Śākyamuni statue, the most sacred object in Tibet, a gold crown, thereby symbolizing the

transformation from an ordinary appearance—the emanation body (nirmanakāya)—perceivable

by humans, to an extraordinary appearance—the beatific body (sambhogakāya)—perceivable

only by advanced bodhisattvas, and hence symbolizing the transformation of the entire populace.

These two elements, the transformation of the Jowo and the collective prayer gathering at

the festival’s close, represent a unique cultural shift—even if only a brief liminal state in

practice—in which the entire community focused on the immediate, rather than incalculably

distant, possibility of buddhahood. This transformation of the Jowo and the creation of the Great

Prayer Festival are considered the third of Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds, and the festival

continued to be celebrated from 1409 until 1959. Tsongkhapa’s naming his new monastery

25
Ganden, the Tibetan equivalent of Tuṣita, Maitreya’s pure land and the place from which all

supreme emanation buddhas descend, must be seen as representing an embodiment of that

cultural shift and if not the creation of a new school of Tibetan Buddhism, then certainly the

creation of a new model—based not on clan formations but on monastic discipline—of its

institutional possibility. Thus, the first decade of the fifteenth century witnessed Tsongkhapa

transform the social and physical landscape of Lhasa itself as well as the intellectual landscape of

Tibetan Buddhism.

Now residing at Ganden Monastery, Tsongkhapa began the second decade of the

fifteenth century by teaching to a growing number of followers the range of topics of which he

was expert, from higher knowledge to vajrayāna. He would be dead by the end of the decade,

and he and his close disciples spent great effort with prayers and retreats to prolong his life. He

also continued composing new works, with a special emphasis on tantra, including an enormous

commentary on the Cakrasaṁvara Tantra (Illuminating the Hidden Meaning), and the Ārya

Guhyasamāja system in particular, with a commentary on Nāgārjuna’s perfection stage

instructions (Brilliantly Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages), and a super-commentarial

compendium entitled Four Commentaries Combined focused on Candrakīrti’s commentary on

the Guhyasamāja Tantra. His final exoteric work was a commentary on Candrakīrti’s influential

work on the bodhisattva path, Entry to Centrism, entitled Illuminating the Intent. This period also

saw the creation of the nucleus of the Ganden monastic network, with its two other of the three

major scholastic institutions built around Lhasa, Drepung in 1416 and Sera in 1419; the three

together eventually would hold tens of thousands of monks.

Tsongkhapa’s focus on tantra led to the completion of the final of his four great deeds:

the construction in Ganden of a special hall housing three-dimensional maṇḍala palaces of his

26
two principal unexcelled yoga tantra systems, Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṁvara. 22 He continued

teaching until his final days, traveling to Drepung and Sera Choding, where Sera Monastery

would soon be constructed, and returning to Ganden, where he appointed his senior student

Gyaltsab Jé Darma Rinchen as his successor and began his last series of meditations and prayers.

In 1419 at age 62, Tsongkhapa died, and as reported by many Tibetan yogis present, miraculous

events—raining flowers, lack of body decomposition, light rays from the body—were said to

occur, the tradition maintains. Tsongkhapa is said to have attained enlightenment in the between-

state, just after death, rather than during his lifetime, having refused to compromise his monastic

discipline to engage in the sexual yogas required of the vajrayāna perfection stage practices. He

is said to reside in the heavenly realm of Tuṣita—that is, Ganden—until he returns in the

incalculably distant future as the eleventh of the thousand buddhas of this Fortunate Eon.23

A few elements of the biographical sketch above deserve to be highlighted, particularly in

light of the common perceptions of Tsongkhapa that have developed in certain Tibetan and

Western characterizations. Those lazy characterizations tend to conflate an exaggerated image of

the pedantic scholar, a caricature such as that of the murderous geshé in The Life of Milarepa,

with Tsongkhapa and his entire tradition. As I examine below, Tsongkhapa himself attacks, in

the very opening folios of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, such

22
As mentioned again in chapter five, there is some disagreement about what exactly should count as the fourth, the
construction of the tantra temple alone, both Ganden Monastery and its tantra temple (Yangpachen, dbyangs pa
can), or the broader concept of the body of the teachings taking place within those buildings as well as the buildings
themselves. For the purpose of this study, the broader concept is adopted.
23
The content of these final sentences are attested in other early sources, such as the secret biographies. As this is a
narrative written for general consumption, a standard biography similar in intent (though with different cultural
expectations and assumptions, as chapter two describes) to the modern biography, such claims would be out of
place. Khedrup does not even discuss Tsongkhapa’s death in Haven, in fact—he merely discusses Tsongkhapa’s
final writing projects and then his overall legacy. For Buddhists, in terms of the continuity of existence, death is not
the end, of course; even so, the specific contextual legacy of a particular figure holds great historical importance.
This is an important point with respect to the foregrounding of social processes, as well as the immanent nature of
buddhahood and so forth, that I put forward in this dissertation.

27
scholars who do not put into practice the liberative teachings of the Buddha. He spent years

throughout his life in retreat on a variety of texts and tantric systems, and his compositions are

therefore an integration of textual and experiential knowledge. His guiding purpose, I argue, was

soteriology, not “mere” scholarship, not individual yogic practice, and not the protection of his

lineage or tradition.24 In this way, Tsongkhapa the Gandenpa is similar to his intellectual nemesis

Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, the other former Sakya black sheep, but he also should serve as a

model of non-sectarian learning, centuries before the so-called Rimé movement developed.

Indeed, Tsongkhapa studied for three decades with over forty teachers from all Tibetan Buddhist

traditions, and his refutations were directed solely at misunderstandings of certain textual

interpretations and practices—never the text, practice system, or religious community, even the

Jonang of Dolpopa.

Finally, as I elaborate below, although Tsongkhapa’s Centrist interpretation became very

influential (for some, controversial), he concentrated as much or more in his teachings and

writings on the correct interpretations of tantra, particularly in its place as one piece of the

Buddhist teachings, rather than an independent element. How these twin foci, Centrism and

tantra, necessarily fit together for Tsongkhapa, and the ways in which a constellation of issues,

detailed above, pertain to them within his own development as scholar, yogi and teacher, is the

24
In claiming that soteriology is Tsongkhapa’s guiding purpose, I do not intend to suggest that ‘religion’ is thereby
privileged over ‘philosophy,’ however those two categories might be understood. My aim is not to distinguish them
in any meaningful sense, especially because Tsongkhapa would not distinguish them. For Tsongkhapa, as chapter
four should clarify, the perfect deployment of analytical reasoning brings the philosopher to the accurate
understanding of reality, yet that philosopher will not possess the tools, cognitive or otherwise, for such deployment
without certain religious practices that refine the person toward that end. Moreover, that accurate understanding of
reality is an endpoint that is unavailable to most, but many other less accurate (that is, interpretable) understandings
are salutary in a provisional sense, and should not be denigrated, for those, like the rungs of a ladder, provide the
scaffolding for reaching that endpoint. That philosophy and psychology are entangled in this way may unsettle
philosophers for whom a “view from nowhere” is the necessary foundation for inquiry. For Tsongkhapa, even the
perfect analytical insight into the contours of reality, so to speak, is insufficient, for that neither uproots the cognitive
and psychological habits that bind the philosopher to unenlightened existence, nor assists others with whom reality
is shared; hence the concern for soteriology, of which analytical philosophy is one important factor.

28
focus of this study. Tsongkhapa’s story, as chronicled in Haven and Presence, may well be the

clearest and most detailed example of how the Tibetan Buddhist life narrative itself functions as

a spiritual teaching.

Tsongkhapa’s Four Great Deeds

Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds, as Haven of Faith narrates, are:

First, his leading of the communal refurbishing of a temple dedicated to the future

buddha Maitreya begun during his long retreat at a hermitage nearby and completed with a

festival soon after his enlightenment experience in 1397, expressed in his famed paean to the

historical Buddha, In Praise of Relativity. This represents Tsongkhapa’s embrace of a

progressive, future-oriented outlook, expressed frequently in East Asian history by Maitreya-

based cults, in distinction to the general rhetoric of the related decay and destruction of both

Buddhism and society, often expressed cosmologically as the Kali Yuga.

Second, his gathering in 1401, with his main teacher Rendawa and the Kagyu Chengawa

Rinpochés, of hundreds of monks to renew and rededicate their efforts to a rigorous adherence to

the monastic disciplinary rules, thus restoring the independent authority of the Buddha’s

community over both dominant the clan/family relationships of Tibetan history and the

reincarnation lineages developing over the prior few centuries. This represents the importance of

the so-called individual vehicle, with its emphasis on personal effort resulting in personal

liberation.

Third, his organizing, for the 1409 lunar new year, of the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam

chen mo) to commemorate and celebrate the legendary performances of miracles by the Buddha

as an assertion of supremacy over rival teachers, events witnessed, according to the Buddhist

29
stories, by the rulers and subjects of the sixteen major north Indian city-states. This festival,

which became an annual tradition, involved the refurbishing of the central temples of Lhasa, the

heart of Tibetan culture, and began with Tsongkhapa’s offering crown ornaments to the holiest

icon in Tibet, the Jobo (pronounced Jowo) Śākyamūni statue in the Jokhang temple. This event

represents the transformation of the statue from a symbol of the historical Buddha as an ordinary

human emanational figure (nirmaṇakāya) to a divine, beatific, trans-spatio-temporal form

(sambhogakāya), thereby instantiating the potential for rapid spiritual progress—typically

reserved for buddha-lands where, according to the Buddhist literature, such forms teach only

advanced bodhisattvas—withiin society itself. This opportunity for individual progress shared

collectively complements, I suggest, the second deed, but here the perfection vehicle of the

bodhisattva emphasizes the interpersonal nature of spiritual progress and universal responsibility

for others’ enlightenment.

Fourth, his construction of Ganden Monastery and the Yangpachen tantra temple to

house three three-dimensional maṇḍalas of the unexcelled yoga tantra systems of the 32-Deity

Guhyasamāja, the 62-Deity Cakrasaṁvara, the two primary systems of his tradition, as well as

that of the Vajradhātu maṇḍala and a host of other images. This represents the importance of the

esoteric tantric vehicle of the bodhisattva, with its emphasis on radical and accelerated forms of

self-transformation as an important extension of the common bodhisattva path of the six or ten

perfections. For Tsongkhapa—unlike certain of his contemporaries—unexcelled yoga practice,

like monasticism, is a necessary element of the path to enlightenment, and these two institutions

together represent his coordination of sūtra and tantra.25

25
These first two systems are the most important in the Ganden tradition, each a distinct practice system inherited
from late Indian Buddhism. As I discuss in chapters three and four, Tsongkhapa takes great pains in his education to
understand the common features in order to comprehend these systems as similar in nature. He takes great pains in
his writings to elucidate this, refuting the common assertions of his time that a given system was, in fact, supreme.

30
 Together these four deeds represent the continuity of the three modes of Buddhist

discipline that are forms of social engagement together with the assertion of the immediacy of

enlightened presence, whether in an external aspect (Maitreya) or one’s own future buddhahood,

as a result of the bodhisattva path. Tsongkhapa’s emphasis in his teachings and writings on the

stages of the path to enlightenment, which link the practices of the individual, perfection, and

secret mantra, or tantra, vehicles, thus correlates clearly to his four great deeds. Moreover, he is

adamant in his writings that buddhahood itself is to be understood not as an escape from or

denial of social reality but rather the optimal response to it; hence, buddhahood’s other-oriented

elements are for Tsongkhapa the most important. Against the influential Weberian dismissal of

Buddhism as otherworldly, life-negating, and asocial—as well as contemporary iterations of

Buddhism as fundamentally individualisitic, along with Tibetan philosophical positions that

suggest much the same—I argue that Tsongkhapa’s own writings and life narrative, and

particularly his four great deeds, prove the very opposite.26

My analysis of Tibetan life writing avoids disregarding it as pious fiction—as

hagiography or religious biography often has been—that is fundamentally aggrandizing or

sectarian in nature. Taking life narratives as social documents that index the historical and

cultural changes in which their subjects participate, as well as the ideals to which they, perhaps

unconsciously, aspire, I relate Tsongkhapa’s autobiographical statement and Khedrup’s

Guhyasamāja, according to Tsongkhapa, is a tantra of the father class, which emphasizes the production of the
magic body, whereas Cakrasaṁvara as a tantra of the mother class emphasizes the role of the clear light
transparency (’od gsal) mind. These two, magic body and clear light, are the non-dual aspects of matter and mind in
the unexcelled yoga tantras. The practice of Yamāntaka, a fierce form of Mañjuśrī and long a specialty of
Tsongkhapa, combines elements of both and is held to be particularly useful in overcoming obstacles related to
misknowledge. See chapter four for more.
26
See chapter four for Tsongkhapa’s own work in relation to Indian and Tibetan accounts that he finds problematic,
and chapter five for my discussion and analysis of Weber in particular, but others such as Strathern, whose
interpretations do not fall into Weberian territory as such, but do emphasize an individualism that is untenable on
Tsongkhapa’s interpretation.

31
biography of him together with other primary and secondary Tibetan materials to present his

story in its social context. Moreover, I draw on a particular understanding of asceticism as

embodying traditional religious ideals related to both monastic and tantric discipline to

emphasize their continuity across spatio-temporal contexts. Although Tsongkhapa’s visionary

experiences, years of meditative retreat, and seminal writings do not figure among his great

deeds, I draw on these to provide further context for and deeper analysis of his life narrative.

Thus, my textual resources are Haven along with a small number of other early life narratives,

Tsongkhapa’s own Presence, several of his own writings that establish links between his

scholarship and self-presentation, and a variety of historical, philosophical, and religious sources

that connect and complement the arguments I outline above.

Tsongkhapa in Modern Literature

With respect to Western and academic literature on Tsongkhapa, the early references to

him portray him as a monastic reformer, a Tibetan Luther of sorts, perhaps due to the common

conception of Tibetan Buddhism as a corruption of “pure” Indian Buddhism. This

characterization obscures the deep affinity Tsongkhapa has for tantra, characterized as horrific

demon-worshipping, Hindu-inflected practice in the reports of many Christian missionaries.27

While a handful of European scholars studied Tibetan religious culture in the early half of the

twentieth century, only the second half—with the forced exile of much of the leadership of the

27
Regarding Tsongkhapa as monastic reformer, Gareth Sparham (see his entry on Tsongkhapa in Oxford
Bibliographies at https://www-oxfordbibliographies-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/document/obo-
9780195393521/obo-9780195393521-0169.xml?rskey=7cNTlx&result=1&q=Gareth+Sparham#obo-
9780195393521-0169-div2-0010) identifies a trend in late nineteenth-century observers for this characterization.
See Wedemeyer 2013 part one for a discussion of the purported degeneration of Indian Buddhism (relevant to the
modernist sources at Weber’s disposal) resulting finally in tantra; and Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for
the Soul of Tibet (Harvard University Press 2017) the account of Ippolito Desideri’s sojourn in Tibet by Donald S.
Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa, which relates the earliest encounter and characterization of Tibetan Buddhism,
particularly its tantric practice, in such terms.

32
Tibetan Buddhist communities—witnessed a substantial and increasing engagement with the

tradition.

With respect to the academic study of Tsongkhapa’s exoteric philosophical corpus, a

substantial number of his most important works have been translated into English in recent

decades, but no complete English translation of a Tibetan biography of Tsongkhapa has been

published; Thupten Jinpa’s Tsongkhapa: A Buddha in the Land of Snows (2019) ranges over

many sources to compile an extremely detailed timeline and important study.28 Of the seminal

stages of the path (lam rim) genre, Tsongkhapa writes three texts, of small, medium and

extensive length, and the small version has been translated a number of times since the 1970s, its

earliest availability being in Geshe Wangyal’s Door to Liberation (1973) and Robert Thurman’s

Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa (1982, rev. 2018). The medium length stages of the path

treatise has been translated once (2012) by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna

Tradition (FPMT), an international non-profit founded by a widely respected Tibetan Buddhist

lama in the 1970s, but a new translation is due in summer 2021 from Wisdom Publications.

Finally, the extensive version has been translated in three volumes (Tsong-kha-pa 2000, 2002,

2004) by a team of Tibetan and American scholars, and a five-volume commentary on the

extensive treatise has been published (2004, 2005, 2007, 2016, 2017) by Geshé Lhundrub Sopa,

professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The earliest translation of a major treatise of Tsongkhapa’s was done by Robert Thurman,

whose 1984 The Central Philosophy of Tibet is a study and translation of The Essence of True

28
I must acknowledge the importance of Dr. Thupten Jinpa’s Tsongkhapa: A Buddha in the Land of Snows, which
has been an invaluable source of information, including documents such as letters from rivals and disciples. Jinpa’s
biography provides a wealth of detail that has clarified my thinking on a number of points. Nevertheless, this study
differs significantly from Jinpa’s, a fact of which I had to hold firm in mind upon hearing, not long into my writing,
that his was on the horizon.

33
Eloquence, Tsongkhapa’s monumental hermeneutical exploration of Indian Buddhist literature.

Jeffrey Hopkins, emeritus professor at University of Virginia, has published a three-volume

study (1999, 2002, 2006) related to this treatise. Tsongkhapa’s commentary to the seminal Indian

Centrist treatise Wisdom (Mūlamadhyamakakarikā-nāma-Prajñā), which is Nāgārjuna’s key

statement on emptiness and the touchstone for Tibetan philosophy, has been translated as Ocean

of Reasoning by Jay L. Garfield and Nawang Samten (2006). Hopkins also has published (1980,

1994, 2008) partial translations of Tsongkhapa’s commentary to Candrakīrti’s influential seventh

century Entry to Centrism (Madhyamakāvatāra). Gareth Sparham, emeritus professor at

University of Michigan, has translated two early treatises of Tsongkhapa’s: Ocean of Eloquence

(1993), which deals with Mind Only/Yogic Practice philosophy (1378), and in four volumes

(2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2013) Golden Garland of Eloquence (late 1380s), an analysis of

Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realization and its commentarial tradition that garners

Tsongkhapa considerable fame as a young scholar. Apple (2013) has translated Tsongkhapa’s

earliest treatise (1378) , which is preparatory of Golden Garland. Finally, Thupten Jinpa (2002)

has published a comprehensive analysis of Tsongkhapa’s exoteric philosophical corpus focused

on his Centrist interpretation. Jinpa's translation of Illuminating the Intent, a volume in Library

of Tibetan Classics, has been published in March of 2021, too late for me to consult it in more

than a passing manner. All of these, as well as a number of studies on later Tibetan adherents of

Tsongkhapa’s Ganden tradition, have contributed to a significant exploration of Tsongkhapa the

philosopher.

There also have been a few works related to Tsongkhapa’s massive writings on various

elements of tantra. Hopkins has translated (1977, 1981, 2005, revised as 2017a and 2017b)

portions of Tsongkhapa’s encyclopedic stages of the path of secret mantra, a synthetic overview

34
of the four classes of tantra according to the later Tibetan presentations. Thomas Yarnall has

translated (2013) another portion of this treatise, while both Robert Thurman (2010) and Gavin

Kilty (2012) have translated Tsongkhapa’s monumental exegesis on Nāgārjuna’s commentary on

the Guhyasamāja perfection stage practices. Glenn Mullin (1996) has translated Tsongkhapa’s

brief treatises on the influential practice system known as the six dharmas of Nāropā, drawn from

yoginī tantras, while Gareth Sparham has translated Tsongkhapa’s commentary on Āśvaghoṣa’s

Fifty Stanzas on the Guru (1999) and brief treatise on tantric ethics (2005). Tatz (1986) has

translated Tsongkhapa’s extensive commentary, Basic Path to Awakening, on Asanga’s chapter

on ethics from his seminal Bodhisattvabhūmi.

While some of these works contain a basic outline of Tsongkhapa’s biographical details,

these tend to read as largely unrelated to the philosophical matter at hand. Kaschewsky (1971) is

a German translation of the massive synthetic Great Biography (rnam thar chen mo) by Chahar

Geshé, written in the seventeenth century. Even Elijah Ary’s Authorized Lives:Biography and

the Early Formation of Geluk Identity provides, despite its topic, only the most basic of

information on Tsongkhapa, the founder of the tradition. Thurman’s Life and Teachings of

Tsongkhapa provides a comprehensive, though brief, biographical treatment, drawn largely from

Khedrup’s Haven, while Jinpa’s 2019 biography provides significant insight into some of the

philosophical issues but does not attempt to make a number of connections attempted here. This

dissertation, then, attempts to place Tsongkhapa’s central philosophical-religious concerns,

Centrism and the unexcelled yoga of vajrayāna, into the context of both his life narrative and

larger historical context and also to argue the critical relationship between these and the social

activism of his four great deeds.

35
What This Dissertation Does Not Do

As should be clear, this dissertation does not present the events of Tsongkhapa’s life in a

linear fashion, simply commenting on the unfolding of episodes as narrated by Haven. Thupten

Jinpa’s biography, drawn from Haven and a multitude of other sources, accomplishes that aim

perfectly. This study, instead, aims to illuminate how Tsongkhapa’s life narrative, as evidenced

by his own Presence and confirmed by Haven, draws upon Indian Buddhist systematic and

narrative literature in the construction of personal identity while being lived. It is clear that

Tsongkhapa himself consciously modeled his behavior upon the ideals from this literature, and I

frame this process of identity modeling in terms of monastic asceticism and bodhisattva practice

that—for Tsongkhapa, inevitably—leads to the radical identity appropriation of unexcelled yoga

tantra asceticism. The results of these efforts in self-creation manifest here as his philosophical

oeuvre, discussed in chapter four, and his four great deeds, discussed in chapter five, which

together must be understood as complementary aspects of his coordination of sūtra and tantra.

This dissertation does not focus on Tsongkhapa’s mystical relationship with Mañjuśrī,

though it is clear that (1) Tsongkhapa throughout Presence addresses with gratitude Mañjuśrī’s

assistance in his quest for spiritual progress, and (2) many in Central Tibet knew of this

relationship during Tsongkhapa’s lifetime, as Jinpa 2019 103-115 shows. Whether Tsongkhapa

should be understood as an emanation of Mañjuśrī or simply an especially astute student remains

an open question for his tradition, and although the latter seems better suited to the concerns of

this dissertation, an entirely separate dissertation one day might mine the sources for some

definitive answer. As for Gorampa Sonam Sengé’s suggestion that Tsongkhapa was tutored not

by Mañjuśrī but rather a demon, that too can be left open for others to determine. Even if,

somehow, it could be shown that Tsongkhapa were an emanation of Mañjuśrī, that would be

36
irrelevant to his work, for by Tsongkhapa’s own insistence, it is logical reasoning, and not

textual or personal authority, that takes precedence. After all, Sakya Pandita was regarded, by

Tsongkhapa’s time, as an emanation of Mañjuśrī, but as the introduction to Essence of True

Eloquence seems to make clear, Tsongkhapa did not regard Sakya Pandita as an authority on the

profound view. Buddhaśrī-jñānapāda claimed to have received from Mañjuśrī direct teachings on

Guhyasamāja, yet it is not his exegetical system that Tsongkhapa favored. And Tsongkhapa does

not present himself in Presence as a model to be followed because of lineage, family/clan, or any

claims to visionary experience or insight; instead, he refers to his intense efforts at learning and

meditating, just as Haven does. In fact Khedrup divides the major chapters of Haven (excluding

youth) into periods relating to Tsongkhapa’s study and practice of exoteric (chapter three) and

esoteric (chapter four) topics, the fifth and final detailing his efforts as consummate teacher,

writer, and spiritual leader in dependence on those decades of study and practice.

This dissertation also does not seek to trace the impact of Tsongkhapa with respect to his

direct successors or the trajectory of his tradition. Several studies could be produced to address

different facets of each. Ary’s Authorized Lives has attempted one such effort, and Sullivan’s

Building a Religious Empire has attempted another, and each indicates how much could be done

to provide a sense of the individual and institutional context needed to develop a comprehensive

understanding of the religious history of the Tibetan cultural area. And although this dissertation

focuses on one specific individual, I attempt to situate his impact within multiple contexts and to

refute early on the conceit of the “great man” striding triumphantly, non-contextually, and

independently across the world stage. Hopefully the various discussions throughout chapters

two, three, and four make clear that the fundamental Buddhist concepts of selflessness and

dependent origination entail the impossibility of such putatively independent actors.

37
 Finally, this dissertation does not address certain elements of Tsongkhapa’s legacy that

fall outside the public scope, so to speak, of his tradition. That is, there is a person-to-person

transmission of mahāmudrā stemming from Tsongkhapa—and attributed to Mañjuśrī—that

forms the basis for Willis’ Enlightened Beings and Roger Jackson’s Numata Award-winning

study, Mind Seeing Mind: Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This

tradition has been illuminated by a few Tibetan scholars (notably, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s

The Geluk/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra and Zasep Tulku’s Gelug Mahamudra). Related to

this tradition, and also not addressed in this dissertation, are esoteric, guru yoga practices related

to the person of Tsongkhapa, namely “Hundred Deities of Tuṣita” (dGa’ ldan lha brgya ma) and

“Worship of the Spiritual Guide” (Guru Pūja/Lama Chöpa [bla ma mchod pa]), each of which

possesses oral instructions pertaining to tantric practice regarded as restricted. The coordination

of sūtra and tantra addressed in this dissertation provides a basis for approaching these texts,

although the latter could be taken as its textual quintessence.

Lastly, I should acknowledge my debt to the many translators on whose work I rely

throughout this dissertation. The philosophical material over which Tsongkhapa ranges and the

subtlety of the topics with which he engages present a challenge to any translator (see

introduction in Garfield and Samten), and I do not pretend that I could match the efforts of those

on whom I rely, many of whom have consulted scholars from within the Tibetan tradition to

confirm the meaning—the critical factor—of their translation choices. If, for some reason, I were

attempting to present Tsongkhapa’s philosophy as having been drastically misunderstood by his

tradition for the last six centuries, then translating all the cited material from his philosophical

corpus would be necessary. And this dissertation would be entirely different. As this is not the

case, I am happy to rely on the expertise of others and to refer to the English translations, all

38
easily available for reference, that I cite. As I note earlier, there are certain translation choices

that I do not prefer to use (e.g., “dependent arising” for rten ’brel) and others that I use

synonymously.

The Dissertation in Brief

The dissertation consists of five chapters in which I analyze: (1) the historical

development of the social, political, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the Buddhist Tibet of

Tsongkhapa’s time; (2) material placing Tsongkhapa’s life narrative in the context of the Tibetan

life writing genre and the Indian Buddhist intellectual world that informs his narrative as lived

and as written; (3) the relationship between systematic and narrative writings—particularly those

related to the bodhisattva path and teacher-student relationship as a process of modeling and

emulation as well as processes of monastic and tantric asceticism, the latter a radical form of

identity appropriation—as they pertain to Tsongkhapa’s self-construction and self-representation

as a scholar-yogi; (4) the distinct intellectual contributions of Tsongkhapa, focused on the

soteriological interface of Centrism and tantra within the stages of the path framework, that make

him a towering figure in Tibetan Buddhist history; and (5) Tsongkhapa’s social activism,

expressed in his four great deeds, that represent his unique vision of a Buddhist Tibet oriented

toward a collective cultural capacity for enlightenment. Three appendices present (1) a brief

biography of Tsongkhapa’s biographer, intimate disciple, and second successor to the throne of

Ganden Monastery, Khedrup Gelek Palsangpo, an important figure in the post-Tsongkhapa

sectarian developments of the early fifteenth century, (2) a translation of Khedrup’s outer

biography of Tsongkhapa, Haven of Faith (dad pa’i ’jug ngogs) and (3) a translation of

Tsongkhapa’s Realization Narrative: Excellent Presence (rtog brjod mdun legs ma).

39
 Chapter one traces the historical processes of the Later Diffusion (phyi dar) of Buddhism

in Tibet as they relate to Tsongkhapa’s life narrative, intellectual concerns, and social activism.

This period, a century after the Tibetan empire’s fall in 842 C.E., begins properly with the return

of monastic discipline to Lhasa, the cultural heart of Tibet; but for Tsongkhapa, it is Atiśa’s

arrival in Western Tibet (circa 1040) that marks the beginning of the transformation of the

society as a whole toward the cultural embrace of Buddhism. Critical also to this second

transplanting of Indian Buddhism, for Tsongkhapa, is the translation of the seminal Centrist

treatises of Candrakīrti, whose interpretation he champions as unique and unassailable, as

elaborated in chapter four. This first chapter traces how the holistic Buddhism that Atiśa

introduces in his seminal stages of the path text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment

(Bodhipathapradīpa), is challenged with developments by a populace devoted to the promises of

swift enlightenment in the unexcelled yoga tantras and the assurances by certain tantric adepts

that ethical norms and other niceties are dispensable for the spiritually advanced.

The Later Diffusion, unlike the Earlier (snga dar), is characterized by decentralized

processes, as clan-based sociopolitical formations become increasingly entwined with religious

communities through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, political aspirations converge with

religious identites, and sectarian commitments begin to ossify. In the wake of the Mongol

support of Sakya dominance in the fourteenth century, competition, both religious and political,

between the Sakya and Kagyu intensifies. These social, political, and intellectual conditions help

to explain Tsongkhapa’s independence from Sakya-Kagyu tensions, his embrace of Atiśa’s

Kadam tradition, and his insistence on monastic discipline as an independent social formation

and to contextualize the principal issues of his writings, from the misinterpretations of Centrist

philosophy to the various critical misunderstandings surrounding the practice of tantra.

40
 In chapter two I explore the genre of Tibetan life writing, namthar (rnam par thar pa, or

simply rnam thar), where I draw on the work of Jan Willis and Janet Gyatso to explore the three

traditional levels of life writing (an inclusive term covering hagiography, biography and auto-

biography) of outer, inner, and secret.29 I consider ways by which cultural norms and

presuppositions participate in the creation of the life narrative, in the sociological sense of

structuring the possibilities for the life to be lived and the literary sense of conforming to

audience expectations. The two are, I argue, inseparable elements: cultural norms and

presuppositions are not timeless truths but continuously negotiated and developed by individual

agents deploying those norms and presuppositions in particular contexts. Life narratives, then,

are themselves social documents. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, I analyze

how ethical and ontological presuppositions—the culturally constructed frameworks by which

social actors engage the world—determine one’s reality. This is a key element in understanding

how life narratives take as natural and given the cultural norms that structure the experience of

the biographical subject and how systematic philosophical and religious positions may appear as

timeless truths.

In chapter three I develop these themes with respect to narrative and systematic writings

and the ways these interact to create a framework in relation to which a Tibetan Buddhist

scholar’s life narrative is lived and written.30 The inheritance of Indian Buddhism consists of

both types of writings, particularly in regard to the Buddha’s multi-life biography and, more

29
These three levels often overlap even when the biography is a “secret” one. The outer level pertains to the
historical “facts” of ordinary temporal existence, such as those related of Tsongkhapa in Haven; the inner pertains to
the spiritual life of the subject, including personal obstacles, educational processes, progressive development and
realizations attained; and the secret level pertains specifically to the visions, attainments, and practices of tantra.

30
In some ways, the narrative of Haven functions as an extended model for how to integrate study, meditation,
teaching, composition, and so forth—a sort of commentary to Presence, which, in contrast, functions as a type of
systematic presentation.

41
importantly for Tsongkhapa, in the construction of the bodhisattva path. I analyze how

biographies of the Buddha, jātakas and avadānas, sūtras, tantras and the influential stories of the

late Indian tantric adepts create a cultural wellspring of narrative material from which Tibetans

could draw, complementary to the systematic literature that is the purview of the scholar. I

investigate Tsongkhapa’s commitment to Atiśa’s holistic model of the stages of the path to

enlightenment and its pith, the so-called “four-square path,”31 around which he structures

Presence that he also cites at the beginning of his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path—a

remarkable case of intertextuality across narrative and systematic writings, indicating the thin

distinction between them. Reflecting on the process of modeling and emulation with respect to

the interaction between narrative and systematic presentations, I close the chapter with attention

to how causality, in terms of karma and spiritual progress, forms an integral part of

Tsongkhapa’s focus on soteriology. Placing this concern for tradition in terms of monastic and

tantric discipline, which model and appropriate, respectively, idealized identities assists in

understanding the degree to which Tsongkhapa’s philosophical positions regarding soteriology,

selflessness, and causality provide a consistent framework for practice.

In chapter four I draw upon and analyze some of Tsongkhapa’s own writings in order to

present the contours of his intellectual contribution with respect to historical context and its

relationship to “timeless” truths of Buddhist thought. Tsongkhapa’s presentation of Candrakīrti’s

thought, whose interpretation of Nāgārjuna insists on the precise balance of the two truths,

ultimate and relative, and the critical place of conceptual thought and causality in spiritual

development, serves as its central focus. For Tsongkhapa, emptiness and relative causal

31
The four are enumerated as the understanding (1) that all the teachings are free of contradiction, (2) that all the
scriptures are instructions for practice, (3) the intended meaning of the Buddha’s instructions, and (4) how to refrain
from the great fault of abandoning the Buddha’s teaching, which comes from such exclusivism.

42
functionality amount to the same thing, and all Buddhist practice depends finally on the correct

understanding of how the two truths exist. This equation of emptiness and relativity is central to

his enlightenment poem, In Praise of Relativity, and his hermeneutic exploration, The Essence of

True Eloquence, along with so much of his writings on Centrism and unexcelled yoga tantra. The

application of this understanding of emptiness and relative causal functionality to tantra proves

especially important to Tsongkhapa, for he considers the causality involved in creating a new

extraordinary identity—that is, deity yoga (lha’i rnal byor)—to be the hallmark of its practice.

For Tsongkhapa the philosophical enterprise is fundamentally soteriological, forming a thematic

continuity that connects the bodhisattva path to the Centrist investigation of ontology to the

rarefied processes of deity yoga that portend the attainment of buddhahood.

While Tsongkhapa shares with other Tibetan proponents of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy a

commitment to analytical deconstruction of intrinsic identity, he uniquely argues that

Candrakīrti’s positive articulation of that deconstruction offers a thoroughly groundless

grounding, or a selfless self, for the nominal establishment of ethical actions and their results.

This nominal self is the subjectivity transformed through monastic and tantric ascetic practices,

discussed in chapter three, that model and appropriate idealized identities contained in the Indian

Buddhist scriptures. For Tsongkhapa, the causality of dependent origination underlying relative

reality entails that a meaningful life—that is, the bodhisattva way of life—does not just occur but

is intentionally constructed, as he details in Presence and Khedrup shows in the Haven. These

transformations, for Tsongkhapa, are dependent upon the intentional and thorough

deconstruction of ordinary identity, reflexively grasped as intrinsically real, without which the

intentional and thorough reconstruction of empty, dependently originated identity into that of an

enlightened being—conceived as merely nominally (ming tsam) real—would be impossible.

43
 Tsongkhapa’s critical contribution to the intellectual history of Tibetan Buddhism, and to

cross-cultural philosophy in general, rests on his unique integration of Candrakīrti’s linguistic

nominalism, or establishment by mere name or designation (ming tsam gis grub pa) or

conventions (tha snyad), which can be fruitfully compared to the later Wittgenstein and to

Sellars, and the profound transformative practices of tantra.32 This integration, so important to his

own tradition’s understanding of his genius, has been all but ignored in contemporary studies of

Tsongkhapa for at least two reasons, I suggest: the enormous influence of his Centrist writings,

and the difficulties surrounding the understanding of tantra.33 Tsongkhapa insists that only

Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist exposition of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy accurately analyzes reality

in its relative and ultimate natures and serves as the correct basis for undertaking the thorough

psychophysical transformation of unexcelled yoga.34 Moreover, unexcelled yoga tantra is,

according to late Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, the final element—and a necessary one—for the

32
On affinities between Candrakīrti and Wittgenstein, see Thurman 1978 and 1984 and Loizzo 2007; and Sellars,
see Garfield 2018.
33
Gray 2009a 95-96 addresses the contemporary understanding of Tsongkhapa's place in Tibetan Buddhist history
in reference to the stereotype of him as a monastic reformer, reflecting the binary between monasticism and tantric
practice that Tsongkhapa bemoans, as I examine below. As Gray observes, this binary has been reproduced in the
contemporary West from its roots in Tsongkhapa’s own time despite his own extensive efforts in tantric exegesis
and, quite related to that, tantric practice. The emphasis among contemporary academics to focus largely on
Tsongkhapa’s Centrist writings stems from not only the difficulties with respect to understanding tantra (perhaps
regarded as a form of magic unsuitable for academic study), but also in part due to prohibitions from within the
Tibetan tradition itself, strictures that have been relaxed in the wake of publications emphasizing it as a form of
magic. It is precisely Tsongkhapa’s insistence on understanding secret mantra as a gradual path amenable to
reasoning and grounded in textual transmission, particularly as elucidated by Guhyasamāja hermeneutical keys, that
make an understanding (academic or otherwise) of Buddhist tantra as magical, illogical, or somehow deviant a
skewed perspective, at least from an important segment of the Tibetan tradition. Hopefully this perspective becomes
clear over the course of the dissertation.
34
For Tsongkhapa, Nāgārjuna’s thought was properly upheld by his direct disciple Āryadeva and later Buddhapālita,
whose commentary caused Tsongkhapa’s epiphany. Buddhapālita was criticized a century later by Bhāvaviveka
(a.k.a. Bhāviveka or Bhāvya), who insisted that reasoning through autonomous syllogisms (svatantras) is necessary
for debating opponents. Candrakīrti dismantled this criticism, and the two commentarial traditions become known in
Tibet as Formalism (Svātantrika, rang rgyud pa) and Conventionalism (Prāsangika, ’thal gyur pa), for Bhāvya and
Candrakīrti, respectively. Tsongkhapa’s Essence of True Eloquence discusses these differences and explains why
Candrakīrti’s position is correct and how it differs crucially, an assertion unlike that held by Sakya Pandita and
many other Sakya scholars. See Thurman 1984 for Essence of True Eloquence.

44
attainment of buddhahood, and its identity-construction practices of deity yoga are particularly

important for Tsongkhapa, who argues that these have been misunderstood by many Tibetans

focused exclusively on mahāmudrā, dzogchen, and related meditative systems.35 Again, the

fundamental place of soteriology across these issues illuminates this fourth chapter.

In chapter five I examine the four great deeds, enumerated above, that exemplify

Tsongkhapa’s social activism as a necessary component of the bodhisattva path, linking the

soteriological concern of his writings to these important moments in his life narrative. Rejecting

Weber’s premise that Buddhism lacks a social ethos and drawing on the critiques of Tambiah

and others, I consider the ways in which the three vows—individual liberation, bodhisattva and

mantra—represent different forms of social engagement and degrees of world-transforming

interdependence. Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds encompass all three vows, just as his writings

insist on the unity of the three for the ideal practitioner, and indicate the need for each within his

vision of a Buddhist Tibet, with each available to the needs and predispositions of the individual

in line with Tsongkhapa’s insistence, following Atiśa’s four-square path, on the contextual

validity of all of the Buddha’s teachings. I relate his institution building efforts, such as the

innovative creation of the tantric college, preceded by the construction of Yangpachen tantra

temple within Ganden Monastery, to his fundamental soteriological concern to link all Buddhist

practice within the bodhisattva path framework.

This final chapter, then, displays the importance of Tsongkhapa’s intellectual

contributions in relation to his social activism, applying the more abstract discussions in chapters

two and three to the specific contexts of Tsongkhapa in chapters one, four and five. Moreover,

this final chapter analyzes how Tsongkhapa deploys the symbolism of Maitreya, the future

35
This is the import of Tsongkhapa’s focus on creation stage practices, as detailed in his Great Treatise on the
Stages of Mantra. See Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa 2013, especially the translator’s introduction, for this.

45
buddha, in relation to these four great deeds that together transform Tibet into a potential

buddha-landscape in accordance with the needs and predispositions of the individual, as above.

In this way, the dissertation ties together Tsongkhapa’s own writings (chapters three and four) in

relation to his own historical context (chapter one) and broader intellectual frame of Indian

Buddhism (chapters two and three) as they pertain to the embodied, social performance (chapter

five) of his spiritual path in his life narrative.

46
 Chapter 1: Tsongkhapa’s Formative Matrix: Cultural, Historical,

Social, and Political Contexts

Overview

This chapter has two primary objectives: one, to specify certain social, political, and

historical developments of Tibet’s Buddhist culture relevant to Tsongkhapa’s life and career; and

second, to trace the formation of certain religious and philosophical trends that shaped

Tsongkhapa’s understanding of Tibet’s complex Indian Buddhist heritage. The first objective

relates to the radical transformation of Tibetan culture from warring empire to Buddhist domain

over the course of several hundred years, culminating in the mass monastic movement of

Tsongkhapa’s Ganden tradition. The second objective pertains to the important themes in

Tsongkhapa’s writings and the importance of the two late Indian Buddhists most influential on

his own work, Atiśa (eleventh century) and Candrakīrti (seventh century).36 These two

objectives provide insight into the confluence of religious and political issues as they relate to

development of powerful, independent Tibetan Buddhist communities and Tsongkhapa’s

relationship to those.

With respect to the development of Tibet’s Buddhist culture, I investigate the

contribution of three emperors of the Yarlung Dynasty (spanning from the second to the tenth

centuries, but at its height from the mid-seventh to the mid-ninth) in the empire’s conversion to

the religion and culture shared by its powerful neighbors, China, India, and Turco-Mongolian

Central Asia. I also include as formative in the Tibetan cultural repertoire the myths that locate

36
As becomes clear over the course of the following chapters, the Buddha himself, Nāgārjuna (2nd CE), Āryadeva
(3 CE), Asanga (4th CE), Dharmakīrti (7th CE) and Śāntideva (8th CE) influenced Tsongkhapa extensively in
rd

various ways. The focus here on these two figures relates to their specific impact on the period of Tibetan history
known as the Later Diffusion, discussed below.

47
that conversion to an ancient but continuously unfolding plan involving the Buddha himself,

Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist embodiment of transcendent compassion, and the legendary tantric

master Padmasambhava. I then consider the post-imperial socio-political formations that became

integrated with the emerging religious communities, the Kadam, Sakya, and Kagyu traditions,

during the period called the “Later Diffusion,” from the tenth through fourteenth centuries. I

focus on themes critical for Tsongkhapa’s perception of Tibet’s religious history: the importance

of Atiśa in reforming Buddhist practice, the cultural tension between tantric practice and

institutional monasticism, and the primacy of the Indian gradualist model of spiritual

development, as enshrined in the narratives of the famed Samyé debate.

Next I turn to the impact of the two Indian Buddhist masters who define Tsongkhapa’s

career, Atiśa, the Bengali scholar-adept of sūtra and tantra, and the Conventionalism founder,

Candrakīrti, whose philosophy acts as the foundation for a later chapter.37 I consider how the

careers of these two figures serve to distill critical philosophical concerns of the Later Diffusion,

the post-imperial period of Indian Buddhist transmission to Tibet. I analyze how Tsongkhapa

takes Atiśa as a model for practice, yet that the Bengali master may differ in important respects

from Tsongkhapa on matters of Centrism interpretation, epistemology, and tantric practice.

Candrakīrti, whose work Atiśa introduces to Tibet and who is now virtually synonymous with

Centrism, appears as a minor figure in the Indian Buddhist landscape dominated by the

epistemological tradition. I trace the troubled reception of Candrakīrti’s writings in the emerging

scholastic institutions where the Centrism of the “Three Easterners,” influenced strongly by the

epistemological tradition, holds sway.

37
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Nāgārjuna on the Indo-Tibetan tradition to which Tsongkhapa
is heir, as chapter four makes clear. Nevertheless, it is Candrakīrti’s clarification of Nāgārjuna’s works in light of
later developments as well as his reception in Tibet that make him especially relevant for this study.

48
 Candrakīrti’s philosophy is understood almost uniformly—and completely differently

from Tsongkhapa’s interpretation—as a total rejection of logic, reasoning, and conceptuality. I

consider how that understanding fits with other elements of the Tibetan religious scene,

including the mahāmudrā (great seal) and the gzhan stong (other-emptiness) views of the Kagyu

and Jonang traditions. I chart these factors along partisan lines, which became more rigid due to

Sakya and Kagyu political ambitions, and question where Tsongkhapa—whose allegiance could

be assigned credibly to the Kagyu, Sakya, or Kadam traditions—fits, if anywhere, given the

widening divisions in the Tibetan Buddhist world of the late fourteenth century. Candrakīrti’s

Centrism, it appears, may have served as one important factor in the partisan ruptures inside the

weakening Sakya tradition. With the founding of Tsongkhapa’s Ganden tradition in the early

fifteenth century, these divisions deepened further, and Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of

Candrakīrti’s work featured as one significant fault line to the present.

The Historical Foundations of Tibet’s Buddhist Culture

Although Tibetan historians trace their culture more than twenty generations earlier, it

was in the seventh century that Tibet’s emerging empire entered the broader sweep of Asian

history. Supported by a confederation of aristocratic clans, the first Yarlung Dynasty emperor38

Songtsen Gampo (605–649) began both a rapid expansion of Tibetan dominion and the

introduction of Buddhism.39 The dynasty’s interest in Indian Buddhism initially may have related

38
The term tsenpo (btsan po) has been rendered as “emperor” and “king,” but I opt for “emperor” in order to
differentiate these expansionist rulers of the Yarlung Dynasty from the later regional rulers, such as Yeshe Ö, for
whom “king” is better. (This is not to say that some regional rulers did not have expansionist ambitions.)
39
Kapstein 2006 53 notes that the Yarlung emperors were thoroughly dependent on the support of the clans, with
important relationships often solidified through marriage, resulting in a “Tibetan monarchal system” that was
“profoundly unstable.” Prior to the consolidation of the empire and its incorporation therein, an autonomous
kingdom, Zhang Zhung, comprised some of western Tibet, part of which is now within the modern Indian nation, in
Ladakh and Himachel Pradesh.

49
to its administrative and bureaucratic efficiency in relation to imperial ambitions. However,

Tibet’s cultural engagement with Buddhism outlasted the Yarlung Dynasty’s empire (appr. 620–

900) by more than a millennium, to the present. Although Buddhist Tibet’s historiographies,

compiled centuries after the empire’s demise, are notorious for submerging fact within myth

(much in the manner of Tibetan life narratives discussed in chapter two), some historical data are

confirmed from other sources, such as Dunhaung manuscripts. The pro-Buddhist perspective of

three emperors in particular—Songtsen Gampo (r. 618–649, appr.), Trisong Detsen (r. 755–

797/804) and Ralpacan (r. 815–838)—contrasts with the allegiance of many imperial court

figures, who continued to adhere to the indigenous imperial religious tradition during the two

centuries of the dynasty. The tension between the foreign and the indigenous became a defining

element of the Yarlung legacy.

In creating a foundation for the transplant of Buddhism, Songtsen Gampo is remembered

for two accomplishments. First, by initiating the creation of a Tibetan script modeled on Indian

examples, he precipitated the translation efforts that transformed the literary treasures of Indian

Buddhism into becoming the matrix of the high culture of Tibet and later much of Central Asia.

Second, through state marriages to a Chinese and a Nepali princess, he introduced Buddhism to

Tibet, specifically in its material form, with the construction of its earliest temples, Lhasa

Tsuglagkhang (i.e., the Jokhang) and Ramoché on their behalf.40 Two centuries later Trisong

Detsen embraced Buddhism and initiated the translation project that began to create the land’s

literary treasure trove, thus gradually transforming the Tibetan empire from a militaristic culture

to a unique scholastic-yogic culture—and Tsongkhapa transformed the latter definitively to mass

monastic culture. On Tri Songdetsen’s authority, the Buddhism of Tibet became modeled

40
See Dorje, Tsering, Stoddard, and Alexander for the history of the Jokhang and a detailed inventory of its art.

50
officially after the Indian gradualist system introduced by Śāntarakṣita and defended later by his

disciple Kamalaśīla against a Chinese sudden enlightenment system; this is detailed below.

Importantly, Tri Songdetsen transplanted Indian Buddhism institutionally by constructing

the first monastery, Samyé (circa 775/9), and inviting the esteemed Indian scholar and Nālandā

Monastery abbot Śāntarakṣita (725–88) to ordain Tibet’s first community of monks. Samyé

Monastery would remain—like the Jokhang temple built under the auspices of Songtsen

Gampo—a symbolic cornerstone of the empire’s commitment to Buddhism, but its difficult

beginnings signaled impending trouble. As the later Buddhist mythographies recount, Samyé’s

construction was undone each night by indigenous spirits opposed to the foreign religion, and

Śāntarakṣita foresaw that mundane human efforts would continue in vain. Thus, the abbot and

emperor summoned from Oddiyana41 the charismatic tantric master Padmasambhava to employ

supramundane efforts to overcome the hostile forces, and in due time Samyé—and monastic

Buddhism as a state-sponsored institution—arose. Ralpacan, before being deposed (assassinated,

presumably) by his younger brother, Darma/Langdarma, in the empire’s twilight, continued and

expanded the extensive patronage of Buddhist cultural transmission despite the economic strain

of near constant warfare, his personal religious commitments apparently blinding him to bleak

financial and political realities.42

The Collapse of the Empire’s Weak Foundation

Tibet’s embrace of Buddhism during its imperial period remained inconsistent and

incomplete. Although Buddhism provided a shared cultural medium with important neighbors,

41
This is generally agreed to be the Swat Valley of modern Pakistan, an area that, like neighboring Afghanistan,
once had a rich Buddhist presence.
42
See Van Schaik 2011 44-5.

51
such as China, Nepal and India, from which the empire sought respect and formal relations, the

foreign religion remained for some important individuals and clans an unwelcome influence. For

those with deep allegiance to the indigenous spirits and rites that had guaranteed the empire’s

success and ordered their world, Buddhism may have represented simply a form of diplomacy

complementary to warfare in Tibet’s imperial ambitions. Indeed, this could be argued of

Songtsen Gampo and his successors as well—until Tri Songdetsen, who decreed Buddhism the

state religion. The Testament of Ba, the earliest known Tibetan record of the events, documents

clan fissures at his court regarding the exclusivity of the Indian form. The extent to which certain

clan factions perceived Buddhism as a hegemonic cultural formation threatening to displace their

own traditions is unclear. However, it is conceivable that the indigenous spirits blamed for

obstructing Samyé Monastery’s construction, necessitating the wrathful intercession of

Padmasambhava, represent a more prosaic, human effort to preclude the institutionalization of

monastic Buddhism, as a challenge to the entrenched militaristic social structure, than the mythic

tales, elaborated in later centuries, reveal.

Some four decades after Samyé’s founding—with translation activity, patronage of

monastic communities, and institution building at their zenith—Tibetan territorial expansion had

reached its limits under Tri Ralpacan and his senior minister, the monk Palgyi Yonten.

Substantial material wealth from more than a hundred local households had been directed

annually toward the maintenance of Samyé, along with its teachers and students, and this pattern

was repeated with each new monastery or temple sponsored. As Kapstein notes:“the expense of

maintaining the religion may have mushroomed to the point of unsustainability, given the

considerable outlays also required by the empire’s civil and military functions.”43 Due to

43
Kapstein 2006 68.

52
excessive spending on military adventurism or Buddhist projects, or the two together, Tibet was

in financial turmoil by the 830s, just a decade after enforcing a major treaty for respect and

recognition from China.44 In an elaborate plot by clans antagonistic to the overwhelming

Buddhist conversion efforts, Palgyi Yonten was exiled and killed. Soon Ralpacan was murdered

by his younger brother, Darma, apparently instigated by anti-Buddhist clan leaders.45 Patronage

for Buddhist institutions and professionals diminished or ceased completely, and Darma himself

was assassinated a few years later—killed by an arrow shot by the defrocked abbot of Samyé

Monastery, ironically. As this killing was not in quest of the throne, as with Ralpacan’s murder,

no successor lay in wait; rival clan factions supported two claimants, one Darma’s son and the

other alleged to be. As these two factions attempted to rule independently, the empire

disintegrated over the next several decades, much of its territorial conquests lost as quickly as

they had been won. The remaining regions of Tibet fell under the dominance of clans that had

supported the dynasty; henceforth, they reasserted their regional independence, creating a

factionalism that endured for centuries.46

Traditionally Darma’s death in 842 is considered to mark the symbolic end of the

introduction of Buddhism to Central Tibet, a period known retroactively as the Earlier Diffusion

(snga dar) in contrast to the Later Diffusion (phyi dar) of Indian Buddhism begun in the second

half of the tenth century. This second beginning took full shape, for the purposes of this study,

with Atiśa’s arrival in 1042. The veneer of imperial unity, which had concealed innumerable

court intrigues and killings during the Yarlung Dynasty’s rise, disappeared with Darma’s violent

44
Some broader economic and social turmoil was plagued much of the region at this time, and a similar but more
expansive contraction of support for Buddhism in China took place as well.
45
Van Schaik 201143–5.
46
Kapstein 2006 79–82.

53
death, and simmering clan rivalries emerged unrestrained. Patronage of Buddhism, though the

primary focus of later Tibetan historians, was but one subject of these disputes. While the arrow

shot into Darma brought a violent end to Yarlung political rule, the cult of the emperor—which

had been the symbolic center of a precarious political alliance—was shattered symbolically and

later materially some decades later, near the end of the ninth century, when four clan nobles

desecrated the great tombs of the former emperors and looted their vast material wealth.47

Buddhist temples and monasteries, symbols of the later emperors’ turn toward Buddhist cultural

wealth, were sacked also. The remaining monks dispersed, many to the eastern frontier where

Buddhism long had a presence, and among them were the ancestors of the celebrated Eastern

Vinaya monks, discussed below, who returned monastic Buddhism to Central Tibet after an

interval of nearly a century.

47
Van Schaik 2011 48–9.

54
 The Mythical Foundations of Tibet’s Buddhist Culture48

Tibetan Buddhist cultural memory, recorded in chronicles from the eleventh century

forward, narrates this timeline of events with a decidedly teleological orientation. These three

historical emperors became identified as three particularly significant celestial bodhisattvas:

Songtsen Gampo as Avalokiteśvara, the embodiment of compassion; Tri Songdetsen as

Mañjuśrī, the embodiment of wisdom; and Ralpacan as Vajrapāṇi, the embodiment of power and

the protector of the tantric teachings. Songtsen Gampo’s introduction of Buddhism is cast not

simply as an effort to transform the administrative efficiencies of an emerging militaristic

culture. Rather, the chronicles written or (re)discovered in the eleventh century and after

elaborate on his true identity as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara who was charged long before,

by the Buddha himself no less, with transforming Tibet.49 These chronicles, along with hidden

pronouncements called treasure texts (gter ma), claim to reveal a mythically truer state of affairs

in which Tibet was destined to become, under the guidance of Avalokiteśvara specifically, the

48
Here “myth” should be understood as subsuming historical facts into a larger, trans-historical discourse, not as
being opposed to history or fact and therefore false. Schweiger observes (in Tuttle and Schaeffer 74) the tension
between the growing importance of imperial age figures, understood retrospectively as advanced bodhisattvas, as in
the cult of Avalokiteśvara found in the Mani bKa’ ’bum and other sources, and “the guiding function of karma,” that
he suggests is displaced by the salvific activity of such figures. In chapter five I examine how Tsongkhapa’s
adherence to the concept of karma determined his relationship to Maitreya and how he attempted to shape events
(his four great deeds) in order to promote a future-oriented—rather than a nostalgic, backward-looking—perspective
on the availability of such figures to the populace. As Doney (2021) 4 observes, the very earliest strata of Tibetan
historical records, those from Dunhuang and inscriptions at various locations, already incorporate a view of the
imperial figures “in positive imperial self-presentations of the empire with the emperors cast as idealised Buddhist
kings or celestial bodhisatva-s” (misspelling in original). Here I might note that Doney's implicit supposition is that
there should exist some objective (necessarily de-mythologized) perspective on persons and events. This might
remind one of the celebrated work of Gregory Schopen, whose studies of inscriptions made by Indian Buddhists,
especially monks and nuns, portray a thoroughly non-idealized (bordering on cynical) vision of these communities;
as Huntington 2007 explains, the recourse to objectivity—construed in response to the positivist and essentialist
tendencies of the early study of Buddhism—that is fundamentally modern and Western and necessarily oppositional
to traditional scholars (who would count as premodern, whatever their era, simply by their adherence to norms of
hermeneutics developed outside of the modern West) is a perspective freighted with unconscious suppositions. I
discuss this issue, drawing on Charles Taylor’s work, below.
49
Both the Lotus Sūtra and the Karaṇḍavyuha Sūtra provide all the scriptural support necessary for the idea that
Avalokiteśvara in particular takes advantage of the falsity or malleability of appearances to emanate himself in
disguise as needed for the spiritual development of others. This is a prime literary device in exoteric and esoteric
mahāyāna narratives and central to Centrist and Yogic Practice philosophy.

55
Buddhist central land that these bodhisattva-emperors and others attempted to create. Whereas

the earliest Tibetan chronicle, Testament of Ba, merely suggests the identity of Songtsen Gampo

as Avalokiteśvara, the most influential of these post-imperial mythographies, the Mani Kambum,

leaves no doubt.50

According to these sources, Tri Songdetsen’s role in converting Tibet was not contingent

on his personal interest or efforts as an empire builder. Instead, this was also part of this alternate

reality of celestial intervention, and centrally involved Padmasambhava. In Testament of Ba,

Padmasambhava appears as a minor figure, a blip in the historical timelines, but in this Later

Diffusion literature his importance eclipses that of Tri Songdetsen and Śāntarakṣita.

Padmasambhava becomes a mythic presence: through hidden treasure texts recovered down to

the present, he is a “second Buddha” whose wisdom and clairvoyant advice guide Tibetan

history. Like Tri Songdetsen’s identity as Mañjuśrī, Ralpacan’s as Vajrapāṇi is unimportant and

practically irrelevant in this cosmic unfolding, and even Songtsen Gampo-Avalokiteśvara pales

in importance to Padmasambhava. Although Avalokiteśvara reappears throughout history in

different emanations (Atiśa’s main disciple Drom, who incarnates later as Tsongkhapa’s disciple

Gendun Drub, who becomes eventually the Dalai Lama reincarnations),51 Padmasambhava

“himself” remains a singular source of power, visibly retaining his unique identity while

Avalokiteśvara thus disguises his own. Interestingly, the Yarlung emperors had promoted for

their lineage a divine origin story involving a rope to the heavens that provided the immortal

rulers their means of exit when their brief earthly sovereignty is exhausted and time comes for

50
The dating of these two collections is difficult, but the Testament appears to date to the ninth century whereas the
Mani appears to have developed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
51
See Kapstein 2000 141–62. It may be noted that Tsongkhapa is understood to be a reincarnation, or in some way
“the same,” as Padmasambhava and Atisa, as evidenced by Shabkar's vision of Padmasambhava (see Shabkar
Tsogdruk Rangdrol) and confirmed as a Gelugpa belief in conversation with Sera Mé Geshé Lobsang Dhargyé
(personal communication, Dec. 7, 2020).

56
next generation to lead. That link was severed generations before Songtsen Gampo, but the

successive emperors claimed a divine persona despite their obvious mortality. In effect, that

severed divinity was now reclaimed, but in Buddhist form—the form that generations of

Tsongkhapa’s forebears would take for granted as their history and culture.

The Early Diffusion as Cultural Context for Tsongkhapa

Certain elements relevant to Tsongkhapa’s career and life narrative should be highlighted

in relation to this body of myth. First, this evidence above supports the popular Tibetan cultural

trope that monasticism is inferior to tantric power. This is true insofar as (1) Śāntarakṣita is

portrayed as unable to calm the indigenous forces obstructing the construction of Samyé

Monastery, for which the mighty tantrika Padmasambhava must be summoned, and (2) Ralpacan

is portrayed as the dupe of a corrupt, power hungry monk. Thus, the trope of the conniving

monk, shown most famously as the foil in the Autobiography of Milarepa, emerged early in

Tibetan history. As Samyé, the first monastery, could not be built without Padmasambhava’s

intercession, monasticism itself is portrayed as dependent on tantric power—another recurrent

theme in Tibetan history. If one takes Śāntarakṣita’s authorship of Tattvasiddhi, a scholarly

treatise on tantra, as legitimate,52 that provides a further contrast: individualistic, often

antinomian, tantric practice supersedes community-based, socially-oriented monastic

52
The move toward a scholastic presentation of tantric principles, such as Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise on the
Stages of Mantra, was clearly underway during Atiśa’s lifetime, and it is conceivable that Śāntarakṣita, as abbot of
Nālandā Monastery and a famed scholar of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist views (as evidenced by his
Tattvasamgraha), would author such work, given the ambiguity of elements that could be taken as non-Buddhist in
certain yoginī tantras, such as Hevajra and Cakrasaṁvara, especially during the period when tantric literature
appears to be at its earliest dissemination. Clearly, however, tantric scholasticism was an important feature of Pāla-
era Indian Buddhism, considering the synthetic works of Abhayākaragupta and Ratnākaraśānti. Thus, Indian
Buddhist history belies the Tibetan trope that tantric practice is primarily a non-institutional, non-scholastic, solitary
endeavor—a trope taken up by Davidson 2002, for example. See Mathes 2019b and Wenta on this.

57
scholarship, and the two are fundamentally distinct if not oppositional.53 This implication is, as I

show below, a particular target of Tsongkhapa’s writings.

Second, worldly political power is regarded as subservient to Buddhist spiritual power, an

idea put forward by Buddhists throughout history in different contexts but with particular

salience in Tibet, given the frequent confluence of the two. With Padmasambhava, however, it

was specifically tantric power that was superior to political power, which is often shown as

corrupt (a theme animating Tibetan history and central to the tales of the great adepts discussed

below, even when the politically powerful were elite practitioners!). Historically, it is more often

the case—beginning with and deriving from the Buddha’s example—that the spiritual discipline

of monasticism created a separate and superior social category that, it is argued, may not accede

to the whims of kings and emperors. Although I consider this in detail in chapter five, I may note

briefly here that Tsongkhapa’s social impact derives from the pan-Asian Buddhist understanding

that a monk of pure discipline is a special field of merit (Skt. puṇyakṣetra, Tib. tshogs zhings)

whose patronage becomes a source of social and spiritual capital. In Tibet, as in post-Gupta

India, the same is true also of tantric practitioners and visionaries, and those rare figures who

53
The overall moral of the foregoing points may be taken this way: allegedly, individualistic tantric practice,
represented by Padmasambhava, Milarepa, and others, is much more akin to Tibetan cultural norms, given the
nomadic, free-spirited ethos celebrated in so many life narratives. Communal monasticism, particularly the large-
scale sort, is antithetical to such norms, insisting as it does on institutional hierarchies that mirror the social
hierarchies that antinomian tantric practice subverts, as in so many of the colorful narratives about Padmasambhava
in Tibet, which reiterate the mahāsiddha tropes noted earlier. (Indeed, the term for communal, or cenobitic,
monasticism is discipline [Skt. Vinaya, Tib. ’dul ba]). A generalized opposition between the two—tantric practice
and institutional/communal monasticism—becomes accentuated with both the rapid spread of the Ganden monastic
network after Tsongkhapa and the rhetorical Kagyu emphasis on individualistic tantric practice, even by its most
elite monastic scholars, such as the Karmapas, as noted with respect to Milarepa’s autobiography. Rarely is the
opposition argued explicitly, though again Tsongkhapa’s Lam rim chen mo indicates it is a widespread sentiment
that he encounters. It might be noted again also that Tsongkhapa himself spent decades as a wandering monk-yogi,
traveling from monastery to hermitage before settling down semi-permanently for only a decade at Ganden. Thus his
life narrative and scholarship, drawing on Indian Buddhist materials, taken together refute these simplistic
dichotomies. It should be reiterated that Padmasambhava’s intercession allowed for the construction of Samyé, the
material and cultural basis for the thriving institutional monasticism that would emerge; thus, any strong dichotomy
is from the outset false.

58
embody some combination of these powers are its cultural heroes. Tsongkhapa laid claim to both

monastic purity and tantric power.

Third, in terms of cultural presuppositions, Tsongkhapa inherited an understanding of

Tibet’s Buddhist history as guided by the intentions and interventions of enlightened figures

within its landscape—as his biography makes abundantly clear—hallowed by enlightened beings

continuously available, whether for personal profit or social well-being, to visionaries and tantric

ritual specialists. Tsongkhapa had important visions of Atiśa even in childhood, of Maitreya, the

future buddha, whose presence is a focus of chapter five; and of course of Mañjuśrī, from whom

Tsongkhapa received ongoing and critical advice on all matters of spiritual development. Thus,

Tsongkhapa’s worldview was completely suffused by the expectation that Tibet itself is a

sanctified location, and his own experiences confirmed this for him and his followers.

Returning to the contours of Tibetan history, one can trace how these social and political

realities developed prior to Tsongkhapa. While imperial nostalgia proved a powerful force, the

emergence of independent monastic communities competing for influence gave new direction to

these realities. Over time, descendants of the important clans at the Yarlung court became

leading figures in these monastic communities, creating complex negotiations between clan

loyalty and religious imperatives. Unlike many leading scholars throughout Tibetan history,

Tsongkhapa had no lineal claim, whether familial or religious, to the Tibetan imperial court and

its legacy; his allegiance was resolutely to Indian sources of Tibetan universalist (mahāyāna)

Buddhism, encompassing monastic discipline, Centrist philosophy, and tantric asceticism.54

54
Although it appears (see The System of the Dalai Lama Reincarnation 11) that Tsongkhapa’s father was an
important figure in the Longben tribe and served, for an uncertain period of time, as an official at the Mongol Yuan
court, it seems unlikely that this would have been seen favorably in Central Tibet among his Kagyu teachers (given
the Yuan court’s relationship with Sakya) nor with the (Chinese) Ming rulers that succeeded the Mongols. Indeed,
concern over Mongol resurgence remained a concern among the rulers of China for centuries to come. The point
here is that Tsongkhapa, unlike others in Central Tibet before, during, and after his time, could not and did not claim
any relation to the Tibetan empire’s court and its clans.

59
Atiśa, Yeshe Ö, and the Later Diffusion of Buddhism

With the disintegration of the Yarlung Dynasty in the middle of the ninth century, after

two centuries of its court-sponsored transfer of Indian Buddhist cultural knowledge to an

expanding Tibetan dominion, a century of political turmoil ensued as the powerful clans

upholding the imperium retrenched.55 Although later Buddhist historiography refers to this a

period of darkness, it seems clear that some minor Buddhist institutions remained around Lhasa,

to which a small group of vinaya (monastic disciplinary code) holders famously returned from

the eastern region of Amdo—where Tsongkhapa was born some four hundred years later.56

Lhasa, the site of the initial emplacement of the Dharma (the Buddhist teachings) in the form of

Samyé Monastery and the Jokhang Temple, retained its place as the cultural heart of Tibet, but

the process of re-transmitting Buddhism from India to Tibet (now no longer a state project)

occured in various locations and under the auspices of upstart claimants to the social capital of

Buddhism, the shared cultural formation across Central, South, and East Asia.

Four major independent schools emerged during the Later Diffusion: the Kadam,

deriving from the disciples of the Indian master Atiśa and centered at Reting (Rwa dreng)

Monastery (est. 1056) near Lhasa, with a formally non-tantric focus; the Sakya, created by the

influential Khön family and centered at Sakya Monastery (est. 1073) in Tsang, whose focus adds

the Hevajra tantric system to the Indian scholastic system; the Kagyu, comprised of a disparate

group of sub-schools deriving from the famed hermit-yogi Milarepa (d. 1135), with regions of

influence spread across Tibet, except Tsang, and whose focus is the Cakrasaṁvara tantric

55
On this period, see Kapstein 2000 1–65 and Davidson 2005 61–115.
56
Davidson 2005 84–115 summarizes this process well; see also Butön Rinchen Drup 292–300 for a very brief
discussion of traditional opinions regarding to what extent Buddhism has disappeared. Iwasaki traces the importance
of trade in the continuation of thriving Buddhist communities in the northeast from which the Eastern Vinaya monks
would return to Central Tibet.

60
system; and the Nyingma, the institutionally unaffiliated and largely non-monastic practitioners

who trace their heritage to the imperial period, particularly to the mysterious tantric adept

Padmasambhava and the dzogchen (great perfection) tantric system. Especially in the first few

centuries, however, these partisan57 boundaries remained more permeable than solid, with most

dedicated practitioners studying under a range of teachers and all sharing a common mahāyāna

framework underlying their tradition’s particular focus.58

It was west of Lhasa, nearest India, where this regenerative process began: in the second

half of the tenth century, the regional king and Yarlung descendent Yeshe Ö (Ye shes ’Od)

observed the degenerate state of Buddhist practice, his subjects following unscrupulous Indian

gurus and taking too literally the antinomian prescriptions of the tantras to engage in ritual

murder and ritualized sexual intercourse.59 Determined to correct this corruption at any cost, he

sponsored a dozen young subjects to travel to India to learn Sanskrit and become translators, a

pattern that characterizes the beginnings of the Later Diffusion. Such translators became cultural

heroes and commanded great respect and wealth, with the latest and most secret Indian tantric

texts becoming prized commodities aggressively sought and often jealously guarded.60 Such

were the beginnings of partisan formations. This commodification apparently led some

unscrupulous translators, both Indian and Tibetan, to supply (i.e., create, as in forge) new texts

57
Prof. Thurman has called my attention to the problematic terms “sect” and “sectarian” in the context of Tibetan
religious history, for these terms imply a similarity to the Reformation in Europe, in which two sides split into
warring camps, each no longer regarding the other as co-religionists. At the worst periods in Tibetan history, such as
the early 1600s, such was never the case.
58
Cabezon 2013 1–11 and 150–60 provides an excellent historical example of this.
59
See Snellgrove 470–79 and Davidson 2005 108–15.
60
Davidson 2005 148–189 discusses the uncertain origins of what he labels “gray texts,” distinct from purely
apocryphal works from the tenth and eleventh centuries, which appear to be collaborative works of Indian and
Tibetan translators interpreting or translating not a text per se but rather a nexus of concepts into writings for their
target audience of Tibetans. He gives the example of Drokmi and Gayādhara in fashioning Lamdre (lam ‘bras)
materials as representative of this interpretive process.

61
for the demand of this eager market, which in turn cast suspicion on any concept, text, or practice

that appeared deviant from authentic Indian Buddhism. Such deviant tantric practices, in certain

cases, were elevated by partisan allegiance into becoming a particular “highest” tantric systems,

which tendency relates to a broad critique that Tsongkhapa later leveled against inappropriate

hierarchies and categorizations of tantric systems.61

Yeshe Ö, who eventually abdicated the throne to become a monk, in addition to setting

the pattern for sponsoring translators, also initiated the sponsorship of building monasteries,

including Tholing and Tabo, and the practice of inviting Indian scholars to Tibet, in this case a

brilliant scholar of the famed Vikramaśīla Monastery, Atiśa.62 In these three ways, Yeshe Ö

followed the patron model set by the royal supporters of the Buddha and, more immediately, the

Tibetan emperors, particularly Trisong Detsen, who constructed the first monastery and invited

from abroad Śāntarakṣita and Padmasambhava. In a sense, Atiśa combined the qualities of both

the scholar (Śāntarakṣita) and the tantric yogi (Padmasambhava)—an important factor in

Tsongkhapa’s adulation of him.63 Yet none of the three so-called Dharma emperors became

monks themselves, though Ralpacan’s eldest brother did. Drawing on the cultural memory of the

empire’s support of Buddhism, Yeshe Ö nevertheless may be seen as establishing a new social

pattern in which monasticism and temporal power were not merely intimately aligned, as in

imperial times, but personally integrated. This would be the case with later Sakya rulers,

including Chögyal Phagpa, who governed Tibet for the Yuan Dynasty Mongols (appr. 1260–

61
See chapter two of the present work for this.
62
See Roerich 241–51 and Kapstein 2006 89–95.
63
There is no suggestion in the work of or stories about Atiśa that he was a powerful tantric adept along the lines of
Padmasambhava, but considering that his mission in Tibet (see below) is to correct tantric abuses and
misinformation, perhaps this is not surprising. As noted earlier, tantric scholasticism appears to develop after
Śāntarakṣita’s time, and he is known almost exclusively for his non-tantric works.

62
1350); Phagmodru Jangchub Gyaltsen (r. 1350–64), who overthrew Sakya rule, and his

Phagmodru successors, as well as the Rinpung and Tsangpa kings (appr. 1435–1640); and most

famously the Dalai Lamas, five through fourteen (r. 1642–1959).64 The unification and

expansion of political power and religious authority, particularly within the Sakya and Kagyu

schools, led to conflict involving both physical violence and polemics over authentic Buddhist

practice. As I discuss below, these factors must be considered in relation to Tsongkhapa’s

embrace of the politically marginal Kadam school despite his strong relations with Sakya and

Kagyu power holders.65 In brief, the trajectory of Tibetan Buddhism, with its political and

religious formations, along with its ramifications for Tsongkhapa’s life and career, can be traced

to the beginnings of the Later Diffusion.

Constructing Authentic (Indian, Tantric) Buddhist Identities in Tibet

As these partisan identities formed and questions of authenticity crystallized around

particular lineages or practices, disputing or proving their Indian Buddhist origins became a

64
Iwasaki shows that, contemporaneously with the rise of combined temporal and spiritual administration in
Western Tibet, similar patterns develop in the northeastern region, in part influenced by contact with China’s Song
Dynasty and the Tanguts, who were a major regional force prior to Mongol decimation.
65
To say that Tsongkhapa embraced the Kadam school simplifies the situation a great deal. Tsongkhapa reunited the
Kadam lineages that Drom had received from Atiśa but then had separated to three primary disciples, and of course
he championed Atiśa and his lam rim presentation, as shown below. That the early Gandenpa tradition was
sometimes called the New Kadampa may refer to instances of the ascedant Gandenpa revitalizing Kadampa
monasteries that had fallen on hard times. Vetturini 20 notes that the rapid spread of Ganden adherents and thought
to the west of Lhasa, to Tsang and beyond, appears to have led to a proliferation of writings related to the history of
the Kadam school, which tend to center Tsongkhapa within it. The dynamics that I discuss in this chapter regarding
the waning of Sakya hegemony and Drigung Kagyu influence concomitant with the rise and rule of the Phagmodru,
whose patronage of Tsongkhapa played an important role in his public activities seen in chapter five, must be
considered with respect to this resurgent interest in the Kadam school as a tradition that is neither Sakya nor Kagyu
by which Tsongkhapa's identity could be distinguished. Tsongkhapa owes so much to the Sakya, Kagyu, and Kadam
schools that excluding any of them is a disservice to his efforts at study with all of them, but perhaps certain
attempts to attribute to Mañjuśrī so much of Tsongkhapa's insight—to say, in effect, that Tsongkhapa's tradition is
Mañjuśrī's own—could be seen as a way of eliding those intense efforts.

63
major pastime.66 Among the mythic events traced to the imperial court of Trisong Detsen, none

is more important to Tsongkhapa’s allegiance to Tibet’s Indian heritage, with its normative

framework of the gradual approach to enlightenment, than the famous Debate of Samyé.67 Late

in the eighth century, after more than a century of grappling with the diversity of Buddhist

teachings offered by various traditions, particularly Indian and Chinese, the imperial court held a

debate between Kamalaśīla—a disciple of Śāntarakṣita and master of the Indian gradual path

approach—and Hvashang Mohoyen, a Chinese Chan master who taught a popular form of

sudden enlightenment practice.68 The two sides were supported by competing clans at the court,

indicating the early entangling of politics and religion. According to the earliest written record,

Kamalaśīla won handily and the Indian gradual approach was decreed normative.

Thenceforth, Hvashang Mohoyen appears in Tibetan scholastic literature as a symbol for

any teaching alleged to: be non-Indian in origin or subitist in content; promote a form of practice

that wantonly disregards the need for ethics, compassion, or analytical meditation; or in some

66
Apologetics from Nyingma scholars, defending against attacks from New Translation proponents, that some of
their most important literature is apocryphal, begins in the eleventh century. On this, see Davidson 2005 210–43 for
an overview, Cabezon 2013 for a moderate Nyingma defense, and for a strident Nyingma defense see Rongzom
Chokyi Zangpo. Attacks among proponents of the New Translation sources (i.e., Sakya, Kagyu, Kadam scholars)
appear to begin in the thirteenth century with Sakya Pandita’s broadside against certain Kagyu theories and
practices, on which see Jackson 1994 and Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen (kun dga’ rgyal mtshan).
67
Ruegg 1989 is the definitive statement on the intellectual concerns of this debate and its larger context, the
gradual-sudden enlightenment positions. Kapstein 2000 23–37 provides political context for the literature that
enshrines the history of the debate, while Wangdu and Diemberger provide a translation of the early influential
record of the debate, Testament of Ba. Biondo provides a discussion of some ambiguities regarding the portrayal of
certain figures in different sources, suggesting that the absolute distinction between the two camps reflects the
particular perspective of those who came to influence the normative understanding.
68
The title “Hvashang” is well known in Tibetan sources, to the present, as the approximation of the Chinese
“Heshang,” which simply means “monk,” with Mohoyen translating Mahāyāna. Thus, this name aptly conveys the
very generic or flat representation attributed to him and his position in the Tibetan literature, and for Tsongkhapa
this is appropriate insofar as the Samyé Debate (singular for him, of course) represents two monolithic entities,
gradual and sudden enlightenment positions. Certain contemporary scholars question whether there was a single
event as such, but that is practically immaterial for Tsongkhapa, for the propensities or tendencies to dismiss or to
undervalue the “art” (upāya, thabs) aspect of the path that this figure represents most starkly are what actually
concern him. It is the philosophical import, rather than the historical particulars, that matter to him, in other words.

64
way offer a single element as sufficient for enlightenment. The teaching of the Chinese master

involved a deliberate cessation of thought processes altogether, predicated on the notion,

expressed in a range of Buddhist texts, that the unenlightened mind is overwhelmed with

conceptualization whereas the enlightened mind is strictly non-conceptual, even thought-free.69

The importance of this event for Tsongkhapa cannot be exaggerated, insofar as it epitomizes two

distinct but complex ways of integrating scripture and practice, especially in terms of the role of

conceptual thought. Tsongkhapa, as I show in chapter four, insists on the vital role of conceptual

thought, particularly analytical reasoning, along all stages of the path to enlightenment. He

distinguishes between mere conceptual thought, including the use of language and reasoning, and

malignant conceptualization, emphasizing that authentic Indian Buddhist textual sources which

champion non-conceptuality must be understood contextually rather than strictly literally.

A second trend—antinomian tantric behavior—that animated the Later Diffusion,

particularly in relation to Tsongkhapa, may be traced to Samyé as well, and in particular the

figure of Padmasambhava, the tantric wonderworker whose legendary status increased

significantly by Tsongkhapa’s time. The origins of the Later Diffusion, at least as related to

Atiśa’s career in Tibet, pertain to such behavior, especially the literal enactment of ritual murder

and ritualized sexual intercourse. The tension between such wanton conduct and the efficacy of

tantric practice—the latter embodied famously by Milarepa, whose tantric mastery transformed

him from mass murderer to enlightened saint—is explored in chapter two, where I discuss

Tsongkhapa’s critique of this literalism. Some of Padmasambhava’s colleagues among the famed

eighty-four great adepts (mahāsiddhas) stand at the legendary beginnings of the lineages of the

69
On this, see Ruegg 1989 and van Schaik 2015, the latter providing material recovered from Dunhuang that
suggests that Hvashang Mohoyen’s teachings were more nuanced than presented by later Tibetans, though the
fundamental premises attributed remain correct.

65
Kagyu and Sakya school, in particular Tilopa, Nāropā, and Virūpa. These eighty-four as a group

represent and instantiate for many Tibetans a particular tantric lifestyle of antinomian mode of

behavior to be emulated or, at least, esteemed, for they perform a type of enlightened activity

more aligned with non-duality, in distinction to the dualistic behavior of the discipline-bound

monk.70 From this perspective, the latter conforms to hierarchical norms of society whereas the

former subverts them—which the eighty-four do with aplomb—as recorded in Abhayadatta’s

twelfth-century compilation The Lives of the Eighty-four Mahāsiddhas.71

Yet these charismatic mythical figures—perhaps out of deference to popular fascination,

or perhaps because a few appear at these lineage beginnings, or perhaps because they represent

an inconceivable spiritual attainment—were esteemed even by communities valorizing the most

rigorous monastic discipline, scholastic norms, and institutional hierarchies. In part, this may be

attributable to the distinction between such antinomian behavior as representing an advanced

attainment that presumably depends on the correct view of reality—and therefore excusable in

exceptional cases—and the explicit articulation of an incorrect view, as with Hvashang

Mohoyen, which is inexcusable; and such behavior was/is tolerated of mythic Indian

mahāsiddhas in ways it often is not of contemporaneous Tibetans emulating those mahāsiddhas

by engaging in antinomian “tantric” behavior. In any case, whatever the truth of

Padmasambhava’s legendary scandalous tantric behavior during his time at Tibet’s court, the

undisputed mythic “fact” remains that his primary purpose in coming to Tibet was to support the

construction of Samyé Monastery and, thereby, to secure the foundations for monasticism in

70
DiValerio provides an extensive investigation into this Tibetan phenomenon in its historical context, while
Dowman presents a translation and sympathetic English commentary of Abhayadatta’s text, and Robinson offers an
alternate English translation.
71
With respect to ideals and tropes in life narratives, a topic of the next chapter, the extent to which the eighty-four
great adepts conform to such ideals and tropes, and the impact of these on Tibetan expectations of such figures,
speaks to the importance of such narratives in the construction of norms for religious communities.

66
Tibet. Thus, even Tibet’s most famous tantric adept is intimately imbricated in the support of

monasticism.

Religious Differences and Regional Divisions Take Hold

This distinction between institutional monasticism and individual tantric power, broadly

construed, may lie at the heart of the primary partisan divisions that emerged between the Sakya

and Kagyu schools in the thirteenth century. As Davidson has shown, the initial period of the

Later Diffusion—from the late tenth through the eleventh century—was characterized broadly

first by tensions in Central Tibet between the new, institution-building Eastern Vinaya monastic

groups (communities derived from those returning from Amdo to Central Tibet) and the lay

aristocrats whose allegiance remained with the imperium and the Earlier Diffusion practices and

texts, and then later between an increasingly tantric focus of the translator class and the

monasticism of the scholarly Kadam and Eastern Vinaya groups.72

Although the Kadam and Eastern Vinaya groups intermingled significantly as the latter

extended control into Kadampa institutions, these distinctions belie the extent to which many

leading scholars from the Sakya and Kagyu schools trained with or were affiliated with the

Kadampas. Gampopa Sonam Rinchen may be the quintessential example of this manner of self-

identification: he trained extensively as a Kadampa monk but found his “true” identity as a

disciple of the legendary Kagyu hermit Milarepa; yet Gampopa initiated the monastic

institutionalization of the school that led, in the form of its many sub-schools, to its extensive

influence throughout Tibet.73 Although the Sakyapas shared with the Kadam groups an emphasis

72
On which see Davidson 2005 86–160 and the discussion below.
73
On Gampopa’s blending of Kagyu and Kadam sources, see Sherpa 45–69 and 158–185.

67
on rigorous scholastic pursuits, modeled on the Indian monastic universities, the Sakyapa

cultivated both a greater partisan and institutional cohesion and an appreciation for secret mantra

than the Kadam. The Kagyu groups developed an institutionally diffuse but relatively coherent

communal identity with a marked emphasis on secret mantra, and they insisted—in principle, if

not necessarily practice—on the subordination or outright rejection of the Indian scholastic

model. For some among these, scholastic pursuits were, like monastic discipline, simply a

prelude to “authentic” practice—i.e., tantra. For others, both scholasticism and monasticism were

antithetical to and inhibiting of the practice of secret mantra and, therefore, merely for those of

lesser spiritual capacity.74

By and large, however, the Sakya and Kagyu were remarkably similar: they insisted

generally on a scholastic education preceding the practice of their tantric specialty and concern

themselves with securing patronage and institution building; even their tantric specialties

aligned, with the Sakya focused first on Hevajra and second on Cakrasaṁvara and the Kagyu the

reverse. The Kagyu lacked the institutional basis for scholasticism that Sakya developed and

were less concerned in general with scholastic pursuits than the Sakya; yet it was that rigorous

scholasticism that brought Sakya Pandita (1182-1251) to the attention of the Mongols and the

Sakyapas to political power. Because of this shared focus on Cakrasaṁvara and Hevajra, Sakya

Pandita’s harsh critiques of certain Kagyu practices—some derived from Gampopa—and his

linking of them to Hvashang Mohoyen and thereby to deviance from Indian authenticity,

emphasized this developing partisan distinction that only increased, in complex ways, in later

centuries.

74
On this rhetoric of Kagyu authenticity, see DiValerio and Larsson, as well as Davidson 2005, chapter eight.

68
 During this early period of the Later Diffusion, competition for economic and political

patronage from regional powers, the Tangut and Chinese, exacerbated partisan divisions. These

hardened further under China’s Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), for its Mongol rulers—who easily

incorporated Tibet into history’s largest empire—entrusted the overall administration of Tibet to

the Sakyapas.75 Yet because Central Tibet’s two provinces were dominated by different

factions—U by Kagyu-aligned powers and Tsang by Sakya—those who governed the local areas

within U on behalf of Sakya were aligned with Kagyu interests. To a large extent, post-imperial

Tibetan political formations developed out of competition for regional control by the clans that

once had vied for power at the emperors’ court, and new clans emerged to challenge the

resurgent status quo. As monastic institutions became important sociopolitical and economic

centers, members of aristocratic clans became increasingly involved in the leadership of

important monastic institutions, thus solidifying gains across old and new forms of power.76

Regional governance, however, remained the norm.

Unification of Central Tibet under the Sakya-Yuan hegemony proved brief and

anomalous: within a hundred years, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the Sakya were

deposed by the Lhasa-based Phagmodru Kagyu, under the indefatigable leadership of Jangchub

Gyaltsen.77 The following three centuries witnessed ongoing political disruptions marked by

75
See Kapstein 2006 110–19.
76
Venturi 102 notes that “the exemption of all clergy and monastic establishments from any form of taxation,
including excise payable in kind and forms of labor such as corvée or military service” by the Mongols and
continued after their rule “created a single privileged class above all others, including the aristocracy. Most
importantly, it increased the wealth of monasteries, which were able to keep the entire income derived from their
agricultural lands and pastures, and as a consequence became more desirable allies and ultimately more powerful
political players.” Well before this period, however, aristocratic clans—the Khön of Sakya and the Rlang of
Phagmodru being two important examples—became integrated into the governance of important monasteries, such
that a “single privileged class” above the aristocracy seems to oversimplify the complexities of the relationships
involved, especially insofar as clan affiliation appears to remain an important factor for many monks.
77
The definitive study of this period is Petech’s Central Tibet and the Mongols: The Yüan-Sakya Period of Tibetan
History.

69
increased militarism coupled with partisan allegiance, yet the immediate political aftermath of

the Phagmodru ascendancy was an extended period of peace and prosperity. When the Mongols

took control of Tibet, they appointed the central administration of the territory to Sakya and

divide Central Tibet into thirteen administrative districts called myriarchies. The province of U,

which includes Lhasa, had long been a Kagyu stronghold, while Tsang had been the same for

Sakya; hence, U was governed by Kagyu-affiliated administrators under Sakya command. Not

only was the district under Phagmodru administration badly mismanaged internally, but also

wealthy estates were appropriated by neighboring districts—a fact that Jangchub Gyaltsen, the

Phagmodru administrator from the 1320s, brought to the attention of Sakya’s chief administrator

(dpon chen). Repeatedly, Jangchub Gyaltsen won judgments against other myriarchies, but

repeatedly—due to corruption or weak leadership—Sakya failed to deliver justice to

Phagmodru.78 Seeing that legal means would not resolve the adjudicated malfeasance, Jangchub

Gyaltsen raised an army and eventually succeeded in overthrowing Sakya rule entirely. The

Mongols, recognizing the obvious, finally named him the great master/minister (tai situ) of

Tibet, thus officially ending Sakya dominance over Central Tibet about a decade before Mongol

rule over China, as the Yuan Dynasty, officially ended.

Yet under Phagmodru rule, the Central Tibet political realities “continued to be mired by

instances of intrigue, favoritism, corruption, open aggression, and recurrent reciprocal attempts

to unseat, usurp, or succeed the governing authority.”79 Those succeeding Jangchub Gyaltsen to

the Phagmodru leadership “seem for the most part to have inherited his general outlook,

78
Venturi 99–100 observes: “The personal connections between the administrators in Sa skya, who were supposed
to render justice, and the myriarchs who had profited from the mismanagement of Phagmo gru prevented the
attainment of a fair judgement (sic) or of any kind of satisfactory resolution to the conflict…”
79
Venturi 100.

70
promoting peace, relative prosperity, and religion,” and under Tsongkhapa’s ardent admirer and

benefactor, Dragpa Gyaltsen, “Tibet enjoyed particularly propitious times.”80 However, even

Dragpa Gyaltsen’s extended reign (1385–1432) was characterized by the specter of political

unrest, “and he had to defend his position both from the influential ministers (rdzong ji)

surrounding him at court and from the rivalry of the neighboring ’Bri gung pa.”81 It was in

Drigung (’Bri gung), at Drigung Monastery itself, where Tsongkhapa spent his first years in

Central Tibet, and began his significant immersion in Kagyu teachings and forms of practice.

Tsongkhapa in Social, Historical and Intellectual Context

Tsongkhapa arrived in Central Tibet some two decades after Sakya’s political collapse, a

period in which political and religious hostilities between Kagyu and Sakya groups simmered,

though Sakya retained its scholastic dominance even as its political clout waned.82 Political

instability among the Kagyu-aligned myriarchies of U, where Tsongkhapa spent the vast

majority of his wandering life and eventually settled, could not have gone unnoticed. His early

friendship with Dragpa Gyaltsen, prior to the latter’s becoming the supreme ruler (mi dbang),

and close connections with other Phagmodru ministers surely gave him an intimate view to the

tribulations of power, of which he—as a monk devoted to rigorous discipline and lacking any

clan affiliation—had no part, by choice and by birth.83 This fact should be emphasized, for

80
Kapstein 2006 118.
81
Venturi 101.
82
Sakya would never regain political clout, as the ascendant Rinpung vassals of Phagmodru repeatedly undermined
their purported leaders, particularly in Tsang, Sakya’s province. Political instability remained an issue even after the
Rinpung effectively ended the Lang clan’s dominance of Phagmodru from within, and eventually the Rinpung were
supplanted around the middle of the sixteenth century by the new Tsangpa Dynasty. Sakya also lost scholastic clout
to Tsongkhapa’s Ganden order, which quickly established dominance in U province.
83
Khedrup notes that at one point Tsongkhapa had to spend a significant amount of time in a cave in order to avoid
Kagyu–on–Kagyu fighting.

71
Tsongkhapa often refers to himself as “the Easterner,” thus explicitly acknowledging his outsider

status among the Central Tibet elite. Having no clan affiliation providing him access to the halls

of power, as it were, his stature among the Phagmodru rulers appears predicated entirely on his

personal charisma and his devotion to spiritual development that they, in principle, shared.

These various rivalries among the religious communities in which Tsongkhapa was initially

educated in Central Tibet—i.e., Drigung Kagyu, Phagdru Kagyu, and Sakya—may have

contributed, at least in part, to his remaining independent of them.84 That is, Tsongkhapa’s

identification with the politically unaligned Kadampas may have evolved, in part, as a result of

his experiences with these Central Tibetan power holders. However, the Lhasa of his time saw an

efflorescence of religious expression under the munificence of the Phagmodru leadership and to

some extent the Ming Dynasty, some of its emperors being decidedly pro-Buddhist.85

Tsongkhapa’s institution building was funded in large part by these two parties, and the Phagdru

support of Tsongkhapa undermines any assertion of clear partisan divisions, given Tsongkhapa’s

many possible allegiances—and complete refusal of all of them.

Indeed, Tsongkhapa was as much Kagyupa or Sakyapa as Kadampa.86 The viability of

Kadam as a tradition, particularly by the fourteenth century, is an open question, due to its lack

of central leadership, institutional coherence, and unique identity claims. Sakya had displaced its

84
It may be that some of his short pieces of advice to certain ministers reflect his awareness of the difficulties they,
as powerful leaders with spiritual inclinations, face.
85
See Kapstein 2006 119–26 and Wylie.
86
That is, Tsongkhapa’s first teacher, in Amdo, was the Kadampa Dondrub Rinchen, with whom he studied for over
a decade before traveling to Central Tibet; in Central Tibet, he studied first with different Kagyu masters, with
whom he had extensive contacts throughout his life; and his main teacher was the young Sakya master Rendawa,
with whom he eventually developed a mutual teacher-student relationship. Thus, any definitive ascription
necessarily falls short of Tsongkhapa’s many streams of influence, as it were; nevertheless, it is the case that the
early Gandenpas were referred to as New Kadampas as well. It should be noted also that Tsongkhapa received
important teachings of the Kadampa lam rim from the Nyingmapa Lhodrak Khenchen Namkha Gyaltsen, who
convinced Tsongkhapa not to travel to India to seek teachings from the mahāsiddhas Maitrīpa and Nāgabodhi.

72
scholastic flagship, Sangphu, as the leading scholastic center for epistemological studies, Sakya

Pandita having undermined, to some extent, its interpretation of Dharmakīrti. The Kagyu had

been divided for centuries into several suborders, their minor differences stemming from their

founders’ interpretations of core teachings transmitted from Marpa and Milarepa to Gampopa.

But, as just noted, by Tsongkhapa’s time several of these suborders were in armed conflict with

one another, for their shared religious identity did little to stifle their individual political

ambitions for the territories of U. And just what it meant to be a Sakyapa, especially in the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was very much in question, as intellectual fault lines emerged

as Sakya political dominance declined. The “defection” of Dolpopa Sherap Gyaltsen (1291-

1361) from Sakya to Jonang, and his deviant other-emptiness doctrine, which Tsongkhapa

equates with Hvashang Mohoyen’s view, was the first crack.87 Internal strife continued with a

series of doctrinal disagreements among Sakya’s leading scholars, including Bodong Chogle

Namgyal (1376-1451); Tsongkhapa’s teacher Rendawa (1349-1412); Tsongkhapa himself;

Tsongkhapa’s leading disciples Gyaltsab (1362/4-1432) and Khedrup (1385-1438); and Rongtön

Sheja Kunrig (1367-1449), whose disciples Gorampa Sonam Sengé (1429-1489), Taktsang

Lotsawa Sherab Rinchen (1405-1477), and Shakya Chokden (1428-1507) became the fiercest

critics of Tsongkhapa’s works.88

87
See Stearns for the fullest treatment of Dolpopa available, and Thurman 1984 for Tsongkhapa’s rebuttals of
Dolpopa’s theories.
88
For Bodong Choglé Namgyal, see Diemberger; for Rendawa, Roloff; for Rongtön, see Rongtön Sheja Kunrig and
Jackson 1988; for Gorampa, see Cabezon and Dargyay; for Taktsang Lotsawa, see Thakchoe 2019; and for Shakya
Chokden, see Komarovski 2012. Not yet published by the completion of this study is the two-volume presentation of
Taktsang Lotsawa’s attacks on Tsongkhapa’s works, undertaken by a group of scholars collectively called the
Yakherds—the first volume (due November 2021) details the historical and philosophical issues to be considered.

73
Atiśa as Model for Tsongkhapa

Tsongkhapa’s distancing himself, physically and intellectually, from the Sakya tradition

of his main teacher, Rendawa, must be seen in this larger historical frame, with respect to

growing inter- and intra-group animosities. Yet it would be inaccurate to attribute his apparent

embrace of Atiśa’s Kadam tradition simply as a reaction to these animosities, for Tsongkhapa

himself specifies the context of the epiphany, as well as the arduous journey thereto, that brings

him to articulate his influential understanding of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist Centrism and to

reject the adequacy of the mainstream Sakya view of reality.89 For Tsongkhapa, the Kadam

tradition of the stages of the path presentation represents the ideal approach to clarifying

precisely how the diverse elements of the Buddhist tradition fit together, omitting nothing.90

Tsongkhapa, as I detail in chapter two, observed among his peers a dangerous tendency of

excluding or rejecting elements of the Indian Buddhist tradition and of not balancing scholastic

education and meditation practice. Many Tibetans apparently regarded scholastic education as

but a means to the reach the “authentic” practice of secret mantra, which bears little or no

relation to the former; for others, the Kadampa in particular, secret mantra was to be avoided,

and scholastic education itself was the authentic practice of Buddhism. The progenitor of the

Kadam tradition, Atiśa, had provided at the beginning of the Later Diffusion in his seminal

stages of the path treatise—Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment—the guide for integrating in a

precise sequence and hierarchy all the elements of Indian Buddhism, from scholastic education

to secret mantra, according to Tsongkhapa. The unifying thread for that path lies in the correct

89
The ascription of Sakya identity to Tsongkhapa certainly is based on his relationship with Rendawa, but perhaps
also on his inheritance of the entire secret mantra lineages from Butön, who is regarded as a Sakyapa too. I would
contend, however, that the primary Sakya affiliation of his two successors to the Ganden throne is equally important,
as I will suggest below.
90
This and the points below articulated in his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path (lam rim chen mo), his first
major mature work that represents his altered view of reality, so to speak.

74
understanding of the Conventionalist thought of Candrakīrti, an understanding that the

mainstream Sakya interpretation, Tsongkhapa writes, failed to grasp.

As Tsongkhapa interprets it, Tibetans had strayed, in the three and a half centuries since

Atiśa’s death, from his holistic map of the path and its constituents. Instead, many Tibetans of

different schools had come to privilege as superior their own particular lineages, practices, and

tantric systems, often without having a grounding in the entire range of Buddhist thought and

practice. And Candrakīrti’s Centrist philosophy, which Atiśa himself introduced to Tibet, had

been misinterpreted as thoroughly rejecting logic and epistemic grounds, thus vitiating the depth

and efficacy of the path to enlightenment.91 While Candrakīrti certainly rejects the ontological

commitments to which many Buddhist logicians adhere, Tsongkhapa contends that this does not

amount to a complete rejection of all grounding of logic. This is an important focus of the fourth

chapter. To understand the development of the philosophical issues to which Tsongkhapa is heir

and to contextualize his own contributions within Tibetan intellectual history, one must trace the

main philosophical trends characterizing the Later Diffusion. In particular, one must clarify how

Tsongkhapa interprets the social and intellectual impact of Atiśa, on the one hand, and the subtle

philosophical positions of Candrakīrti, on the other. The former relates to the investigation below

and in chapter three, and the latter leads into the fourth chapter, where I consider the details of

Tsongkhapa’s philosophical positions, including his own interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism

and how that pertains to secret mantra practice.

91
Atiśa himself apparently considered the tradition of epistemology completely unrelated to spiritual pursuits,
ranking lower than the four standard philosophical groupings (Vaibhaika, Sautrāntika, Yogic Practice/Mind Only,
and Centrism) of late Indian and Tibetan doxography (see Apple 2019 134). This likely relates to his interpretation
of Candrakīrti, not shared at all by Tsongkhapa, as rejecting all epistemological warrants, an interpretation quite
widespread in Tibet, as I examine below and in chapter four.

75
Atiśa’s Impact on Buddhist Tibet

As I explain later, two elements of Atiśa’s career stand out in Tsongkhapa’s biographical

recounting of it in the beginning of his Lam rim chen mo: an unwavering personal commitment

to the three forms of ethical discipline (individual monastic, altruistic bodhisattva, and depth

psychological tantric vows), and an unimpeachable commitment to integrating the entire scope

of the Buddha’s scriptural teachings as non-contradictory advice for practice. These two

elements are, one might say, meta-level concerns that pertain to a single issue: the integration in

practice and theory of the three forms or vehicles of Buddhist practice—individual, exoteric

universal, and esoteric universal.92 Yet three important features of Tsongkhapa’s own precise

articulation of these two elements diverge from Atiśa’s in ways that deserve attention in order to

clarify the nature of Tsongkhapa’s debt to the Indian master. Two of these three are too complex

to consider fully, and they do not pertain directly to the issue at hand. The first of these is the

possible divergence between Tsongkhapa and Atiśa in the interpretation of Candrakīrti’s

Conventionalist Centrism, and the second, related, element is the role of the Buddhist

epistemological tradition in relation to Centrism. I confront Atiśa’s understanding of

Candrakīrti’s thought below, when I turn directly to the reception of latter’s work some

generations after Atiśa.

In terms of the Buddhist epistemological tradition of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, Atiśa

appears to deny any soteriological value to their insights, a position at odds with Tsongkhapa’s

ardent appreciation of Dharmakīrti’s work, as articulated in his autobiographical poem,

92
Here it might be important to distinguish between the three forms of vow- or pledge-based practice, which are
individual (monastic vows), exoteric universal (bodhisattva vows), and esoteric universal (tantric vows) and the
three scopes of persons typologized in the lam rim literature, these being small, intermediate, and great scope in
relation to their spiritual aspirations. The precise mapping and overlap of these need not be articulated here.

76
Presence.93 However, Atiśa’s position on this may be more nuanced than that statement

indicates, for he does suggest that epistemological warrants pertain at a conventional level but

not in relation to realizing ultimate truth, as certain Centrist thinkers—notably Śāntarakṣita and

Kamalaśīla (both eighth century)—contend.94 This would put Atiśa’s position very much in line

with Tsongkhapa’s. The third element where Tsongkhapa and Atiśa diverge is most critical with

respect to Tsongkhapa’s understanding of the Indian master’s impact, and that is the practice of

unexcelled yoga tantra. This topic forms the very basis for Atiśa’s journey to Tibet, according to

Tibetan histories, and the later development of the Kadam school derived directly from his

teachings provides an image of the early divisions of communities regarding secret mantra.

Whereas Atiśa contends in his Lamp that the higher initiations of the unexcelled yoga class of

tantra are not permitted for monks, Tsongkhapa argues otherwise, and this is one factor of his

extensive focus on the unexcelled yoga class. Indeed, the integration of monasticism and practice

of the unexcelled yoga tantra systems is a hallmark of Tsongkhapa’s tradition.

The impetus for the Gugé king Yeshe Ö’s invitation to Atiśa was, according to his

famous declaration, the deviant state of tantric practice within his dominion.95 The northeastern

region of Pāla Dynasty India, a Buddhist oasis that would vanish soon, was—to use a relevant

metaphor—the subtle body of tantric practice; its network of monastic universities supported by

the Pāla kings its cakra system; and Vikramaśīla, Atiśa’s institution, its heart cakra. It was the

epicenter of the late Indian Buddhist educational curriculum that integrated the study and

practice of the entire corpus of the tradition, with an emphasis on secret mantra as the pinnacle of

93
On this topic, see Krasser 2004 and Roger Jackson 1988 for useful perspectives, in particular the latter for one
akin to Tsongkhapa's understanding.
94
On this, see Apple 2019 15.
95
These events are studied in Samten Karmay’s article, “The Ordinance of lHa Bla-ma Ye-shes-’od,” reprinted in
The Arrow and the Spindle, 1998, Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, pp. 3–16.

77
bodhisattva methodology. This was, as evidenced by Tsongkhapa’s own writings, precisely the

tradition that Tibet of the Later Diffusion inherited, and the figureheads of the main schools—the

mahāsiddhas from whom the Sakya and Kagyu traditions derived their self-identity—emerged

from this region. Atiśa, though not counted among the notorious great adepts of Abhayadatta’s

collected stories, was steeped in their milieu, and he brought to Tibet the famed enlightenment

songs (dohās) of Saraha (ca. eighth century), the “Great Brahmin” regarded as Nāgārjuna’s

teacher of the vajrayāna. But unlike so many great adepts, Atiśa did not abandon his monastic

vows to become a yogi; rather, he was a tantric practitioner first and later became a monk.96

From Tsongkhapa’s perspective this would not represent the ideal sequence for

integrating the teachings, insofar as monastic discipline should form the basis for antinomian

secret mantra practice, but Atiśa’s taking up monastic vows certainly proves their overarching

importance in relation to that practice. Despite mirroring Atiśa’s rigorous commitment to

upholding the three vows in practice, Tsongkhapa disagrees in principle with Atiśa over the

permissibility of monks to take the second and third initiations of unexcelled yoga tantra. As

these two involve a commitment to ritualized yogic sexual intercourse—initially visualized and

potentially actualized eventually—Atiśa insists that these vows would entail breaking one of the

four fundamental monastic vows, thus causing expulsion from the monastic community.97

Tsongkhapa argues that by merely visualizing these sexual practices, rather than engaging

physically in them, this would bring about the intended psychological and physiological

transformations without damage to the monastic vows. Perhaps it is not ironic—given the

96
There are conflicting versions of his life narrative, but this sequence appears to be the accurate one by most
reliable accounts.
97
In his autocommentary to Lamp, Atiśa cites the authority of his own teacher Avadhūtipa for this position,
indicating that the issue was not isolated to the Tibetan context.

78
different social contexts in which they operated—that the two figures most associated with the

reform of monastic discipline in Tibet would disagree on this critical point, yet it is fascinating

that the life-long celibate would prove more liberal than the former prince.98

What is ironic in Atiśa’s career is the apparent contradiction that lies at the heart of his

journey to Tibet when the purpose of that journey is framed in terms of Yeshe Ö’s concern

regarding the practice of secret mantra. If errant tantric practice were such a concern in Gugé,99

then Atiśa was just the person to confront the issue, and indeed he directly addressed the topic in

relation to the entire bodhisattva path in his Lamp, in which he specifies the limits of practice

above. Most accounts indicate, however, Atiśa that was prevented by Dromtonpa Gyalwé

Jungné, his most important disciple, from teaching about tantra at all—at least not to public

gatherings. Drom is remembered in unflattering terms in certain Kagyu circles over this loss for

the Tibetan populace, yet the extent to which Drom is responsible for this is uncertain.100 In

Central Tibet, as Davidson makes clear, it is the various hosts of Atiśa, all affiliated in some way

98
Gray 2020 offers an important counterpoint to this entire discussion, as he finds that in the context of a relatively
minor work, a commentary on a Cakrasaṁvara sādhana, Atiśa in fact accepts that monks may take the higher
initiations. Gray observes (7-9) that both before but much more so after Atiśa, there appears to be a distinct increase
in the acceptance of this position among the scholars at Vikramaśīla. Gray offers suggestions as to why in Lamp
Atiśa offers a more conservative approach, but one can appreciate—given the purpose for which he was invited to
Tibet and under which he wrote this treatise, that this approach would obtain. After all, the Tibetan infrastructure of
the middle eleventh century, both in terms of scholastic sophistication and community coherence, could not
approximate even remotely that of Vikramaśīla. Szántó 2020 offers a brief study of a pair of treatises, likely dated to
the ninth century and hence well prior to Atiśa, from a pair of scholars, teacher and student, who object to tantric
antinomian practices on the grounds that current-day practitioners of the degenerate age (Kaliyuga), unlike those in
the Buddha’s audience, are unsuited to such advanced practices, due to their obscurations and addictions. The texts
appear to respond to opponents who champion such practices as the swift path, circumventing study and ethics,
whereby even the dimwitted achieve buddhahood—a rhetorical perspective one still finds deployed, though with
less antinomian emphasis, with respect to Cakrasaṁvara practice.
99
On this see Chattopadhyaya 291–3. She observes that the very question of whether the unexcelled yoga tantras
were, in fact, Buddhist at all appears to have been central to his dispatching the prospective translators and inviting
Atiśa.
100
Apple 2019 10–11 notes that soon upon meeting Drom, Atiśa gave a him tantric empowerment, and also that the
histories emphasize Drom’s commitment to his layperson’s vows in the Mūlasarvāstivāda code of discipline, not
Atiśa’s Mahāsamghika. Davidson 2005 points out that Atiśa’s impact in Central Tibet is limited due to the influence
of the Eastern Vinaya communities, who uphold the royal command from three centuries earlier that only the
Mūlasarvāstivāda code would be allowed in Tibet.

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with the Eastern Vinaya communities, who determined what he would teach, and tantra was not

in the curriculum. In fact, Davidson notes the irony that while residing at the famous monastery

Solnak Tangpoché Atiśa taught as requested the Ratnagotravibhāga, typically regarded as a

Yogic Practice (Yogācāra) text, even as Atiśa and Drom together were translating a number of

unexcelled yoga ritual manuals.

Although translation of the tantras was strictly circumscribed by the Tibetan court during

the Earlier Diffusion, it is clear from Yeshe Ö’s account that information on its practice, however

procured, was publicly available; access to knowledge, then, is not the real problem.101 The

problem lies in the gap between the correct interpretation of that knowledge and its being put

into practice responsibly; simply translating the source materials without teaching their

interpretive framework or providing the full ritual process of empowerment, vow taking, and so

forth, would do precious little to close that gap.

Although Atiśa did teach tantra privately to his close disciples, one might wonder

whether a more public welcoming of Atiśa’s knowledge of tantra, integrated into the existing

exoteric monastic curriculum of the Eastern Vinaya communities that come to control the

Kadampa institutions and to exert significant influence over U province, might have precluded

the conditions Tsongkhapa bemoans in Lam rim chen mo—that is, the distinct conceptual gap

between monastic scholar and tantric adept regarded by many as a natural state of affairs. In

other words, were Atiśa able to address in a sustained public manner the concerns surrounding

the practice of the unexcelled yoga tantras and to introduce an institutional curriculum similar to

that of Vikramaśīla, the trajectory of the Later Diffusion might have been significantly different.

Drom, perhaps due to the overwhelming influence of the Eastern Vinaya communities, did not

101
The propagation of literal enactment of ritual murder and sexual practices in the region is attributed to one
Prajñāgupta, known as the Red Acharya, in the traditional literature. See Roerich 1049–50 and Chattopadhyaya 380.

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introduce tantric studies at Reting Monastery, despite his translation work with Atiśa. Atiśa’s

other main disciples founded monasteries with the support of the Eastern Vinaya communities

and established curricula consonant with that of the Early Diffusion, focused on the exoteric

universal vehicle. The Kadampa legacy became a decidedly anti-tantric legacy: the early Kagyu

and Sakya luminaries Gampopa and Sonam Tsemo recorded suspicion directed toward their own

interest in tantra on the part of their Kadampa brethren. It fell to their Sakya and Kagyu traditions

to institutionalize, to a minimal degree, the practice of secret mantra, their Hevajra and

Cakrasaṁvara lineages drawn from Tibetan translators studying in India and Nepal.

In a sense, then, Tsongkhapa’s channeling of Atiśa’s legacy is more symbol than

substance; or rather, for Tsongkhapa, Atiśa’s impact is more social than philosophical. Indeed, it

was the progenitors of the Sakya and Kagyu traditions—Drokmi and Marpa, respectively—who

planted secret mantra deep in Tibetan soil, and the widespread study of Candrakīrti’s work

emerged a century later. Understood in this way, Tsongkhapa’s appropriation of Atiśa’s meta-

level concerns for his own philosophical interpretations reinforces the combined social and

soteriological impetus underlying Tsongkhapa’s interest in the stages of the path presentation.

That is, Tsongkhapa observed the Tibet of his time to be dysfunctional in ways similar in nature

to what Atiśa discovered upon his arrival from India: a society vivified by Buddhism for some

three centuries but with serious misunderstandings about the integrated nature of the entire

Buddhist scriptural collection as a whole and tantric teachings in particular. The conditions were

not identical, and substantial progress in assimilating the range of Buddhist teachings had been

made, but these two fundamental misunderstandings persisted as (1) partisan divisions ostensibly

based on the superiority of a particular tantric system (whether Hevajra, Cakrasaṁvara, or

Guhyagarbha, a Nyingma favorite) or unique practice (whether path and fruit [lam ’bras], the

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Sakya favorite; great seal [mahāmudrā, phyag chen], the Kagyu favorite; or great perfection

[rdzogs chen]), the Nyingma favorite, and (2) a marked distinction between tantric practice and

monastic education and scholarship.

According to the received historiography, Atiśa had stitched up the torn fragments of

post-imperial society, pointing the way forward textually with his seminal lam rim treatise and

personally with his meticulous adherence to the three forms of discipline. Tsongkhapa himself

built on that legacy both textually and personally and, through his four great deeds, created the

conditions for a Buddhist Tibet oriented away from the political violence and clan-based social

formations of its recent past and toward a present of collective cultural aspirations focused on the

potential for enlightenment. In other words, it is not the specific content of Atiśa’s work that

Tsongkhapa considers most influential, but rather the broader focus on the essential unity of the

Buddhist scriptural collections and the three forms of discipline that together create the basis for

the path to enlightenment.102 Turning now to the reception and impact of Candrakīrti’s Centrist

thought in Tibet, I examine the constellation of philosophical issues that Tsongkhapa inherits

before addressing his own articulation of the relationship between exoteric and esoteric strands

of Buddhist thought.

Tsongkhapa’s Reliance on Candrakīrti

The writings of the seventh-century Indian Buddhist Candrakīrti had a profound impact

on Tsongkhapa’s spiritual development, yet Khedrup reports that Mañjuśrī had to verify for an

102
As I have noted, Tsongkhapa’s emerging community, initially known as the Gandenpa, was known also as the
New Kadampa, which is wildly inaccurate in terms of the Kadampa tradition’s lack of emphasis on secret mantra
practice, yet it appears to be a label he himself used. This label reflects, presumably, Tsongkhapa’s emphasis on
monastic discipline, a focus that also has occupied modern scholars who conceive of him as a reformer, and of
course his great emphasis on the stages of the path presentation.

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uncertain Tsongkhapa the authority of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism.103 Tsongkhapa relied

heavily on Candrakīrti in the exposition of critical insight in Lam rim chen mo, and the very

purpose of his hermeneutical treatise, Essence of True Eloquence, was to distinguish the

increasing subtlety of wisdom of Nāgārjuna’s interpreters, culminating in Candrakīrti’s

Conventionalism. Candrakīrti’s exegesis forms the basis for Ocean of Reasoning (hereafter

Ocean), Tsongkhapa’s own massive commentary to Nāgārjuna’s Wisdom; and Tsongkhapa

paused at the beginning of writing Ocean to compose Essence of True Eloquence in order to

clarify in advance the definitive nature of Candrakīrti’s work. Tsongkhapa also wrote as one of

his final works a commentary on Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism, and composed a super-

commentary on Candrakīrti’s Illuminating Lamp, itself a commentary on the Guhyasamāja

Tantra.104 In fact, Tsongkhapa chose Illuminating Lamp as the first book to be xylographed in

Tibet, indicating not only his esteem for Candrakīrti but also his emphasis on unexcelled yoga,

Guhyasamāja more specifically.105 Given the practical equivalence of Conventionalist Centrism

and Tibetan Buddhist philosophical identity in later centuries,106 that Centrist study—particularly

103
As I explain below and in the fourth chapter, the prevalent understanding of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist
interpretation of Centrism regards it as strongly anti-rational.
104
It should be noted Tsongkhapa also composed a super-commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Guhyasamāja perfection
stage manual, Five Stages, as well as Nāgabodhi’s Means of Achieving Guhyasamāja. He also cites in various
contexts Āryadeva’s Lamp That Integrates the Practices, which places Nāgārjuna’s Five Stages in a gradual path
format. In this way, Tsongkhapa’s relationship with the Ārya exegetical tradition of Guhyasamāja literature proves
extensive, beyond Candrakīrti’s writings.
105
See Jackson 1990 for information on this printing.
106
Tibetan historians point to Tsongkhapa as the reviver of Centrist study, given his emphasis on the unique
authority of Candrakīrti, though in fact his teacher Rendawa introduces him to the Indian master’s work and,
through his own commentary to Entry to Centrism (Madhyamakāvatāra), establishes the foundation for his student’s
appreciation.

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Candrakīrti’s work—required revival in the fourteenth century invites an inquiry into the history

of Candrakīrti’s reception and interpretation.107

Indian Centrism Prior to Candrakīrti

Although Atiśa introduced the thought of Candrakīrti to Tibetans in the first half of the

eleventh century, it was only with the translations of his key Centrist works by Patsab Nyima

Drak (1055-1145, uncertain) several decades later that Tibetans could assimilate the unique

positions of the Conventionalist master. The Eastern Vinaya communities retained their study of

the curricular materials formulated for the teaching institutions created during the imperial

period, and the works of the so-called Three Easterners (Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, and

Kamalaśīla, all eighth century Nālandā masters) were the focus of Centrist interpretation.108

These three Indian scholars synthesized the insights of Centrism with respect to emptiness and of

Yogic Practice (Yogācāra) with respect to relative reality while integrating the epistemology of

Dharmakīrti. These three relied on the procedures of formal debate, developed from the fifth

century in dialogue with Orthodox Indian epistemologists, that required a commonly appearing

subject to which inferential reasoning refers indubitably, a position anathema to Candrakīrti.109

107
In this respect, Tsongkhapa’s own career exemplifies the earlier scholastic trends that his own focus on Centrism
disrupts. Tsongkhapa, on the advice of his first teacher, begins his studies in Central Tibet with an emphasis on the
perfection of wisdom literature, whose primary source is Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realizations, which makes
explicit the bodhisattva path hidden within the Buddha’s root discourses. Tsongkhapa’s first major treatise, Golden
Rosary, is a massive study of this literature, preceded by brief writings on higher knowledge. Both topics remain
central elements of Tibetan scholastic education. It is conceivable Candrakīrti’s Centrism, especially when
understood as a rejection of all logic, finds little space within such a curriculum, especially in relation to the rival
Three Easterners’ interpretation (see below). With the general consensus being that Yogic Practice fits better with
tantric practice and does not differ significantly from Centrism, it is understandable that Centrism became neglected
as a vital and distinct topic even if it remains a necessary one for a scholastic education.
108
Jñānagarbha is the teacher of Śāntarakṣita, who in turn is the teacher of Kamalaśīla.
109
Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s teaching has no patience for either the metaphysical foundationalism
of Idealism (Mind Only/Cittamātra) nor the cognitive foundationalism of the epistemologists. He attacks the

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 Śāntarakṣita’s role in institutionalizing Buddhism with the construction of Samyé

Monastery and his disciple Kamalaśīla’s in defending Indian path-based gradualism against

Hvashang Mohoyen’s deviant sudden enlightenment teachings assured their legacy in Tibet,

perhaps most prominently in the cultural memory of imperial nostalgia. That is, while the

Centrist treatises of the Three Easterners continued to be taught in Kadampa institutions, which

had become integrated with the Eastern Vinaya communities, the Sakya and Kagyu traditions

focused their attention as much or more on Yogic Practice thought, which to many appeared

more consonant with tantric practice, their greater concern. The success of Śāntarakṣita’s

synthesis was not limited to Tibet, for among other late Indian Buddhist scholars the impact of

Dharmakīrti and his successors led many to champion a similar approach, finding ways to

harmonize Centrism and Idealism that Candrakīrti rejected forcefully. Candrakīrti’s influence

appears to have been all but stillborn: there is virtually no mention of him in Indian Buddhist

literature prior to the first commentary by Jāyananda in the twelfth century, writing half a

millennium later in the Tangut kingdom. As Vose observes of Candrakīrti’s “resurrection,” the

earliest positive reference to him occurs only in late tenth-early eleventh century in

Prajñākaramati’s commentary on Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, in which he links their notions

of the two truths.110 Earlier commentators pass over Candrakīrti’s critiques in silence.

Yet evidence suggests that in the distant corners of India, Bengal and Kaśmīr,

Candrakīrti’s work was transmitted orally through the centuries. Thus, there were textual

positions of both traditions for positing a subtle type of irreducible reality that, he argues, undermines the Buddhist
commitment to selflessness, as I detail later.
110
Like Atiśa, Prajñākaramati hails from Vikramaśīla Monastery, predating his tenure by a generation or two,
indicating an ongoing lineage of teaching Candrakīrti’s work at this important institution. Vibhūticandra, who
travels in the thirteenth century with the entourage of Śākya Śrībhadra from Kaśmir to Tibet, also embraces
Candrakīrti’s Centrism; he may be the source for Sakya Pandita’s conversion to Conventionalism. It is in Kaśmir a
century earlier that Patsab encounters and translates Candrakīrti’s work.

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communities, presumably small, in the two remaining (and widely separated geographically)

strongholds of Indian Buddhism, the far northeast and the far northwest, that preserved and

continued to teach Candrakīrti’s writings. It should be noted that Atiśa, though clearly favoring

the interpretation of Candrakīrti, not only is well versed in Yogic Practice/Idealist texts but also

used Bhāvaviveka’s Blaze of Reasoning (Tarkajvāla) as an important teaching resource. Given

the importance of Vikramaśīla’s top scholars to be literal gatekeepers who could be challenged to

debate at a moment’s notice, one might take Atiśa’s breadth of knowledge to have been the norm

among them.111 Hence, it is quite likely that Candrakīrti’s unique positions were well known

among the Indian Buddhist scholarly elite but dismissed for their explicit rejection of the

epistemological and Yogic Practice traditions, both of which had been well assimilated to the

practice of tantra, which was the overwhelming interest of late Indian Buddhism.

Candrakīrti’s Centrism Before Tsongkhapa

In Tibet, the institutional conditions were different. If Pāla patronage of the Indian

Buddhist universities resembled the Yarlung Dynasty’s earlier efforts, there was in the Later

Diffusion no central authority supporting the Tibetan renaissance. There were in Tibet no

monastic universities comparable to Vikramaśīla or Nālandā where the integrated model of

scholasticism and secret mantra could have been adapted easily. Atiśa’s personal example

integrating monastic discipline, scholastic breadth, and tantric knowledge impressed many but

did not become the standard model. Interest in Candrakīrti’s work was minimal in Atiśa’s own

time, but among his immediate disciples at Drom’s Reting, it remained strong though apparently

111
Vose 49 observes that Ngok Loden Sherap and Patsab Nyima Drak study in the very same circle of scholars in
Kaśmir but, presumably based on their own interests, learn and translate very different materials, Dharmakīrti and
Candrakīrti respectively.

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not grounded in thorough understanding.112 Conditions at Reting, however, deteriorated two

generations later, and the post of abbot remained unfilled for three decades; thus, any chance for

Candrakīrti’s work to take root and spread in or beyond Reting deteriorated as well. In the

Kadampa educational vacuum, Sangphu—the institution founded, with support from the Dring

clan associated with the Eastern Vinaya, by the famed translator Ngok Loden Sherap—emerged

quickly as the preeminent scholastic institution in Central Tibet.113 For all practical purposes,

then, Candrakīrti’s Centrism found as much interest in eleventh century Tibet as it did in India,

eclipsed by the epistemological tradition among Kadampas and by tantra among the fledgling

Sakya and Kagyu traditions.

Candrakīrti’s revival in twelfth century Tibet occured outside of, but not completely

distinct from, Sangphu, for at this time (and for centuries to come) boundaries of school, lineage,

clan, and doctrinal adherence were fluid. What identified Kadampa as Kadampa was not a priori

codified but, like other identity claims in Buddhist Tibet and elsewhere, contested when

appropriated or defined; the various strands of Atiśa’s teaching, which Drom scattered among his

students, were the sole constant of Kadampa identity, but those strands were woven into the

fabric of virtually all Tibetan schools and lineages. The influence of Atiśa flowed not only from

Drom’s Reting and its legacy of plain-spoken geshés114 who codified the mind training

tradition—drawn from master’s perilous journey to Sumatra to meet Serlingpa—in pithy,

indigenous Tibetan terms, nor only the stages of the path/doctrine genre that Kagyu and Sakya

112
Apple 2019 17. Reting, unlike other institutions built by Atiśa’s disciples, did not become aligned with any of the
Eastern Vinaya communities and was considered instead a satellite of Vikramaśīla. In attempting to master
Candrakīrti’s Centrism, Drom may have tried to create that satellite concept by making Reting an extension of that
textual community.
113
Nephew of Ngok Legpai Sherap, one of Atiśa’s main disciples, Loden Sherap commands audiences of many
thousands with his fame and charisma at Sangphu, where the tradition of the Buddhist epistemologists holds sway.
114
That is, “spiritual friends,” in the sense of scholastic mentors.

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scholars emulated, but also from the influence of Ngok Loden Sherap and the success of

Sangphu, where virtually every important scholar of any lineage or tradition studied over the

next centuries. And at Sangphu the curriculum centered around the study of the epistemological

tradition and the Centrism of the Three Easterners, not Candrakīrti.

Chapa and Patsab Expand Candrakīrti’s Influence

Sangphu’s legacy expanded further away from Atiśa’s under the sixth abbot, Chapa

Chokyi Senge (phya pa chos kyi seng ge), whose many disciples include “eight great lions” of

debate known for their prowess in Dharmakīrtian logic. Chapa explicitly refuted Candrakīrti’s

Centrist interpretation, taking it as a repudiation of rationality writ large; however, it was also

with his student Mabja that different interpretations of Candrakīrti took shape. It was at this time

as well that Patsab returned from Kaśmīr and the Kaśmīri scholar Jāyananda—noted earlier as

the first Indian commentator on Candrakīrti’s work—was active in Central Tibet. Chapa’s

refutation of Candrakīrti must have been a response to an interest in Candrakīrti’s thought

significant enough that it could not be ignored, and perhaps a small community of scholars at

Reting had preserved Atiśa’s teaching lineage for nearly a century. Thus, though the Centrism of

Candrakīrti introduced from Vikramaśīla encountered widespread apathy, that introduced

generations later from Kaśmīr appears to have found, in a more mature and sophisticated

Buddhist audience, a level of interest than either appear ever to have received in India.

At the beginning of the twelfth century, Patsab returned to Central Tibet after two

decades in India and through his translations began a revolution in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy

by introducing Nāgārjuna’s Centrism as mediated through Candrakīrti’s interpretation rather than

those of Bhāvaviveka or Śāntarakṣita. Soon Patsab was joined in this effort by both the Kaśmīri

88
Jāyananda, who wrote, while in the Tangut kingdom to the east, the first Indian commentary on a

work of Candrakīrti, and a number of his own students who, having studied under Chapa,

interpreted Conventionalism differently. Although no independent writings of Patsab’s remain,

the characterizations of his views from other sources indicate that he, like Jāyananda, understood

Candrakīrti to be rejecting the very possibility of validating cognition, both ultimately and

conventionally, resulting in a form of skepticism that, from Tsongkhapa’s perspective, denigrates

the path. In contrast, the Three Easterners whose Centrism formed a portion of the Eastern

Vinaya curriculum asserted, in line with the epistemological tradition in general, the possibility

of validating cognition both conventionally and ultimately, which Chapa took as a critical

component of his refutation of Candrakīrti.

There was, then, among these early luminaries a clear consensus on the interpretation of

Candrakīrti’s critique of epistemological foundations, a consensus apparently shared by Indian

Buddhists over the prior centuries—but decidedly rejected by Tsongkhapa. It is unclear when

Chapa wrote his refutations of Candrakīrti, whether before or after some of his leading students

left him to study with Patsab, but it is clear that he was engaging with both the texts themselves

and the contemporaneous exegetical trends on them. Chapa’s former students formulated new

interpretive possibilities in response to his critiques, and of these one by Mabja bears some

notable similarities to those of Tsongkhapa.115 Thus, the interpretive shift of Candrakīrti’s

critique appears to have begun in Tibet not long after Patsab’s reintroduction of his work, but

due in large measure to the attention from a well-known vocal opponent, something Candrakīrti

apparently lacked in India.

115
See Doctor for a study of Mabja’s Centrist work and the relevant context discussed here.

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 Atiśa apparently, it should be recalled, explicitly rejected the soteriological value of the

epistemological enterprise exclusively, but that likely refers to the possibility for ordinary

consciousness to ascertain emptiness, for he also affirms the validity of conventional validating

cognition.116 Similarly, Mabja affirms the validity of ordinary cognition on the conventional

level, where causal regularity is established by worldly convention alone;117 this is also a central

principle of Tsongkhapa’s, which he attributes to Candrakīrti as well. Tsongkhapa differs from

Mabja, who takes the unanalyzed appearance of conventionalities to be far less meaningful than

does Tsongkhapa, and argues that such conventionalities, due their being produced by causes and

conditions, are little more than products of ignorance. This equating of appearances and

ignorance, based on the possible meanings of the word samvṛti, also became the standard

interpretation for the Sakya tradition, the interpretation that Tsongkhapa shared but later rejected.

Thus, despite a divergence in how to understand Candrakīrti with respect to conventional

epistemological commitments, it appears that in both India and Tibet his interpreters agreed that

on his interpretation relative reality is far less real and less meaningful than ultimate reality.118

Logic and Reasoning in Candrakīrti’s Philosophy

The twelfth century focus of interpretation on Candrakīrti’s rejection of epistemological

foundations concentrated on the accessibility or inaccessibility of ultimate reality to ordinary

dualistic consciousness that is bound up with concepts and language practices. The well-known

distinction between Formalists (*Svātantrikas), whose debate practices depend on autonomous

116
Apple 2019 135. While it seems clear that, unlike Kamalaśīla who explicitly endorses validating cognition for
realizing the ultimate, Atiśa acknowledges it for conventionalities alone, yet what that could mean is itself open to
interpretation.
117
See Doctor 20-22.
118
On this see Vose 63-85.

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syllogisms and common inferential subjects, and Conventionalists (*Prāsaṅgikas), who primarily

employ consequentialist reasoning to expose the absurd positions of opponents, was at this time

not considered to have the ontological commitments that Tsongkhapa explains in Essence of

True Eloquence.119 Formalists such as Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, and Bhāvaviveka—the stalwarts

of the Eastern Vinaya curriculum—defend the need for autonomous syllogisms in their Centrist

treatises, explicitly or implicitly asserting the intrinsic identity of conventional phenomena to

which inference and perception could refer.120

For Candrakīrti, recourse to autonomous syllogisms indicates a foundationalist

epistemology with commitments to “conventional intrinsic identity” (reality or objectivity) that

is anathema to Nāgārjuna’s philosophy. For Patsab, Chapa, Jāyananda, and others, Candrakīrti’s

rejection of autonomous syllogisms and conventional intrinsic identity signals that conventional

phenomena are, as noted above, less real and meaningful than ultimate reality. To Candrakīrti’s

opponents, this is untenable, for they assume that ultimate reality would become utterly

unknowable, and the path to enlightenment a journey of guesswork rather than wisdom. For his

proponents, this indicates that the ultimate is truly singular, inaccessible to ordinary conceptual

thought and language, and literally ineffable. From their perspective, the two truths are certainly

two distinct truths—or natures or realities—that share no common locus. This position—the

understanding of Candrakīrti as antirational—is that which Tsongkhapa attacks most

vociferously.121

119
These terms, Formalism (Svātantrika) and Conventionalism (Prāsaṅgika), are Tibetan, not Indian categorizations.
120
Tsongkhapa differentiates these positions in his Essence of True Eloquence, on which see Thurman 1984.
121
Candrakīrti’s reemergence in Tibet appears to have little to do with his writings on tantra; where he is cited in
tantric contexts in India, it is in reference to his Centrist work, particularly his distinction regarding the two truths. It
appears instead to be his proximity to Nāgārjuna, as a direct disciple, in their exegetical lineage of the Guhyasamāja
tantric system—rather than a temporally distant commentator—that contributed to his renown, providing a definitive
legitimacy to his Centrist interpretation that otherwise appears radical. Tsongkhapa himself addressed confusion

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Conceptuality and Knowability in Candrakīrti’s Philosophy

Again, for Tsongkhapa, Candrakīrti serves as the primary authority on both Centrism and

tantra as articulated in the Guhyasamāja system, and his understanding of both diverges from

certain earlier Tibetan interpretations. As just noted, Tsongkhapa refutes the position that

Candrakīrti is antirational, and concordant with that in particular he argues against the

widespread notion that tantric practice is thoroughly non-conceptual. The rhetoric of non-

conceptuality has a deep pedigree in Indian Buddhism (as it does in East Asian Buddhism) but its

nature and role in practice remain a topic of dispute—the Samyé debate discussed earlier focuses

on precisely this. For Tsongkhapa, the gradual path defended by Kamalaśīla represents the

authentic Indian Buddhist position in which concepts and language are critical facets of Buddhist

practice, and non-conceptual states play an important but limited role. However, among

Tsongkhapa’s peers in Tibet—particularly within the Kagyu school—strong forms of anti-

conceptual or non-conceptual rhetoric insisted that conceptuality itself is the obstruction to

liberation.

Nearly all Kagyupas trace their ancestry to the famed pandit Nāropā (956-1040), a

contemporary and teacher of Atiśa. He serves as an authority for both Centrism and

Guhyasamāja in the Kagyu tradition, and he cites Candrakīrti as a Centrist authority.122 Nāropā is

regarding the relationship between Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti, discussing the attributions of Guhyasamāja works to
the Centrist Candrakīrti and noting that certain Tibetan scholars were unwilling to accept that the two could have
met, perhaps indicating that these scholars, like many modern scholars, cannot concede the Centrist scholars and
tantric scholars could be one and the same. Tsongkhapa cites Atiśa as an authority who accepts the direct
relationship between the two Centrists. Given the focus of the early Kadampas away from tantra, it is perhaps not
surprising that they would pay little heed to Candrakīrti’s Guhyasamāja work. Tsongkhapa observes, as he notes in
Lam rim chen mo, a tendency among many Tibetans, apparently Kagyupas in particular, to consider philosophy
irrelevant to tantra, but others, likely Kadampas, to have failed to recognize the importance of tantra as the
consummate Mahāyāna practice. On this see Vose 30–6.
122
Vose 31. Tsongkhapa considers Nāropā a Guhyasamāja authority and charges unnamed Kagyupas with having
badly misunderstood the master’s interpretation—perhaps in reference to other-emptiness views, though it is not
clear.

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regarded as an important source for Marpa’s transmission of Cakrasaṁvara and mahāmudrā

teachings, both of which are central to Kagyu identity.123 Nāropā, then, provides a connection

between the two types of unexcelled yoga tantra, the father and mother categories, and

Candrakīrti’s Centrism, a connection that Tsongkhapa would have encountered in his extensive

Kagyu training. The Kagyu emphasis on mahāmudrā (great seal, referring to emptiness) that is

utterly non-conceptual and hence beyond ordinary cognitive processes bears some resemblance

to the early interpretation of Candrakīrti’s work, and in fact Patsab is counted among the sources

for the Kagyu understanding of Conventionalism.124

It is possible, then, that Candrakīrti’s controversial claim that buddhas have neither minds

nor mental factors was taken in a manner relevant to mahāmudrā and tantra: inaccessible to the

ordinary mind, the enlightened awareness of one’s own buddha-nature is itself the cessation of

minds and mental factors, a non-conceptual pristine state empty of anything other than

enlightened qualities.125 Given the strong emphasis on non-conceptuality in many interpretations

of both Yogic Practice and Centrism (interpretations that Tsongkhapa challenges as perilously

close to the deviant Ch’an view of Mohoyen Hvashang, the loser of the Samyé debate), such an

interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism might have proved compelling for its rejection of Yogic

Practice and epistemological ontological commitments while still retaining the innateness of

enlightenment.

An unknowable innateness finds its strongest expression in the other-emptiness (gzhan

stong) theory of Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, an erstwhile Sakyapa and, to Tsongkhapa and his

123
Roberts 7-15. Nāropā also transmits his mahāmudrā teachings to Atiśa, who in turn teaches them to Drom, who
apparently finds them, like tantric practice in general, to be problematic within the Kadampa context.
124
Vose 28.
125
See Vose 87–110 on the difficulties of interpreting Candrakīrti’s meaning with respect to this topic.

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teacher Rendawa,a philosophical miscreant. Dolpopa claims his view—which he calls Great

Centrism—is superior to Conventionalism, as do Kagyupas who espouse various softer forms of

other-emptiness in contrast to the self-emptiness (rang stong) that is, on some accounts,

Nagarjuna’s Centrism.126 Kagyupas trace their versions of other-emptiness to Maitrīpa—the

Indian mahāsiddha who is a colleague (or perhaps a teacher) of Atiśa at Vikramaśīla and a

student of Nāropā—who also serves as the primary source for mahāmudrā practice,127 which is

perhaps the quintessential Kagyu practice and is explicitly non-conceptual in Kagyu

presentations.128 Thus, the links among these three—Atiśa, Nāropā, and Maitrīpa—are extremely

close, and the possibility of an interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism as radically non-

conceptual informing not only Guhyasamāja interpretations but also mahāmudrā and other-

emptiness presentations—as well as that of the yoginī tantras Cakrasaṁvara and Hevajra, the

principal tantric systems of the Kagyu and Sakya traditions—in India is quite possible.129

In short, the intersections of these various strands of thought and practice woven through

different Tibetan Buddhist communities create a deep uncertainty about how one should

understand the reception and dissemination of Candrakīrti’s work and thought and the extent to

which Tsongkhapa—having studied extensively in all three traditions—deviates from the early

126
Proponents of other-emptiness consider the definitive teachings of the Buddha to be those of the third turning of
the Dharma wheel, which is the source of Yogic Practice views as well. In contrast, Nāgārjuna’s Centrism derives
from the second turning, but other-emptiness advocates argue that certain of his works are in line with the third
turning teachings and in fact represent his true intention, just as it represents the Buddha’s definitive view. I
investigate this in chapter four. “Self-emptiness” is not the best way to characterize Tsongkhapa's position, for that
is often understood to indicate that a phenomenon has no reality whatsoever, whereas Tsongkhapa insists on the
reality of the conventional.
127
See Mathes 2016 for historical details and of Maitrīpa’s seminal works that are sources for Tibetan other-
emptiness views.
128
Roberts 11–12.
129
Dolpopa claims that his unique view derives from the Kālacakra Tantra, of which Nāropā is among the leading
Indian proponents, which again indicates the close relationship between these forms of practice and the subtly
different philosophical views that could attend them.

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interpretations.130 That is a question to which I turn later, but for now one might observe that

according to Haven Tsongkhapa, prior to his 1397 breakthrough, planned to travel to India to

seek further insight into the philosophical view from Maitrīpa—a tantalizing clue to the possible

avenues of interpretation open to late fourteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist scholars.131

Revisiting Sakya Identity in Light of Candrakīrti’s Philosophy

Tsongkhapa spent most of his adult life in the U province of Central Tibet, the region

dominated by Kagyu political and religious figures, rather than Tsang province, the region in

which Sakya Monastery is located. From the twelfth century onward, various Kagyu

communities developed strong political connections throughout U province, but they lacked the

institutional coherence and centralized authority that the Sakya developed for itself within Tsang.

The dominant Kagyu order rested on claims of lineal descent from Marpa first, but also from

130
It is important to note that there appears to be something of a spatial and political dimension to the early revival
of Candrakīrti’s work. When Patsab returned to Central Tibet, he began revising his translations of Candrakīrti’s
main works and Nāgārjuna’s root Centrist text, Wisdom, at Tibet’s two oldest temples, Ramoché and Lhasa
Trulnang, i.e., the Jokhang. Perhaps this is a symbolic move, suggesting with his (re)discovery of Candrakīrti’s
critique of the dominant, imperial-era synthesis a rebirth or transformation of Tibetan Buddhism at its institutional
foundation. Later Patsab relocated to Gyel Lhakhang, a Kadampa institution to the north of Lhasa and affiliated with
the Eastern Vinaya Lumé clan, where he gained fame as a teacher of Centrism based around Candrakīrti’s
interpretation of Nāgārjuna; Gyel Lhakhang becomes the place for Conventionalism study. In contrast Sangphu, to
the south of Lhasa and affiliated with the Eastern Vinaya Dring clan, maintains its allegiance to an interpretation of
Nāgārjuna’s Centrism influenced by the Yogic Practice and epistemological traditions. (On this, see Vose 46–50.)
A few decades later (appr. 1160) both Ramoché and the Jokhang were seriously damaged by fighting among the
clans affiliated with the Eastern Vinaya communities, and Lama Zhang, an eccentric Kagyupa, turned Lhasa into his
personal fortress to return law and order. (On this complex character who founds the Tshalpa/Tselpa Kagyu tradition
and his imposing virtual martial law on Lhasa, see Yamamoto 2012 175–220.) While there is no reason to suggest a
direct link between any philosophical position and political antagonism, coupled with regional patronage, it is
certain that philosophical positions often have functioned as points of contention to further tensions, intentionally or
not, between political rivals. Sakya Pandita’s pointed barbs, mentioned earlier, against certain Kagyu practices
associated with Gampopa and Lama Zhang, are notorious in this respect, but even adherence to Candrakīrti within
Sakya circles at Tsongkhapa’s time apparently could function so.
131
Why Tsongkhapa and his companions assumed that Maitrīpa, unlike his teacher Nāropā or peer Atiśa, would still
be alive is unclear, but considering the tacit understanding that tantric accomplishment provides extended lifespan,
one could likely surmise this would be the reason. Tsongkhapa might have been interested in Maitrīpa’s teaching on
non-conceptuality, however, perhaps wanting clarity from the source over a topic that he considers problematic and
misunderstood. He also sought Nāgabodhi for clarity on the magic/illusory body practice.

95
Milarepa and Gampopa for the numerous sub-groups of the Dvagpo Kagyu, including the

Phagmodru, from which further communities developed in relation to charismatic founders—a

tenuous thread of shared religious identity, coupled with a concomitant commitment to practices

derived from Marpa. Complicating this religious identity are the disjunctive commitments to

clan—an important consideration given the hostilities among Kagyu-aligned provincial powers

during Phagmodru’s ascendance—and to practices and teachings from other sources, including

the Sakya.

As I have noted, Tsongkhapa studied under a number of Kagyu masters and wrote a

commentary to that fundamental Kagyu practice system, the six dharmas of Nāropā, which is a

distillation of yogic elements drawn largely from the Yoginī tantras, as well as a commentary on

the Cakrasaṁvara Tantra—thus, his claim to Kagyu identity would be strong.132 His first dozen

years of study, however, took place in Amdo under the Kadampa Dondrub Rinchen, from whom

he received Yamāntaka instruction. Similarly, Tsongkhapa studied under important Sakya-

affiliated masters, notably of course his foremost teacher Rendawa, but also the direct disciple of

Butön Rinchen Drub, from whom he received that eminent master’s complete transmission of

tantra—especially notably Guhyasamāja and Kālacakra—as well as others from whom he

received other important unexcelled yoga class instruction. It would appear, then, difficult to peg

Tsongkhapa as belonging to any one of the three major New Translation traditions—as I have

132
Wylie 273n.3 suggests that the Phagmodru rulers, despite their primary Kagyu identity, may have shared with
Tsongkhapa an appreciation for the Kadam tradition, which might help to explain their extensive patronage of
Tsongkhapa's institution building efforts. The thrust of the article, however, indicates that tensions between
Karmapa (aligned with Rinpung forces) and Phagmodru factions of the Kagyu school may have played an important
role as well, presumably more so after Tsongkhapa's death and that of the Fifth Karmapa, with whom Tsongkhapa
had good relations and who, like his predecessor, personally traveled to China, unlike his successor, apparently.
Wylie does not state this, but his observation about Ming patronage of Tsongkhapa and the construction of Sera
Monastery implies that one should wonder if the Phagmodru rulers would have understood an alignment with
Tsongkhapa’s tradition would provide the rationale for assistance from the Ming in the event of conflict. Or it may
be that simply countering Sakya influence explains it, in some part. In any case, as Jinpa 2019 55-57 notes,
Tsongkhapa had close relations with the Phagmodru leadership from his early twenties, some three decades before
founding Ganden Monastery and the development of its monastic network.

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argued above; however, some contemporaneous Sakyapas seem to have done just that and

perceived his intellectual and institutional independence as hostile to their Sakya tradition.

It should be admitted that direct attacks on Tsongkhapa’s teachings appear to postdate

him, and the only nameable contemporary Sakya antagonist is Rongtön Sheja Kunrig, whose

brilliant students Gorampa Sonam Sengé, Taktsang Lotsawa Sherab Rinchen, and Shakya

Chokden criticize Tsongkhapa’s Centrist interpretation in particular.133 It seems that, despite

Sakya Pandita’s alleged embrace of Candrakīrti’s Centrism as Sakya orthodoxy long before (see

below), Rongtön found Conventionalist thought, and certainly as interpreted by Tsongkhapa,

problematic. Rongtön is known in particular as a proponent of the Maitreya treatises, an expert

on perfection of wisdom literature, and, like other Sakyapas, opposed to Tsongkhapa’s

distinction between Formalism and Conventionalism as an ontological one. While Gorampa and

Taktsang differ from Shakya Chokden significantly in their understanding of the relative value of

Yogic Practice and the different interpretations of Centrism, like Rongtön they all understand

Formalism to differ from Conventionalism in its logical methods alone. Sakya had become since

Sakya Pandita’s time an important institution for the study of the epistemological tradition,

rivaling Sangphu, but its interpretive approach differed significantly from Chapa’s in its rejection

of universals, positing only momentary particulars as real.134

If Candrakīrti’s attacks on the epistemological tradition were taken to be only as

methodological in nature, then it is possible to interpret Conventionalism and Formalism as

pertaining to a critique of ultimately existent entities while accepting the causal efficiency of

conventionally existent entities that are finally analyzed as false. Although particulars—whether

133
Sakya scholars criticized Tsongkhapa on issues regarding tantra as well, but this appears to be less virulent.
134
These historical and philosophical issues are covered in depth in Dreyfus 1997.

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spatially or temporally irreducible—aggregate and interact to form the conventional causal

network of dependent origination, Centrist analysis (whether Formalist or Conventionalist)

finally proves those particulars to be, in fact, dependently originated and hence reducible and

unreal. Centrist philosophers argue that only emptiness exists non-deceptively and, in that sense,

is the only truth. Interpreting Candrakīrti’s Centrism, in the manner of Patsab and Jāyananda, as

refuting conventional reality completely—with dependence synonymous to falsity—aligns with

Dharmakīrti’s insistence on the singular reality of the ultimate (the momentary) yet transcends it

by positing the ultimate as beyond ordinary knowledge completely.

On this interpretation, the conventional and ultimate have no common locus, and this

interpretation matches that of Rongtön’s influential students, who emphasize the meaning of

samvṛti that entails falsity due to obscuration.135 Such an interpretation distinguishes sharply

between the minds of ordinary persons and the minds of spiritually advanced persons, āryas,

who have had a direct meditative perception of emptiness and realize from such experience that

phenomenal appearances do not exist in the solid, unchanging manner that ordinary persons

experience. Such a distinction aligns with the Yogic Practice theory of the three natures, which

posits dependently originated phenomena as truly existent but their identity, superimposed by

language and concepts on what is simply aggregated through causal processes, to be utterly

false.136

135
Gorampa emphasizes this in his Differentiating the Views (see Cabezon and Dargyay), whereas Shakya Chokden
proves a more eclectic thinker, eventually holding as supreme an other-emptiness view that he learned from Kagyu
teachers, specifically the Seventh Karmapa. As I explain in chapter four, Candrakīrti himself indicates samvṛti can
be understood as mutual dependence also.
136
Tsongkhapa analyzes this tradition in Essence of True Eloquence, where he identifies this three-nature theory as
fundamental to its view. I investigate this in the fourth chapter.

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Constructing Sakya Orthodoxy and Tsongkhapa’s Deviance

A proponent of Maitreya’s five treatises and the Formalist interpretation of Centrism,137

Rongtön takes issue with Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of the literature of Yogic Practice/Idealism

as markedly inferior to Centrism and of Candrakīrti as both uniquely authoritative and as

propounding a Conventionalist view that holds conventional truths, or realities, to be true or real

in a robust sense, contrary to the typical or mainstream Sakya position.138 Yet Sakya scholars

were hardly uniform in their understanding of Centrism: the early masters were Formalism

advocates; Sakya Pandita’s interpretation is largely informed by tantra; Dolpopa abandoned

traditional Centrism in favor of a radical other-emptiness; and Rendawa was instrumental in

bringing Candrakīrti’s work back into the mainstream. Dolpopa was heavily criticized by many

Sakya-affiliated scholars, such as Buton Rinchen Drup, but in his lifetime he apparently was well

received by many other Sakyapas. Thus, Centrist orthodoxy among Sakya scholars is a non-issue

prior to the fifteenth century.

It seems clear that Rongtön perceived the swift rise of the Ganden tradition at the

beginning of the fifteenth century, financed as it is by the Phagmodru rulers that had overthrown

Sakya political dominance, to be a threat to Sakya scholastic dominance. Dolpopa began the

splintering of a putative Sakya orthodoxy decades before by embracing a Kalacakra-inspired

other-emptiness theory, Rendawa continued that splintering with his spread of Candrakīrti’s

teachings, and Tsongkhapa opened an irreparable chasm with his unique Conventionalism

interpretation, taking along with him two of the brightest scholars emerging from Sakya—the

137
See Bernert’s introduction to Rongtön’s commentary on Maitreya’s Ratnagotravibhāga in Rongtön Sheja
Kunrig.
138
I investigate in chapter four this view, which, as is clear here, becomes the orthodox Sakya view only later.

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two successors to Tsongkhapa, Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen and Khedrup Gelek Pelsangpo, author

of Haven.

While Tsongkhapa taught on a variety of topics and wrote extensively on tantra, his

interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism proved provocative, then as now. That interpretation is,

as I have noted, an explicit rejection of his own former view, that of “freedom from extremes,”

as Rongtön’s student Goramapa designated the mainstream Sakya view. Although Tsongkhapa

clearly cites the direct inspiration and tutelage of Mañjuśrī for his trust in Candrakīrti’s Centrism,

which led to his philosophical breakthrough, the interpretation deviating from understanding

Conventionalism as that kind of mere “freedom,” (along the lines of Patsab, Jāyananda,

Gorampa, and many others) is his own. His interpretation derives—as Khedrup recounts in

Haven—from rigorous purification practice and extensive meditation. Gorampa, however,

suggests that it is not Mañjuśrī, but rather a demon in disguise, guiding Tsongkhapa to his

interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism.139 In any case, Rongtön was correct to be concerned: by

the time his student Shakya Chokden studied at Sangphu in the 1430s, that institution had

become dominated by Gandenpa interests.

It is this Rongtön whom Jigmé Bang, the biographer of Bodong Choglé Namgyal (1376–

1451), identifies as not only a petulant and envious scholar but also a staunch, hostile detractor of

Candrakīrti’s thought. In his biography of Bodongpa, written not long after the death of both his

teacher and Rongtön, Jigme Bang recounts a meeting between the two at the end of the

fourteenth century—by which time both Rendawa and Tsongkhapa were famed for their support

of Candrakīrti—during which Rongtön decried the Indian master’s thought as a mass of

contradictions. By contrast, Rendawa is portrayed as a brilliant and humble scholar whom

139
Gorampa implies this clearly in his Differentiating the Views.

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Bodongpa—an unequaled master of Buddhist theory and practice—takes as a mentor, though

Bodongpa is shown to defend himself against unwarranted accusations of taking Rendawa as a

teacher without his own primary teacher’s permission.140

Details aside, it seems clear from these incidents that Rongtön perceived the unity of the

Sakya tradition, already politically weakened, to be threatened, and Candrakīrti’s

Conventionalism to present one important threat, perhaps more insidious long-term than the

Phagmodru reign.141 The accusations regarding Bodongpa and Rendawa suggest that Sakya unity

was fragile at best. Neither Rendawa nor Bodongpa, both supporters of Candrakīrti, made the

impact that Tsongkhapa does in articulating a Conventionalism distinct from the “freedom from

extremes” interpretation that Taktsang Lotsawa and Gorampa, Rongtön’s students, revived in

their attacks against Tsongkhapa.142 (The fault lines of these competing interpretations of

Candrakīrti animate chapter four.) Ironically, Shakya Chokden—who studied with Rongtön far

longer than Gorampa—became, like Tsongkhapa, engaged in Kagyu intellectual circles but,

quite unlike Tsongkhapa or Rongtön, came to propound an other-emptiness view as supreme. In

short, then, the perception of Tsongkhapa as an errant Sakyapa appears to have gotten life largely

140
These incidents are drawn from Jigmé Bang’s biography of Bodongpa, translated in Feast of Miracles by
Diemberger, et al. Khedrup and Rongtön exchanged heated remarks over the validity of Tsongkhapa’s Centrism
interpretations, and Khedrup also responded fiercely to Ngorchen Konchog Lhundrub’s critiques of Tsongkhapa’s
understanding of certain aspects of Hevajra practice. Hevajra, of course, is the Sakya tantric system.
141
Davidson 2002 100-101 proposes that Candrakīrti's interpretation of Centrism, emphasizing the worst potentials
of Nāgārjuna's (alleged) refusal to accept logic and promoting an adherence to worldly conventions/consensus,
helped to precipitate the decline of Buddhism in post-Gupta India. This proposal fits nicely with Rongtön’s
regarding the decline of Sakya specifically, but not the place of Buddhism in Tibet, where no such rivals exist.
142
As I show in the fourth chapter, “freedom from extremes” in general is the central Buddhist concern, with each
school navigating a middle way between the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Within the Centrist context
that is my specific focus, “freedom from extremes” refers to the cessation of conceptual proliferation that results
from the analysis of how things exist; the mainstream Sakya view, which Tsongkhapa himself held before his
breakthrough, takes conventional reality to be coextensive with conceptual proliferation and therefore ignorance.
Tsongkhapa argues against this view, distinguishing the superimposition of conceptual proliferation from
dependently originated conventional reality.

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from Rongtön, whose philosophical attacks were countered strongly by Khedrup, whose

aggressive defensive posture on Tsongkhapa’s behalf later became a critical feature of Gandenpa

identity. The rest is Tibetan partisan history, begun at least in part from the divergent

interpretations of Candrakīrti’s Centrism.

The Legacy of Tibetan Partisanship

The entanglement of philosophical differences, lineage or partisan allegiance, and

political interest has appeared innumerable times in Tibetan history, and it finds expression here

with respect to Atiśa and Candrakīrti. To what extent the motivation of local and regional power

holders in their patronage of religious figures and institutions matches—rather than subverts for

personal interest—the ideals expressed in Buddhist sources is unknowable but routinely

assumed. It is certainly true that the fraught realities of these types of entanglements increased in

later centuries, with animosities resulting again in armed conflict between certain Kagyupas with

their political supporters and, in this instance, Tsongkhapa’s successors with their supporters,

particularly the Mongols. This led to civil war that ended with the political re-unification of Tibet

under the Fifth Dalai Lama in the middle of the seventeenth century. The Fifth Dalai Lama

himself, coming from a Nyingma family, engaged in a diversity of practices of different schools

and encouraged—merely for the utilitarian purposes of political unity, one could argue—the

different orders to maintain their institutions and unique traditions, to the chagrin of some of his

Gandenpa colleagues. Among the Gandenpas, a rigid allegiance to an infallible Tsongkhapa

emerged and, in some quarters, remained; and a stultifying scholasticism devoted to Centrist

orthodoxy as interpreted by Tsongkhapa—symbolized by the image of Khedrup’s aggressive

sneer, purported to indicate his strident defense of Tsongkhapa—took hold in some quarters.

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 A different version of this entanglement emerged two centuries later in eastern Tibet, far

from the Ganden government, with the so-called Rimé movement, led by charismatic figures

from all orders—except, almost entirely, the Gandenpas (by then called the Gelukpas, “those of

the virtuous way”)—who combined Nyingma and Kagyu elements of practice in an eclectic

mélange that practically ignores Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism in favor of an other-emptiness

view. In both instances, an underlying issue was Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of Candrakīrti’s

Centrism, but that interpretation tended to be decontextualized and isolated from Tsongkhapa’s

broader focus on how that interpretation entails rigorous ethical discipline and tantric practice

within the path to enlightenment. It is to that broader focus, drawn from Atiśa and Candrakīrti

but many others as well, that I turn now.

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 Chapter 2: Sources of the Tibetan Buddhist Self: Narrative and

Systematic Literature

Tibetan Life Narratives in Context

In the past two decades, substantial scholarly attention has been paid to the role of life

narratives in the production and transmission of Buddhist concepts, practices, and lineages in

Tibet.143 This should not be surprising, for such life narratives—biography, autobiography, or

hagiography—encode elements of both social history and religious practice, such as ritual

systems or philosophical doctrines, in ways that transcend genre boundaries. Moreover, claims of

lineage and historical precedence are central to claims of religious authenticity and authority, and

life narratives have been the locus for those claims, providing a critical counterpoint to explicit

expressions of spiritual accomplishment, which are in principle, though not practice, anathema.

Life narratives provide the immediate and deep historical context for the individual’s sources of

identity, which range from this-life lineages and teachers to prophecies and activities in the

distant past, such that the continuity of ever-evolving personal identity is an important, but often

unstated, subtext. Often unaddressed but obvious are the models on whom the subjects base their

spiritual careers, for these models, such as Milarepa or Padmasambhava, tend to be related

uncomplicatedly to lineage.144 Such models, along with references to textual materials, tantric

practice systems, and other systematic or narrative elements serve as signifiers by which subjects

and/or their biographers may construct and interpret their lives.

143
See Bessenger, Diemberger, DiValerio, Gorvine, Gyatso, Jacoby, Quintman, Schaeffer 2010, Willis 1995, and
Yamamoto 2012.
144
On Milarepa as the Kagyu exemplar, see DiValerio; on Padmasambhava as Nyingma exemplar, see Hirshberg.
While the Buddha, in particular, and other Indian figures serve as models, these tend to be indirectly so, though
clearly the template that is the Buddha’s lifestory is particularly important.

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 It has become clear that Tibetan Buddhist life narratives draw upon repertoires of cultural

meaning, derived from Indian Buddhist and Tibetan mythic/literary sources that replicate and

renegotiate patterns of thought and behavior in relation to given historical and temporal

specifics.145 In this manner, subjects shape and are shaped by socially constructed realities and

expectations in ways that exceed, yet do not extinguish, aspects of individuality celebrated and

reified in modern Western conceptions of the autonomous self, conceptions which have come

under scrutiny in recent studies of life narratives.146 Indeed, Buddhist theories of the self are, in

differing degrees, antithetical to notions of rigid autonomy, as chapter four emphasizes, and this

fact deserves foregrounding particularly with respect to life narratives of scholars who are

themselves focused on the philosophical and soteriological centrality of such conceptions.

However, little work on Buddhist life narratives engages with relevant systematic

sources, those cultural products of philosophical or meditative insight that are presented as

principles and timeless truths abstracted from personal experience, both the historical Buddha’s

as well as his predecessors’. These, the higher knowledge and later commentarial literature, are

intimately related to, and arguably inseparable from, the narratives—jātakas, histories, legends,

sūtras and tantras—that tell the histories and deeds of the Buddha as well as past and future

buddhas.147 And whereas the biography of the Buddha often has been taken as the paradigm for

Buddhist emulation, this tells only a part of the story, especially for Tibetan Buddhists, for whom

living teachers can serve as mediums for the Buddha’s presence. The Buddha for Tibetan

Buddhists is active as a historical figure in all the mahāyāna sūtras and tantras, in which time is

145
On this see the introductions in Willis 1995, Gyatso and Kapstein 2000.
146
On this see Gyatso, Willis 1995, Eakin, and Bruner 1987 and 1991.
147
Collins 1998 advances this argument but does not develop it in detail, and as his concern is the Theravāda
tradition, which does not accept the validity of the mahāyāna sūtras or tantras, there is much more to be considered
in a Tibetan Buddhist context, for which all of these are authoritative.

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both linear and secular as well as utterly nonlinear and infinite, and he authorizes the careers of

the advanced bodhisattvas, such as Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī, who are the wellsprings of

Tibetan Buddhist myth and practice. Of course, there are innumerable other buddhas who

populate the mahāyāna lifeworld, some of whom form the most critical elements of tantric

practice.148 Moreover, the vast range of Indian Buddhist commentarial literature,149 the

systematic sources drawn from the Buddha’s teachings (in the three senses of body, speech, and

mind) in their narrative form, that forms the basis of Tibetan Buddhist education must be taken

into account, particularly with respect to those scholars for whom Centrism and Idealism ([Mind

Only] Cittamātra)/Yogic Practice (Yogācāra) debates over identity construction is a central focus

of their writings. Hence, Tibetan Buddhist scholars from the thirteenth century onward must be

understood as operating within a context in which all these entangled sources and elements may

be contributing (1) to their understanding of how identity could be constructed in abstract

systematic terms and (2) to their construction of their own identity as a narrative locus.

Within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Tsongkhapa surely qualifies as the philosopher

whose work engages most deeply and comprehensively with issues of self-construction across

registers of individual and social processes. His writings on Indian Centrism are the most

influential in Tibetan history,150 and when taken in tandem with his writings on tantra—as this

dissertation does—they reveal an internally consistent presentation of the self, in both its

subjective and objective spheres, as a mere linguistic construction lacking any intrinsic reality

148
Among the most important of these are Vairocana, who is central to the Avatamsaka Sūtra and Mahavairocana-
abhisambodhi Tantra, and Akṣobhya, who appears in the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra and is central to Guhyasamāja
Tantra practice lineages.
149
On Indian commentarial literature, see Nance, and on its use in Tibetan monastic education, see Cabezon 1994
Dreyfus 2003 and Dreyfus 2005.
150
On which see the introduction by D.S. Ruegg in Tsong-kha-pa 2002, Jinpa 2002, Thurman 2018/1982 and 1984,
and Tsongkhapa 2006.

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whatsoever. However, this constructed self, because of its being a mere designation, is anything

but an utter illusion to be abandoned at buddhahood, as his critics would have it, but rather the

very basis of transformation and the locus for enlightened activities.151 This explains

Tsongkhapa’s insistence on the centrality of the stages of the path genre as the soteriological

foundation for the remainder of Buddhist thought and practice, from epistemology to tantra, and

speaks to two features of his famed Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

(Lam rim chen mo [hereafter, LRCM]) that signal the interdependence of social processes of role

modeling and individual self-construction relevant to the creation of life narratives. First,

Tsongkhapa places reliance on the spiritual teacher as the initial step on the very beginning of the

path, and not just in relation to tantra, and hence emulation of an enlightened figure is the heart

of the entire path. Second, Tsongkhapa makes the linguistic nominalism of Candrakīrti’s

Centrism, particularly emphasizing the validity of relative means of authoritative knowledge, the

centerpiece of that mammoth work.152 In this way, Tsongkhapa links together inseparably these

two elements, the former a tantric focus and the latter the height of philosophical investigation,

into a singular soteriological presentation, thereby implying the necessity of tantric practice

within his vision of self-construction. These two themes are clarified in chapter four.

Tellingly, Tsongkhapa begins LRCM with a biography of the progenitor of the lam rim

genre, the eleventh century Indian master Atiśa, with a decidedly hagiographical emphasis, thus

accentuating the process of ideal-type modeling as the proper register for life narrative

151
On this, see in particular Jinpa 2002, Thakchoe 2007, and Thurman 1984.
152
Candrakīrti (seventh century) is among the most studied of Indian (Buddhist) philosophers in Tibet, especially
due to Tsongkhapa’s influential treatises elevating him as the unsurpassable commentator on Nāgārjuna’s Centrist
work. On his reception in Tibet, see Vose, and on his place in Tsongkhapa’s work, see Thurman 1984 and below,
especially chapter four.

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construction with respect inspiring the reader’s focus on spiritual progress.153 As a biographer

here, Tsongkhapa indicates that the productive manner of engaging with the spiritual teacher is

precisely that of approaching him/her as if an enlightened being, a topic that he explains in depth

in a separate commentarial work.154 Importantly, however, Tsongkhapa insists that the teacher-

student relationship is one of mutual responsibility, with the teacher bearing the burden of

measuring up to that ideal image specified in Aśvaghoṣa’s Fifty Stanzas on the Guru. The

teacher, then, must embody the ideals stipulated by the textual authorities, thus becoming worthy

of the emulation that is enjoined upon the student. The student must examine the teacher

critically in order to gain conviction that he or she approximates this ideal image and, having

done so, should acquiesce to his or her authority unquestionably—but within limits, as

Tsongkhapa makes very clear. The teacher is expected to behave as an enlightened figure, being

present as a medium for the absent Buddha, and the student is expected to perceive the teacher in

this way, disregarding any apparent aberration as misperception.155

Both teacher and student, in this way, engage in a ritualized dialectic until the

relationship develops into one of spontaneous behavior, whereby internalized social ideals,

drawn from authoritative texts, become naturally externalized. And the developing student is

expected to inculcate this ideal and eventually, upon full development, embody it for others, in

an ongoing chain of transmission derived from the Buddha in both living and textual sources.

And this is precisely what Tsongkhapa does in his own autobiographical Presence, wherein he

153
See Napper for a discussion of how Tsongkhapa deploys Atiśa's life narrative.
154
This is Fulfillment of All Hopes, which elucidates Fifty Stanzas on the Guru.
155
For this interpretation, given by Tsongkhapa on this influential text, see Tsongkhapa 1999. In terms of the
exoteric portion of that path to buddhahood, this level of devotion to the spiritual guide is not at all enjoined on the
student. In the context of the tantric initiation, occurring in the esoteric portion in which the spiritual guide is
considered inseparable from the enlightened figure whom the initiate intends to propitiate, such devotion is
expected. The need for this should become clear in chapter three.

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details the processes by which he became, like Atiśa, a teacher suitable for emulation. This, of

course, implies that by the time of his writing that autobiography, he was regarded as such by a

significant enough number of disciples to view himself as a suitable model in accordance with

the textual authorities. And this was no accident, for his writing of the hagiography of Atiśa in

LRCM and his commentary to Aśvaghoṣa’s text indicate that he was inculcating this ideal for

several years, at the very least, before establishing his first monastery, the terminus ante quem

for suggesting he was taken to be the ideal by a significant following. Haven confirms this

trajectory, as I discuss below.

Early studies of Tibetan life narratives, such as those by Jan Willis and Janet Gyatso,

have illuminated the emic categories of Tibetan life narratives and lain the foundation for studies

of individuals whose biographical activities enact those categories in diverse historical times and

places.156 Here, one can relate these emic categories to the implications of Tsongkhapa’s

presentation of the process of emulation and ideal-type transmission noted above. That is, the

three traditional Tibetan categories of outer (phyi), inner (nang), and secret (gsang) biographical

levels may be analyzed productively with respect to the processes whereby textually authorized

ideals become routinized in teacher-student relationships that are transmitted across generations,

thereby inscribing the ideal-type into cultural expectations. Moreover, these three categories may

be related to the processes of ascending the stages of the path to enlightenment as well, in the

sense of how the three levels of biography can be understood in terms of spiritual development

from thoroughly unenlightened to fully enlightened states as described in Tsongkhapa’s LRCM

and his other stages of the path treatises.

156
See Willis 1995 and Gyatso and the discussion below.

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 Two main sources may be regarded as biographical literature pertinent to the

development of Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, with particular relevance to Tsongkhapa: the

jātakas (birth stories) of the Buddha contained in Āryaśūra’s Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives

(Jātakamālā) and the legends of the Indian tantric adepts found in Abhayadatta’s famed

collection, The Lives of the Eight-Four Great Adepts.157 In this way, one can relate Tsongkhapa’s

role as biographer and autobiographer in chronicling the sources and development of his

philosophical concerns that pivot on the issue of soteriology. And since the writings that express

these philosophical concerns draw directly from his deep engagement with a vast range of Indian

Buddhist literature, it is critical to trace the genealogy of these sources in order to tease out the

strands of thought that pertain to Tsongkhapa’s understanding of the self as a nominal construct

and how such a self develops into an enlightened self.

The Elements of Tibetan Buddhist Life Narratives

The two most important academic explorations of the general frameworks for

understanding Tibetan Buddhist life narratives (namthar—literally, “liberation stories”), Jan

Willis’ Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition and Janet Gyatso’s

Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, were published

within a few years of each other, and together established the analytical framework for current

scholars to undertake the in-depth analyses that have created a thriving subfield of Tibetan

Studies. Over the last two decades, studies have analyzed Tibetan life narratives, both

157
Of course, the biography of the Buddha himself, contained in the vinaya collections, and the literary works, such
as Aśvaghoṣa’s seminal Buddhacarita (Deeds of the Buddha), are important resources as well. I focus on Garland of
the Buddha’s Past Lives due to its place among the Kadampa texts considered central to understanding bodhisattva
activities; indeed, Tsongkhapa inaugurated the tradition of teaching these narratives during the Great Prayer
Festival, beginning in 1409, detailed in chapter five. The Lives of the Eighty-Four Great Adepts serves to present, I
contend, a skewed vision of tantric conduct, at least when taken out of the broader context of the bodhisattva path to
enlightenment.

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biographies and autobiographies, with focuses on gender, regional context, historical

development, lineage construction, and community formation, among others. These have drawn

upon emic and etic frames in order to present nuanced studies that examine persons who are both

Tibetan and Buddhist within and beyond their religious contexts. For although, from the eleventh

century, Tibet became a region increasingly permeated and structured socially and politically by

Buddhist ideals and expectations, as the previous chapter explains, the forms of Buddhism were

diverse and competed with other types of social capital, such as imperial connection. Moreover,

Tibet has not existed in a political or cultural vacuum: its relations with China, Mongolia, Nepal

and India have contributed, in various ways and at different times, profound influences on

Tibetan society. In some respects, Buddhism was adopted as a means for imperial Tibet to

cultivate diplomatic relations with its Buddhist neighbors, and in turn Buddhist Tibet transmitted

its own cultural formations abroad. Thus, any simple reduction of Tibet to a monolithic

Buddhism, devoid of historical, political or social context, is doomed to failure, and the reading

of a Tibetan Buddhist life narrative with that reductive framing is likewise.

Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition delineates, in its

introduction, Willis’ understanding of the way that the three indigenous Tibetan categories of life

narrative function. In terms of the outer (phyi) level, “which most resembles Western notions of

biography,”158 Willis labels this as the “historical,” for it presents the objective facts of birth,

upbringing, education, and so forth.159 With respect to this level, Willis analyzes the six life

narratives that she translates to prove just how much social and political detail can be gleaned

from such sources, if one reads with a careful eye. For instance, she notes that the six historically

158
Willis 1995 5.
159
Willis 1995 5.

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contiguous figures—all of whom are Gelukpa tantric lineage holders—study tantric systems or

practice certain behaviors associated with other lineages. 160 This indicates that for all the

bureaucratic streamlining of the Gelukpa educational system in general, there still remained

significant instances of individualized practice and non-sectarian attitudes, at least for the nearly

three centuries prior to the Great Fifth Dalai Lama’s political unification of Tibet in the

seventeenth century. Regarding the inner (nang) level, Willis terms this the “inspirational,” for

she takes the religious activities, hardships suffered, obstacles overcome, and realizations

accomplished to be sources of devotion and inspiration for those seeking to follow the examples

given.161 Surely Milarepa’s activities serving Marpa and surviving on nettles, as recounted in

Tsangnyon Heruka’s “authorized autobiographical” version of Milarepa’s life, are the

quintessential Tibetan expression of this level.162

One can see, with respect to this level of life narrative, the social processes of emulation

in the student-teacher relationship, both in terms of the narrative’s contents themselves as well as

their public use: as Willis explains, inspirational life narratives are often presented as instruction

manuals when relevant tantric initiations are being conferred. “The recitation of namtar sets the

stage for practice by giving authority and credence to the lineage of teachings, by prefiguring the

conditions conducive to practice, and by subtly sowing the seeds for similar liberation.”163 While

this is most assuredly correct of tantric practice, I will show that Tsongkhapa takes this

inspirational process to be central to the stages of the path to enlightenment from its inception,

taking as he does the spiritual teacher to be the very foundation of even the most elementary

160
Willis 1995 13.
161
Willis 1995 14-20.
162
On which see Quintman.
163
Willis 1995 16.

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Buddhist practice. In this respect, even what is considered to be the education for personal higher

rebirth or liberation of the so-called individual vehicle (Hīnayāna as pratimokṣayāna, sometimes

termed Nikāya Buddhism or Early Buddhism) sort turns out to be rooted in the social processes

of student-teacher relationships. This, in turn, bears significantly on the vision that Tsongkhapa

has for the primary place of Buddhist culture within Tibetan society, as later chapters show.

The third level of Tibetan life narrative is the secret (gsang), which Willis labels the

“instructional,” and this level is the specific focus of Janet Gyatso’s Apparitions of the Self.

Willis argues that this level of life narrative functions as a type of tantric literature, for it

describes the realizations, visions, and accomplishments resulting from the tantric practices

themselves.164 These attainments bear directly upon, and grant authority to, the inspirational

(nang) level, as they testify to the actual capacity for the subject to perform the role of spiritual

teacher and role model on the outer level, but these remain secret to ordinary, unenlightened

awareness. As Willis notes, the powers (siddhis) that constitute the secret level are ubiquitous in

Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, given that they “are signs of his or her holiness and success

along the path,” but they play a role in the earliest accounts of the Buddha’s life and his leading

disciples as well.165

However, unlike the putative objective features of the outer, “historical” level of life

narratives, this secret “instructional” level is quite opaque to the reader unacquainted with the

images, vocabularies, metaphors, and allusions of any given tantric system or specific religious

community. There is a sense in which this opacity could bring about questions of authenticity

and sectarianism, for its relatively closed set of references along with the essentially private

164
Willis 1995 20-9 and especially 26-8.
165
Willis 1995 23.

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nature of spiritual realization make their authority dependent largely on devotion, often socially

constructed and reinforced within religious communities as defining their limits. It was, I

contend in chapter five, precisely Tsongkhapa’s conformity to a more public set of religious

references, such as monastic discipline and comprehensive scholarship, in addition to his secret

tantric attainments, that allowed for both a broad popularity and a devoted group of core

disciples to form around him, leading to the institutionalization of Ganden Monastery and to

small practices lineages around tantric practices, such as the one that Willis studies.

Janet Gyatso’s Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan

Visionary does far more than concentrate strictly on the gsang level of Tibetan Buddhist life

narrative. Her central concern is to excavate the historical conditions for the emergence of

autobiography in Tibet, given the allegedly paradoxical nature of the Buddhist teaching of

selflessness. For Gyatso, the peculiarity of Tibetan Buddhist autobiography is highlighted by the

stark absence of Indian Buddhist antecedents.166 She observes that Tibetan culture long has had a

predilection for recording history in the form of dynastic chronicles and genealogies “for

virtually everything,” tracing a thing’s origins as “an assertion of its legitimacy.”167 In post-

imperial Tibet, when Buddhism becomes the prevalent form of authority, autobiography “by

recounting the development of spiritual power, indeed virtual divinity, in the religious hierarch,

inspires such faith and was thus continuous with ancient traditions of recalling the past and

asserting power on the basis of origins.”168 And this assertion of power is no longer based on

clan or group identity but rather individual achievement by a charismatic master, and it is to be

166
Gyatso 115. This certainly seems to be the case, although the enlightenment songs (doha) of the Indian great
adepts often are self-referential, expressing the individualistic attitudes that resonated with many Tibetans.
167
Gyatso 116-7.
168
Gyatso 118.

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accomplished within a discourse of Buddhism as a civilizing force over Tibet’s barbaric past.

Gyatso argues succinctly: “ the radical overthrowing of the past and the construction of a new

cultural identity that occurred with the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet was the principal factor

that made for the development and flourishing of autobiography.”169

One can extend this argument to life narratives in general, inasmuch as they partake of

the same basic assertion of legitimacy, though typically in terms of a group’s sectarian

identity.170 That is, the subjects of life narratives operate within a culturally constructed context

that helps to determine the formation of religious identity, and specific sectarian communities

and lineages are further determinative. Biographies assert the defining characteristics of what is

orthodox or orthopraxic within a sectarian community, offering claims of privileged access to the

founder or the founder’s true intentions, much as an exegete would do with respect to systematic

writings. In this way, the two genres are importantly similar. What an autobiographer asserts

about herself, a biographer asserts about his spiritual master, with the same basic concern for the

subject’s legitimacy, perhaps voiced more loudly and piously, extended to her students,

community, and lineage. From this perspective the biography, then, is not so much about the

subject as the larger community and its claims to authority, which could be considered in relation

to the previous chapter, concerning Tsongkhapa’s relationship to the Sakya order.

This is, in part, the argument that Gyatso’s student Elijah Ary rehearses in his Authorized

Lives with respect to certain biographies in the early Ganden tradition founded by Tsongkhapa.

Ary is concerned to show that Tibetan Buddhist biographies, as claims to authority, should be

169
Gyatso 119. One could argue that rather than “overthrowing,” Tibetans replaced the pre-Buddhist past with a
sanctified past replete with Indian Buddhist ancestors, cosmological principles, and so forth that, as chapter one
describes, became blended with the pre-Buddhist past in tremendously interesting ways.
170
Gyatso 105 briefly considers how biography functions in similar ways, but takes its hagiographic rhetoric, its
“glorified, idealized terms” to be “striking” in its difference to the diffident voice of Tibetan autobiography. Both are
culturally conditioned norms, of course.

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studied as artifacts of social, political, and economic competition rather than, as Willis would

have it, primarily as documents of historical and religious truth. He rightly notes that “the hero in

Tibetan biographical writing is not autonomous; his identity cannot be understood independently

from his lineage and teachers,”171 though I should be quick to add, as Ary’s study shows, that the

“hero’s” identity can hinge on figures well outside their immediate lineage or community, as is

clear with Tsongkhapa and Atiśa. Claims to authority cannot be limited merely to contiguous

historical figures, especially given the prevalence and critical importance of enlightened mythical

figures in Tibetan historical and biographical writings. Unraveling the relationship between

Tsongkhapa and Mañjuśrī in the earliest biographical writings, including Tsongkhapa’s own

Presence, about Tsongkhapa, Ary examines ways in which discontinuities in the understanding

of that relationship indicate a less fully defined sense of community around Tsongkhapa than the

later tradition takes for granted.

Specifically, Khedrup—the biographer of Tsongkhapa and the figure known to modern

history as third member of the “three masters, father and sons” (rje yab sras gsum)—appears in

Ary’s study not as a leading disciple of Tsongkhapa at all. Instead, according to Ary, through

several acts of life writing by various members of Tsongkhapa’s developing Ganden order,

Khedrup—despite being Tsongkhapa's second successor—is elevated to that “master” position

retrospectively due to the assertions of authority by later figures, particularly Jetsunpa Chokyi

Gyaltsen. Ary argues that Jetsunpa’s criticisms of the textbooks of his own college, Sera Jé, and

his supplanting of those by his own writings during his tenure as abbot can be understood as

evidence of the fluidity of Gandenpa orthodoxy within the first century after Tsongkhapa, when

consensus over the relative strengths of the two master-sons’ interpretations of the father’s

171
Ary 44.

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writings had not yet formed. Jetsunpa understood Khedrup’s pronouncements to be the

authoritative interpretations and argued for them as such in his scholarship but, more

importantly, composed a secret biography of Khedrup in which he describes this specific son,

Khedrup, as having a unique relationship to the father. “Jetsunpa states that not only was

Khedrup one of Tsongkhapa’s chief disciples throughout multiple lifetimes, but also he took

birth in Tibet for the express purpose of disseminating and developing Tsongkhapa’s teachings

there.”172

In this way, Ary makes important links between the life writing and systematic writing,

such as scholastic commentaries, with the former masking its creative aspects by drawing on the

typically conservative nature of the latter.173 But, he claims, the ulterior purpose in composing

such a biography is not merely to bolster Khedrup’s claim to authority at a time when such a

claim was either unsettled or ascendant. Rather, the real purpose is to establish Jetsunpa’s own

authority as interpreting Tsongkhapa, the unimpeachable father, through the works of Khedrup.

“By legitimating Khedrup’s interpretations through direct endorsement by Tsongkhapa, the

Secret Biography of Khedrup allows Jetsunpa to make legitimating claims about Khedrup as

Tsongkhapa’s authentic representative, Khedrup’s works as the authentic interpretations of

Tsongkhapa’s thought, and Jetsunpa’s own preference for Khedrup’s interpretations.”174

Ary purports to show, then, that the hagiographic tenor of such biographies must be taken

not merely as prime facie claims to spiritual authority on the part of the subject, but also as

multivalent attempts to reconfigure social and political realities within the life of the

172
Ary 98.
173
See Cabezon 1994 Section 1 for a presentation devoted to the role of commentary in Tsongkhapa’s Ganden
tradition.
174
Ary 98.

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biographer.175 I suggest below that a similar, smaller scale effort, though quite different in its

manipulation of the biographical subject, takes place with Tsongkhapa’s appropriation of Atiśa

as the model spiritual teacher at the beginning of LRCM. There, rather than composing a new

biography as Jetsunpa does of Khedrup, Tsongkhapa draws on an existent hagiography to assert

Atiśa as the supreme authority of Indian Buddhist lineages and, by extension, himself as the

legitimate successor to that mantle.

Early studies, both Willis and Gyatso observe, have tended to dismiss Tibetan life

narratives as pious hagiography devoid of any historical substance. From this perspective,

Tibetan life narratives submerge the unique historical individual under a morass of rote praise

that serves to conceal the real within the ideal. Tucci writes: “The events they relate with a

particular satisfaction are spiritual conquests, visions, and ecstasies; they follow the long

apprenticeship through which man becomes divine, they give lists of the texts upon which saints

trained and disciplined their minds, for each lama they record the masters who opened up his

spirit to serene visions, or caused the ambrosia of supreme revelations to rain down upon

him.”176 However, for Tucci, who is describing with some accuracy the stereotypical contents of

Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, these stock elements are problematic, as historical context is

replaced by religious concerns. This way of reading is, perhaps, simply a product of the

expectation for an objective recounting of the chronological facts, available to any observer, that

a life (bio) writing (graphia) should be. Life narrative should be, then, simply a sub-genre of

history, which is itself not affected by sentiments of any sort, religious or otherwise.

175
Overall, it is quite difficult to accept the basic premises from which Ary proceeds: first, that Khedrup was not
among Tsongkhapa’s leading disciples, for not only was Khedrup his authorized biographer but also his second
successor at Ganden; second, that Khedrup fabricated or exaggerated the relationship between Tsongkhapa and
Mañjuśrī, for the relationship was known in Tsongkhapa’s circles. Ary’s analysis of Jetsunpa and so on need not be
disregarded on these issues, but they need to be mentioned.
176
Cited in Willis 1995 7.

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Such a way of reading does not consider how these stereotypical elements, these literary tropes,

while performing superficially their anticipated hagiographic role, may be put to use in creative

fashion to forge new claims to authority that are themselves historically consequential. However,

as I discuss below, Tsongkhapa takes pains to model himself after Atiśa and, in turn, to present

himself as a model for his followers to emulate; moreover, processes of emulation and

appropriation of enlightened identity, in exoteric and esoteric (i.e., tantric) contexts, provide

access to a healthier, more “real” (in the sense of beneficial) form of existence than does the

karmically contingent one that happens, at any given time, to provide the basis of designation for

personal identity trapped in cyclic existence. Thus, stereotypes, ideal types, or archetypes are

anything but dismissable.

The Interdependence of Individual Development and Cultural Context

If one sets aside the positivist search for “what really happened” beneath the layers of

hagiographic lacquer, then both general and specific patterns and presuppositions of Tibetan

Buddhist culture may be seen. Rather than searching for the true locus of individual identity

separate from any context, one may attend to the ways in which the individual is woven out of a

nexus of historical, social, and cultural factors, a weaving in which the individual participates

through processes of socialization. For the moment I bracket the ways in which contemporary

Western models of development and socialization may be understood in relation to Tibetan

Buddhist models, which are based on theories of beginningless time, rounds of rebirth, and

memories of prior births that impinge on the present and, thereby, orient future possibilities.

Instead, I follow Robert Campany in attempting to negotiate a middle way between an

interpretive lens that accepts “a straightforward reading of hagiographies as objective, accurate

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reports of events” or “a view that sees a total disjunction between life as it is lived and post-facto

attempts to gather life’s messiness up into coherent narratives.”177 As Quintman maintains,

taking “Tibetan biographical literature simply as a target for data mining, to the point of

overlooking it as an important cultural formation in its own right, is to miss the literary forest for

the positivist trees.”178

Campany argues, drawing on the seminal work of Jerome Bruner and others, that life

narratives emerge from social contexts that are themselves already structured in narrative forms,

and that “the shaping of narrative is of a piece with the shaping of experience,”179 such that life

narratives necessarily reflect their social contexts in manifold ways. Because the transmission of

particular social worlds, including religious worlds, depends on communities of believers for the

continuity of their histories across generations, it is the cultural or social memories of those

communities that shape their negotiations with other social worlds. Such memories construct the

narrative processes and experiences with which communities and their individual members

engage their own and other worlds, and the interpretive lenses that they use are constrained by

the norms and values of both such worlds. In other words, while one anticipates actors to be

governed by their own subjectivities, which are themselves the results of social processes of

conditioning and development, it is the case as well that such actors are governed in their

interactions with others by the perceived norms, values, and expectations of those others. As

such, all human interactions are mediated to some degree by social processes that are

intersubjective in nature, and the Enlightenment image of the fully autonomous individual—an

177
Campany 8.
178
Quintman 22.
179
Quintman 12.

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embodied subjectivity acting against, not within, the world—turns out to be an illusion, a

harmful one by Buddhist reckoning.

But returning to Campany’s point, the composer of life narratives, even the

autobiographer, does not construct the product within a cultural vacuum, but “does so for an

audience, under the pressure of their expectations, assumptions, and interests.”180 This may

entail, as Ary indicates, that divisive partisan interests—potentially giving way to polemics—are

endemic to Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, but the broader point is that there is no telling of a

story, much less a life narrative, that is not already structured by a dialectic of expectations.

But, Campany warns, “recognizing the rhetoricity of texts does not require us to divorce them

utterly from the social worlds that produced and consumed them, since rhetoricity is part of life

as lived just as much as it is part of texts.”181

Therefore, drawing conclusions about unstated motivations behind such rhetoric on the

part of sectarian actors is also engaging in a way of reading that privileges an objective

standpoint, rather than culturally conditioned contexts, from which judgments of behavior can be

pronounced. And because cultural norms and values are always contested, being constructed

along a continuum of possibilities, an objective standpoint is itself a rhetorical event even within

the culture that it purports to represent. For, “the audience does not confront a single holy

person’s performance without precedent, standards, or resources; it measures that person against

whatever contemporary repertoires, codes or expectations pertain to the role”182 the holy person

inhabits, whether—in the case of Tibetan Buddhist culture—that be the scholar like Tsongkhapa

180
Campany 16.
181
Campany 18.
182
Campany 25.

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or the meditating adept, like Milarepa. Since the biographical corpus of Milarepa has been

studied vigorously, I use that to consider how Campany’s claims figure within a Tibetan

Buddhist context.

In The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint

Milarepa, Andrew Quintman traces the development of the biographical tradition from its

earliest written traces to the masterpiece of Tibetan literature that emerged in the late fifteenth

century, spanning some three hundred years. The Kagyu tradition has produced the largest

number of hagiographies, taking the transmission of authentic lineages in a master-disciple

relationship to be central to its ethos, and it is no surprise, then, that its founder would be the

model for practice for successive generations of Kagyu practitioners. What is surprising,

however, is how the image of Milarepa is transformed over the centuries, particularly as it

culminates in its radical reinvention as an “autobiography” by Tsangnyon Heruka, evincing an

ongoing concern for how to represent the famed ascetic, as pre-formed saint or heroic

meditator.183

Each of these has its parallel instantiation in the biographical corpus of the historical

Buddha as well, reflecting the tendency to view the ideal teacher as more than human or fully

human in terms of potential for enlightenment.184 “The works of Milarepa’s biographical

tradition indicate a similar concern for representing the yogin as both exemplar and individual.

As the life story matured, the relationship between these representations becomes increasingly

183
Quintman 15 also traces how the figure of Milarepa has been transformed, from self-reliant hero to mystical poet,
for Western audiences across the centuries in their encounter with Tibetan culture as, ironically, a static, unchanging
Shangri-la.
184
Here one would distinguish the Pali canon’s portrayal of the Buddha as a human who attains enlightenment in his
own lifetime against the mahāyāna versions, such as Lalitavistara or Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita, which understand
the Buddha as already enlightened before enacting his twelve deeds. Buddhacarita is openly directed to its
contemporary North Indian society, portraying the Buddha as the quintessential Brahmanical hero, much as the
Buddha himself redefined dharma from Vedic ritual duty to universal ethical duty.

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complex”185 until Tsangnyon Heruka rejects the idea of Milarepa as an emanation and constructs

him instead as the paragon of diligent human practice. An irony, perhaps, is that Tsangnyon

Heruka apparently considers himself, and his biographer explicitly states that he is, an emanation

of Milarepa,186 for it is clear that Tsangnyon Heruka is fashioning a Kagyu identity for posterity

by literary means in a way quite the opposite of how he lives it.

As DiValerio recounts, Tsangnyon Heruka’s Life of Milarepa is a complex retelling of

the life narrative of the great saint considered to be the first Tibetan to be fully enlightened in a

single lifetime. The author himself, as a self-styled madman adhering to a literal enactment of

the mode of behavior enjoined by the antinomian yoginī tantras (the mother class of unexcelled

yoga tantra, examined later), represents one end of the continuum of the available models of

Buddhist practice available in Tibet. At the opposite end is the arrogant scholar whom the author

represents as the murderous villain in the Life of Milarepa, a figure intentionally fashioned as

representative of the ascendant Ganden school of Tsongkhapa. DiValerio notes that Tsangnyon

Heruka himself, according to his biography, suffers ridicule from Gandenpa monks for his literal

enactment of the yoginī tantras, monks who regards such behavior inappropriate to the current

historical context of Tibet, even for those of high realization who are authorized to undertake it

by those same tantras regarded as the word of the Buddha. As such his Life is “to function on one

level as a polemic against institutionalized and scholastic forms of Buddhism, which relied on a

gradualist model of spiritual development and downplayed the transformative power of tantra,”

thus creating, or reifying, a stark rhetorical dichotomy between the two ends of the continuum.

Yet Tsangnyon Heruka does not portray Milarepa as a tantric literalist like himself, suggesting a

185
Quintman 26.
186
DiValerio 174-5.

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range of lifestyle options within the Kagyu mold and at least two models—his own and

Milarepa’s—available for emulation.

In fact, one could say that as Milarepa’s emanation, Tsangnyon Heruka offers dual

images of the great saint, one literary and one self-embodied, for the diversity of Kagyu

hierarchs and patrons, some of whom more closely fit the scholastic form. DiValerio also

suggests that a second, indirect polemical strain is directed at the institutionalization of

reincarnated masters, a phenomenon that originated in the Kagyu tradition not long after

Milarepa’s lifetime and that undercut the ascetic effort that his Life valorizes.187 Clearly, then,

Tsangnyon Heruka is performing his own life as one type of antisocial madman and writing

Milarepa’s as implicating another in complex ways that caters to, and antagonizes, a diversity of

audiences. Hence, Tsangnyon Heruka’s efforts illustrate well Campany’s insights about

reception and rhetoricity in hagiographic traditions.

Campany, however, analyzes how the figure of the transcendent (xian) is constructed and

contested against the cultural background of early medieval China, whereas this analysis of

Milarepa focuses on the competing images of one individual constructed across time in

reference, arguably, to a more stable audience.188 A better locus of comparison with respect to

larger cultural reception may be the two poles of practice noted earlier, those of solitary

meditator and monastic scholar. These two poles represent the tropes noted above, with

Tsangnyon Heruka himself consciously representing the antinomian, anti-scholastic meditator

type and Tsongkhapa consciously representing the monastic scholar; in both cases, it is an

187
DiValerio 166.
188
The Daoist traditions of China are notoriously heterogeneous, with influences not only with respect to Buddhism
but to the eponymous conglomerate of “popular religion” or “folk religion,” and, depending on timeframe, (neo-)
Confucianism as well. In this regard, the target audience for the authentic figure, so to speak, of Milarepa was quite
circumscribed and stable—adherents of the Kagyu traditions in particular and Tibetans in general, a much smaller
and more stable community, to be sure.

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intentional performance of a contested ideal that functions to recall or reconstruct Indian

Buddhist antecedents of those ideals in the Tibetan present. In other words, both Tsangnyon

Heruka and Tsongkhapa embodied tropes that are divergent cultural markers of exemplary

Buddhist practice. The tantric literalism of Tsangnyon Heruka represents the mahāsiddha

inheritance common to all schools of early Tibetan Buddhism: Kagyu tracing its lineages to

Tilopa; Nyingma to Padmasambhava; Sakya to Virūpa; and Kadam to Atiśa, who—at least in

many memories—was a tantric master who conformed to the needs of his time by not teaching

tantra publically. Yet each of these schools also traces its inheritance to figures who embody the

ideal of monastic scholar as well: Kagyu to Milarepa’s disciple, Gampopa, who institutionalizes

the school; Nyingma to Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśila, who introduce monasticism to Tibet; Sakya

to its founding Khön family, whose emphasis on rigorous scholarship—though not necessarily

monasticism—culminates in the great Sakya Pandita; and Kadam to Atiśa again, in the monastic

scholar role that Tsongkhapa takes as his model.

The two poles, then, serve as rhetorical foci rather than inviolable markers of sectarian

identity, and each school is comprised by a discursive emphasis on one pole but always with an

important rhetorical capacity to draw on the other. This explains why Tsangnyon Heruka could

draw patronage from a range of Kagyu supporters, such as the Seventh Karmapa, who are

committed to the ideal of scholarship for themselves, and why Tsongkhapa could draw on

massive patronage from the Phagmodru rulers of Lhasa, who are directly affiliated with the

Kagyu school from Milarepa’s time. In this way, the contours of Tibetan Buddhism are more

complicated than a superficial, decontextualized reading of an individual life narrative would

suggest. Tsongkhapa himself understood a true commitment to either pole to be a

misunderstanding of the Buddha’s teachings, which place the availability of both monasticism

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and tantric literalism in specific contexts—the former in a very circumscribed one. In this

argument, Tsongkhapa is supported by another famous madman, Drukpa Kunley, who argued

that behaving as a Heruka required a level of meditative attainment that very few could claim for

themselves. Yet the latter also argues that many monks who claim to be disciplining themselves

with the rules of the vinaya are in fact merely pretending to do so and hence not worthy

recipients of generosity or respect.189

In such an attitude, however, there is no space for gradual development by means of

taking up any practice, be it monastic discipline or the antinomian behavior that is enjoined by

the tantric literature attributed to the Buddha.190 Both Tsangnyon Heruka and Tsongkhapa would

reject such an attitude in principle, for it implies that effort toward enlightenment is an

impossibility, whereas both in different ways argue that the path to enlightenment, the tantric one

especially, is traveled by enacting future states of attainment in the present. In the many details

of the path to enlightenment, however, these two figures would find much on which to disagree.

The point remains that from the perspectives of cultural possibilities and the complexities of

reception, following Campany, Tibetan life narratives tend to take a more ambiguous stance on

the absolute values of these two models of exemplary Buddhist practice.

Taylor on Conceptual Frameworks and Meaningful Lives

Turning from the literary features of Tibetan Buddhist life narratives to the religious and

philosophical elements that inform them, one can explore further the socially constructed and

189
DiValerio 94-7.
190
That is, the transgressive behavior that Kagyu madmen celebrate has its place in the Buddha’s teachings, but that
place is, according to the unexcelled yoga tantras, in the far reaches of tantric accomplishment, and not before, and
in the private space of the tantric feast (ganacakra), not the public square. On this, see Wedemeyer 2013 149-52.

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mediated processes that underlie culturally contextual presuppositions regarding conceptual

frameworks, constitutive goods, and moral values, following Charles Taylor’s analysis of these

topics in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Here one encounters the

“universal” instantiated by the individual at a fundamental level, where cultural and social

realities—overarching/underlying conceptual frameworks—appear to be natural and given,

rather than learned and inhabited, as demonstrated in Berger and Luckmann’s classic study of the

sociology of knowledge, The Social Construction of Reality. Informing any life narrative and its

rhetorical possibilities are these realities that form the very parameters for human experience,

which is constructed within intersubjective communities of meaning-making. Individuals always

are inscribed, by means of language and concepts that transmit cultural knowledge, with

particular moral values and principles that correspond to an order of reality held to transcend

mere human interests.

Any cosmic order, whether the meaningless universe of contemporary natural science,

the celestial bureaucracy of traditional Chinese culture, or the caste system of Hindu India,

appears as if a priori and independent of human concerns, but in fact this cosmic order reflects,

reifies, and authenticates moral values and principles through individual habituation and

repetition. The observations made by Taylor, and bolstered here by Berger and Luckmann, reject

the notion of a substantial disjuncture between pre-modern and modern forms of socialization:

objective human rationality divorced from human interests and concerns, celebrated as the

constitutive good of modernity, is, as an overarching/underlying conceptual framework,

qualitatively similar to the idols of religious paradigms of pre-modern societies. Life narratives,

however “individual” their subjects may seem relative to peers, follow cultural patterns and

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expectations inscribed by processes of socialization that take as normative, natural, and

necessary those constitutive goods that comprise conceptual frameworks.

Charles Taylor’s influential Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity traces

the genealogy of the Western theories of selfhood from Plato forward and argues that the modern

condition of disenchantment and existential confusion is, in part, a result of a deliberate masking

of the moral judgments underlying modern philosophy and natural sciences. Taylor’s specific

target is the radical objectivism of the natural sciences, whose bracketing of human agency and

participation from truth-making claims derives from Descartes and other post-Reformation

thinkers who sought to articulate a human subject free of “the illusion which mingles mind with

matter”191 in order to emphasize the preeminence of reason over 'the passions' in a thoroughly

mechanized cosmos. Taylor objects that the development of this radically autonomous subject

has elided the fundamental importance of goals and values as human beings actually live their

lives, in culturally determined and socially constructed realities.

To suggest that modern societies represent a vast and total rupture from pre-modern

societies, in which totalizing conceptual frameworks provided a complete map for thought and

behavior, is to ignore how deeply modernity and this genealogy of objectified selfhood depend

on goals and values of their own. “The point of view from which we might constate that all

orders are equally arbitrary, in particular that all moral views are equally so, is just not available

to us humans. It is a form of self-delusion to think that we do not speak from a moral orientation

which we take to be right.”192 For Taylor, such a “view from nowhere,” to use Thomas Nagel’s

famous phrase, is itself an impossible task for humans, whose identities are constructed within

191
Taylor 149.
192
Taylor 99.

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interpersonal communities in which moral principles are encoded in language and taken as

guidelines for living meaningful lives. In this way, moral principles structure values and goals in

relation to which lives are lived, choices are determined and—relevant to the concerns of this

study—life narratives are constructed and construed. And these moral principles typically are

enshrined, whether in oral or written form, in the systematic presentations of religious or

philosophical thought that serve as the sources for moral principles against which the deeds of

meaningful lives are lived and measured.193

Taylor posits that moral sources for living meaningful lives derive from what he calls

“constitutive goods,” which are qualitatively superior actions or principles that align “by

reference to a cosmic reality, the order of things” to what is taken in a cultural context to be

“valuable, worthy, admirable” in fundamental sense.194 What is “Good” in this fundamental

sense is the primary referent to that cosmic reality, and the love of this Good “empowers us to do

and be good…[and] is part of what it is to be a good human being.”195 Even in the perspective of

a disenchanted universe in which human rationality is the only bulwark against meaninglessness,

“an entirely immanent view of the good is compatible with recognizing that there is something

the contemplation of which commands our respect, which respect in turn empowers.”196 Thus,

even the Enlightenment trope of the disengaged, autonomous hero depends on a notion of the

Good—a mechanical universe lacking external sources of meaning—in which the constitutive

193
While it is certainly debatable the extent to which (1) modern societies differ in the degree to which conceptual
frameworks determine moral principles, goals, and values and (2) the degree to which members of any society are
influenced by the systematic presentations of its philosophers, I will take for granted here, with Taylor, that
conceptual frameworks permeate any society significantly, as Berger and Luckmann have argued influentially.
194
Taylor 92.
195
Taylor 93.
196
Taylor 94.

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good, transcendent human rationality, is a moral principle that structures modern Western goals

and values.197 Hence, Taylor argues that contemporary claims by natural scientists, in particular,

and others to value-free perspectives actually derive from and replicate the claims to universality

of religious and other totalizing antecedents that, due to “the great epistemological cloud under

which all such accounts lie,”198 they reject forcefully.

Taylor questions just how far from the ontological moral claims of the past modernity has

come, arguing that if the modern scope of morality is limited as a universal to concerns over

respect for others, “then we have to allow that there are other questions beyond the moral which

are of central concern to us, and which bring strong evaluation into play. There are questions

about how I am going to live my life which touch on the issue of what kind of life is worth

living…or of what constitutes a rich, meaningful life.”199 These strongly evaluative questions

“involve discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower, which are not

rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations, or choices, but rather stand independent of these

and other standards by which they can be judged,”200 which is to say that these are not purely

subjective concerns but derived from and contained within a larger conceptual framework of

meaning.

Crucially, such a conceptual framework develops within a culture or society and reflects

that community’s paradigmatic moral values that are, following Berger and Luckmann’s classic

197
Garfield 2015, 278-317 offers an excellent discussion of how Buddhist moral theory and their principles relate in
partial and overlapping ways with Western theories, refusing to reduce the former to any of the latter. It provides an
important introduction to the ways in which metaphysics and epistemology relate to ethics as a holistic relationship
with the world: “Buddhist ethics is a moral phenomenology concerned with the transformation of our experience of
the world, and hence our overall comportment to it.”
198
Taylor 5.
199
Taylor 14.
200
Taylor 4.

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model, the focus of primary socialization by which a specific individual becomes a member of

that community.201 Shared moral values, by which one has been socialized to make evaluative

claims in the world, orient oneself within that world and thereby create an identity by means of

intersubjective relations with others so oriented, particularly primary caregivers.202

Taylor argues that to have an identity is to be able to articulate within this social world an

answer to the question “who am I?” as an orientation among these relations. Personal identity,

then, is constructed as an orientation within a social world that serves as the horizon for

subjective meaning-making by means of moral values that are inculcated within intersubjective

relations. Thus, conceptual frameworks are the culturally determined, socialized moral values

that orient one’s personal identity as a moral agent of a life story as it is lived within the world.

Far from being radically autonomous, even the modern subject is oriented, through primary

socialization, toward moral values that serve to guide a life and to constrain its choices.203

Part of Taylor’s project is to trace the development among Western philosophers from

Plato to Locke of the conception of a radically autonomous, unsocialized and unconditioned soul

or self or subjectivity, an essence, that, as chapter four details, is the antithesis of Tsongkhapa’s

view. Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism offers an important cross-cultural companion to Taylor and

argues that much of contemporary philosophy and cognitive science takes for granted that,

201
On the process of primary socialization, see Berger and Luckmann, 129-37. They characterize this process as the
internalization of social realities, whereby the society into which one is born becomes one’s subjective reality. “The
beginning point of this process is internalization: the immediate apprehension or interpretation of an objective event
as expressing meaning, that is, as a manifestation of another’s subjective processes which thereby become
subjectively meaningful to myself.” (129)
202
Neisser identifies five types of self knowledge that develop in infancy and childhood, two of which appear to be
present from earliest times. The second of these is the interpersonal self, which develops in relation to others from
pre-linguistic communication forms to linguistic ones, whereby the (fully) extended self, which is what I would
consider to be under analysis here, emerges in a larger social context.
203
Taylor 39-40. Berger and Luckmann observe (133-4) that socialization is never a totalizing process, such that
subjective reality and objective reality are completely coextensive, and that the asymmetry between the two would
be what allows for reflection on and growth as an individual within and against a social world.

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following Thomas Nagel’s (other) famous phrase, there is an about-ness that is constitutive of

subjective experience—an irreducible feature that distinguishes a unique first-person reality from

any other, “a particular we could come to know.”204 Philosophers who articulate selfhood in the

age of cognitive science, in which the disparate elements noted above engage together, tend to

offer what Garfield calls minimal conceptions, but he notes “they do not in general represent a

retreat from essentialism about the self so much as a more modest version of that presupposition”

of the self as essentially real.205 Garfield elaborates on these contemporary commitments, to

which Taylor’s genealogy of modernity is apposite:

On the one hand, we have a strong intuition that we are selves in some sense – subjects,
agents, centers of consciousness and referents of personal pronouns – and philosophical
commitments in domains as diverse as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics in some kind
of unified subject if agency, choice, rational justification and moral assessment is to be
possible. On the other hand, the clear naturalistic light of reason tells us that over and above
a complex organism in a rich social matrix there seems to be nothing that fits the bill of a
continuing, integrated entity that subserves these functions.”206

In sum, following Taylor’s exploration of the path from Plato and Augustine forward to

Descartes and Locke as they struggle to articulate essential selfhood in terms of reflexivity and

inwardness, one can agree with Garfield’s general assessment: “I venture to say that central to a

pre-modern and modern Western approach to the self is a presupposition that the question of our

essence makes sense in the first place…essentialism is still very much at the mainstream of

Anglo-American-Australasian metaphysics.”

204
Garfield 2015 178.
205
Garfield 2015 99 These minimalist conceptions in different ways deflate the self to a “perspective, emphasizing
not its diachronic continuity but its synchronic status as a kind of vanishing point…[or] nothing but a kind of pure
subjectivity, a self-consciousness that accompanies all consciousness, a sort of mine-ness, with no substantial owner,
either synchronically or diachronically.” And Garfield questions whether these analyses in fact “constitute an
analysis of selfhood at all, or an abandonment” of it, in fact.
206
Garfield 2015 101.

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 Given the constructed nature of personal identity as an intersubjectively constrained

orientation to moral values, Taylor argues that the modern exclusion of human interests and

values as dispensable from the description of reality is fundamentally incoherent. If, he objects:

our language of good and right makes sense only against a background understanding of
forms of social interchange in a given society and its perceptions of the good, then can one
not say after all that good and right are merely relative, not anchored in the real? To say this
would be to fall into an important confusion. Certainly what emerges from this is that good
and right are not properties of the universe considered without any relation to human beings
and their lives.207
Every description of reality makes reference to particular socially constructed interests, such as

transcendent rationality, that are deeply embedded in webs of meaning and value that are

presupposed even if not intentionally hidden. “What better measure of reality do we have in

human affairs than those terms which on critical reflection and after the correction of the errors

we can detect make the best sense of our lives?”208

And because the conceptual frameworks and language by which deliberation is involved

are those by which evaluative judgments are made, to bracket these and the moral values which

issue from them as irrelevant to one’s perspectives on what counts as real and meaningful is

again incoherent. Since there can be no private language existing prior to and independent of

language use, which is thoroughly intersubjective and embedded within conceptual frameworks,

to insist on some objective perspective completely beyond these is untenable in principle.

Taylor’s point is that from a moral standpoint, our conceptual frameworks determine our

orientation within reality and our intuitions reflexively,209 as unexamined habit patterns, and over

207
Taylor 56.
208
Taylor 57.
209
Comparing Taylor’s analysis to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus would be apposite here.

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the course of living these have primary explanatory power even in modern societies wherein a

plurality of competing conceptual frameworks operate.210 From this standpoint, morality is not

primarily about obligations to others but rather foremost the orientation of one’s identity in

relation to constitutive values of intersubjective meaning, the “Good,” by which one is to live.

Conceptual Frameworks and Identity Construction

The point here is that conceptual frameworks in which meaning and values are embedded

in language are necessary conditions for human identity construction, however variable meaning

and values may be across cultures and communities within them. In other words, there is no

absolutely objective position from which to understand a life narrative, which is by nature a

social artifact that participates in meaning-making processes as much as it derives from them. In

this way, too, systematic presentations of meaning, such as those philosophical positions that

Taylor considers, must be taken as constitutive of identity construction processes in terms of life

narratives, in the sense of both derivation and, for scholars such as Tsongkhapa, participation.

Sources of the self, so to speak, are manifold and complex even for purportedly pre-modern

societies such as fifteenth-century Central Tibet, and life narratives serve as sites in which the

ongoing negotiation of these complexities, as indices of meaning and primary moral values of a

given culture, occur.211 The emphasis here on the deep cultural embeddedness of the individual is

not intended to dismiss subjective reality but rather to counter the position, championed among

philosophers since Descartes, that subjectivity is an autonomous essence. Moreover, this

210
Taylor 74-5.
211
In a similar vein, Collins 2010 observes that these two, systematic and narrative, “are modes of thought for
individuals and for traditions, forms of collective memory carried by civilizational institutions,” emphasizing the
place of the individual within those traditions.

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emphasis accords with Tsongkhapa’s own theories of moral agency, social construction of

personal identity, and meaning making as a language-dependent process, as chapter four details.

From this perspective, it is clear that one’s conceptual frame, including moral values

guiding action toward goals, structures the parameters of how life is to be lived and reflected

upon in life narrative.212 The links between the conceptual frame and the structural parameters

are not uniform, for individuals will vary not only in their levels of socialization to such a frame

but also in their deliberate immersion within it, as noted earlier. Following Taylor’s analysis of

constitutive goods and conceptual frames, lives—which are themselves social processes—are

lived as goal-oriented by their very nature. I analyze in the pages and chapters that follow how

Tsongkhapa argues for religious practice grounded in scriptural warrants, models himself in

relation to normative ideals from the Indian Buddhist tradition, upholds monastic discipline as

the foundation for spiritual progress, including tantric practice, and enacts the tradition’s ideals

and expectations through his four great deeds, and thereby one sees him carry out with deliberate

effort precisely this process of self-construction, through acts of identity emulation and

appropriation, which I will relate to a specific conception of asceticism.

Tsongkhapa was born into and raised within a mahāyāna Buddhist conceptual frame, and

he plumbs its depths at a level paralleled by few others, and his life narrative reflects that strong

link between mahāyāna Buddhist goals and his individual story. Moreover, Tsongkhapa was

immersed in a scholastic education in which fundamental Buddhist questions regarding the

connection of identity and personhood to the ultimate goal of enlightenment are central, and he

212
This is not intended in the strong sense of, say, Geertz, for whom the dominance of the symbolic system of a
culture is overarching, theoretically at least. The weak sense intended here posits a complex web of dynamic
interactions that are not reducible either to radical individual autonomy, as some Western Enlightenment thinkers
would have it, or socio-cultural patterns’ suppressing individual differences, desires, and so forth. From a Tibetan
Buddhist perspective, past life inheritances make any simple articulation of these interactions, based on the very
hidden operations of karma, challenging, though the life narratives of accomplished meditators tend to belie this.

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directed all of his efforts, according to Haven and Presence, toward the precise articulation of

that connection. The path to enlightenment, with its proximate and ultimate tasks and goals that

Tsongkhapa specifies in his stages of the path (lam rim) treatises, structures expectations for

living in certain ways, as does the mere fact of living within general mahāyāna Buddhist culture,

and more specifically one thoroughly permeated by the vajrayāna, that is, the tantric vehicle that

constitutes the esoteric form of the mahāyāna.

In this way, Tsongkhapa’s life narrative, Haven of Faith, mirrors Tibetan Buddhist

cultural norms and expectations, as I have discussed above. For Tsongkhapa, his ultimate goal

orients him toward the profundity of Centrism as articulated by Candrakīrti, but even beyond the

accepted Tibetan understanding of that Indian master to a new interpretation, a move attributed

to the direct tutelage of Mañjuśrī, the very embodiment of Buddhist wisdom. This shows not

only the importance of systematic sources of Indian Buddhist tradition as they impact Tibetan

life narratives, but also the complex interactions that cultural repertoires of textual authority and

mythic and historical figures negotiate and produce within them. Most importantly for

Tsongkhapa, I argue, is the capacity of Centrism to articulate within a lam rim framework the

constitutive good of the bodhisattva path and buddhahood itself as relational realities, as public

events, that entail the social awareness of the four great deeds that I consider in chapter five.

Introducing Narrative & Systematic Sources for the Tibetan Buddhist Self

There is an intimate relationship between the narrative and systematic sources by which

Tibetan Buddhist biographers and autobiographers could construct their subjects: in the case of

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both types, the Buddha himself is in some way the origin.213 With respect to narrative sources,

these include the biography of the Buddha contained in the vinaya and elsewhere; stories relating

the Buddha’s previous lives while traveling the bodhisattva path toward full enlightenment,

jātakas; as well as the sūtras that depict the Buddha’s life during which he became enlightened.

One could also include the avadānas, which are stories of Buddhist persons that corroborate the

workings of karma across rebirths.214 While the standard biography of the Buddha, involving the

twelve deeds that each of the thousand buddhas of the so-called fortunate eon (bhadra kalpa)

recapitulates, is a critical narrative, his identity is hardly exhausted by that narrative.215 The

sūtras, which for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are mainly mahāyāna sūtras, are anything but

straightforward narratives in that they often feature a variety of advanced bodhisattvas and other

buddhas acting as central characters and offer a dizzying, permeable vision of space-time.

Additionally, the tantric literature supplements this alternative vision of the Buddhist

cosmos, both in terms of the Buddha himself, so to speak, and the parameters of spiritual

practice; this literature serves as the basis of practice for the late Indian Buddhist great adepts

(mahāsiddhas) whose antinomian lifestyles served as influential models for Tibetan tantrikas.

These latter two, in which the Buddha is either peripheral or absent, are for the Tibetan traditions

213
That is, the narrative literature derives from the Buddha’s life story, including his own recollections of his
journey toward enlightenment, whereas the systematic literature that presents the four tenet system derives from the
Buddha’s assertions while an enlightened teacher.
214
Appleton 2020 8-9 observes that this literature, which has a strong connection to the Mūlasarvāvastivāda Vinaya
(which I explain in chapter five), is not mahāyāna-aligned, since it champions three final vehicles. However, its
emphasis on karmic cause and effect, along with its centering of Buddha as narrator of the past and predictor of the
future, would make this literature appealing to Tsongkhapa and, like the jātakas, complementary to mahāyāna
literature, as I discuss below. Appleton, 20, 27, observes that there is no concern in this literature, which appears to
take shape in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, to systematize the bodhisattva path, which is fully systematized by
Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi by this time.
215
This enumeration of twelve deeds, attributed to Nāgārjuna, is the standard for the Tibetan understanding of the
routinization of the enlightenment process, on which see Schaeffer’s introduction in Tenzin Chogyel pp. ix-xiii and
103-5. As I discuss in chapter five, there are other enumerations.

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particularly important, with the Buddha serving as the underlying authority. All of these

complement the systematic literature that derives from the Buddha’s own teachings, some of

which are present within the narrative sources themselves, such as the perfection of wisdom

(prajñāpāramitā, pha rol tu phyin pa) literature. The majority of the systematic literature comes

from the Indian Buddhist scientific treatises, the śāstras, that are attributed to the luminaries of

the Indian Buddhist tradition, such as Nāgārjuna, Asanga, the future buddha Maitreya, and

Candrakīrti, and form the basis for the tenet systems noted above.

The Life Narratives of Buddha Śākyamūni

The biography of the Buddha, in the sense of the single-life narrative from birth to death,

has been studied so thoroughly that only the briefest comments need be made here.216 In part,

this limited attention is warranted, in that this historically oriented perspective on the Buddha’s

impact is rather marginal compared to the traditional Buddhist focus, which incorporates the

Buddha’s countless prior lives as a bodhisattva. As Julie Schober notes: “The interpretive

plasticity of the Buddhist biographical genre becomes apparent only after we depart from the

historicist epistemology that presumes biography to be defined by the unique events and

circumstances of a single life span of an individual actor captured in unilinear time.”217

Moreover, from a mahāyāna perspective, the Buddha’s biography extends beyond his own deeds,

so to speak, to include those of others which he authorizes by his presence implicitly or by his

speech explicitly. And mention must be made, particularly with respect to Tsongkhapa’s path-

216
Reynolds 1976 is the classic summary, but comprehensive and indispensable is Strong 2001, see below.
217
Schober 2.

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centered approach, of the Buddha’s visions of the interdependent nature of reality that

immediately preceded his attain of unsurpassed supreme enlightenment.

There is a tight circle of authority, with the Buddha at its center, whereby the Buddha’s

own past lives and his interactions with prior buddhas confirm his teleological evolutionary

development as a bodhisattva through time, culminating in his own enlightenment by which,

upon reviewing those past lives, he witnesses their facticity. This circle, however, is not vicious

in two ways: first, when Māra, the Buddhist devil, questions the Buddha’s right to claim the

mantle of buddhahood, the earth goddess bears witness of the factuality of that claim; second, the

Buddha famously declares that his teachings should be verified by the personal experience of his

disciples, who in principle can replicate his exact attainment, just as he has replicated the

attainment of past buddhas as well.218 In this way, there is an appeal to the possibility of direct

personal knowledge of the truth of the bodhisattva path and its fruition in buddhahood, as

specified in both narrative and systematic presentations, that grounds the authority of both.219

Frank Reynolds has provided a brief summary of the two paths of early academic

scholarship on the Buddha’s biographies, noting the penchant by most for demythologizing the

narratives, on the model of the quest for the historical Jesus, while others take as fact the mythic

events that are central to traditional Buddhist understanding. Reynolds points to the basic

inaccessibility of the historical record prior to the third century BCE, about two hundred years

218
It might be objected that the authority of past buddhas derives only from the Buddha’s own knowledge of them,
but again the claim is that in principle their reality can be known by anyone who simply takes the trouble to become
a buddha, as with any other form of knowledge.
219
Reynolds 1976 50 puts is this way: “Just as the teachings of the Buddha and subsequent commentaries on them
are legitimized by biographical narrative, the tradition as a whole is framed by biographies of past and future
Buddhas.” This, however, disregards the collective memory of the mendicant community, which transmits, allegedly
from the verbatim testimony of Anānda, the Buddha’s teachings over time and serve, therefores, as the touchstone
for authority of the biographical claims themselves, especially to the extent that the community could claim descent
from liberated disciples bearing such personal knowledge.

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after the Buddha’s life as modern reckonings would have it.220 Strong, following what I have

suggested above, takes this historical inaccessibility to be unproblematic with respect to

understanding the social context for the production and reception of the Buddha’s biography, of

which different versions exist. This multiplicity, and their divergences, should not be

problematic from a scholarly perspective insofar as normative claims by any one tradition is not

privileged as the standard. “These narrations may contain “fictions” about the Buddha – legends

and traditions that have accrued around him – but these “fictions” are in many ways “truer,” or at

least religiously more meaningful, than the “facts.” They are certainly more plentiful, more

interesting, and more revelatory of the ongoing concerns of Buddhists.”221

Moreover, to the extent that all such tellings purport to derive from the Buddha, there is

no objective authority to refute any dubious claims, and the Buddha himself points to the role of

hermeneutics and reason in determining what, in his absence, would count as authority. If one

were to hear a teaching attributed to the Buddha from a reasonable source, “one should carefully

compare it to established discourses and/or review it in light of the accepted disciplinary

code...[i]f it is found to be in agreement with these, it may be accepted as the word of the

Buddha.”222 In this way, the Buddha sees no recourse to a theoretically objective source for such

claims but only the social practices of hermeneutics and reasoning among his followers for

providing the final grounds for the determination of authenticity. This is precisely the point that

Tsongkhapa makes in his Essence of True Eloquence with respect to his challenge to certain

interpretations of various teachings attributed to the Buddha and leading Indian Buddhist

220
Reynolds 1976 37-41. See also Strong 2001 2–3.
221
Strong 2001 2.
222
Strong 2001 133–4.

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philosophers.223 In this way, what comes to be regarded as the word of the Buddha

(buddhavacana) is able to grow in proportion relative to the interpretive diversity of the

mendicant communities that spread throughout the Indian subcontinent, as illustrated by the

eighteen distinct groups that comprised the Vaibhāṣika school alone. Moreover, since

experiential, and not just scriptural, knowledge could suffice as authentic Dharma—provided it

conforms to the latter—the parameters proved spectacularly liberal, allowing scholars such as

Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu to argue for the authenticity of the mahāyāna against trenchant

conservative Buddhist attacks on the very points noted above.224

The Buddha’s Vision and Conventional Reality: Soteriology and Path

Turning to the basic facts about the Buddha’s lifetime as such, one episode in particular

proves interesting in relation to Tsongkhapa’s concerns regarding the soteriological importance

of the bodhisattva path in general and the nominal establishment of conventional reality as he

articulates it, and that episode relates to the content of the Buddha's enlightenment experience

itself. Having dispelled the attacks from Māra, the Buddha enters the concentrations prior to the

immaterial (or formless) states, and upon entering the fourth such concentration focuses on two

of the six superknowledges (abhijñā). The concentration involved in the immaterial realms are

those to which the Buddha is introduced by his former teachers, and whose efficacy in leading to

transcendence he denies. As Strong notes, the concentration here “is characterized by a mental

state that still perceives the realm of forms and is not completely abstracted from this world.”225

223
On which see Thurman 1984 345–63. This is discussed later, when I consider how Tsongkhapa addresses the
relative authority of the spiritual teacher in relation to secret mantra.
224
For Nāgārjuna’s brief defense, see his Ratnāvalī, and for Vasubandhu’s Vyākyāyukti, see Gold 2013 119–24.
225
Strong 2001 73.

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This is a crucial point, for the relationship between the attainment of enlightenment and the

perception of all other living beings entails that nirvana is indeed not an escape from relative,

conventional reality that is grounded in interdependence. Nirvana is, then, the infinite

interdependence of all relative existents. Nor is enlightenment characterized by the cessation of

the (mis)perception of other living beings who are—as some of Tsongkhapa’s critics would have

it—established falsely by dualistic ignorance that the enlightened mind, in principle, cannot

possess. From such a perspective, the entire bodhisattva path would be predicated on a profound

falsehood, a consideration Tsongkhapa addresses in his Illuminating the Intent.226

First, the Buddha reviews in specific detail the inconceivable number of his own past

lives, establishing what Strong calls the temporal dimension of the enlightenment experience and

his individual entanglement with all other living beings.227 With this, the path of the bodhisattva

as an efficacious reality, regardless of the divergent details in the systematic presentations, is

authenticated by the Buddha’s own narrative account.228 This will be important to the discussions

below of the jātaka literature and of Tsongkhapa’s focus on the path to enlightenment literature.

Second, the Buddha then reviews the present and future karmic realities of all other living

beings, establishing what Strong calls the spatial dimension of the enlightenment experience.229

226
This topic, which bears on the validity of conventional reality as a whole as well as the path to enlightenment, is
discussed in chapter four.
227
Strong 2001 74.
228
Interestingly, in the Living Out the Game Sūtra (Lalitavistara), the Buddha recounts his final-life biography in
the third person until, recounting the moment of full awakening (chapter 22, verse 26), he switches to the first
person to affirm his attainment of the direct knowledge of the four noble truths, what Strong calls ‘dharmalogical
knowledge’ below. Thus, he refers to ‘the bodhisattva’ as if an entirely distinct person, which would be true from
the perspective of distinguishing between unenlightened and enlightened existence. On this see Bays 522 or
Dharmachakra Translation Committee http://read.84000.co/translation/UT22084-046-001.html.
229
Strong 2001 74.

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 However, there is a critical temporal component to this dimension, for the enlightenment

experience may be a single spatiotemporal event, but the sublime continuum of enlightened

experience is not extinguished—ever, from a mahāyāna perspective. The moment-by-moment

unfolding and unwritten futures of all these other living beings depend for their spiritual progress

on the Buddha’s intercession, as teacher, wonder worker, or whatever sort of creative genius he

becomes in the mahāyāna sūtras. The understanding of selflessness that the Buddha gains in the

third watch of the night of his enlightenment is the understanding of dependent origination, this

inseparable knowledge of the entangled karmic fortunes of himself and all other living beings,

ofthe mutual conditionality of all phenomena. For Tsongkhapa, as chapter four details, the

inseparability of these realities or truths—ultimate reality as selflessness or emptiness, and

relative truth as interdependence and conceptual designation—is the core content of the

bodhisattva path and of the Buddha’s twofold enlightened continuum, completely and

inseparably balanced and related in importance. Otherwise, the Buddha’s attainment would not

only remain unknown and hence unhelpful to all other living beings, but it would be as irrelevant

to them as if he had entered the immaterial concentrations.230

Instead, the Buddha, having gained this momentary glimpse of the ongoing karmic

fortunes of all other living beings, is compelled to act for the welfare of these beings, based on

this “cosmological knowledge,” as Strong puts it.231 The Buddha famously hesitates to

230
That is, from the perspective of the two bodies of the Buddha, one (the wisdom truth body) is the consummation
of his own welfare and the other (the material body) is the consummation of others’ welfare, and is that which
appears to unenlightened beings to teach them the path. The second is created, as is detailed below, by the
intentional, self-directed/other-oriented evolutionary actions structured by the bodhisattva path, which derives from,
in the first instance, from the vow to become a perfect buddha for the sake of others. Hence, the best career option
within the Buddhist framework is that of teacher, especially the enlightened kind.
231
Strong 2001 75. Strong nicely contrasts this cosmological knowledge with “dharmalogical knowledge” gained in
the final watch, when the Buddha experiences the cessation of the āśravas, the residual impurities that include
obstacles to knowledge and knowledge of the four noble truths. These two correlate, then, to the buddha bodies,
rūpakāya and dharmakāya, when enumerated as only two.

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communicate these experiences, knowing that these insights are literally ineffable and

conceptually challenging, but eventually (the details differ depending on the particular

version)232 Brahmā convinces him of the necessity for him to teach. From the perspective of the

Indian Buddhist systematic literature, however, it is not Brahmā’s goading that provokes the

Buddha into action but rather his own previous preparation while on the bodhisattva path. There,

taking Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism (Madhyamakāvatāra), the influential seventh-century

compendium as the primary source,233 the bodhisattva travels over ten grounds or stages of

progressive spiritual attainment after having become a noble bodhisattva, that is, one who has

directly perceived emptiness. Each is defined by the completion of one of the transcendences

(pāramitās), the first six grounds corresponding to the standard mahāyāna grouping, famously

articulated in Śāntideva’s eighth-century classic, Bodhicaryāvatāra: generosity, ethics,

forbearance, heroic effort, concentration, and wisdom.

It is the latter four among the ten that are of interest here, for the seventh stage perfects

that quintessentially mahāyāna concern, upāya (skillful means or creative art), while the eighth

stage—at which the bodhisattva attains liberation from cyclic existence and thus becomes an

arhat—perfects the vow or unswerving aspiration (pranidhāna) to liberate all other living beings;

thus, this transcendence is related to the spirit of enlightenment, bodhicitta.234 On this eighth

232
See Strong 2001 79-80 for divergences in the two main accounts.
233
On which, see Huntington 1989 185-8.
234
There appears to be here a contradiction of sorts. If the prayers for the welfare of other beings are perfected on
this ground, then the force of that should counteract the tendency to become withdrawn in meditation on cessation,
the capacity for which has become exceeding. Candrakīrti and the Sūtra on the Ten Grounds seem to take for
granted that the bodhisattva will become so withdrawn or absorbed, requiring the buddhas to appear and arouse him
or her, much as Brahmā does with the Buddha, and this might be an allusion to that. Tsongkhapa, perhaps seeing
this possible contradiction, specifies “If he enters into absorption…” (Illuminating 314). This state of cessation
(nirodha) is of course what the individual vehicle takes to be the final reality of nirvana, which the Lotus Sūtra
contradicts famously, and here it is not arhats who are roused from error, but the bodhisattva who needs a gentle
reminder.

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ground, the ability to meditate on cessation has become so effortless that the buddhas arouse him

or her as a reminder to continue working toward buddhahood. This is what causes the Buddha to

teach: the perfection or consummation of the vow that he himself made innumerable aeons in the

past, under the Buddha Dipamkara.235 The ninth stage perfects the power to enforce that vow, so

to speak, and so could be paired appropriately with aspirational bodhicitta. The tenth and final

stage of unenlightened existence, the very cusp of buddhahood on which the future buddha

Maitreya and other celestial bodhisattvas such as Mañjuśrī abide, perfects jñāna—notoriously

difficult to translate, but which I will give (following Thurman) as “intuition,” indicating the im-

mediate (i.e., unmediated) awareness of all things. These latter transcendences clearly relate to

the “cosmological knowledge” above, which has the welfare of other living beings as its focus.

In fact, one could suggest that Candrakīrti’s treatise is an explicit attempt to relate these

transcendences—which are largely other-oriented, as the bodhisattva’s task by definition is—to

the Centrist metaphysical project; by doing so, it serves as a type of stages of the path (lam rim)

text for which Tsongkhapa is famous. One might note also, in distinction to those who dismiss

the critical importance of those other-oriented transcendences, that these later transcendences are

attained in sequential dependence on the sixth, the perfection of wisdom of emptiness, which is

itself attained in dependence on the earlier transcendences, the first three of which are explicitly

other-oriented. Entry to Centrism does not set out the three scopes of spiritual aspiration, as does

Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and which Tsongkhapa follows in his lam rim texts,

yet it is notable that this treatise does serve as the exegetical touchstone for Tsongkhapa’s

235
There is some uncertainty here in how to take Candrakīrti. Huntington understands this stage to be related
directly to the vow to liberate others, whereas Tsongkhapa is not explicit in this regard. It appears from his
commentary that the power of prayer does relate to the bodhisattva’s prior intention to become a Buddha for the
sake of others, but in an indirect sense rather than the direct relationship to the spirit of enlightenment, as Huntington
takes it. To what extent they are may be related is debatable. In either case, however, it is the welfare of other living
beings that is the object of the prayer or vow.

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discussion of insight in LRCM. As such, one might view Candrakīrti’s text to be a critical

supplement or point of entry (avatāra) not only to Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realization,

which famously reveals, though in an impenetrably cryptic way, the bodhisattva path hidden in

the Buddha’s perfection of wisdom literature, but also an important complement—for

Tsongkhapa at least—to Atiśa’s seminal text. (As we shall see later, Atiśa’s Kadampa tradition

focused on six key texts, of which Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra is the only one that sets out a

Centrist view.) Although I will consider that these concerns derived from the Indian Buddhist

systematic literature below, in relation to Tsongkhapa’s focus on the stages of the path

presentations, one can observe that the fundamental issue regarding soteriology derives from the

very content of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience narrative itself.

Prior Life Narratives and Karmic Causality: Jātakas and the Bodhisattva Path

Given the importance of the bodhisattva path for understanding of the foundational

concerns of Tsongkhapa’s scholarship, which inform (and was informed by) the choices of his

own spiritual path and his self-presentation as represented in the life narratives of him, both his

own and those written by others, I turn now to the literature from which the systematic

presentations of the bodhisattva path are thought to derive, the jātakas and, relatedly, the

avadānas. Frank Reynolds suggests that “it is not improbable that first items of the sacred

biography to appear within the Buddhist tradition were the Jātaka stories which recount events in

the previous lives of the Founder. In fact, it is quite possible that such stories were told by the

Buddha himself to illustrate a point or drive home a moral.”236 If one considers the typical

question and answer format of so much of the literature attributed to the Buddha, this conjecture

236
Reynolds 1976 42.

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makes sense, especially in light of Campany’s point that biographical literature should be

understood in relation to its audience. The jātakas are quintessentially moral teachings whose

fundamental concern is the operation of karmic cause and effect over a continuity of lifetimes as

the basis for individual responsibility, and Tsongkhapa’s source for these is the Jātakamālā of

Āryaśūra, a brief collection, especially important to the Kadam school, which focuses on the

transcendences of the bodhisattva.237

Given the radical nature of the Buddha’s teaching on selflessness, establishing the

efficacy of his moral principles must be a central concern—as seen above with respect to the four

Indian Buddhist tenet systems—for both followers and detractors. That efficacy hinges on the

person of the Buddha himself, who has the unique capacity to authenticate the links of

personhood over vast temporal distances, and his reference to his own past actions and their later

results provide particular power to these narratives. Moreover, the incomprehensibly vast

temporal landscape of the jātakas is attenuated not only by the Buddha as protagonist, but by the

recurrent appearance of many others: “the Buddha’s disciples, for instance, are often born

together with the Bodhisatta, as animals or men. Their kamma is knitted together by their search

for enlightenment in different spheres of existence.”238 For instance, in the Jātakamālā, the

Buddha’s companion is Ajita, the future Buddha Maitreya, who is shown in contrast to the

Buddha to be less clever and and compassionate, even though further developed along the

bodhisattva path—indicating implicitly the mutability of relative progress in spiritual

development.239

237
For a recent English translation of this text, with Romanized Sanskrit, see Meiland 2009a and 2009b.
238
Shaw 2006 xxxviii.
239
This is shown in particular in the first tale, that of the starving tigress, on which see Meiland 2009a, 7–25.

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 The narratives themselves illustrate the causal principles over incomprehensible lifetimes,

but the underlying moral issues relate to the truth of suffering itself: the responsibility for present

suffering both is and is not the fault of the person afflicted. That is, there is no one else to blame

for the past action that has led to the present result, but the person to whom that action can be

attributed is neither the same nor different. And while this may be a metaphysical conundrum of

sorts, the therapeutic value is considerable, for the blame over suffering can be personalized and

depersonalized in relation to individual capacity.240 This fact extends even to the Buddha, who

can speak with detachment from the ethical lapses in his own previous lives and complete

authority about them, embodying for listeners/readers both the shared reality of unenlightened

existence and its transcendence. “This interplay of times places Buddhahood within the stories

always in the present, for the past stories enact in various metaphorical or parallel ways the

dynamics of the ‘present’ stories. The Buddha, in the text as in life, is the elucidator of meaning.

His fully awakened mind is needed to remember, order, comment and provide connecting links

that interpret the events…to a clearly located and recognizable present.”241

Implicit in the foregoing are two fundamental Buddhist truths: first, no one in the

unenlightened state, including the Buddha in his immediate past lives as a noble bodhisattva, is

free from the consequences of his/her past actions, however opaque the causal network of their

effects to the unenlightened; and second, no one is in principle prevented from liberating

him/herself, by means of (Buddhist) ethical prescriptions and proscriptions, from the suffering

that results from negative actions. Even the most ordinary person, or most heinous—e.g., the

240
Sara McClintock 2018 considers these past life narratives in terms of ethical autopoiesis, or self-fashioning, and
the ways in these third person stories are intended to act as models, to cause the readers or listeners to recognize
themselves therein and to generate the awareness of their own need for ethical transformation. In particular, she
focuses on the act of recollection in certain avādānas that, I would posit, link Strong’s notions of the Buddha’s
cosmological and dharmological knowledge to these narratives as sites for their transmission.
241
Shaw 2006 xxvii.

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murderous Finger Garland (Aṅgulimāla)—is represented by, and may be recognized in, the

jātaka narratives, and this speaks to the link between the systematic and narrative literature,

noted earlier. The latter—the Buddha’s discourses, the jātakas, and the avādānas—represent

specific, context-bound instances of actions of body, speech, and mind that the former, higher

knowledge and later commentarial works (śāstras), abstract into universal patterns of psychology

and behavior.242 From a general Buddhist perspective, these patterns may be extrapolated into

the 84,000 afflictions that are countered by the 84,000 teaching of the Buddha, or contracted into

the three poisons of misknowledge, desire, and aversion; from a tantric Buddhist perspective,

these patterns are categorized into eighty subtle instincts underlying their manifest appearances.

These different heuristics serve simply as an acknowledgement that these three poisons manifest

in countless ways in dependence on individual karmic circumstance but nevertheless are neither

unique nor incurable.

From the perspective of Tibetan life narratives, as noted earlier, the integration of

individual personality traits and typological patterns of behavior is critical, for there is a balance

expected between the unique person who instantiates the contextual specificities of region,

education, religious background, and so forth with the “timeless” spiritual qualities associated

with advanced spiritual practitioners, qualities that may be upheld or inverted/subverted as the

given narrative requires. Too much emphasis on either aspect would result in a loss of narrative

realism, on the one hand, or didactic purpose on the other. While Ulrike Roesler suggests, based

on reports from contemporary fieldwork in Southeast Asia, “the situation in which jātakas and

hagiographies are traditionally told can make their effect rather more entertaining than

242
For the avādāna literature in general, see Rotman, who observes that these stories, which recount the spiritual
development and karmic history of the Buddha’s disciples, circulated as didactic stories that monks recounted to lay
Buddhists, much like the jātakas.

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edifying,”243 it could be the case these group settings, such as festivals, could have served

historically as opportunities for the communal affirmation of moral values and subtle social

shaming even within an otherwise raucous event.244 That such situations typically are, and were,

overseen by eminent spiritual figures highlights their didactic purpose, and in the same way

someone could read the jātakas without imbibing, either intellectually or viscerally, their

underlying messages. Even that inattentiveness can be explained in terms of karmic propensity,

to be sure.

These life narratives—whether those of the Buddha’s prior lives or those of eminent

Tibetan Buddhist figures—communicate ethical virtues and principles that are similar in nature,

if not specific manifestations, to those of all other living beings, and these are categorized in the

systematic literature to highlight this universality. For Tsongkhapa, the ethical concerns for all

unenlightened persons are qualitatively similar until they have been liberated fully from the

bonds of karma. This focus on causal continuity, from the most unenlightened to the most

rarefied existential states within unenlightened existence, deeply informs Tsongkhapa’s focus on

soteriology, particularly his emphasis on the bodhisattva path, inclusive of tantric theory and

practice, where such continuity is deeply relevant. Here one may recall, on a biographical note,

that Tsongkhapa begins the tradition at the first Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo),

instituted in 1409, of discoursing on the Jātakamālā, a tradition that has continued—though not

without interruption—to the present by his successors.

243
See Covill, Roesler and Shaw 4.
244
If personal experience may be invoked, I have been in attendance at several such events in India among Tibetan
exile communities and in the United States among mixed crowds of exiled Tibetans and other communities, and the
atmosphere has been in every case, especially among Tibetans, a mix of reverent attention during the teaching
portions— perhaps feigned —and jovial disregard otherwise. But the two need not be oppositional moods in order
for learning to occur, for the truth of suffering may be countered by the truth of cessation, for example.

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 Naomi Appleton has argued that the bodhisattva transcendences do not figure into the

earliest layers of the jātaka genre, but “a strong tradition nonetheless emerged that the stories

illustrate the long path to perfection that was steadfastly pursued by the Buddha during those of

his countless past lives when he was a bodhisattva.”245 Sarah Shaw echoes this, proposing that

transcendences are “essential to an understanding of the stories and [their linkage] seems to have

been a crucial factor in shaping the composition of many.”246 Appleton notes that the absence of

the genre in the Jain tradition, which espouses a wholly different conception of karma,

“highlights the way in jātakas take their meaning from the understandings of the bodhisattva path

and rely upon the possibility of pursuing a self-intentioned future.”247 Buddhism shares with

other Indian religious traditions the notion of karma, but diverges from both Jainism and others

in its understanding of what karma is. The Vedic conception of karma, predating Buddhism, is

that of ritual action mediated by elite Brahmins trained in the correct procedures of sacrifice for

the benefit of the powerful ruling class. This privileged duopoly was challenged by the

theoretically egalitarian position espoused by the Upaniṣads, which stressed direct individual

knowledge of the workings of the cosmos, including various aspects of divinity. Buddhism

shares this emphasis on direct personal knowledge and redefines karma as ethical action, positive

or negative, and attributes to that ethical action the causal efficacy that the orthodox Brahmanical

positions (i.e., not Buddhism or Jainism) invest in the deities Iśvara, Brahmā, and so forth.

Jainism, by contrast, understands karma to be a material substance that is necessarily negative,

insofar as it prevents the liberation of the immaterial soul from cyclic existence.

245
Appleton 2012 12.
246
Shaw 2006 lii.
247
Shaw 2006 15.

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 Thus, liberation is for the orthodox traditions a matter of appeasing divine forces and for

Jainism a thoroughly individual quest for liberation, in distinction to the fact of infinite

conventional relationality involved in the Buddha’s enlightenment visions note above. The

Buddha’s emphasis on personal responsibility within an intersubjective framework, as articulated

in the four noble truths, clarifies that the ethical action depends on the mental factor of intention

(cetanā) as it relates to the object of an action, i.e., other living beings. Although this is true even

from the Buddha’s initial delineation of the eightfold path enunciated as the fourth noble truth,

even as late as the eighth century Śāntideva felt obligated to specify the critical factor of

intention in his Bodhicaryāvatāra.248 Thus, as noted above, the transcendences of the bodhisattva

path depend on ethical action directed by individual intentionality, a fact that the jātakas are at

pains to stress, both in terms of the magnitude of the initial vow to buddhahood at the outset of

that path and of the perseverance required over countless lives along that path. But, it cannot be

stressed enough in terms of the bodhisattva path, that individual intentionality, that primary

factor in the creation of conditions for future existence, depends on the object with which it

engages—another living being.

Given these distinctions over agency and action articulated by these South Asian

religious communities in relation to a common cosmology, one should not be surprised to

discover shared narratives that offer divergent statements of their intended messages. Thus, the

themes and plots that certain shorter jātakas share with Aesop’s fables and the pañcatantra tales

represent a common heritage of folklore transmitted across ancient Eurasia that developed into

specifically Buddhist stories, articulating the significance of those universal themes within a

248
In chapter five of Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, he entertains the objection that the Buddha clearly did
not perfect generosity, considering the continued presence of poverty in the world, to which he responds that the
transcendences are mental states, of which intention is an omnipresent mental factor according to the higher
knowledge literature. See Shantideva 35.

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distinctly Buddhist ethical framework.249 What appears to the unenlightened as an inexplicable

series of random events turns out to be simply the necessary outcome of some past action that is

fully explicable by the workings of karmic causality, as described by the Buddha. What appears,

then, to other religious communities as the unknowable workings of fate or the uncontrollable

caprice of the gods turns out to be, on a Buddhist understanding, a matter of individual ethical

action that can be both known and controlled by oneself and for oneself simply by means of

immersion in the Buddhist path of ethics and knowledge.

The Buddha famously rejects the objective truth of caste distinctions, Brahmin

superiority, the definition of nobility, and the transcendence of the Brahmanical gods on the basis

of his direct knowledge. The Buddhacarita by Aśvaghoṣa depicts “the Buddha’s dharma as the

consummation and fulfillment of the Brahmanical tradition,”250 and even within Buddhist

traditions one finds intertextual reinterpretation abounds, especially in mahāyāna contexts, as

with the docetic biographical Living Out the Game Sūtra (Lalitavistara). In these processes one

can point both to the dynamic Indian religious and philosophical traditions, such as the

epistemological and tantric, that developed together through the second millennium and to the

interpretive diversity of the decentralized Buddhist traditions themselves, whose hermeneutical

principles predicated on oral sources, noted earlier, allow for virtually unlimited communities of

text and practice to emerge, each interpreting the words and true intentions of the Buddha in

dialogue and debate with their coreligionists. All of this indicates shared worlds of meaning and

interpretation open to argument and persuasion, with the Buddha’s own life narrative/s operating

249
See Shaw 2006 xlv.
250
Olivelle xxv, see xxiv-xlix in Aśvaghoṣa for details on the history of Buddhist-Brahmanical debates as presented
by the Buddhacarita. This text, then, serves as a prime example of life narrative written explicitly for a particular
audience.

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as the nodal point and the soteriology of the bodhisattva path serving as both the cause and effect

for those narratives.

Mahāyāna Sūtras and Indian Buddhist Scholasticism

It is with the mahāyāna traditions that the bodhisattva path becomes a central topic for

both the narrative and systematic literature, all of which reflects, from a historical perspective,

the great diversity of the early mahāyāna, which contemporary scholarship takes to be all but

coextensive with its literature. The historical development of scholastic thought in the centuries

after the Buddha’s passing proved dynamic, with influential groups such as the Mahāsamghikas

offering different interpretations of the reality of the Buddha’s enlightened existence,

interpretations that may have developed into different mahāyāna strands of thought.251 While

Hirakawa’s theory of the origins of the mahāyāna’s emerging from stūpa worship among lay

practitioners has been widely discounted, there has been no consensus on what, if anything,

counts as the mahāyāna in distinction to Nikāya/Early Buddhism, as embodied now only by the

modern Theravāda traditions. From the perspective of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, what

appears as historical development or doctrinal inconsistency is taken to be the consummate

teaching skill of the Buddha himself, whose precise teaching to specific contexts and individual

needs leads to contradiction only if that teaching is taken out of context as a general

philosophical proposition. This, of course, explains the centrality of hermeneutics to Buddhist

philosophy, as evidenced by Tsongkhapa’s own Essence of True Eloquence, the very writing of

which, some two thousand years after the Buddha’s passing, testifies to this point.252

251
For the early traditions and their diversity, see Boucher, Drewes 2009a and 2009b, Harrison, and Walser.
252
Chapter four discusses this treatise.

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 As noted earlier, among the transcendent skills or abilities attributed to advanced

bodhisattvas is that of creative art (upāya), which refers not merely to verbal teaching but to

pedagogical mastery of all types, including wonder-working displays such as I examine in

chapter five in reference to the Buddha's displays at Śrāvastī, which serve as the reference point

for Tsongkhapa's Great Prayer Festival. This art is not limited to bodhisattvas, as represented by

the skill attributed to the Buddha’s supreme disciple Mahākaśyapa, but rather develops as an

effect of Buddhist practice, though its intentional cultivation by bodhisattvas over lifetimes, as

narrated by the jātakas, leads to its transcendent capacity. The mahāyāna sūtras employ the same

narrative devices as the jātakas and avadānas to emphasize the causal processes involved in the

bodhisattva path, with the Buddha again serving as witness to the infinite entanglement of his

own and others’ karmic processes, bringing past and present together in the narrative. And like

the jātakas, the mahāyāna sūtras look not just to the “present” effects of past karmic actions but

to future effects as well, in particular the predictions of buddhahood.

Whereas the jātakas and avadānas focus on the present enlightened state of the Buddha in

re-viewing the past-present continuity of ethical actions, the mahāyāna sūtras tend to focus on

the Buddha’s pre-viewing the present-future continuity of others’ ethical actions, yet the three

times—as observed with respect to the Buddha’s enlightenment vision—are supposed to be a

single glimpse for the fully enlightened mind. The sūtras that contain these prophecies, The Lotus

Sūtra being the quintessential example, are typically narrative in form and serve not, as many

mahāyāna sūtras do, as statements of philosophical doctrine per se but rather as supplemental

material for systematic philosophical reflection by scholastic commentators.253 And just as the

253
This is a general observation: The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines contains a widely influential narrative
component that serves as the prototype for guru devotion, and is particularly important for Tsongkhapa; and the
Avatamsaka contains within it both a systematic exposition of the bodhisattva path (the independently circulated
Sūtra on the Ten Grounds) and the massively influential narrative of the bodhisattva Sudana. Interestingly, and

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jātakas and avadānas do not offer sustained philosophical reflection but rather focus on the

unfolding of karma and the ethical circumstances involved, these prophetic sūtras focus on the

karmic relationships between actions and effects not only in relation to ethical circumstances but

religious practices as well. Two such practices appear to have been central to the emergence of a

distinct mahāyāna culture: the cults of the relics and of the book. While the emergence of a

separate mahāyāna culture is something of an accomplished fact textually by the second century

C.E., it is less clear when a majority of Buddhists would have identified themselves as

participating in its practices and goals as articulated in the texts.

The cult of the Buddha’s relics, worshipped at stūpas across India, was given impetus by

Aśoka’s having dispersed the relics to a larger geographic region, thereby bringing a larger and

more diverse number of worshippers in contact through pilgrimage, creating bonds of religious

community over greater distances. The concomitant growth of monastic communities and the

development of the great Buddhist monuments around parts of the subcontinent, such as Sañci,

Amarāvatī, and Bharhut, indicate a fluorescence of Buddhist culture. The cult of the book, on the

other hand, is a self-referential rhetorical strategy within certain mahāyāna sūtras themselves to

propagate the ideas and ideals of their own content, including the worship of the Buddha’s relics

and of the book itself. Thus, in addition to exalting its own contents as efficacious forms of

practice, venerating the embodiment of those forms became an important practice, and these

sūtras enjoin Buddhists to support Dharma “preachers” (bhanakas) who should spread the

bodhisattva-centered teachings far and wide, against heretical skeptics.

In these ways, the emergence of the mahāyāna participates in the wider physical and

devotional distribution of the Dharma in the form of the relic cult and the wider intellectual and

deserving of greater reflection, is the fact that the Lalitavistara is a biography that includes extensive systematic
presentations of doctrine.

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devotional distribution of the Dharma in the form of the book cult, thus combining social and

intellectual development. The sūtras themselves also disperse authority for the dissemination of

enlightened discourse from the Buddha to both advanced bodhisattvas and disciples, as in the

Heart Sūtra in which the Buddha authorizes as buddhavacana the speech of Avalokiteśvara

while also prompting through his own meditative power the questioning by Śāriputra. In this

way, enlightened speech is not localized with the Buddha but may emerge from anyone or even

anything, as evidenced by the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras in which the realm of the Buddha

Amitābha has natural features that continually voice slogans of the Dharma.254 The Lotus and

Vimalakīrti Sūtras display and narrate incomprehensible interpenetrations of permeable physical

locations, vast universes that are accessible instantaneously via superior concentration, while the

Avatamsaka displays the extent of the cosmos as a reflective hologram within the Buddha’s

awareness, perhaps alluding to the “cosmological” enlightenment vision noted previously.255 In

all, then, these mahāyāna sūtras present an ordinary reality in which enlightened body, speech

and mind are immanent and accessible to anyone and vow-bound bodhisattvas replicating the

Buddha’s own journey—as narrated by the jātakas and confirmed by the Buddha’s omniscient

predictions in these sūtras—populate every atom of the cosmos. These are contours of the

ordinary Buddhist reality that Tsongkhapa and his Tibetan forbears inherited from the eighth

century.

In addition to the revelations of the mahāyāna sūtras, the growth of higher knowledge

scholarship continues in proportion to the growth of monastic communities across South Asia,

and this scholarship incorporates and systematizes mahāyāna themes, often as refutations of

254
See Gomez 86-7.
255
On which, see Hurvitz for the Lotus, Thurman 1976 for the Vimalakīrti and Cleary for the Avatamsaka,
especially 55-7 for this specific episode.

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alternate positions, leading to the four tenet, or theory, systems discussed above. The two

mahāyāna systematic presentations of the view of reality, Centrism and Idealism—which are

different interpretations of the meaning of emptiness in relation to the vast range of bodhisattva

activities—serve as the lifeblood of Tibetan scholarship. Luminaries such as Nāgārjuna,

Āryadeva, Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti and Śāntideva form a lineage of Centrist

scholars articulating an understanding of emptiness based on the perfection of wisdom sūtras,

while others known as Yogic Practice or Idealist scholars (notably the brothers Asanga and

Vasubandhu, both scholars of higher knowledge, along with Sthiramati and Dharmapala)

articulate an alternate understanding of emptiness in dependence on The Elucidation of the

Intention Sūtra, which clarifies the meaning of the perfection of wisdom literature. Each

presentation integrates its distinctive view of reality with a normative focus on the bodhisattva

transcendences, though the Yogic Practice scholars are famed, within Tsongkhapa’s milieu, for

their work on the latter.

These two lineages develop from the second century C.E., with each developing

independent interpretations while refuting the ontological commitments of the other, culminating

in the influential synthetic treatises by Candrakīrti (Entry to Centrism, seventh century CE) and

Śāntideva (Bodhicaryāvatāra, eighth century CE). From the Tibetan perspective these two are

known respectively as the lineage of the profound—which articulates the correct interpretation of

emptiness—and that of the vast, which systematizes the bodhisattva path in precise detail.

Although these two are traced to the Buddha, they derive their direct authority within Indian

history from, respectively, Mañjuśrī and Maitreya, according to the Tibetan tradition. These two

are supplemented by the Buddhist epistemological tradition of Dignāga, Dharmakīrti,

Devendrabuddhi, Sakyabuddhi and others, which developed in dispute with the Orthodox

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Brahmanical traditions from the fifth century and prove extremely influential in late Indian and

Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism.

The Vajrayāna: Questions of Continuity and Coherence in the Buddhist Teachings

The final pieces of the Tibetan Buddhist worldview—perhaps the defining pieces—are

the tantric traditions, the vajrayāna, attributed to the historical Buddha in much the same way as

the other teachings, though in these instances the Buddha took the form not of a human monk but

the specific enlightened figure of the maṇḍala. The contemporary academic consensus argues

that these disparate traditions, particularly the more antinomian aspects, develop in some relation

to non-Brahmanical theistic traditions, particularly marginal Śaivite communities, from

approximately the eighth century onward. The sophistication of the Buddhist tantras, however,

suggests that they, in fact, are refined by the elite, highly educated members of the tradition,

most likely from the great monastic universities from which the Tibetan traditions drew their

teachers.256 These same monasteries, such as Nālandā, and later Vikramaśīla and Odantapuri,

witness the scholastic development and integration of the two lineages, along with the insights of

the epistemological tradition, in the second half of the first millennium.257

Notably, with respect to this integration, although the tantric traditions are taken by

Tibetans to be focused on practice, and hence the vast lineage, the Indian Buddhist scholars

associated with the transmission of the unexcelled yoga tantras, in particular, are those from the

256
On this perspective, see Wedemeyer 2013.
257
On this development, see the articles by Mathes 2019b, Szántó, and Wenta. Wenta’s piece focuses on an Indian
contemporary of Atiśa and long-term collaborator of Atisa's Tibetan student Nagtsho, the source of Tsongkhapa's
extensive praise of Atiśa. Thus we can see the concern among Indian Buddhist scholastic elites to reign in, at least in
their writings, tantric literalism, suggesting such literalism may not be restricted to the hinterlands at all but rather
within, or quite close to, the monastery walls. And since these elites would be addressing other literate scholars with
their writings, the idea, promoted by certain scholars that tantric practice is an extra-monastic phenomenon simply
holds no weight.

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profound lineage, namely Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva and Candrakīrti. However, the unexcelled yoga

tantras, particularly the more transgressive division of the yoginī tantras, are known more

popularly, in both Tibet and the West, through the narrative legends of their idiosyncratic, caste-

flouting practitioners, the great adepts (mahāsiddhas), apparently collected by the twelfth-

century Indian Abhayadatta. These great adepts serve as exemplars for generations of Tibetan

practitioners of the unexcelled yoga tantras, particularly the peripatetic non-monastic adepts who

take the anti-scholastic and anti-institutional tropes of the legends as their own heritage.

Tsangnyon Heruka, the Kagyu madman referenced earlier, takes these tropes as the authentic

emblems of tantric practice and the hallmarks of true Indian Buddhism in its highest form, a

controversial but not uncommon move that jettisons as unnecessary, rather than acknowledges as

introductory, the common mahāyāna practices that Tsongkhapa argues as indispensable.

In taking the uncommon mahāyāna practices of the vajrayāna as a self-sufficient “result

vehicle,” in distinction to the common mahāyāna as a “cause vehicle,” some Tibetans reject

certain elements of the bodhisattva path, including its focus on karma, as counterproductive or

irrelevant. This represents for Tsongkhapa a major misunderstanding not only of the nature of

karmic causality but of the interrelated nature of the entire mahāyāna path, its common and

uncommon elements, which fit together causally and seamlessly, in a serial and hierarchical

manner. Abhayadatta’s compilation, as the quintessential record of Indian Buddhist tantric lives,

may serve as a heuristic counterpoint to the jātakas, which one may take as representative of the

causal focus of the bodhisattva path. For Tsongkhapa, however, the most elementary facets of

the Buddhist path, detailed in his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

(again, LRCM), lead to the most advanced, detailed in his Great Treatise on the Stages of

Mantra, which are dependent on and conditioned by those elementary facets. The advanced

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practices of vajrayāna, he warns, are not distinct from the preparations undertaken in the

common mahāyāna—that is, the three principles of renunciation, development of compassion,

and cultivating the wisdom of emptiness—nor, from within the unexcelled yoga tantras, are the

perfection stage practices distinct from their psychophysical preparations undertaken in the

creation stage practices. As a result of practice in prior lives, a particular person may not need to

begin from those elementary facets—a determination to be made by a reliable and experienced

teacher, not oneself—but the general developmental perspective holds true.

In fact, one critical element of many Tibetan life narratives is precisely the need, even for

those recognized as spiritually advanced, to be educated in these common mahāyāna elements,

although this can be portrayed as mere display for the benefit of the less advanced. Perhaps the

Buddha’s own life, as presented in the Living Out the Game Sūtra, is the best example of this, in

which the display of his twelved deeds typical of every supreme emanation body buddha, is

claimed to be such a mere display, his having become enlightened long before. On the other

hand, Milarepa is portrayed in the Autobiography as enacting the twelve deeds but gaining

enlightenment only after committing murder and then suffering, in expedited fashion, the karmic

effects. Tsongkhapa, too, even when portrayed in biographies as a spiritually advanced being or

an emanation of Mañjuśrī, disciplines himself with rigorous elementary practices, studies topics

from elementary to advanced, and undertakes a long purification retreat to effect his spiritual

breakthrough. Whether this is mere display, as with the Buddha’s biography, the message is the

same: the path to enlightenment is, in its general features, identical for everyone.

In other words, Abhayadatta’s Lives of the Eighty-Four Great Adepts, as a record of

result vehicle practice, may be taken as complementary to Āryaśūra’s Garland of Prior Births, as

a record of cause vehicle practice, in two different ways: as Tsongkhapa does, seeing them as

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conceptually distinct but practically and necessarily integrated; or, as Tsongkhapa warns against,

seeing them as both conceptually and practically distinct. The latter perspective typically takes as

self-sufficient either the cognitive breakthrough of a transcendent wisdom that is unconditioned

by conventional psychophysical realities, such as karma and embodiment, or the physical

breakdown of the conventional psychophysical complex by means of perfection stage practices

that dissolve their basis, the channels and drops. From the normative perspective of Tibetan

Buddhists, there is something of an apparent soteriological dilemma, based in hermeneutics,

intrinsic to the diversity of canonical materials and practices represented by these two types of

narrative literature, the way out of which Tsongkhapa advises. Given the virtual unanimity from

the eleventh century forward regarding the superiority of the vajrayāna, the predilection for most

Tibetans to eschew the cause vehicle for the powerful attainments promised by the result vehicle

appears to have been substantial.

As Tsongkhapa insists (see below), the canonical materials themselves must be taken

literally, and not dismissed as merely provisional statements for the immature, when prescribing

a graded series of spiritual practices that join the cause and result vehicles. Otherwise, the karmic

result may be understood from the advanced perspective of the tantric vows:

If you do not gain such an understanding, then, each time you gain what seems to be an
understanding of an isolated teaching, you will abandon other teachings. When you develop
a supposed interest in the higher vehicles, you will abandon in succession the scriptural
collections of the Hīnayāna [i.e., the Individual Vehicle] and the Perfections Vehicle [i.e., the
common Mahāyāna]. Even within the mantra vehicle you will abandon the three lower
tantras and the like. Thus, you will have accumulated the great karmic obstruction of having
abandoned the teachings, which has a very grave fruition.258

258
See Tsong-kha-pa 2000 49.

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There is, then, a tendency for certain traditional scholars and modern scholars to read the jātaka

and mahāsiddha narratives as unrelated pieces of the Tibetan Buddhist jigsaw puzzle; for the

former, the jātakas represent a lower form of Buddhist practice pertinent to the spiritually

immature, while for the latter the two literatures represent historically distinct and culturally

contextual responses to Indian Buddhist developmental processes. These two positions are not

entirely dissimilar, however, in that both interpret the full form of Buddhism that Tibet inherited

from the eleventh century as disjointed and separable.

By contrast, Tsongkhapa insists that these two literatures, or the scope of religious

practices that they enjoin for cultivation, must be understood to represent a whole, in terms of

both traditional Buddhist exegetical norms and the interdependence of mind and body, which

from a certain perspective may be linked. That is, against those Tibetan scholars taking such

positions, Tsongkhapa opens LRCM by marshaling a wealth of scriptural references, including

tantric texts, to argue for this integtration:

The path of the perfections is like the center post for the path that leads to buddhahood.
Hence it is unsuitable to cast it aside. As this is said many times even in the Vajrayana, the
path of the perfections is the path common to both sutra and tantra.259
More generally, and applicable to both traditional and modern scholars, Tsongkhapa warns

against partisan or narrow forms of reading and comprehension:

Some see a slight discrepancy in terms of what you are and are not to do and conclude
that these are in complete contradiction, like hot and cold. Obviously, this is a cursory
assessment. Apart from certain points about what is or is not to be done, the scriptures
are very much in agreement.260

259
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 49; see 47-67, which includes his argument in terms of scripture and the methods for
reversing these attitudes.
260
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 48.

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 There is a similarity between those traditional and modern scholars based not merely on

such ways of reading, but also on implicit metaphysical frameworks by which such ways of

reading are determined. That is, there is a shared metaphysical dualism that underlies both the

traditional and modern interpretations of the entire Buddhist path, from elementary to advanced,

and rejects it as a composite whole. This metaphysical dualism collapses into one or another

form of monism: for traditional scholars, the mind alone, in some form, is essentially real; and

for modern scholars, the brain or some irreducible, autonomous subjectivity alone is essentially

real. This returns the discussion to the foregoing analysis of sources of the self and the culturally

conditioned presuppositions that inform them, the implicit conceptual frameworks that mediate

one’s interpretation of the possible. Tsongkhapa insists, as I have noted, that there exists beneath

any such philosophically determined commitment to any particular form of mind-body dualism

the universal, pre-theoretical and unconscious grasping at and reification of an intrinsic self-

identity, distinct from but related to the psychophysical continuum. This grasping, a subtle form

of subject-object dualism, falsely imposes an essential, rather than a mere nominal distinction,

between mind and body, and so forth.

For Tsongkhapa, this reification is the error binding everyone to cycles of suffering

existence, as articulated in the Buddha’s presentation of the four noble truths; and the causal

processes of unbinding, of reversing, that fundamental error range across, and necessarily

include, the most elementary religious practices to the most advanced tantric meditations.

Nothing, for Tsongkhapa or his sources as he interprets them, related to the psychophysical

continuum transcends the realm of causality, the dependently originated nexus of causes and

effects that constitute relative or conventional reality. This would include the transcendent posits

of traditional or modern frameworks: from the Buddhists who posit selfless yet real subjects and

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objects to those who posit a real substratum consciousness; from the moderns who posit a

Cartesian autonomous subjectivity, drawing on Taylor’s analysis, to those who posit a subtler,

but similar, real subject of phenomenological experience, drawing on Garfield’s analysis. In each

of these cases, there exists—perhaps only implicitly—a mind-body dualism that is inappropriate

to the thorough integration that the Buddhist path, particularly the tantric teachings, enjoins.261

Tsongkhapa’s analysis of this complex integration, covering the entire Buddhist path,

encompasses the fourth chapter, but for now it must suffice to acknowledge the deficiency of

conceptual frameworks that take mind and body, following Tsongkhapa above, as “in complete

contradiction, like hot and cold,” as intrinsically existent realities and not merely conceptually

separable and nominally designated. It is understandable that competing claims for normativity,

particularly given the intellectual diversity present within the Indian Buddhist tradition itself,

would emerge among Tibetan scholars, thus generating partisanship, as shown earlier. One might

expect from professional academics in the human sciences—if they have interrogated any

unconscious commitment to a Western, that is, generically Greco-Abrahamic worldview,

following Garfield’s comment above—a greater commitment to respect both the range of

Buddhist interpretations of their own traditions and the depth of insight into the cross-cultural

matrix of common and uncommon metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological premises that

relate inextricably to their unique, i.e., Buddhist, soteriological concerns.

261
For Tsongkhapa, the adherence to an inherently or intrinsically existing self or subject entails, however
unwittingly, an escape from relational reality as the medium for the processes of conceptual and linguistic
construction that lay at the heart of Buddhist transformational practices as well as the concomitant social activism
these necessitate.

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Atiśa and the Unity of Late Indian Buddhism
In championing this holistic interpretation of Tibet’s inheritance of Indian Buddhism,

Tsongkhapa explicitly champions the image and seminal writing of Atiśa, the eleventh century

Indian whose arrival in Western Tibet marks, here, the commencement of the Second Diffusion

of Buddhism, detailed in chapter one. Specifically, Tsongkhapa presents his first major mature

work, LRCM, not just as an expansion of Atiśa’s seminal Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment,

but as the latter’s own, in a remarkable inversion of modern authorship claims. The story of

Atiśa’s coming to Tibet, discussed in chapter one, is legendary: seeing the dissolute state of

religious affairs, particularly the literal antinomian practices of unexcelled yoga tantra, around

him, the king of the Gugé region offered massive amounts of gold to bring the abbot from

Vikramaśīla Monastery in Bihar, to reform his wanton subjects. Ultimately the king sacrificed

his own life to ensure Atiśa’s coming, and nearly two hundred years after Tibet’s empire, and its

state sponsorship of Indian Buddhism, had collapsed, Atiśa offered both a personal model of

impeccable monastic decorum and comprehensive scholarship, embodied in the Lamp’s holistic

interpretation, that Tsongkhapa upholds as ideal.

Tsongkhapa sees the situation in his own time little changed, with rigorous monasticism

in tatters and comprehensive scholarship, embracing the entire scope of the Buddha’s teachings,

rare. Yet he does not present monasticism as a mere palliative for degenerate times, as the trope

has it, but the appropriate large-scale social formation for a Buddhist culture, even a vajrayāna-

centric one. Tsongkhapa undeniably sees the stages of the path (lam rim) presentation as the core

of the Buddha’s teaching, linking the Buddha’s own perfection of wisdom teachings—the

profound view—with the otherworldly revelation to Asanga of its hidden structure, the vast path,

by the future buddha Maitreya in his Ornament for Clear Realization. For Tsongkhapa,

following Atiśa, the profound view and the vast path culminate in the vajrayāna, specifically the

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unexcelled yoga tantras, where the soteriological elements of the two are integrated as a non-dual

union. Khedrup, writing Haven of Faith almost two decades after Tsongkhapa’s death, echoes

Tsongkhapa’s concerns and notes how much, due to Tsongkhapa’s enormous influence, the

situation has changed—the normative expectation having become the study of both exoteric and

esoteric portions of the path within the framework of monastic scholasticism.

Tsongkhapa sees in the person of Atiśa the embodiment of the entire Buddhist teachings

and thus focuses on the function of emulation in setting out, at the beginning of LRCM, the brief

biography of the abbot.262 Drawing on the Eighty Verses of Praise composed by Atiśa’s disciple

Nagtsho, Tsongkhapa is interested not in presenting a full life narrative but a condensed sketch

that highlights specific points of relevance for his intended audience: those who may tend to the

faults of discriminating incorrectly the pieces of the whole Dharma but may self-identify as

“fortunate ones who are unobscured by the darkness of partisanship,/ Who have the mental

capacity to differentiate good and bad,/ And who wish to make meaningful this good life of

leisure,”263 as Tsongkhapa labels them in his opening verses.264

Among the episodes that Tsongkhapa highlights, certain ones deserve attention. First, he

notes that Atiśa, who had become a famous scholar with typical hagiographical ease, is an

accomplished but arrogant tantric practitioner whose pride is deflated by ḍākinīs, a recurrent

theme among the stories of the Indian great adepts. Second, Tsongkhapa notes that only then,

nearing thirty, did Atiśa become a monk and turn his attention from the narrow focus of the most

262
Napper 107-118 shows that Tsongkhapa’s presentation of Atiśa’s biography and personal qualities depends very
much on the points that Tsongkhapa intends to make regarding study and ethics in LRCM.
263
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 34.
264
Interestingly, Tsongkhapa is not interested in the perilous journey Atiśa undertakes to Indonesia in search of
Serlingpa, who would transmit the mind training teachings, esoteric bodhisattva practices that form the core of the
Kadampa tradition. Perhaps the journey to Tibet serves the purpose of illustrating the great sacrifice Atiśa makes for
the sake of the Dharma, but in terms of transmitting rather than receiving it.

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advanced tantric practices to the comprehensive study of most elementary philosophical systems

and monastic decorum. This is significant in that it represents the inverse of the Tibetan

hagiographical trope of the arrogant textual scholar-monk who is invariably humiliated by a

more powerful and humble vajrayāna figure; the legend of Nāropā, Atiśa’s contemporary, who

abandons his intellectual gatekeeper post at Nālandā Monastery in search of the itinerant siddha

Tilopa, is an interesting contrast.

The cultural resonance of these episodes would not have been lost on the audience,

whether listeners or readers, for many of whom they would have represented a regression in

spiritual aims, if not progress, taking monastic discipline and vajrayāna practice to be

contradictory in attitude, if not practice. That is, the monastic vows of individual liberation may

be understood, as in certain East Asian cases, as antithetical to the bodhisattva attitude that

underlies, in theory, the vajrayāna, being focused only on one’s own spiritual progress.265 The

normative Tibetan understanding is that the three vows—individual liberation/monastic,

bodhisattva, and tantric—are in some way an integrated whole, for which an important genre of

literature exists.266 But that genre turns on the question of whether and how a monk may engage

in the highest vajrayāna practices, which in some cases enjoin, among other monastic infractions,

ritualized sexual intercourse. Interestingly, Tsongkhapa and Atiśa seem to come to different

determinations on this issue.

But Tsongkhapa’s focus on these episodes becomes clear immediately: all the spiritual

progress that Atiśa himself embodies depends at the outset on the individual ethical discipline

265
Saicho famously petitioned for an ordination platform based on the bodhisattva vows as a separate and superior
set, in distinction to the Indian and Tibetan traditions that, for the most part, see these as complementary.
266
See Sobisch for a comprehensive study of this literature. Regarding Tsongkhapa’s three independent works: for
the individual liberation vows, see Woodhouse 2009; for the bodhisattva vows, see Tatz 1986; and for the tantric
vows, see Tsongkhapa 2005.

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that he undertakes after relinquishing his narrow focus on tantra; and the comprehensive

scholarship that issues forth in the Lamp and changes the direction of Tibetan history depends on

the extensive study resulting in Atiśa’s “crossing over the oceanlike tenets of our own and

others’ schools” to know “all the key points of the scriptural teaching,” that is, the stages of the

path presentation itself.267 Tsongkhapa’s statement represents a powerful link between the

dissolute state of the Tibetan Buddhist society that Atiśa transforms and his own, and between

ethical discipline and spiritual progress within such a society:

[T]he scriptures and their commentaries repeatedly praise training in ethical discipline as the
basis for all good qualities, such as the trainings in concentration and wisdom. Therefore, at
the outset you must have the good qualities of knowledge that occur in the context of
training in ethical discipline.268

In other words, as Atiśa’s own life narrative exemplifies, individual ethical discipline

serves as the foundation for all spiritual progress but, as Tsongkhapa takes pains to emphasize in

his lam rim writings, its focus on the personal relevance of karmic causality—as witnessed by

the jātaka narratives—leads necessarily to the understanding of the interdependent nature of

karmic causality, and hence the spontaneous generation of the bodhisattva vow, as displayed

famously by the Buddha in the jātakas. And from this point Tsongkhapa affirms the

inseparability of the three vows, returning to Nagtsho’s hagiography to highlight the relationship

between Atiśa’s study and spiritual development before returning to his main point, ethical

discipline, here not just as cause but effect:

Thus, Atīśa was not only courageous in promising to train in the ethical discipline of the
three vows, but he also guarded that ethical discipline by keeping his promises and not

267
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 38.
268
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 38.

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 transgressing the boundaries of the rules. Even when he slightly transgressed, he
immediately purified that infraction with the appropriate rite for restoring the vow. Know
that this biography delights scholars who understand the key points of the scriptures;
emulate such excellent beings.269
Here Tsongkhapa refers to monastic discipline, for which Atiśa was legendary, but also to the

bodhisattva and tantric vows, as matters of ongoing personal attention rather than objects of rites

to be taken once and disregarded. Earlier, he cites the vows as causes for all spiritual progress,

but here relates them to their effects: the scholars who can appreciate the importance of such

discipline by being, like Atiśa, scholars of the stages of the path. And in recommending the

emulation of “such excellent beings,” Tsongkhapa implies—as he does by writing LRCM, of

course—that he himself is such a scholar and that Atiśa is not an ancient historical figure but

rather an ideal type, a model, like the Buddha, that he too embodies, which Haven and Presence

make explicit.

In the preceding I have emphasized how Tsongkhapa takes Atiśa as a model for

exemplary Buddhist ethical behavior, embodying the principles of the systematic literature. In

particular, Atiśa’s commitment to ethical discipline, which Tsongkhapa’s argues to be the

foundation for spiritual progress, stands out as a commitment to the continuity of the tradition.

By intentionally serving as a model for others, the spiritual guide constructs an identity that

conforms to the ideals of the narrative and systematic literature, and for Tsongkhapa, as for

Atiśa, that includes both monastic and tantric forms of ethical discipline. Next, then, I turn to an

analysis of Tsongkhapa’s construction of a scholar-yogi self and examine how emulation and

appropriation of ideals, framed as forms of asceticism, may help to clarify Tsongkhapa’s

coordination of sūtra and tantra. In particular, I emphasize how monastic and tantric discipline

269
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 39–40.

170
should be understood as complementary forms of embodying tradition, a complementarity that

highlights the concern that Tsongkhapa evinces with respect to the disjuncture of the two forms

among his Central Tibetan colleagues.

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 Chapter 3: Creating the Tibetan Buddhist Self: Emulation,

Appropriation and Asceticism

Emulation and Education in Tsongkhapa’s Writings

Tsongkhapa, in Presence, portrays himself as an another example of this ideal type to be

emulated, suggesting a direct relationship of emulation and modeling intrinsic to the life writing

genre.270 This is significant, if one takes these two narratives as instances of a single model, in

that the two appear as complementary, each illuminating their specific social and intellectual

contexts, apropos of Jan Willis’ point, mentioned above, regarding the function of Tibetan life

narratives as historical documents. That is, Tsongkhapa takes Atiśa as a model for rigorous

ethical discipline and comprehensive scholarship, both for himself and in general; however, his

emphasis on the sequential nature of spiritual development, from the former to the latter—with

the latter, scriptural knowledge, providing the basis for experiential knowledge—reflects the

normative historiography of the Tibetan renaissance. There, as noted above, the degenerate

realities of Tibetan tantric practice are highlighted, with the implicit understanding that, since the

tantric literature had been repressed by the imperial court for fear of such misunderstanding, the

problem was the absence of ethical discipline. In his historical context, Atiśa serves foremost as

the embodiment of ethical discipline, from which comprehensive scholarship could emerge, and

by which the monumental efforts of the Tibetan translators would not be wasted.

Tsongkhapa, in contrast, lives at the other end of this history: the Indian Buddhist canon

has become, in the intervening centuries, the Tibetan Buddhist canon, and although Tsongkhapa

laments the lax state of monasticism, the transformed condition of society reflects the broad

270
See Appendix Three, especially the final portions. Tsongkhapa structures this text on the fourfold commitment of
Atiśa, cited at the beginning of LRCM, to a holistic approach to scholarship and practice, making explicit his lived
emulation of the Indian master.

172
penetration of Buddhist ethics and scholarship. Further, Atiśa’s Lamp has articulated the overall

framework for Buddhist practice, and Tsongkhapa’s LRCM stands not as a mere verbose

restatement of that framework but rather a detailed explanation of its individual pieces, directed

to a different historical audience that has access to scriptural knowledge but fails to integrate it

properly into the stages of practice that will result in experiential knowledge. In the homage of

his text, Tsongkhapa distinguishes two trends in among practitioners of his time, reflecting the

tropes mentioned earlier: there are those “making effort at yoga” without having studied of the

Indian Buddhist foundational treatises for their practice and “those who have studied much” in

these treatises, but without capacity or interest to put their explanations into practice.271

In each case, there is a disconnect between scriptural knowledge and experiential

knowledge, and in Presence Tsongkhapa addresses his own efforts in these two topics explicitly.

Therefore, in this way his autobiography stands as a sort of commentary to LRCM—and by

extension, Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra, the companion treatise explaining the four

tantric classes—and as a response to the social and intellectual context of his time.272 Toward the

end of Haven, Khedrup recapitulates these issues and laments that “there only remained the

shadow of Buddha’s teaching,” and insists that Tsongkhapa’s personal example, together with

his writings, have brought about a virtual revolution in Tibet’s religious life.

Moreover, Tsongkhapa makes an explicit link between narrative and systematic

presentations by offering his spiritual development in terms of his study of the Indian Buddhist

systematic literature. Presence serves as a precise explanation of his own education in the Indian

Buddhist systematic literature and an implicit exhortation for his disciples, or anyone who would

271
Tsong-kha-pa 2000 33.
272
Again, one can see the interwoven nature of Tsongkhapa’s writing and living with that of Atiśa’s is explicit and
particularly important with respect to processes of emulation and modeling.

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follow the scholarly model that he and Atiśa offer, to emulate. Tsongkhapa specifies at the outset

that he first puts great effort into extensive learning, in dependence on which “all teachings

dawned as a spiritual instruction,” a reference to Atiśa’s fourfold presentation for understanding

the breadth of the canon as practical advice.273 One pertinent fact deserving of further

consideration, which Haven does not emphasize but may be gleaned from its fourth chapter is

this: Tsongkhapa is introduced to the stages of the path presentation only after his extensive

study of both sutra and tantra topics—only after composing his massive Golden Rosary, only

after having taught during one extended instructional session seventeen Indian treatises, and only

after receiving the full transmission of Butön’s tantric lineages.

Finally, in dependence on this impartial, integrated assimilation of scriptural knowledge,

which provides the capacity to discern a coordination of sūtra and tantra as a “complete path of

concentrated essentials,”274 he practices relentlessly and gains deep realization, after which he

expresses his gratitude to his guru, Mañjuśrī. Here, as elsewhere, Tsongkhapa implies strongly

that he has attained deep spiritual transformation that qualifies him to write this work at all and

to offer himself, in the lineage of Atiśa and others, as a model for emulation.275 In particular, he

specifies that, like Atiśa, his experiential knowledge derives from scriptural knowledge, offering

himself as an explicit counterexample to those, mentioned earlier, whom he criticizes at the

outset of LRCM.

273
On which see Tsong-kha-pa 2000 46-54, whose points will be detailed in a later chapter.
274
See Appendix Three, the translation of Excellent Presence.
275
Jinpa 2019 199 discusses the special visions that Tsongkhapa experienced that convince him to write the special
insight of LRCM, on which I rely extensively in chapter four.

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 Two elements in Presence deserve special attention.276 First, Tsongkhapa discusses the

importance of the works of the epistemological tradition in bolstering both faith and reasoning,

noting that most Tibetans of his time consider these works to be unrelated to the bodhisattva

path.277 He does not linger, as I shall do later, on this critical point: he applies the principles of

logic and epistemology to the paths of both vehicles, sūtra and tantra. This application to the

vajrayāna is extremely significant, for it speaks to Tsongkhapa’s groundbreaking coordination of

sūtra and tantra, which combines the profound view of Candrakīrti’s interpretation of

Nāgārjuna’s Centrism with the esoteric arts of deity yoga specific to secret mantra, which I

consider in chapter four. Here, Tsongkhapa notes in passing that the principles of reasoning,

which so many Tibetans—especially tantric practitioners—consider mere scholasticism at best,

pertain directly to tantric practice as well.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Presence is the emphasis he places on the Indian

literature on all four tantra classes, which undermines the notion of tantra as strictly practice

oriented and any presumption, based on the volume of his writing, that his own concern lay only

with the unexcelled yoga tantras. While there is no doubt that this fourth class indeed represents

the bulk of his writings on tantra, this relates to the dire misunderstandings that Tsongkhapa

identifies in its practice among his contemporaries; given the profound psychophysical

transformations that this class offers—and the negative consequences ensuing from its

misapplication—the need for this focus is clear. Tsongkhapa’s emphasis on the three lower

classes, in both Presence and Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra, reflects the need for the

276
The complete absence of Candrakīrti, arguably his most important source for both sūtra and tantra, is striking.
277
Presumably because these works do not relate directly to the stages of the path presentation, Tsongkhapa does not
make this point in his LRCM homage, when he notes the disconnect between scholarship and practice, but this
appears to be a subspecies.

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gradual psychological transformations that these three provide in preparation for the radical re-

modeling of the self enjoined by the unexcelled yoga tantras. This surely relates to the tendency

noted earlier for tantric practitioners to jettison as unnecessary even the creation stage of the

unexcelled yoga class. In Presence itself, Tsongkhapa relates his concern with the three lower

classes to the commonplace but unsupported assertion that the fourth is the best, which he

notes—echoing the same criticism in the LRCM homage—frequently is made by those scholars

who do not even study the tantras: “If such persons are supposed to be intelligent/Then who

could be thought dull-witted?”278 In this way, Tsongkhapa stresses, from his own position as a

scholar, that true scriptural knowledge—if it is to be more than mere scholasticism—necessarily

incorporates the vajrayāna, again referencing his own unique coordination of sūtra and tantra.

That these two genres, the narrative and the systematic, are intimately related is

confirmed by Tsongkhapa’s own shortest stages of the path composition, Condensed Stages of

the Path (lam rim bsdus don), in which he briefly touches upon each of the topics and advises

explicitly that those on the spiritual path should follow his example, with the refrain: “I the yogi

practiced just that. If you would also seek Liberation, please cultivate yourself in the same

way.”279 An alternate title for this is Song of Experience of the Stages of the Path (lam rim nyams

mgur), with song (mgur) indicating a spontaneous composition, as made famous by Milarepa’s

collection and derived, in part at least, from the Indian tantric genres of dohā and caryāgiti.280

This poetic genre stands midway between the narrative and systematic, functioning as an

uncontrived expression of personal experience of Buddhist principles, in theory at least.

278
See Appendix Three.
279
See Thurman 1982 61-65.
280
See Jackson 1996 368-92 for a brief overview of these types.

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 In Tsongkhapa’s composition, this experiential knowledge relates directly to the

scriptural knowledge underlying the stages of the path genre.281 Whereas Presence focuses on

scriptural knowledge in detail, naming the specific texts and the context of his application, Song

of Experience of the Stages of the Path presents the progressive stages of attainment in the form

of advice for practice, based on the refrain citing his own experiential knowledge as justification

for such emulation. In this way, these two texts express the intimate relationship between

narrative and systematic writings as well as the recursive manner in which the ideal practitioner

internalizes scriptural knowledge and develops that, through the serial progression in meditation

and yoga, into experiential knowledge that he or she then embodies, becoming a model for others

just as Tsongkhapa presents himself.282 Such an ideal practitioner, the antithesis of the two

partial, misguided types that Tsongkhapa criticizes in the LRCM homage, is both scholar and

yogi, just as Tsongkhapa identifies himself in these two texts.

Systematic Literature, Emulation, and Spiritual Development

Finally, it is possible to articulate the development of a Buddhist practitioner in terms of

this recursive process of spiritual attainment, from emulating an appropriate model, such as Atiśa

or Tsongkhapa—or, as in the previous chapter, the Buddha in his life deeds and past lives as a

bodhisattva, recorded in the jātakas—to becoming such a model for others. If one take the stages

281
His Holiness the Dalai Lama 2002 in 2000 taught the Song in conjunction with Atiśa’s Lamp and said that
Tsongkhapa expressed his realization in “the style of a spontaneous song,” (23) suggesting that, as its colophon
indicates, it was at least polished after its spontaneous delivery. Tsongkhapa wrote or spoke much verse (see Kilty,
e.g.), some no doubt spontaneous, most notably In Praise of Dependent Origination on the morning of his
awakening after emerging from a dream in which he was blessed by the Indian Centrist masters for his realization.
282
Gomez 1994 suggests that certain Indian Buddhist confessional writings, Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva
Way of Life serving as classic model, act as intermediate types of literature, neither fully narrative nor systematic but
as ritual self-presentations drawing on both formats. There is much more to say about this in terms of ritualized self-
construction, which one could argue is the entire program of the Buddhist path, especially the tantric processes, and
my general point here is that the two operate in conjunction as normative prescriptive and proscriptive injunctions
and their specific individualized self-applications.

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of the path genre to incorporate the vajrayāna as well, in the manner of Tsongkhapa’s

coordination of sūtra and tantra, then this would encompass the entire range of spiritual progress,

from the attitude of the small scope practitioner to perfect buddhahood. To delineate these stages,

with signposts from the systematic literature that have been encountered thus far, I must

emphasize that for Tsongkhapa emulation of and reliance upon the spiritual teacher—as the

foundation for all good qualities, as one of his very brief lam rim verse compositions has it—is

the beginning point. That is, all education begins with a qualified teacher, and spiritual education

in particular must commence with a teacher whose qualifications Tsongkhapa specifies in both

LRCM and his commentary on Aśvaghoṣa’s Fifty Stanzas on the Spiritual Teacher.283 The

vajrayāna, of course, requires of the teacher a level of spiritual attainment congruent with its

advanced practices, and the relationship between vajra master and disciple is qualitatively

different from that anticipated by the lower paths.

For Tsongkhapa, however, emulation and reliance are cultivated from the outset of the

path, and the spiritual teacher’s responsibility to serve as a model for students is critical, as seen

in his emphasis on Atīśa’s ethical discipline earlier. While Tibetan life narratives abound with

anecdotes regarding the mad behavior of enlightened adepts to serve as teachings, following

Abhayadatta’s collection, for Tsongkhapa the most important forms of emulation and, in turn,

modeling are the processes of maintaining monastic discipline and ultimately mastering

deity yoga within the unexcelled yoga tantras. There, the practitioner appropriates fully as his or

her own true identity that of an enlightened archetypal figure, such as Guhyasamāja or

Kālacakra, that will serve as his or her initial embodiment at enlightenment.284 Thus, emulation

283
On the latter, see Tsongkhapa 1995.
284
This initial embodiment is not restrictive: upon this attainment of buddhahood or vajradharahood, at the tantric
accomplishment sometimes refers to it, any embodiment may be displayed.

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continues from the first, renunciatve monastic, to the final moments of the path, tantric adept, to

buddhahood; below, I distinguish deity yoga as identity appropriation in contrast to this softer

form, emulation.

Any first moment presents itself as a chicken-egg conundrum: what motivates the initial

awareness of the need to turn to the (Buddhist) spiritual path, the awareness, in the standard

metaphor, that one is sick (dis-eased, in the sense of suffering), that the Buddha is a skilled

doctor who can prescribe individually appropriate medicine, and that the spiritual community

however defined can act as caregivers assisting one toward health? That would be answered in

terms of the ripening of karma, which may be conditioned by any number of factors, as the

jātaka and avādāna literature attests, which is why one finds in the early portions of LRCM

references to this literature in the form of the Jātakamālā and its counterpart in the systematic

literature, Udānavarga—both among the six books that Atiśa’s Kadam school emphasized. Only

the Buddha knows the details of karma, as this literature makes clear, but this literature also

presents others, especially in the avādānas, who attain arhatship and can testify to the truth of

their particular karmic evolution. Thus, faith in the Buddha and belief in karma are inseparable

elements in some sense.

In these first stages, one becomes aware of the existential plight in which the

inexorability of karma is central, and with great power—the general knowledge of karmic

causality—comes great responsibility: the need to assimilate that knowledge into one’s behavior

through mindfulness and self-focused ethical discipline. The attitude that characterizes these

stages, with the desire for good rebirths rather than a concern for liberation, is the lowest scope

of spiritual development, with its focus on medium term self-interest. The middle scope, by

contrast, focuses on long term self-interest in its goal of full liberation from cyclic existence,

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with a concern not only for karmic causality and higher rebirths, which come about as a natural

byproduct of ethical discipline, but also a knowledge of the links of dependent origination,

whose undoing results in liberation. Just as the middle scope attitude subsumes the practices of

the small scope but is characterized with an attitude more conducive to the facts of dependent

origination, the great scope subsumes the practices of both but is characterized by the highest

attitude fully reflective of the facts of dependent origination: that taking as its goal the attainment

of perfect buddhahood for the sake of all other beings who, again, are inextricably related in the

spatiotemporal unfolding of relative reality. Both higher rebirths and liberation from cyclic

existence (at the eighth bodhisattva ground) occur as natural byproducts of this goal’s practices,

and it is important to note that Buddhahood is characterized by its other-oriented focus, or it

simply would be liberation from cyclic existence, the highest self-oriented goal.285

From Tsongkhapa’s socialized mahāyāna perspective, the only rational attitude is the

bodhisattva’s, as it understands the plight of others—each of whom has been one’s devoted

mother in prior lives—to be the same as one’s own and, given the facts of dependent origination,

inseparably so. Moreover, meticulous attention to one’s own ethical discipline is completely

consonant with the other-focus of the bodhisattva, who is bound by karmic causality until

liberated. This is why, as I detail in chapter five, Tsongkhapa’s concern for monasticism

integrates perfectly with bodhisattva and tantric vows. With respect to the development of the

bodhisattva, one may refer to two texts discussed earlier, Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva

285
This sets aside the Lotus Sūtra’s insistence that everyone proceeds to enlightenment and that the state of
omniscience of a Buddha is a qualitatively different, and better, subjective state. The point is that liberation, as the
end of conditioned existence, ends one’s own suffering. The concern that the self-oriented attitude leading to
liberation, which is not the end of existence tout court, will issue forth in a form of uninterrupted “enlightened” life
in which the concern for others is utterly absent, is characterized as the fear of the peace of nirvana.

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Way of Life and Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism, as representing the progression in different

ways.

Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life displays the initial career of the bodhisattva,

beginning with the generation of the spirit of enlightenment (bodhicitta), in terms of the practice

of six transcendences but still within the thrall of the three poisons. In these initial moments, the

bodhisattva’s attitude may be thoroughly other-regarding, but his or her actions of body, speech

and mind require extensive discipline before any of the six transcendences, though the horizons

of practice, are within view. Entry to Centrism, on the other hand, proceeds from the first

bodhisattva ground, the point at which the bodhisattva has had direct meditative apprehension of

emptiness and the first transcendence is attained.286 Although all the transcendences—and

Candrakīrti gives ten rather than six—are practiced together, their perfect attainment is serial,

coincident with each bodhisattva ground. As noted previously, the eighth ground features the

attainment of liberation from cyclic existence, at which time the addictions (kleśas) and their

habit patterns are eradicated, but the obstructions to omniscience remain, as does a massive

distinction between this condition and buddhahood, as Candrakīrti enumerates.

There is, however, a different enumeration of the paths and grounds of the vajrayāna,

whose practices the bodhisattva may enter at any time, and while the details are unimportant

here, the vajrayāna literature, specifically the Tattvasamgraha and Guhyasamāja Tantra, assert

that the bodhisattva does not actually attain buddhahood without completing the tantric path.287

286
Tsongkhapa notes in Illuminating the Intent, drawing on Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament of the Middle, that there are
two ways of proceeding on the bodhisattva path: the preferred one, in which an ascertainment, presumably
intellectual, of emptiness precedes the spontaneous generation of the spirit of enlightenment, which itself develops
from compassion, as Candrakīrti specifies, and the opposite, which develops out of faith rather than reasoning,
which seems to be the form described in Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. See Tsongkhapa 2012 15-16.
287
On this episode in the Tattvasamgraha, see Weinberger 55-60 and 185-9, who argues that this tantra is the
earliest complete presentation of the tantric enlightenment process.

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The Buddha’s enlightenment narrative, as examined thus far—in which he becomes enlightened

while enacting the twelve deeds in the 6th century BCE or did so long before and simply displays

those deeds for others’ benefit—is incomplete. As the Buddha is seated in deep meditation under

the Bodhi tree, on the tenth bodhisattva ground, all the buddhas rouse him288 and instruct him in

the processes of deity yoga, only by means of which he becomes a perfect buddha.

As Khedrup explains, the two sources—the former a yoga tantra and the latter an

unexcelled yoga tantra—differ in their presentations slightly: the Tattvasamgraha emphasizes its

processes of attaining the five manifest enlightenments (abhisambodhi) whereas the

Guhyasamāja Tantra focuses on the ritualized sexual yogas and psychophysical transformations

involved in the perfection stage along with the role of all the buddhas, acting as vajragurus,

overseeing the two higher initiations.289 Nevertheless, the necessity for the bodhisattva to attain

the six or ten transcendences remains the same, and the resultant state of buddhahood—or

communion, (yuganaddha) in Guhysamsāja vocabulary—does not differ for these common and

uncommon mahāyāna textual sources. Thus for Tsongkhapa the two mahāyāna paths are this

single process whose shared feature is emptiness, which for him is the same as dependent

origination, integrated with their distinct but sequential bodhisattva practices, culminating in

perfect awakening for the practitioner just as for the Buddha.

Elements of Tibetan Life Writing and the Processes of Spiritual Development

I now can articulate these processes in terms of the three categories of Tibetan life

writing with which I began—outer (phyi), inner (nang), and secret (gsang)—with respect to

288
Note the similarity to the account in Entry to Centrism of the eighth ground bodhisattva, absorbed in meditation
on cessation, being roused by the buddhas in order to complete the path to enlightenment.
289
Lessing and Wayman 25-40.

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individual spiritual development. First, one may recall, following Willis’ presentation, that phyi

refers to the historically contextual, individual biographical markers that are characteristic of

Western biography; nang to the “inspirational,” that is, the subject’s inner spiritual activities,

ranging from hardships endured and obstacles overcome to practices undertaken and, with

overlap of the gsang level, subsequent realizations attained, serving as sources of devotion and

emulation for followers; and gsang to the individual realizations, visions, and accomplishments

resulting from the practices, typically tantric ones, themselves. These two latter, then, function as

cause and effect, though as Willis notes, the gsang also is instructional, “providing inspiration

and encouragement, along with descriptions of esoteric practices and instructions for their

accomplishment.”290

Considering the pervasive nature of tantra in Tibetan Buddhist culture and the

acknowledgment of its supremacy as the swift path to enlightenment, it is typical for Tibetan life

narratives to focus on these practices even when the life narrative is not strictly a “secret”

biography. Insofar as these are literally stories of liberation, rnam par thar pa, the discussion just

above suggests that the tantric focus is a necessary one, though in fact the narratives tend to

imply, through displays of miraculous powers (siddhi), a generalized advanced attainment rather

than state explicitly what that attainment—the particular bodhisattva ground, liberation from

cyclic existence, or even complete awakening—might be. However, in Tsongkhapa’s case,

except for the secret biographies, his namthar focuses on the spiritual breakthrough at the Olkha

retreat, in which the principal practice was purification through the (non-tantric) thirty-five

confession buddhas rite that condition his capacity for the precise understanding of the

Conventionalism of Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti.

290
Willis 1995 5.

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 As I have shown, Tsongkhapa in Presence stresses his practice of both sūtra and tantra,

so it is very instructive that his tradition focuses, atypically, on the former, for it is that area of

study most conducive to creation of the large scale monastic network that Tsongkhapa oversees

in his final decade. Moreover, that focus aligns with Tsongkhapa’s concern that vajrayāna

practice in his time is not being preceded properly by comprehensive education in either sūtra or

tantra, which explains the novel creation of the tantra temple in Ganden Monastery and

eventually separate institutions, the tantric colleges of Gyuto and Gyumé, for the study of the

latter.291 Rather than suggest the dis-integration of sūtra and tantra, this biographical focus on

Tsongkhapa’s realizations—the secret level—through sūtra practice emphasizes his gradual,

integrated model against the normative religious culture of dis-integration, noted above, in which

namthar excludes, almost definitionally, much of the Buddhist path. Thus, I take this integrated

model as normative in unpacking these three biographical levels.

As I have emphasized, for Tsongkhapa the Buddhist path begins and ends with reliance

on the spiritual teacher who, especially in tantric contexts, represents the Buddha in serving as a

model for practice, just as he presents Atiśa in the opening of LRCM. Although Willis makes an

important case for the historical details that the outer level of life narratives offers, here I simply

note that progression along the spiritual path transforms the subject from student to spiritual

teacher, from emulator to emulated, from modeler to model. It is the two other levels that operate

recursively to create the transformation that, from Tsongkhapa’s perspective, warrants no change

291
In chapter five, I discuss the construction of Ganden Monastery and its Yangpachen tantra temple as part of
Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds. Tsongkhapa recognized the need for a separate area for tantric practice so that those
students who were not yet empowered into tantric practice were not violating the secrecy associated with seeing the
maṇḍalas and so on. Khedrup discusses this in the fifth chapter of The Haven of Faith. Eventually distinct tantric
institutions—Segyu, Gyuto, and Gyumé—were created.

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in public behavior, as evidenced by the discipline of both the Buddha and Atiśa and in distinction

to the “crazy wisdom” lifestyle advocated by certain Tibetans.292

The inner level, again, begins with the assimilation of the small scope practices, such as

meditating on the preciousness of human life and inexorability of karma, and generates

concomitant effects, spiritual realizations that deepen the resolve to behave in ways conducive to

higher states of rebirth. So too with the middle scope practices and their effects, the spiritual

realizations that deepen the resolve to behave in ways conducive to liberation, and then the

common and uncommon great scope practices and their effects, the spiritual realizations that

deepen the resolve conducive to perfect buddhahood. At each stage within these three scopes, the

inner level conditions the secret level, which in turn conditions the capacity for further spiritual

development, and the inner level is related to a progression in the pertinent systematic literature,

as specified by Tsongkhapa’s Presence.

From this perspective, the individual spiritual realizations of the secret level depend on

and should conform to the authority of the systematic literature and the spiritual teacher’s

personal instructions, a hermeneutical circle in which scriptural knowledge and experiential

knowledge authorize and reinforce each other.293 Thus, even the most spectacular or mysterious

tantric accomplishments of the secret level are by nature indistinct from and causally related to

scriptural knowledge—the inner level—which reiterates the earlier point regarding the

inseparability of systematic and narrative literature. As Tsongkhapa stresses, such

292
One could distinguish, in terms of secret mantra, the ordinary, unenlightened life (driven by emotional addictions
and ignorance in one sense, but by ordinary conceptions and appearances in a tantric perspective) as prthagjana yoga
as opposed to the immanent enlightened life (of extraordinary conceptions and appearances) that deity yoga
(iṣṭadevatā-yoga, lha'i rnal 'byor) enjoins upon the practitioner as the path from the former to the latter.
293
See Gray 2009a for a study of Tsongkhapa's insistence on this circle of authority. Tsongkhapa insists that
scripture, which is the record of the Buddha's own experiences, must be the guide for any spiritual guide's personal
advice, and any practitioner's experience must be examined in relation to scripture in order for it to count as
authentically Buddhist.

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accomplishments also are causally related to individual progress on the path from the small to

the uncommon great scope practices, however much Tibetan life narratives tend to efface that

progression. Finally, as narrated of the tenth stage bodhisattva consecrated by all the buddhas in

the final moments of unenlightened existence, the inner level systematized in the unexcelled

yoga tantra perfection stage literature leads to communion (yuganaddha), the final realization of

the secret level, after which all emulation and appropriation ceases. Thereafter there is only

modeling: the state of perfect buddhahood that, mirror-like, models spontaneously, with the three

biographical levels thoroughly integrated into the three buddha bodies. The path is complete, and

all that remains is “to remain as long as space endures,” as Śāntideva famously puts it, to guide

others on that same path.

Appropriating Emulated Identity in Asceticism

In order to connect the social force of both narrative and systematic literature with that of

asceticism and ritualized enactment of the modeling process, topics to be discussed next, it will

be helpful to clarify briefly how the aspiring practitioner comes to embody the authority of the

tradition. That is, it must be clear to such an aspirant that the gap between her own unenlightened

state and the enlightened state of a buddha is rather stark; this clarity is only enhanced by an

immersion in the literature in which that gap is accentuated. The systematic literature, the lam

rim in particular, guides the beginner along a positive ethical trajectory that brings about the

attenuation of negative actions in service of a better future but also a keen awareness of future

horrors awaiting due to negative actions already performed. That awareness, extended to others

who are regarded (however half-heartedly at first) as dear as one’s own mother or self, brings

about the compassion, gradually, that the mahāyāna literature valorizes. That positive ethical

trajectory also enables the capacity for concentration, wisdom, and the other components that

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lead to awakening, providing an experiential hint that the enlightened state, though distant, is

achievable.

It is, however, through the intentional process of modeling the identity of the protagonist

of the discourse, such as the Buddha, as the aspirant’s own that significant progress is possible.

This is clear from Tsongkhapa’s modeling of Atiśa and his own recommendation of emulating

himself, as should be clear. This process is explicit, however, in the canonical literature of the

tantras, in which the aspirant—no longer a beginner, according to normative expectations—is

enjoined to appropriate the identity of the protagonist, here an archetypal enlightened being, in

order to progress particularly swiftly to the enlightened state. Drawing on Greg Urban’s “The “I”

of Discourse,” I examine how this appropriation process proves to be more than mere role

playing or imaginative pretense. Instead, this appropriation in its strongest form collapses the

distinction between the ordinary self, the indexical referential “I,” and the appropriated self of

discourse, the archetypal enlightened being. While Urban’s analysis seems to reject such a

collapse of distinction, I investigate whether the intimate relationships of unexcelled yoga

present—on the basis of the selflessness of ordinary or extraordinary identity—a unique case,

one in which the ordinary self, the indexical referential “I,” has no intrinsically real basis.

Although this analysis deserves greater attention, this brief examination should suffice to bring

into focus the broad contours of the relevant issues.

As I have shown earlier in charting the process of primary socialization, the importance

of imitation, or emulation, is central. Urban, a linguistic anthropologist, makes a similar claim

with respect to discourse specifically:294

There is also, in some instances at least, a kind of “de-quotative ‘I’,” where the metaphorical

294
Urban 27. He explains (35) that “the role playing involved in anaphoric “I” is crucial to culture, conceived for
the present purposes as a socially-transmitted system of discourse.”

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 “I” of quotation, through a kind of theatrical substitution, becomes again a referential index,
but this time pointing to the speaker not with respect to the speaker's everyday identity or self,
but rather with respect to an identity the speaker assumes through the text...this substitution of
the de-quotative “I” for referential indexical “I” is at the heart of the cultural construction of
self.

In other words, one’s ordinary identity (the referential I or self) becomes socialized into cultural

norms and values by means of appropriating the discursive identity (the de-quotative I, also

called the “anaphoric I,” the identity to be taken on) that is an index of those norms and values in

a sort of role playing exercise that is an unconscious substitution.

Moreover, this substitution necessitates the development of concern for others, another

cornerstone of culture, by means of a slippage between first and third person reference.295

Further, with respect to the discussion of emulation above, the conscious appropriation of the

anaphoric “I,” when “understood as a metaphorical or theatrical” identity that bears the

tradition’s norms and values, can transform that assumed “I” into an ideal—say, the

indefatigable Avalokiteśvara of the Lotus Sūtra—that becomes the goal of religious practice.296

In a sense, this slippage is the basic stuff of the creative arts, but the semantic density of

culturally significant texts—narratives such as jatakas, sūtras, and so forth—heightens the

potential impact of such substitution. In fact, it may be significant that the supreme creative art,

from Tsongkhapa’s perspective, is the practice of deity yoga, which is the complete

appropriation of an identity from within tantric discourse.

Urban posits two types of identity or self that extend the appropriative character of the

anaphoric “I,” the theatrical and the projective. The projective is the furthest on the continuum,

295
“The anaphoric “I” tells us to regard “he” from “he’s” point of view, as if “he” were a kind of “I.” The anaphoric
“I” entails a kind of play acting...momentarily taking on the role of the third person referent.” (35) Just this process,
in a very strong form, is part of the mind training (blo sbyong) exercise recommended by Śāntideva to develop
compassion leading to the spirit of enlightenment.
296
Urban 35-6.

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in terms of the centrality of the subjective experience, and may represent possession or trance

behavior, in which the referential self has been thoroughly overwhelmed by a substituted identity

not bound by discourse.297 This is not so much intentional appropriation as substitution, and it

does not concern my analysis. The theatrical “I,” by contrast, hews close to a rigidly fixed text

and performs that text faithfully. While the distinction is fluid, Urban distinguishes the theatrical

from the typical anaphoric “I” in terms of appropriation: for the former, “the actor can become so

immersed in another “I” that that other “I” becomes once again virtually indexical referential.”298

That is, the identity that is substituted for the everyday referential identity becomes primary,

displacing at least temporarily that ordinary self. Urban helpfully differentiates the theatrical and

projective identity thus:

From a discourse point of view, it is important that in the limiting case of projective “I” there
is no script or story that is accessible to the audience apart from its manifestation in the
present speech. This is the key distinction from the theatrical “I,” where the self is usually
part of a well-known story. The projective “I” tells an emergent story, and in this regard is
distinguished only with difficulty, and by virtue of a highly marked context, including non-
linguistic behaviors, from the original indexical referential.”299

For my purposes, this distinction is pertinent, but I will put it into service in order to

understand the differences between sūtra and tantra and, moreover, between the four tantra

classes. In order to make those differences clear, I refer to another distinction that Urban

theorizes, that between referential otherness and iconic otherness. Referential otherness simply

indicates the ordinary indexical and unique identity of another person, but iconic otherness refers

to the identity of a narrative’s protagonist understood as other yet available—due to being a

297
Urban suggests, but does not indicate explicitly, a distinction between the theatrical “I” in general and a theatrical
“I” that narrates/performs a mythical text whose semantic density is greater than, say, a Shakespeare play. This is a
worthwhile distinction to make: theatrical, mythical, and projective “I” expanding this to three sub-types of
anaphoric identity.
298
Urban 38.
299
Urban 42.

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cultural figure embodying its norms and values—for imitation or appropriation. Here one might

think of a buddha who, while possessing referential otherness (in some sense), also is

appropriable—intentionally so—in terms of patterns of behavior. Or one could think of

Tsongkhapa, who, as observed earlier, explicitly suggests in both Presence and Condensed

Stages of the Path emulating his example in educational and practical efforts. This iconic

otherness is the foundation of guru yoga, one of the most important practices of Tibetan

Buddhism, and such iconicity—a fundamental property of the Tibetan worldview—provides the

basis for the simultaneous coexistence of referential otherness.

Nevertheless, it appears that iconic otherness, separable from referential otherness,

obtains in the case of tantra, where the the deities appropriated in deity yoga are understood as

archetypes devoid of referential indexical identity. It is somewhat more complicated than this, in

that these deities (sometimes, like Mañjuśrī, appearing as bodhisattvas in certain sūtras) have no

single iconic identity: their physical forms, accoutrement, and so on are context-dependent and

purely symbolic. In the case of Tārā, for example, there are twenty-one forms that comprise a

specific set to be worshipped, yet in another context one of these, White Tara, is part of healing

triumvirate; in the context of unexcelled yoga, Tārā is Cintamani Tārā, a distinct form. These

deities are archetypal embodiments of specific enlightened qualities to be developed on the part

of the yogi by way of the theatrical “I.” It does not seem accurate to say these different forms are

“distinct” in the sense of referential identity or otherness. Their context-dependent function

suggests that in tantra iconic otherness is the central concern, which is to say, appropriation of

that iconic identity by the yogi/ni is, as Tsongkhapa argues, the distinguishing feature of tantra.

Certainly sūtra (as the meta-category distinct from tantra) enjoins the practitioner, the

possessor of referential indexical identity, to appropriate the identity of the Buddha, e.g., by

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shifting to a theatrical identity that makes that substitution possible. Much of what has been

discussed in this chapter so far attempts to make this very point, a point that Tsongkhapa takes

pains to stress. In other words, appropriation in sūtra is strictly emulation or imitation. This is,

however, a minimal form of appropriation compared to that of tantra. Indeed, I will have to part

ways with Urban, who appears to reject the possibility of complete appropriation of iconic

otherness to a referential indexical identity and to allow only projective identity, which is the

inverse of what I propose here. I turn now to Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of the four tantra

classes to understand this and to see how appropriation falls on a continuum of intimacy.

Tsongkhapa argues that the four classes of tantra—action, performance, yoga, and

unexcelled yoga—are distinguished in terms of their representation of the level of intimacy

shared between the principal figures, that is, the male and female buddhas who symbolize the

two mahāyāna meta-categories art and wisdom.300 These four represent, respectively, desire

expressed as laughing, gazing, hand holding, and union; these in turn, then, refer not primarily to

these physical actions but to their symbolic meanings: the relative distance between subjective

bliss and objective emptiness on the part of the yogi/ni capable of practicing that class.301

Communion, or buddhahood, is the absence of any distance between them at all. Another way of

putting this is that the four classes relate to the gap between the yogi/ni’s referential identity and

the iconic otherness of those buddhas: in unexcelled yoga, the two are collapsed—hence the

300
See Tsongkhapa 2016 144-50, where Tsongkhapa cites several late Indian Buddhist sources for this claim.
301
The gendered identities are the product of the historical reality that monks are the primary audience of the
discourses. Nevertheless, the tantric discourses, as chapter four explains, deny the reality of gender for enlightened
beings; the enlightened state is the integration of female and male and their transcendence. For the yogi—the would-
be yogi/ni who is both—that is a future identity to be appropriated but that remains unattained as yet. Tacikowski,
Fust, and Ehrsson show that virtual reality immersion, which is perhaps the closest analog to advanced creation
stage identity reconstruction, disrupts self-perception of biologically designated gender identity.

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image of sexual union, the closest symbolic approximation of non-duality.302 In action tantra, by

contrast, the awareness of otherness permeates the practice; the significant distinction between

enlightened deity/ies and unenlightened yogi/ni is highlighted by their physical separation; often

the deity in this practice hovers in the air well above the yogi/ni.

In other words, relative physical proximity to/intimacy between the buddhas symbolizes

the relative level of appropriation of iconicity consonant with that class; it also represents the

relative proximity to enlightenment on the yogi/ni’s part.303 In unexcelled yoga, the referential

“I” of the yogi/ni is completely replaced by the iconic otherness of the buddhas as an indivisible

pair, like art and wisdom.304 As enlightenment is the nondual integration of certain principles or

concepts—mental/material energy, intuitive wisdom/bliss, relative/ultimate,

transcendent/immanent, and so on—the male/female imagery represents this. The yogi/ni is

instructed to maintain the unwavering awareness of the referential self as the iconic “other” thus

appropriated at all times.

Because, as chapter four details, the referential indexical self is understood to be empty of

intrinsic identity, the capacity for appropriating iconic otherness is absolute. There is no real,

302
In unexcelled yoga practice, at least as interpreted in Tsongkhapa’s tradition following the Guhyasamāja lineage
stemming from Nāgārjuna, there is an explicit union of all enlightened beings and the yogi/ni, who summons them
into their (his/her) heart. There are various expressions and images that attempt to capture the nondual integration
that is buddhahood, all with the purpose of making iconic otherness available for appropriation.
303
Although the ramifications of this point cannot be explored here in any depth, I should note that tantric sādhanas
often use the second-person pronoun to instruct the yogi/ni directly in the practices, indicating the intimacy between
the deity and yogi/ni. Garfield 2019 explores the importance of the second person in the very early formation of the
subject, which should be considered in relation to the general process of dissolution and reconstruction of identity in
the unexcelled yoga tantras and the specific processes of the initial Kālacakra initiations mimic the stages of birth,
infancy, and early developmental stages in creating the yogi/ni anew.
304
It is worth stating, and restating, that it is understood that although historically the yogi/ni tended to be male, the
tantric literature clarifies sufficiently that even when the male is dominant in the narrative, the female is at least
implied if not fully present, since she is ontologically coextensive with the male buddha. It could not be otherwise,
given the non-dual integration of the pairs listed earlier. That integration is critical for Tsongkhapa, who writes at
length against those who would reduce enlightenment to wisdom at the expense of empathic art, as chapter four
details.

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intrinsic basis whatever for the referential indexical self. And because that referential indexical

self is, invariably, the locus for mis-knowledge and negative habit patterns perpetuating cyclic

existence, it must be understood to have no such basis, that is, to be empty in this way. And, as

Tsongkhapa insists, to be empty is to be dependently originated and conceptually constructed.

Thus, the anaphoric process—beyond the (sūtra level) theatrical or mythical to the tantric level

of unexcelled yoga—is critical to the reconstruction of a referential indexical self that is

archetypal and therefore an ideal, which is itself always a social product. In that way, through

that appropriation of iconicity, or archetypicality, in the practice of deity yoga, the referential

indexical self transforms into the highest ideal of the social good and becomes, in turn, an icon to

be appropriated. Otherness is obliterated completely in this manner of appropriation. This is the

extreme end of the appropriative continuum, which seems unique to unexcelled yoga tantra. How

such appropriation might work in embodied practice is the next topic.

Buddhist Monastic and Tantric Asceticism

I have emphasized the role of narrative in the process of self-construction, but another

element—arguably a more important element—must be brought to bear on this process: that of

asceticism. There is much to say about this topic, particularly in the context of Tibetan

Buddhism, yet almost no writing has been done on it, and I shall only sketch out the rough

contours of how asceticism bears on our analysis of the social context of Tsongkhapa’s life and

deeds. Asceticism—which should be distinguished from self-mortification in the Buddhist

context—is in effect the full spectrum of practices of monastic and tantric discipline, practices

that intentionally transform the psychophysical continuum in ways that embody the ideals of the

tradition. These are the practices, the ritualized performances of the tradition’s prescriptions and

proscriptions, that animate Tibetan life narratives.

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 The category of renunciation,one of the three principles of the path to enlightenment,

underlies these ritualized performances, especially in Tsongkhapa’s interpretation: renunciation

of the eight social concerns, such as praise and blame, that anchor the ascetic to society’s values

and expectations, and of the biological factors, such as reproduction and sexuality, that bind the

ascetic to further existence of a similar type, i.e., unenlightened existence. Monastic asceticism,

one might say, undermines such coarse levels of bondage, those maintained by everyday

socialization, whereas tantric asceticism undermines the subtle levels of bondage, the deeply

imprinted instincts of desire and aversion, of lust and hate. Both forms, from Tsongkhapa’s

perspective, must be undertaken in order to deconstruct fully the grasp of these afflictive habit

patterns and transform unenlightened existence to buddhahood.305

Virtually all that has been claimed of narrative with respect to its social embeddedness

can be claimed of asceticism, particularly in its formal, ritualized activities that construct the

ascetic self, as Gavin Flood puts it. I follow Flood’s presentation of asceticism—against that of

Harpham and Valantasis, two other recent, prominent theorists of asceticism—due to his

articulation of asceticism as the embodying of a tradition’s ideals by performing the memory of

the tradition, which is clearly what Tibetan Buddhist life narratives attempt to do.306 As public

305
Napper 118-124 makes the point that Tsongkhapa, in LRCM, emphasizes the importance of vows in his
discussion of ethics, and he stresses the importance of bodhisattva vows (see Tatz) and tantric vows (see
Tsongkhapa 2005), in addition to monastic vows (on whose importance see the discussion in chapter five), all of
which cause the practitioner to maintain traditional norms. This is an important point in relation to the discussion
that follows below regarding Gavin Flood’s portrayal of asceticism as the appropriation of a tradition’s ideals.
306
As Valantasis (7) observes, Harpham follows Foucault’s work on the care of the self in emphasizing the ascetic
nature of culture itself, “arguing that there is an inherent level of self-denial necessary for a person to live within a
culture so that the resistance to appetites and desires is at the heart of cultural integration and functioning.”
Distinguishing his theory from Harpham, for whom “asceticism operates at the most fundamental level of cultural
formation,” (36) Valantasis (37) argues that asceticism is based in alterity, committed to developing “a subjectivity
alternative to the prescribed cultural subjectivity.” For Valantasis, asceticism extends to virtually any sub-cultural
formation that develops in opposition to the dominant formation. Alterity would prove relevant, within our purview,
with respect to early Indian Buddhist monastic development, if understood to be an alternative to the Vedic social
system, and to Buddhist tantric practice, if understood to be a rejection (even an inversion of) Brahmanical norms of
purity. These circumstances do not hold for Tsongkhapa’s Tibet, however. As such, Flood's contention that

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performance and as the embodying of traditional ideals, asceticism on this understanding will

allow me, in chapter five, to articulate the social impact of Tsongkhapa and to analyze his four

great deeds in this context. Specifically, monastic discipline and tantric discipline, each of which

encompasses one such deed, bear extended analysis as ascetic forms. Tantric discipline, with its

explicit attention to total psychophysical transformation, figures in Tsongkhapa’s understanding

as the very summit of Buddhist practice, and William Bushell’s theory of asceticism will

illuminate this aspect of transformation, a necessary but underappreciated aspect of buddhahood.

Nevertheless, Tsongkhapa’s primary focus regarding tantric practice, precisely due to its

misinterpretation among his colleagues, is conceptual transformation, which is central to Flood’s

understanding of asceticism.

Unlike Valantasis, Flood avoids offering a definition of asceticism and instead indicates

its constitutive features. The following passage, which underlines the intentionality involved in

asceticism, illuminates the central points of concern here:

The ascetic self is formed through ritual, which is the performance of the memory of
tradition, but which is intimately connected to subjectivity in the ascetic case. This is to
separate subjectivity from modern notions of individuality and to set subjectivity within the
public realm of tradition. Asceticism as the subjective appropriation of tradition is the
enactment of a cultural memory. Indeed, the performance of tradition can be seen as the
performance of memory: reversing the body’s flow is enacting the memory of tradition, a
tradition that becomes encoded in the body.307

The meaning of “reversing the body’s flow” may not be self-evident, but refers to “the

instinctual impulses of the body,” (4) which in turn refers to the biological constraints that, from

a standard Buddhist perspective, derive from the contaminated formative actions propelling

asceticism constructs a subjectivity that embodies traditional ideals proves more useful, though Valantasis offers
valuable insights as well.
307
Flood 2004 7-8.

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cyclic existence. That is, the misknowledge that gives rise to desire and aversion produces, in

terms of the twelve links of dependent origination, the compulsion for sensual pleasure that binds

persons to rebirth. Although dopamine and serotonin play a maintenance role in this addictive

cycle on a superficial level, it is the deeper psychological processes of desire—impossible to

fulfill due to impermanence—and hatred that, from a Buddhist perspective, perpetuate this cycle.

Flood observes that this reversal of the flow of the body also is an attempt “to reverse the

flow of time,”308 which for means here to undo the final link of dependent origination, sickness

and aging and death. Indeed, the forward cycle of the twelve links is unenlightened existence

whereas its reversal leads to the destruction of misknowledge and to liberation. For mahāyāna

Buddhists, the continuity of enlightened (or unenlightened) existence does not terminate at death,

and thus the flow of time is reversed; supposedly, time is overcome or transformed, becoming a

medium, like space, that can be traversed in both directions at will. There is, from the perspective

of the wisdom truth body of a buddha, only uninterrupted meditative equipoise that intuits the

ever-changing dynamics of cyclic existence (the flow of time) that each and every living being

co-creates.309 The tantric literature, while acknowledging the role of mental processes in this

cycle, elaborates on the complementary biophysical process that sustain it; indeed, among the

most important of the unexcelled yoga tantras—one studied intensively by Tsongkhapa, as

Khedrup makes clear—is the Wheel of Time (Kālacakra), which directly links the internal

respiratory processes with external cosmological processes.310 This explicit feature of the tantric

308
Flood 2004 4.
309
As chapter four reveals, how—if at all—a buddha participates in cyclic existence after their parinirvana is an
important issue for Tsongkhapa and his entire project of uniting Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism with a robust
presentation of the bodhisattva path to enlightenment.
310
Chapter four of Haven of Faith details the immersion that Tsongkhapa has in Kālacakra, which may come as a
surprise in light of his extensive writings on Guhyasamāja, to which he is introduced just prior.

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path, its attention to biological constraints, will allow the analysis, with the assistance of

Bushell’s work, of its elements separately.

It is crucial that Flood’s portrayal of asceticism relates to religious traditions that are

cosmological:

A cosmological tradition is a way in which cosmic time is related to individual time, and
asceticism as the reversal of the flow of the body is also an attempt at the reversal of cosmic
time. Through ascetic performance, the ascetic self looks back through tradition to an origin,
to a source that also becomes a future goal. Ascetic performance becomes the remembrance
of tradition and the overcoming of forgetfulness.311
Flood’s work is comparative, so when he refers here to “an origin” among the Abrahamic

religions, the sense is different than that of the South Asian contexts he considers. For the Śaiva

communities he discusses, referring to Śiva as the totality of existence, and hence both origin and

goal, is relatively unproblematic. The same cannot be said of the Buddhist case, for—as in the

literature of the pre-theistic Vedas and Upaniṣads—no origin to the cosmos is posited and no

a-/pre-temporal creator god is accepted.312 Nevertheless, one can interpret this in terms of the

transmission of tradition: a buddha-to-be (bodhisattva) necessarily forms the irreversible

intention to become a buddha in the presence of a buddha, whereby origin becomes goal.

In more literal terms, the distinguishing feature of tantra, as Tsongkhapa argues, entails

imaginatively simulating through ritual enactment the state of buddhahood as the very path to

that goal. Nevertheless, as Tsongkhapa insists on equating dependent origination and emptiness,

the individual co-creates through karma the momentary unfolding of reality—as the Buddha’s

311
Flood 2004 11.
312
Of course, gods with lesser abilities are regarded as present and commonplace, comprising one of the six
“realms” of unenlightened existence. Often they function in Indian Buddhist narratives to acknowledge the
transcendent status of the Buddha, whose compassion for other beings these self-indulgent, luxury-immersed gods
do not possess in the least. They are, in a sense, unearthly royalty, pointing to the dangers of power used for oneself
rather than others, which misconstrues the interdependence of the social world.

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cosmological knowledge intuits. Thus, despite there being no transcendent force beyond the

cosmos that enables its existence, Buddhism certainly qualifies as a cosmological tradition,

particularly in the tantric practice of deity yoga, wherein the cosmos is imagined as the

enlightened self.

Asceticism in Buddhist Monasticism

Fundamental to life narratives of the Buddha is his rejection of forms of self-

mortification, including near-starvation, as inimical to liberation. These forms were among the

practices of the burgeoning ascetic sub-culture that the prince, abandoning the hedonism of

palace life, came to embrace along with the group who would become his first five disciples.

Rather than come to embody an ideal of a tradition of mortification, the Buddha forged a middle

way between hedonism and mortification, a path of disciplined behavior that would come to

define the monastic communities developing in his lifetime.313 Although all Buddhist traditions

recognize the existence of buddhas prior to Śākyamuni Buddha, those buddhas play no narrative

role toward the creation of the monastic community; there is, however, in the Mūlasarvāstivāda

Vinaya, the understanding that among the ten necessary deeds of a buddha, forming such a

community is one.314

313
From another perspective, however, the Buddha does come to embody a tradition’s ideal: having generated the
bodhisattva vow in front of another buddha countless lives earlier, the Buddha is supposed to have spent billions or
trillions of years constructing a self in light of the ideal of buddhahood. This path-oriented, replicable perspective is
critical to Tsongkhapa’s understanding of buddhahood.
314
Cohen 2000a 144 provides a list of these ten: (1) on the shores of Lake Anavatapta, the Buddha and five hundred
disciples provide firsthand accounts of the veracity of karma; (2) the Buddha trains in the monastic conduct all he is
able to train; (3) the Buddha lives at least three-quarters of a full lifespan; (4) the Buddha establishes his parents in
the Dharma; (5) the Buddha delineates a congregational boundary, thereby creating a community; (6) the Buddha
displays great miracles in Śrāvastī, an event discussed in the fifth chapter; (7) the Buddha displays his descent from
the heavens; (8) the Buddha appoints two chief disciples; (9) the Buddha inspires another member of his retinue to
aspire for the unexcelled, complete, and perfect awakening of buddhahood; and (10) the Buddha predicts the
buddhahood of a member of his retinue. In chapter five, I explain that the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya narrative of the

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 The implication appears to be, then, that the continuity of a buddha’s teaching resides

with those communities, at least insofar as they reproduce his efforts to attend to the welfare of

the larger society. Fundamentally, the monastic community, though devoted to the spiritual

progress of its individual members, operates in terms of its rules of disciplined conduct (vinaya)

with wider social networks at the fore. Theoretically, the Buddha himself certainly could choose

never to teach, to instruct disciples, or to create a community, but in the memory of the tradition,

enlightenment does not allow for asociality, for buddhahood, as Tsongkhapa insists, is in itself

the full satisfaction of self-interest and is therefore engaged primarily in the welfare of others.

Although the socio-political realities of the region in which the Buddha taught are

complex and somewhat uncertain, it seems clear—at least in the cultural memory preserved in

the Buddhist (and Jain) accounts whose authority I grant priority—that he took great pains not to

disrupt the social order excessively even as he displayed his detachment from and triumph over

that order, both divine and human. Acknowledging the normative expectations of his

interlocutors, whether king, god, or washerwoman, the Buddha tailored his advice to their

particular needs, encouraging of others whatever limited capacity for abandoning harmful actions

they possessed. This is portrayed not as a concession to the inviolable power of existent social

structures but an acknowledgment of the origin and development of those social structures in the

shared karmic entanglements of the participants. The Buddha, in other words, adapted his

dharmalogical knowledge to his cosmological knowledge; this pedagogical skill is the sine qua

non of the mahāyāna and, for Tsongkhapa, its raison d'etre.

This tension of negotiating possible/ideal and actual realities—recapitulated personally

by each ascetic striving toward the tradition’s ideal against their own instinctual habit patterns of

great miracles of Śrāvastī enumerates a must-do list of only five from among these ten, including of course
performing those miracles, or supernormal displays, at Śrāvastī.

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desire, especially, rooted in misknowledge—is the inheritance of Buddhist monastic

communities negotiating and influencing the socio-political realities of their own context. Just as

an enlightened being cannot eradicate others’ karma nor transfer realizations to influence directly

the social order despite possessing power to alter even natural forces (such as the Buddha’s

wonderworking displayed at Śrāvastī, the miraculous performance commemorated by

Tsongkhapa’s Great Prayer Festival—one of his four great deeds), just so unenlightened

beings—such as Buddhist monastic ascetics—are constrained by the pervasive conditioning of

their own karma even while striving to overcome it. The Buddha, it is said, recognizes as much

when setting out the monastic code of conduct, adapting it to the normative expectations of the

larger social arena while accounting for the potential failings of the imperfect ascetics attempting

to replicate ritually his own effortless discipline (see chapter five).

Thus, influence on the social order by Buddhist monastic communities depends in part on

the cultural memory of the Buddha’s wisdom and power, derived from his ascetic perfection,

maintained within society at large (by the monastic communities, of course), and in part on the

performance of the tradition, which is the performance of that cultural memory, on the part of the

individual ascetics comprising those communities—that is, the performance of ascetic discipline.

And, given the tension between ideal and reality known to both the ascetic performers and the

society from which they come, it is precisely the institution’s commitment to the performance of

cultural memory that guarantees the community’s viability as a social good.

The social contract between society and the Buddhist monastic community is based on

reciprocity, of a sort, rooted in ascetic discipline: if the community fails to approximate the

Buddha’s asceticism—if it fails to be a field of merit—then its economic support withers.

However, the cultural memory of the Buddha, vivified in narrative and material art forms,

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typically looms large in societies where Buddhism has taken root, such that the viability of the

monastic community—which assures the institutional continuity of pure ascetic detachment from

the mundane snares of greed, lust, and power—takes precedence over any missteps by individual

community members. Flood refers to asceticism as “a range of habits or bodily regimes designed

to restrict or reverse the instinctual impulses of the body and to an ideology that maintains that in

so doing a greater good or happiness can be achieved,” and one could add that in Buddhist

cultures a sort of social contract exists that acknowledges that the greater good extends well

beyond the individual ascetic. The well-being of the supportive society and supported ascetic

community are linked ideologically and economically and, thereafter, karmically, precisely in the

sense of interdependent evolutionary development.

Those individual ascetics, submitting themselves to institutional authority—such as

participation in the fortnightly confession ceremony, the ritual codified by the Buddha to

guarantee ongoing effort toward ascetic purity—recognize their own potential failings and

attempt to exculpate these in the pervasive institutional authority present in the vows themselves.

Individual ascetics, such as Tsongkhapa, may display the perfect discipline that is the ideal of the

tradition, but the institutional authority that guarantees the broad approximation of that ideal

within its purview matters more. This tacit social contract, with its burden on conscientious

ascetics striving toward that ideal rather than riding its coattails, as it were, proves extremely

compelling to Tsongkhapa.315

315
An important corollary to asceticism construed primarily as bodily practices that inscribe tradition, along with the
other aspects that Flood delineates, is scholasticism as Cabezon 1994, reiterated 2020, 34-35 presents it. Cabezon
presents eight elements that characterize scholasticism cross-culturally. Of these notable for our purposes include a
strong sense of tradition, concern with language in general, and with scripture and its exegesis in particular,
completeness and compactness of the canon, a belief in the epistemic availability of the world, systematicity,
rationalism, and hermeneutical reflection. Cabezon 2020 adds a number of specifically Indo-Tibetan elements, of
which prayer (56-58) stands out as particularly relevant to the present discussion.

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 As Flood puts it, such monastic ascetics become—through the inscription of tradition on

the body through various forms of ritualized practice—indices of the tradition, their subjectivity

intensified even as their individuality is diminished. That is, they become more like Weber’s

ideal-types or Thurman’s archetypes, emptied to whatever extent of the self-habit yet full of

tradition. With respect to the Buddha, one can think of this inscription in terms of iconography:

the images of his emaciated body, eyes sunken into his skull, representing the apex of self-

mortification; or of his slight smile, post-enlightenment, suggesting from one perspective the

perfect equanimity of existence beyond the self-habit or, from the tantric perspective perhaps, the

innate bliss of enlightenment; or of the thirty-two major and eighty minor physical marks of a

superhuman buddha.

For Buddhist monastic ascetics, foregoing self-mortification and not yet enlightened,

such inscription may include, as recorded by the tradition, the inculcated discipline of gazing

downward, profound stillness during meditation, a serene aura, and so on. The ideal of outward

self-composure and restraint mirrors the inward taming of desire and aversion, such that the

larger society can be certain of the spiritual “value” of the community as a field of merit.

Although the mahāyāna significantly problematizes the veracity of appearances—even Māra, the

Buddhist equivalent of the devil, may actually be a bodhisattva—the image of the Buddhist

monk remains, even in tantrified Tibet, a powerful symbol of the tradition.

The physical changes that accompany buddhahood, the major and minor marks, express

the psychological transformation of enlightenment dramatically, but such physical changes

develop, or become inscribed, gradually through spiritual practice, as I have observed earlier.

A proper analysis would take far too much space, but it should be obvious, given Tsongkhapa’s many years of
scholastic education, that this is a critical component of the formation of the ascetic self. Indeed, it would not be too
much to say that scholasticism (which would include meditation) comprises the “sūtra” portion of Tsongkhapa’s
coordination of sutra and tantra.

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However, more generally, physical changes related to ethical discipline occur necessarily at

death, when a new form of life in one of the six realms of existence is taken: that subsequent

form of life—from hell being to divine being—is, by all Buddhist accounts, a result of past

ethical actions suddenly shaping the psychophysical continuum. Unlike the asceticism of

Buddhist monasticism, such karmic reshaping is involuntary and uncontrolled, in one sense, yet

little discussion of the mechanics of bio-physiological transformation is found in the literature.316

As a natural by-product of the transformation of the mind, taken as more fundamental, the

body’s changes appear to have been unremarkable, literally, except in the tantric literature, where

the physical processes are considered in some detail. As I will examine below, this allows for

greater purchase on Flood’s discussion of asceticism and the importance of tantric practice for

Tsongkhapa.

Following Flood’s comments above, one can say the purpose of every monk or nun,

having committed through ordination to developing the ascetic self, is to reverse the flow of the

body and the flow of time—just as the Buddha does—and thereby to enact the memory of the

tradition. While in general the “central performance of the ascetic self” is “the denial of

reproduction and of sexuality,”317 for Buddhist monastic communities, there are over two

hundred infractions against which the ascetic must guard, and most of these pertain to social

relationships involving not only fellow mendicants but those beyond—those whose forms of life

do not conduce to liberation. The narratives of the Buddha’s interactions with the powerful and

powerless of his day indicate that his personal charisma, based on his disciplined behavior,

convince many around him that—despite his rejection of rigid social hierarchies and Vedic

authority—he and his community are worthy of material support. For example, the Buddha’s

317
Flood 2004 5.

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discourses make the explicit case that ethical behavior, not social standing within a static (Vedic)

cosmic hierarchy, warrants the label “noble” (ārya) for anyone—male or female.

The rules of monastic discipline, developed contextually in light of real and potentially

offensive behavior, enforce this understanding that outward appearance mirrors inward restraint,

and the Buddhist theory of karma expresses this, positing that those in elevated social standing

exist so only because of ethical discipline in prior lives. The jātakas and avadānas reinforce this

with reference to the Buddha’s personal experience, and the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya—the

official disciplinary code of Tibet—itself contains a multitude of these narratives, again

indicating the deep social context of monastic discipline and bearing witness for the monastic

ascetic of the very process of inscribing discipline. Indeed, Tsongkhapa celebrates Atiśa's perfect

discipline at the opening of LRCM, and one of his own four great deeds pertains to his own

efforts—undertaken just prior to the writing of LRCM, to reinvigorate perfect monastic

asceticism among his colleagues. Hence, Tsongkhapa himself both narrates and exemplifies

personally the importance of monastic asceticism as a social bond within Buddhist cultures.

Thus, while Buddhist monastic asceticism involves the rejection of ordinary social norms

in pursuit of the individual reordering of body and mind, the monastic communities nevertheless

must participate within those norms in order to engage with the larger social arena, even as they

undermine their relative value with reference to the Buddha's supra-worldly status and to their

own striving toward liberation. Thorough disengagement with those norms would simply break

the economic and educational bonds that serve each group well: the ascetics would starve or

return to society, and that society would not gain merit through their economic support nor gain

insight into the ethically driven, karmically causal machinery of the cosmos. Material and

narrative artifacts establish the models of social obligation for the support of the communities,

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while the communities themselves, on the basis of their code of discipline, police themselves to

ensure that this support is earned.

The monastic code of conduct is, of course, prescriptive whereas the discourses (sūtras)

and narratives, such as the jātakas and the avadānas, are generally proscriptive; the discourses

explain and the narratives display what is to be done actively. The narratives, with their focus on

the bodhisattva’s career, inevitably proscribe a career beyond the goal of liberation synonymous,

in many imaginations, with monasticism. Historically, according to modern scholarship, the goal

of buddhahood is a much later development than the goal of liberation prevalent among monastic

communities. However, for Tsongkhapa, as for the Indian Buddhist sources on which he relies,

these two goals exist simultaneously, but many monks simply could not aspire to the greater of

the two: for those monks, prescriptions take greater precedence than proscriptions, one might

say. Mistaking their own ultimate well-being as if distinct from that of all other beings—that is,

not grasping the full import of the Buddha’s cosmological knowledge—such monks cannot grasp

the Buddha’s life narrative and living example as a model for practice. From Tsongkhapa’s

vantage point, neither the goal of liberation nor the bodhisattva’s exoteric practice of the

transcendences can fully effect the complete, unified psychological and physical transformation

that results in buddhahood. Only unexcelled yoga practice, with its attention to the non-duality of

the psychological and physical elements to be transformed, makes this possible.

Tantric Asceticism

Although tantric Buddhism has been interpreted by some—from late first millennium

India and Tibet to the present globally—as an obscene form of hedonism utterly incompatible

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with monasticism,318 this is certainly not Tsongkhapa’s interpretation, nor that of the canonical

sources on which he relies; I already have discussed the centrality of this issue for the trajectory

of Tibetan religious history. The denial of reproduction and sexuality relevant to monastic ascetic

discipline is no less relevant in the tantric context. Here I limit my analysis to an interpretation of

tantric discipline in line with Flood’s presentation and illuminated by Bushell’s.

Tantric Buddhism is foremost, according to Tsongkhapa, the logical extension of the

Buddha’s teaching on selflessness and, therefore, thoroughly bound by the rules of karmic

causality that the teaching on dependent origination propounds. Whereas monastic asceticism

seeks to avoid and attenuate the afflictions in order to eliminate them, tantric asceticism—having

largely ameliorated the afflictions in their coarse forms by various means earlier in the

bodhisattva path—engages them directly in order to eliminate them in their subtlest forms.

Tsongkhapa, following Candrakīrti, rejects the idea that arhats attain liberation without

comprehending both personal and objective selflessness, which might suggest that there should

not be the distinction between coarse and subtle just noted. That is, Bhāviveka and others argue

that the difference between an arhat’s liberation and a buddha’s enlightenment depend, at least in

part, on this distinction in wisdom, that arhats grasp only personal selflessness whereas buddhas

grasp objective selflessness as well. However, for Tsongkhapa and Candrakīrti the difference lies

in a pre-buddha’s perfecting of the other transcendences, those related to other-oriented

compassion, which relate to a buddha’s material body (rūpakāya, divided conceptually into

sambhogakāya [beatific body] and nirmaṇakāya [emanation body]), the necessary complement

318
Wedemeyer 2013 has discussed the genealogy of this position over the last two centuries. An interesting
contemporary warning of the spread of tantric Buddhism is given by Xiao, a Ch'an Buddhist from Taiwan who
minces no words (ix): “Beneath its spiritual veneer, Tantric Buddhism is a sex cult that advocates eternalism and
carnal pleasure, and its devotees are monastic who have no regard for Buddhist precepts and act like laity. If Tantric
Buddhism supplants true Buddhism, then there will be nothing left of the latter; only the superficial presence of
monasteries and monastics will remain, and Buddhism will be reduced to an occult religion of demon worship.”

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to the wisdom truth body (dharmakāya or jñānakāya). Another way of putting this is that

enlightenment is not simply the purification of misknowledge but the active accumulation of

virtues that, following that purification of misknowledge, serves others infinitely—as long as

space endures, as Śāntideva expresses it. Or one could say that enlightenment involves

proscriptions of behavior (what is to be done) much more extensively than prescriptions (what is

not to be done), the purview of monastic asceticism.

Although asceticism is, by nature, a form of emptying the self through anaphora in order

to become an index of tradition, for Buddhists there is no transcendent power, no creator outside

of conventional reality, that fills that empty self. Neither Abrahamic Creator nor Śiva nor any

other purported transcendent being claimed to be the source of existence or the single real reality

serves, from the Buddhist perspective, to fill, consume, or overwhelm the emptied self. Hence

my earlier claim that unexcelled yoga’s appropriation of iconicity obliterates otherness.319 The

ascetic self—being a dependent designation, merely a construction of concepts and language, as

Tsongkhapa argues following Candrakīrti—is properly filled, or reconstructed, by concepts and

language fully capable of serving others’ welfare while being understood as empty, as

dependent, as conventional.

In any case, the primary concern for Tsongkhapa with respect to tantra is the positive

transformation of the psychophysical continuum, with its two aspects—mental and material, or

physical, along with their correlations noted above—being nondually integrated at buddhahood

and, during the path to that fruition, being imagined as if nondually integrated. In other words,

319
Flood 2004 4 observes that self-submission to tradition is not to be limited strictly by that tradition, in which case
cultural evolution would be impossible. Rather, the “tradition patterns the body or imposes order on it, in the sense
that the body is subjected to an institutional power by which it is inscribed, but the ascetic self also transcends that
institutional power.” One could relate this to Mary Douglas’ concept, in Purity and Danger, of matter out of place,
which would find the ascetic as a liminal being who, upon successfully traversing the danger of appropriating of
otherness/disorder, has the transcended the limits of the cosmic order and reinstated its power.

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tantra proceeds from the realization of the emptiness/interdependence of all things, including

body and mind, identity and reality, from which spring the program of conscious ideal self-

reconstruction, deity yoga. This reconceptualizes the ascetic self as an enlightened being, the

highest ideal of the tradition, in order to effect that very transformation. The meta-category of

sūtra, the tradition explains, does not directly address the bio-physiological mechanisms involved

in this transformation, and the three lower tantra classes—action, performance, and yoga—do so

rather minimally compared to unexcelled yoga. As Tsongkhapa contends, the Guhyasamāja

literature and its Noble commentarial tradition provide the insight into these mechanisms,

applicable to the entire class. For this reason, I focus on this supreme class and its two stages,

creation and perfection, in order to analyze the full transformative process.

The Creation Stage

The creation stage of unexcelled yoga focuses on creating a replica of the cosmos as experienced

by an enlightened being/s, with its animate and inanimate features coextensive, in a sense, with

their referential self. This replication process—that is, the means of accomplishment

(sādhana)—is the complete appropriation of the iconic otherness of the deities, the enlightened

archetypal beings, and the maṇḍala (the cosmos experienced by enlightened subjectivity) by the

yogi/ni, described earlier. This is not a temporary substitution, nor simply role playing, but rather

a long-term ritualized undertaking that transforms the subjectivity of the yogi/ni down to the

level of perception. The entire sensorium simulates, in order eventually to function as, the

perceptual experience of the deity, with vision apprehending only divine imagery, audition

apprehending only mantra, gustation apprehending only nectar-like substances, and so forth.320

320
Bushell 2009 390, in reviewing relevant literature, explains that the types of practices enjoined by the creation
stage and its antecedents, classified as cognitive behavioral techniques, “based on heightened imagery and

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This initial undertaking is anticipated to take years, given the deeply rooted psychological

patterns of desire and aversion anchoring primal misknowledge, the self habit that imagines an

intrinsically existent self as the referential indexical identity. This stage entails not merely the

ritualized appropriation of deity identity but the creation of a new self-narrative with that identity

and its perceptual experience. That is, in addition to the ritual enactment of identity appropriation

within formal sessions, that identity must be maintained as the referential “I” at all times in order

to seal it through narrative and perception.321

Central to unexcelled yoga practice is the architecture of the three-tiered psychophysical

continuum that the Guhyasamāja literature details: these levels—coarse, subtle, and extremely

subtle—reflect their relative distance from direct sensory contact, withdrawal from which allows

for the amelioration of trauma (self-)inflicted by the yogi/ni’s compulsive attention to addictive

behaviors. As Śāntideva explains in the eighth chapter of The Bodhisattva Way of Life

(Bodhicaryāvatāra), the concentration required for that amelioration—not even necessarily

monastic or tantric asceticism—necessitates significant withdrawal, a sort of renunciation of the

triggers for trauma. The coarse level of that continuum is the sensory level, the one examined in

the discourses and narrative literature, the one directly enmeshed in the intersubjective world;

absorption ability, can actually override—which includes negating and substituting—sensory-perceptual functioning
on a fundamental neurophysiological level across sensory modalities.” He proposes that “[i]t can extrapolated from
this data that it would be possible to utilize the abilities revealed by these studies to mobilize them more
comprehensively, forcefully, and systematically in order to accomplish the goals of deity and mandala yoga
meditation, i.e., to substitute “divine” for ordinary appearances, as one could substitute the imagined sensation and
perception of green for red, or color for gray, or an absence for a presence (in visual as well as somatosensory
terms), etc., as demonstrated in these experimental studies.”
321
Flood 2004 224-225 explains: “[P]erformance is not only the expression of ritual structure, it is simultaneously
the intensification of meaning, because in accepting the tradition in this way the ascetic intends to approach the goal
of the tradition and to eradicate the self. If meaning is understood as the location of the self with the larger scheme
of tradition and cosmos...then ritual is the performance of this ability to locate the self and the context within which
this meaning is most clearly demonstrated. Through ritual the ascetic self both eradicates individuality by
conformity to the rule and intensifies meaning by locating the self in a larger scheme and eroding the distinction
between the sign, the signifier, and the interpretant.”

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this level corresponds to the emanation body (nirmāṇakāya) of a buddha, that appearance which

directly benefits ordinary beings who grasp strongly at their referential identity as intrinsically

real.

The subtle level—which corresponds to the beatific body (sambhogakāya) of a buddha,

available only to spiritually mature beings grasping less strongly—is removed from direct

sensory contact; however, as the Guhyasamāja literature clarifies, such contact is only partly the

problem, for the eighty instincts of misknowledge, desire, and aversion (the primary focus of the

subtle level) that drive the coarse addictions propel cyclic existence even without direct sensory

contact. The problem is not other living beings who trigger negative behaviors but rather the

responses themselves, which are self-reproducing; these instincts can produce negative

evolutionary results due to false narratives and misperceptions that are thoroughly unmoored

from external influences.

The extremely subtle level—corresponding to the wisdom truth body (dharmakāya)

perceived only by buddhas—is that at which mind and matter are practically indistinguishable, at

which the instincts have ceased, and at which the possibility for attaining buddhahood is directly

available. The conscious awareness of these subtler levels, along with developing the capacity

for harnessing them, is the yogi/ni’s goal in withdrawing into a ritualized process of experiencing

and narrating reality anew, as the iconic other.

The aim, of course, is not absolute withdrawal from the external world but transformation

of the unenlightened subjectivity that engages with that external world in the profoundly

ineffective ways that propel cyclic existence. The ordinary referential “I” is reified in its

interactions with others, and only by a healthier process of engagement—preceded by a wise

disengagement—can the yogi/ni cease their negative behaviors at the coarse level and then

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attend to their instincts at the subtler levels. As I have shown repeatedly, and detail in chapter

four, buddhahood is anything but withdrawal or disengagement; rather, Tsongkhapa argues, it is

omnicompetent engagement, which is possible only from the perfect experiential wisdom

apprehending the absence of an intrinsically existent identity, thereby abandoning self-

cherishing, and the practical creative arts constructing a new identity that perfectly cherishes

others. In terms of the creation stage ritual processes, the former (experiential wisdom) pertains

to emptiness meditation and the latter (creative arts) to the successive yogas that appropriate the

iconic otherness of the deity. It is critical that the yogi/ni’s ordinary identity, including the entire

external world, be completely dissolved by emptiness meditation for appropriation to be

possible; no sensory experience remains, indicating that subtler levels too have dissolved,

leaving only the extremely subtle level—the dharmakāya, the clear light transparency

(prabhāsvara, ’od gsal), which is the fundamental sameness of all buddhas.322

Corresponding to the three levels of the continuum—which when transformed are the

three bodies of a buddha—that process of reconstructive appropriation that is enjoined by the

ritual performance script (the means of accomplishment, sādhana) begins from the subtle levels

to the coarse. This, then, reverses the process of dissolution, with the deity’s extraordinary

identity taken up in place of the ordinary identity of the yogi/ni’s, which is already ritually

renounced. Briefly, the yogi/ni appears first as the seed syllable, the subtlest and most

fundamental representation of the deity, the syllable from which any appearance—Mañjuśrī, e.g.,

322
In the Guhyasamāja literature, as interpreted by the Noble commentarial tradition, the personification of
enlightenment is one (the central male buddha with whom the yogi/ni identifies primarily, Vajra Holder), two
(adding the coextensive female buddha Vajra Touch), five (enumerating the five ordinary aggregates in their
enlightened aspects, personified as Akṣobhya, Amitābha, Ratnasambhava, Vairocana, and Amoghasiddhi) and and
so on up to one hundred, depending on the enumeration of the maṇḍala deities based on these five “clan” leaders.
The five aggregates, considered as unenlightened or enlightened, comprise the one “person” whose identity, as
explained in chapter four, is merely designated in dependence on them; parts and wholes are equally dependent,
neither being really real. In any case, regardless of the appearance and function of the enlightened being, their
attainments of wisdom and empathic art are necessarily identical.

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whether as two-armed Arapatsana or as fierce multi-armed Yamāntaka Vajrabhairva—derives.

The seed syllable functions, then, as a sort of stem cell that can develop into the fully

differentiated material body (rūpakāya) of a buddha, which is just what occurs as the yogi/ni

proceeds through the ritual performance. From the seed syllable the yogi/ni gradually creates the

complete appearance of the deity and maṇḍala, the entire cosmos coextensive with the yogi/ni-

deity’s subjectivity.

This appropriated identity—though initially only imaginatively simulated—eventually

becomes conceptually real and valid through repetition of the ritual performance as well as the

post-performance maintenance of that identity through sensory perceptual experience as the deity

and the integration of the deity's appropriated narrative to the referential identity. These

processes must be preceded, Tsongkhapa insists, by the common, exoteric mahāyāna practices,

especially the precise analytical insight into the absence of intrinsic identity of self and world,

which reveals the thoroughly constructed nature of reality and its plasticity as well, in addition to

disarming the core drives of desire and aversion, resulting in what Thurman terms “a

psychological ascetic” capable of self/world destruction and reconstruction.323 The yogi/ni

internalizes and then re-externalizes the entire enlightened cosmos.

Here one can refer to Flood’s comparative theory of asceticism to clarify the meaningful

nature of this process:

[C]osmological traditions interiorise cosmology. That is, there is a tendency in cosmological

religions to emphasise interiority, and an interiority that interfaces with the structure of the
hierarchical cosmos in a way that goes beyond what might be understood simply as
subjectivity...ascetic traditions are the enactment of the memory of tradition, which is also the
expression of cosmology, for tradition is understood as an expression of the cosmic
structure...ascetic traditions are forms of collective memory enacted in the body through
praxis and enacted in language through discourse.324

323
Thurman 1995 117.
324
Flood 2004 9.

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Unexcelled yoga interiorizes cosmology in that the entire universe comes to be regarded as

coextensive with the subjectivity of the yogi/ni. This is not, as in theistic traditions, the

interiorizing of the transcendent creator in some manner, but rather the expression of the

complete interdependence of all living beings whose individual evolutionary (karmic)

developments—cosmological knowledge, on John Strong’s designation—are transparent to the

omniscience of a buddha.

Moreover, the re-production, so to speak, of enlightened existence is not only the

appropriation of iconic otherness, which is for enlightened existence the cosmic structure

encoded in the performance script—itself the distillation of tradition expressed in the root tantric

discourse, such as the Guhyasamāja Tantra—that enjoins the ritual enactment of the deity's

enlightened existence, but also the transcendence of subjectivity, the attainment of the wisdom

truth body of a buddha, which is the identical fundament of all enlightened beings. This

emptying of referential identity, therefore, not only abandons the pernicious conceit of modernist

individuality that imagines a fully autonomous self but also inscribes into referential identity the

collective memory of tradition that is its goal, the universal self, as it were, of buddhahood.

Although oral traditions that clarify both the root and explanatory tantric texts play a

central role in the transmission of tradition, the basic texts themselves, as Tsongkhapa argues,

form a baseline of authentic interpretation that oral traditions cannot undermine. That is, what is

regarded normatively as scripture—the word of the Buddha, enlightened testimony however

construed in relation to the fluctuating mundane reality to which other-oriented enlightened

awareness attends—authenticates the ritual performance that produces an enlightened existence

greater than its source. Because interdependent conventional reality changes moment by

moment, the iconic otherness appropriated in deity yoga practice seems insufficient to meet those

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challenges, except that such iconic otherness (though transcendent, as the wisdom truth body) is

suffused with immanent other-cherishing, the two material buddha bodies.

Thus, although there is strict attention to ritual performance, which is the enactment of

text, which is in turn the expression of tradition, the goal of the tradition—enlightened existence,

buddhahood—necessarily exceeds the bare parameters of text and ritual in its engagement with

the impermanent intersubjective reality of the living beings to which it must attend. If, as in

theistic traditions, reality were simply reducible to some creative principle/Creator, then ritual

and text would suffice and be ends in themselves, for they would participate in a closed circle. In

the Buddhist framework, however, the circle is not closed, and there is no static transcendent

state (i.e., dharmakāya) entirely separate from the reality of other beings to whom the material

bodies attend. The interdependent nature of conventional reality entails a necessary lack of

closure and stasis, which entails the priority of enlightened subjectivity over both text and ritual,

though both are necessary to the formation of that subjectivity. In other words, tradition

(dharmalogical knowledge) as embodied by newly produced enlightened beings expands in

relation to the evolutionary entanglements of living beings (cosmological knowledge) with

whom they are engaged.

In principle, then, the yogi/ni’s capacity for complete appropriation of iconic otherness to

their referential identity by means of deity yoga expressing tradition in both text and ritual is

apparent.325 It is worth observing here that Tsongkhapa argues strongly against the

misunderstanding, apparently prevalent, that reconceptualization of the referential “I” in the

creation stage is unnecessary. Both the capacity and the necessity should be clear now. In the

325
As Flood 2004 222 puts it, drawing on Urban’s work: “The self participates in tradition through a somatic
identification, through entextualising the body, which entails the linguistic identification of the self with the
tradition. The self can appropriate tradition, can internalise tradition in subjectivity through the merging of the
indexical-I with the “I” of discourse in the texts.”

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parlance of the tradition, the yogi/ni has overcome ordinary perceptual appearances and ordinary

conceptions, thus establishing divine pride, the certainty of oneself as the deity. However, the

reconstruction of the bio-physiological structures concomitant with that reconceptualization must

be completed as well, and that occurs within the perfection stage.

The Perfection Stage

With the imaginative simulation of deity identity now fully appropriated, the yogi/ni

proceeds to create what has been enacted. In the five stages articulated by Nāgārjuna as distilled

keys of the Guhyasamāja literature, the yogi/ni accomplishes principally the production of a

magic body from the extremely subtle wind-energy that exists non-dually with the clear light

transparency, the extremely subtle mind. I need not detail these stages—one may note here,

however, that the first three are named body isolation, speech isolation, and mind isolation,

indicating explicitly the yogi/ni’s full withdrawal from unenlightened existence. First, these

practices occur at the subtle and extremely subtle levels, so there may not necessarily be changes

in outward physical appearance, but I will discuss the relevant bio-physiological transformations

that the work of William Bushell has detailed. Second, I will refer to more recent work by Flood

that indicates how one may relate perfection stage practice to neuroscientific insights into pre-

linguistic patterns of knowing and communicating, patterns that may relate to the subtle levels of

existence and a buddha's cosmological knowledge of infinite interdependent others.

William Bushell, a medical anthropologist by training, has made a number of significant

but underappreciated contributions to the study of ascetic disciplines, including yoga and

meditation, in relation to human bio-physiological capacities, capacities which verify certain

claims of extreme, supernormal abilities as the outcome of such disciplines. For my purposes, his

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fieldwork among Ethiopian Christians with a tradition of asceticism derived from the early

centuries CE and related ancient narratives analyzed by Peter Brown offer insight into the results

claimed as outcomes of monastic asceticism in general and perfection stage practice specifically.

These capacities and resultant abilities suggest that extreme withdrawal, not self-mortification as

rejected by the Buddha, from basic biological drives brings about levels contentment and bliss

consonant with the claims of the Indo-Tibetan tradition. These abilities are not, both the

Christian tradition of the desert fathers and the Indo-Tibetan tradition of tantric yogi/nis

maintain, sought-for ends in themselves but rather mechanisms by which the relevant spiritual

goals are attained.

With respect to Buddhism monastic asceticism, two primary biological drives are

restricted or rejected, those related to food (restricted) and to sex (rejected).326 It is a basic rule of

Buddhist monastic discipline that eating after noon is prohibited in order to promote, among

other things, clarity of mind for meditation upon waking. As I have noted earlier, the

concentration required for meditation pertains to a constellation of other factors, especially the

manifold elements of ethical discipline. As Bushell notes:

Ascetic fasting, or restriction of food intake, if done properly, would result in outcomes
consistent with the strikingly salutary principles of scientifically investigated fasting and what
researchers have called dietary restriction, in which the constellation of potential outcomes
includes: the disappearance of pain, discomfort, and dysphoria of hunger, and their
replacement with feelings of well-being, tranquility, and even euphoria; “(enhanced)
efficiency of food utilization,” as evinced by indices of body weight, nutritional status, and

326
Olivelle 200-3 observes the centrality of food to the cosmic/social order in ancient South Asian religious
traditions, which centrality reinforces the disengagement of the ascetic from that flawed order. He summarizes the
Buddhist myth contained in the Agañña Sutta that narrates the gradual descent of beings from a paradisiacal state
apparently without sexual differentiation and prior to food consumption. Olivelle notes of the ascetic in this context:
“His very withdrawal from food is an expression of his withdrawal from social and cosmic engagement. He stands
outside the food cycle, because he only eats food but never offers it to others, thus inverting the admonition, often
repeated, that food must be shared.” However, for Buddhist monastic ascetics, there is a sort of reciprocity in that
rather than food being offered, the Buddhist teachings substitute in that transactional framework. Thus, it is not a
complete disengagement from the social order, but one that acknowledges certain distinctions between ascetics and
non-ascetics within the social order, as chapter five clarifies.

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 activity or energy; and even general enhancement of health, as evinced by decreases in illness
and retardation of aging.327

In other words, a regimen of food restriction, rather than resulting in mental and physical

lethargy, can bring about an overall state of better health and well-being, including elevated

levels of energy, once established. Moreover, euphoria—a positive blissful state—is a natural

by-product, one recorded in the Indian Buddhist literature, though typically ascribed to

meditative virtuosity; given the attention to monastic virtuosi in the narrative literature, it is

unsurprising that a combination of food restriction and meditative skill would coincide, as among

the desert fathers studied by Brown.

Regarding sex—which in the Buddhist monastic imagination always is fraught with

attachment and hence deleterious to concentration, ethics, and so on, and related to procreation

and social burdens of family, livelihood, etc.—Bushell observes, in addition to the striking

heightening of alertness and energy, the following:

An equally robust phenomenon association with radical dietary restriction or fasting is the
loss of libido and suppression of gonadal axis activity. Research has found that dietary
restriction can lead not only to low sex drive in both sexes but also to impotence in
males...regression to prepubertal and infantile gonadal hormone profiles, and, in severe cases,
to testicular atrophy and complete loss of secondary sex characteristics...fasting alone may
lead to radical attenuation of two of the primary drives, for food and sex.328
Whereas monastic asceticism is largely prescriptive and generally wary of behavior typically

driven by desire or aversion anchored necessarily in misknowledge, tantric asceticism recognizes

327
Bushell 1995 554.
328
Bushell 1995 558. In addition, Mehta and Roth observe that caloric restriction, another term for the fasting
regimen noted here, has been linked in several studies to stress reduction and, in turn, enhanced functioning in the
immune system, which in turn increases longevity. Drawing on her psychological research at Columbia, Olivo
observes that an array of meditative practices in the Indo-Tibetan tradition functions as cognitive behavioral
techniques shown to counteract stress, anxiety, depression, and negative affect that, as shown by Elizabeth
Blackburn in her Nobel-winning research on telomerase, directly relates to early mortality. Olivo (165) summarizes:
“In fact, there is a small but significant body of research showing that, with training and proficiency, an impressive,
even extraordinary level of resistance to stress, inflammation, and the associated tissue damage, is achievable for
practitioners of these cognitive behavioral techniques.”

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that behavior may be, and should be, decoupled from misknowlege and therefore not so driven.

Unexcelled yoga tantra literature explicitly explains that engaging in otherwise forbidden

activities, while apprehending the reality of that behavior as utterly lacking of any natural,

intrinsically real taboo or sinful status can counteract the power of misknowledge and undermine

the addictive, afflictive nature of the behavior. Even so, Tsongkhapa argues forcefully that

monastic vows are sacrosanct and, where in apparent conflict, should not be disregarded for the

sake of tantric attainments. He himself, the tradition maintains, refused to undertake the

ritualized sexual yoga enjoined by the latter stages of unexcelled yoga or to renounce his

monastic vows, given the great importance he attaches to rigorous monastic asceticism, as

evinced by its status among his four great deeds.

The unexcelled yoga tantra literature is relatively clear (it is by nature allusive and

symbolic, so perhaps it is better to say the commentarial literature clarifies) that the perfection

stage practices are for elite yogi/nis—those at the highest bodhisattva levels—and that ritualized

sexual intercourse and other taboo behaviors, even when prescribed literally, are for those well

beyond the ordinary misknowledge-driven desire that would enmesh others deeper into cyclic

existence. The key factor in breaking this cycle, then, is that the addictive properties,

psychological and physiological, attributed to objects—whether food, sexual partners, or tangible

property—actually reside in the subject. To a certain extent, then, the Buddhist self is a closed

circle, an autopoetic—that is, a self-reproducing and self-maintaining—network.

Bushell goes on to discuss studies showing that a reward system of endogenous opioid

substances in the central nervous system produces responses in the body characteristic of drug

addiction, and in particular that brain neurons respond to feeding identically as to addictive drugs

such as morphine. In brief, Bushell observes that typical eating is, if judged by markers of

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optimal health, excessive and indicative of addictive behavior whereas “the endogenous opioid-

mediated reward of abstention is greater than that associated with eating,” and, further, “all

categories of ascetic practice, in their ideal-type forms, appear to result in drive reduction,

possibly by directly or indirectly leading to enhanced endogenous opioid activity.”329

As has been determined with great clarity in recent years,330 “consummatory drives, such

as for food and sex, and aversive drives, such as those associated with pain, anxiety, fear, and

dysphoria, have all been demonstrated to be profoundly modulated by various forms of opioids.”

Bushell explains that there is a decoupling of the experience of reward from its object:

“paradoxically, the absence of food replace food in the production of reward experience,

resulting in a reward experience of greater intensity and duration, the absence of sexual activity

and consummation produces a neuroendocrine milieu interieur that is more conducive to

extended and more intense experience of euphoria than is the brief euphoria associated with

orgasm.”331 The same may be said of aversive drives, whereby fatigue and pain involved with,

for example, the purification practices that Tsongkhapa undertakes in the Olkha cave that brings

about his great breakthrough in 1397, lead to enhanced energy and zeal. Summarizing, Bushell

writes: “[t]he architecture of normal drive-reward pathways is dismantled and replaced by an

329
Bushell 1995 558–560.
330
In particular, the central role of dopamine in generating addictive behavior has become well known. Termed “the
molecule of more” by psychiatrist Daniel Lieberman in his aptly titled (but overly determinative) The Molecule of
More: How A Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the
Human Race (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2018), dopamine, along with other neurotransmitters, certainly limit the
conscious control over behavior that one often presumes to have naturally. Asceticism rejects the presumption that
conscious control is unattainable.
331
Bushell 1995 560-61. Both negative and positive experiences are modulated by neurotransmitters such as cortisol
and dopamine, respectively, that inhibit the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to maintain behavioral control, which is
why, in part, the routinization of behavior in monastic asceticism may be understood to obviate the need for
conscious control, whereby tantric asceticism can undermine and eliminate the unconscious control of
neurotransmitters.

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architecture in which reward precedes goal—is independent of goal: it is the

psychoneuroendocrine, the psychophysiological, architecture of dispassion, of detachment, of

apatheia.”332

What this means for my purposes is that not only do addictive properties not reside in the

objects of reward but that withdrawal from the ordinary objects of reward results in a greater

experience of reward. There is, then, a critical overlap between monastic asceticism and tantric

asceticism, for the latter—just as Tsongkhapa contends—need not be based on the bodily sexual

practices prohibited by the monastic disciplinary code. Tsongkhapa parts with Atiśa on whether

monks can take the third and fourth initiations of unexcelled yoga, initiations which enjoin

sexual congress and thus break the monastic vows of celibacy. But, as Tsongkhapa holds, since

the visualization of such congress (which is to be done with the contemplatively appropriated

identity of the deity) may cause the same effects as physical union—and now it is possible to

confirm that, under proper ascetic conditions, it may—there is in this respect no disjuncture

between monastic and tantric vows.333 Again, it is critical to emphasize that the decoupling of

experience from the object of reward, the decoupling of subject and object, entails that ascetic

practice—both monastic and tantric—locates the practitioner, the monk/nun and/or yogi/ni,

within the subtle levels of the psychophysical continuum, disconnected from the coarse sensory

level and the ordinary objects associated with food and sex, but grappling with the underlying

drives and their addictive characteristics. From this perspective, it may be productive to

understand monastic and tantric asceticism as complementary and sequential.

332
Bushell 1995 561.
333
Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn, who has shown the
neurobiological equivalence of mental imagery and perceptual contact, Bushell 2009 has observed that creation
stage visualizations, with their complex and detailed imagery, create an enriched environment of the type shown to
promote neuroplasticity along with increased learning and memory.

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 It might be correct to say, then, that monastic asceticism, with its strict concern for

celibacy, prepares the foundation for the visualized engagement with objects of sexual desire by

its complete prohibition, this decoupling. It is not, finally, the objects related to desire and

aversion that prove problematic but rather the reflexive reactions, the subtle instincts, of desire

and aversion—reactions anchored in habitual self-cherishing/-protecting cycles based ultimately

in grasping at an intrinsically real self—that propel unenlightened existence. This is why

attending to these subtle psychophysical levels detailed in unexcelled yoga, specifically in

Guhyasamāja literature, matters to Tsongkhapa, for these underlying instincts, rather than contact

with objects of the senses, actually bind one to cyclic existence. However, monastic asceticism

does the heavy lifting of breaking the bonds of sensory attachment, from which greater and

greater levels of intimacy become possible.

The perfection stage, in fact, tests the yogi/ni’s tolerance for extreme aversion,

revulsion—which is understood as addictive grasping at ordinary appearances of excrement,

blood, flesh, etc., to be consumed ritually—precisely to ensure that the yogi/ni’s capacity for the

intimacy of nonduality, expressed as non-objectifying sexual union, is finally transcendent.334 In

this way, the complete psychophysical withdrawal from and abandonment of misknowledge

underlying desire and aversion, lust and hate—unenlightened existence—coincides with the

complete appropriation of deity identity. Hence, the esoteric practice of deity yoga, which occurs

at subtler and subtler levels of psychophysical integration, can undermine this bondage in ways

that exoteric mahāyāna meditation on emptiness, coupled with the bodhisattva transcendences,

alone cannot.

334
For a sophisticated analysis of this topic, see Wedemeyer 2013, section two.

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 Another way to approach the perfection stage with respect to intimacy may be to analyze

it in terms of engagement or communication with other unenlightened beings rather than—or

along with—withdrawal from ordinary personal identity. In overcoming ordinary conceptions

and appearances in the creation stage and then sequentially isolating body, speech, and mind in

the early portions of the perfection stage, the yogi/ni separates from sensory input as well as the

conceptual and linguistic structures that interpret them. But in this increasing isolation from

ordinariness and descent into subtler and subtler psychophysical levels, when producing the

magic body prior to communion, the yogi/ni does not, in fact, separate completely from

engagement with others and escape into an utterly transcendent state. Rather, the yogi/ni

precludes the ability for sensory input and interpretive structures, which are underlain by the

eighty instincts, to determine the quality of that engagement, and instead draws on the deeply

rooted commitment to transcend those structures and instincts and to attain enlightenment for

others—the bodhisattva vow. That commitment becomes, in effect, the moral sustenance that

ameliorates and obviates the initial physiological austerities and the ongoing psychological

conflicts drawn from those instincts that emerge during the journey to the stage of communion.

Not only does the yogi/ni maintaining divine pride attempt to act as if enlightened in

order to seal that appropriated divine identity, but in sealing that identity ever more thoroughly,

the yogi/ni—progressively purifying the coarse and subtle instincts—comes to enact

spontaneously enlightened behavior. This behavior is, principally, communicative insofar as

enlightened activities are entirely other-oriented, for optimal self-fulfillment is achieved at

enlightenment. In fulfilling the bodhisattva vow (that is, attaining buddhahood—non-localizable

nirvana that is everywhere and nowhere) the yogi/ni, now become a buddha, becomes

omnipresent—utterly un-isolated from all others by having overcome the constraints of the self-

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habit—and omnicompetent in engagement and communication, which is to say teaching, directly

or indirectly, whether through symbolic gesture, language, explicit or concealed magical power,

and so forth. As there exists no means to liberate others except indirectly, teaching in some way,

communication—creative art (upāya) animated by limitless compassion—serves as the key

component of enlightened embodiment whose purpose is just that. The stage of communion,

then, entails not just the integration of the yogi/ni’s magic body and clear light transparency but

also their embodiment entangled with the whole of existence: the latter four bodhisattva

transcendences—creative art, prayer, power, and intuition—are the spontaneous capacities to

intuit—to know im-mediately—the precise needs of living beings (again, cosmological

knowledge) and act upon those optimally, within clear awareness of the obstructions of their own

karma.

In terms of the three buddha bodies that result from these five stages—from the

abandonment of ordinariness and the purification of the instincts—one is of little concern here

but deserves a brief discussion. The wisdom truth body (dharmakāya), the enlightened mind of a

buddha, is strictly inaccessible to unenlightened beings, for its wavelength, as it were, is shared

only with other buddhas; their method of communication is direct, nonconceptual intuition.

Nevertheless, the wisdom truth body is accessible in the sense of its nondual character with

respect to the two material bodies (rūpakāya), which do engage directly with the unenlightened;

of the two, the beatific body is accessible to bodhisattvas, and the emanation body—in a

potentially infinite array of appearances— is accessible to ordinary unenlightened beings.

There is, of course, a certain lack of ontological clarity here insofar as enlightened

identity, on the Indo-Tibetan view, is unrestricted: that the self is merely dependently designated

to the continuity of five aggregates, as Tsongkhapa contends, entails that there is not an intrinsic,

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primary identity—as the wisdom truth body sometimes seems to be regarded—from which the

other two derive. The three buddha bodies are epistemologically distinct but functionally

equivalent in that each—like the five human senses—has its object (here, buddhas, bodhisattvas,

or ordinary beings) validating its function, communication. That is, each buddha body serves its

respective communicative purpose, but only the two material bodies relate to the unenlightened,

and the beatific body serves bodhisattvas, who are on a significantly improved trajectory toward

enlightenment compared to ordinary beings and (presumably) numerically far fewer; hence, the

emanation body (plural would be better) serves beings who are far more numerous and far more

spiritually impoverished than the other two buddha bodies. Yet since here I focus on tantra, I

must discuss both material bodies, for not only is the yogi/ni a bodhisattva, even if only aspiring,

but the tantric literature is said to derive, in some manner, from the Buddha’s beatific body,

whether appearing as Vajradhara, Kālacakra, Vajrayoginī, Tārā, and so forth.

The yogi/ni ideally is an actual bodhisattva, one who has generated the spirit of

enlightenment, but the scholastic systematic literature recognizes two frameworks for

categorizing spiritual progress, those related to common exoteric and uncommon esoteric, or

tantric, paths, with indicators of where actual and aspiring bodhisattvas fit in both; thus, it is

clear the aspiring bodhisattva is as much the target audience as the actual bodhisattva. Indeed,

the former and latter are on a continuum of spiritual progress, so leading along, or maturing,

those aspiring is a necessary process, strictures of absolute secrecy aside. 335 Among those fit for

unexcelled yoga practice, the Guhyasamāja literature distinguishes various levels of spiritual

335
The tantras are alleged to be held in greatest secrecy from ordinary folks who would misunderstand the figurative
language and potent imagery, and certain tantras themselves exhort such secrecy. If there were complete secrecy
enshrouding tantric practice, then the scholastic treatises elucidating the material, such as those written by
Tsongkhapa himself, would be unnecessary. It is better to say that the tantric material, perhaps like bomb-making
information, should be guarded and made available only with appropriate training in place, as Tsongkhapa explains.

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development and cites the jewel-like yogi/ni as the most capable of progress. This type of yogi/ni

need not be taught by strictly literal language but rather can be led by the allusiveness for which

the tantras are known, for literalism indicates an inflexibility in thought not suited to

transformative action. The complex symbolism that characterizes the tantric creative arts—e.g.,

correlating body parts with spiritual principles or deities—serves to inculcate throughout the

sensorium the enlightened reality of the deity that the yogi/ni seeks to appropriate, becoming

isolated from the unenlightened reality that takes (ordinary) appearances to be or to represent

what is intrinsically existent—sensory literalism. This increasing isolation is a descent into the

subtle levels of the psychophysical complex, away from literal language and ordinary appearance

and into mantra and symbols that will become literal for the yogi/ni when enlightened.

These subtle levels, the realm of the psychological instincts, disengage from linguistic

communication and engage with pre-linguistic and symbolic forms of communication,

communication that moves from the purview of the emanation body to that of the beatific body

and therefore indicates the yogi/ni’s progress toward becoming a bodhisattva in fact. This

descent—during which the subtle wind energies supporting sensory engagement and

conceptuality associated with the instincts withdraw into the central nervous system and dissolve

into the heart center—also is a rehearsal for death, which is signaled by a series of images that

portend the final separation from conceptuality and the dawning of the clear light transparency.

Without the complete appropriation of deity identity accomplished in the creation stage, the

yogi/ni simply would face, as innumerable times prior, ordinary death and ordinary rebirth at this

dawning, culminating in the re-aggregation of the instincts and their coarse manifestations in the

ascent to the re-creation of the unenlightened self.

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 The yogi/ni who is accomplished in the creation stage and inscribed with the symbolism

of enlightened reality, however, traverses this separation from language and concepts—from

forms of communication that signal unreflective immersion in the intersubjective world—not as

loss but as gain: recognizing the dis-aggregation process as the possibility for transforming in

fact into the archetypal deity and abandoning the unenlightened self bound by the instincts and

misknowledge; supposedly, the yogi/ni embraces death, the dawning of the clear light

transparency, not as personal obliteration or welcome disappearance into some transcendent void

but as perfection of embodied selflessness. The ordinary unenlightened person is vastly limited

in communicative competence, for like everything else communication is oriented around the

imagined intrinsically existent self that is the locus of desire and aversion, of lust and hate—the

reified central hub on which the universe of isolated experience depends. The yogi/ni

progressively increases competence relative to the weakening of the self-habit, allowing for

greater and greater openness to others. Having abandoned both the coarse sense-bound levels and

the subtle instinct-bound levels, with their limited literal and figurative self-oriented

communicative aspects, the former yogi/ni “arises” from the wisdom truth body into unlimited

communicative competence on behalf of the unenlightened, first as the beatific body, the

enlightened manifestation of the purified instincts and symbolic communication, and second as

the emanation body, the enlightened manifestation of purified sensory engagement and literal

communication, one could say.336

Thus, through the interiorization of the symbolic cosmos (maṇḍala) in the creation

stage—which is in turn dependent on having generated previously the enlightenment spirit that

336
The language of sequence here is somewhat erroneous, since they are for all intents and purposes said to be
simultaneously emergent, but the forward and reverse order of these processes are important to distinguish to
appreciate the conceptual distinctions among the three bodies.

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collects all other beings, abstracted as friend, foe, or neither, into that symbolic cosmos—the

perfection stage yogi/ni interiorizes all other beings, establishing with them purified karmic

bonds in place of impure bonds driven by the instincts gathered through beginningless time.

Apprehending at the dawning of clear light transparency the bare reality of these bonds, the

fundamental karmic interdependence that is, on Strong’s account, direct cosmological knowledge

perceiving all beings as equal to oneself, the former yogi/ni now exteriorizes the cosmos as their

buddhaverse, where all beings are embraced as non-dual self, symbolized by the father-mother

united pair. The beatific body displays such archetypal imagery of communion, resonates the

subtle tone of mantra, and speaks in allusive, poetic language to those capable of subtle

conceptual understanding, while the emanation body communicates with greater coarse

literalism, with apparent individuality and distinct personality, for those whose capacity is quite

limited. In these ways, the three buddha bodies that are the enlightened state reflect the varying

degrees of intimacy and communicative capacity available to the unenlightened and, hence, to be

engaged as forms of selfless creative art by which to lead them gradually to that very same state.

In the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, as the following chapter explains, non-conceptuality

often plays an oversize role in presentations of meditation, much as the wisdom truth body does

with respect to the goal of practice.337 In the same way, ineffability often characterizes the ideal

mode of communication insofar as language lacks the capacity to describe the enlightened state

or, for that matter, anything at all in terms of full experiential reality. While that is certainly true,

simple silence will teach no one anything, much less lead anyone to enlightenment; contextual

silence, like that of Vimalakīrti, makes a profound impact, however. And as just discussed, it is

337
Payne provides an excellent discussion, deserving of sustained reflection, on how conceptual meditation drawn
from tantric ritual manuals and practices, necessarily narrative, structures identification with the enlightened state,
bridging ordinary and extraordinary identities in a gradual process of traversing the path to that enlightened state.

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the material bodies of a buddha, though inseparable from the wisdom truth body, that directly

assist living beings toward enlightenment through various forms of communication. That

communication points, nudges, or shoves those who are ready toward ascetic discipline and

away from the instinct-driven habits that simply reproduce cycles of suffering. The model that

the spiritual guide provides for the student to emulate draws on a chain of transmission

incorporating both narrative and systematic literature designed to reproduce a life embodying

that model and, often, a life narrative serving as a cultural artifact that localizes Buddhist

practices and philosophical principles presented in the literature as universal. Indeed, whereas the

wisdom truth body could be understood as a trans-historical principle, the emanation body is

necessarily local, and the beatific body mediates the two, particularly in the case of tantra, where

modeling and emulation are the primary processes of spiritual communication and development.

To the pertinent philosophical principles underlying Tsongkhapa’s coordination of sūtra and

tantra I now turn.

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 Chapter 4: Articulating the Tibetan Buddhist Self: The

Coordination of Sūtra and Tantra

Coordinating Sūtra and Tantra

As noted in the introduction, the bulk of modern writing on Tsongkhapa focuses on his

Centrism writings, far less on his tantric work, and none has attempted, as I do here, to articulate

the major themes that connect the two. Again, in LRCM Tsongkhapa raises qualms not only

about the correct interpretation of the Centrist view of reality but also the practice of tantra

uninformed by textual training (scholasticism, as noted in the last chapter), including an

immersion in the philosophical views underlying and guiding the various forms of meditation, of

which tantric meditations are the most significant. These qualms reflect the particular errors of

his own colleagues, but these errors, Tsongkhapa clarifies in many writings, are not at all specific

to Buddhists of fourteenth-century Tibet but rather instantiate types of errors—whether

ontological, ethical, epistemological, or hermeneutical—identified in the classic treatises of the

Indian masters. As I have explained, life narratives, in a Tibetan Buddhist context especially,

serve as guides for spiritual practice, complementing formal educational manuals—the

systematic presentations—by means of personal example. And the authoritative Indian sources

on which Tsongkhapa depends are clear: without the correct view of reality, liberation from

cyclic existence is impossible, and without the inerrant practice of unexcelled yoga tantra,

buddhahood is unavailable. I explore here, in reliance on Tsongkhapa’s writings on Centrism and

the Guhyasamāja literature, how the correct view of reality informs the inerrant practice of

unexcelled yoga tantra.

Thus, I consider now the fundamental soteriological commitments underlying

Tsongkhapa’s philosophy. This begins with Tsongkhapa’s distinguishing the essentialist

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commitments of other Buddhist philosophical positions, especially Idealism (Mind Only), from

Nāgārjuna’s Centrism. From there, I cover the critical distinctions between Tsongkhapa’s

interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism and those of the nihilistic interpretations that he

refutes; in particular, these distinctions pivot on the gap between unenlightened and enlightened

existence and the very possibility of that gap’s being traversed. That is, Tsongkhapa argues that

concepts and language, rather than presenting an insurmountable chasm between these two forms

of life, instead act as the tools to transcend that chasm and—for the unenlightened—to traverse

to enlightenment, thus salvaging the bodhisattva path from ontological and epistemological

isolationism. Therefore, conventional reality—taken by his opponents to be the product of

delusion—is on Tsongkhapa’s account a profoundly social arena in which spiritual development

and moral commitments are grounded in ontological and epistemological interdependence. It is

here, in conventional reality, that the bodhisattva transcendences and ascetic forms of emulation

and appropriation, informed by the post-meditative perception (rjes thob ye shes) of appearing

phenomena as empty-dependently designated, clear the path to buddhahood. The concern for

emphasizing “appearances”—that is, the relative world of dependently originated, empirical

objects that adhere to norms of logic and reasoning—is attributed to the exhortation by Mañjuśrī

in light of Tsongkhapa’s holding a faulty Centrist view (neither properly Formalism nor

Conventionalism), and there is in Tsongkhapa’s exposition special attention given to causality,

ethics, and so on—all critical components of the path to enlightenment.

For Tsongkhapa, the practice of unexcelled yoga tantra proceeds from this interpretation,

whereby the fundamental misknowledge—the self habit that perceives and conceives reality in

terms of essences that Centrism targets wtih analytic deconstruction—becomes undermined

completely, and then restored and transformed in illusory conventional reality by means of

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conceptually reconstructing self-identity as an enlightened being. Tsongkhapa identifies this

conceptual reconstruction—deity yoga—as the distinctive feature of tantric practice, and through

its role in Tsongkhapa’s favored Guhyasamāja Tantra system, I attempt to understand its

importance. In this way, I attempt to penetrate the broad contours and principal elements of

Tsongkhapa’s coordination of sūtra and tantra, the legacy of which takes form not only in his

eighteen volumes of writing but, as I explore in the fifth chapter, in the social impact of his four

great deeds that articulate in a complementary manner his philosophical commitments.

Scouting the Terrain of Tsongkhapa’s Philosophical Corpus

Although the colophon of each of his major treatises notes that its composition is

requested by a given disciple, some of them Phagmodru hierarchs, there is a certain logic to the

sequence of Centrist writings that Tsongkhapa produces. Following his two comprehensive path-

based treatises, he turned to composing an extensive commentary to Nāgārjuna’s seminal work,

Wisdom, based on Candrakīrti’s interpretation. By this time, of course, Tsongkhapa had

championed Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism and distinguished it from the Formalist interpretation

of Bhāvaviveka in the final folios of the LRCM. Although he explains there the most difficult

verses of Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism—verses suggesting to others that all reasoning is

fruitless—Tsongkhapa apparently continued to face three interrelated challenges to his Centrism

interpretation, which he met with two large textual commentaries and one monograph.

Tsongkhapa had to prove (1) that Nāgārjuna’s Centrism is the supreme view of reality,

fully and uniquely consistent with ethics, reasoning, and the practices of bodhisattva path; (2)

that Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s work is quite distinct from and

superior to Formalist interpretations; and (3) that Centrism is markedly and importantly different

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from the Idealistic view articulated in the Samdhinirmocana Sūtra and elaborated in works by

Maitreya, Asanga, and Vasubandhu. He attempted to prove the first two points with Ocean of

Reasoning, a massive commentary on Wisdom, and Illuminating the Intent, a complete

commentary on Candakīrti’s Entry to Centrism written at the end of his life.338 The third point is

the focus of his hermeneutical treatise Essence of True Eloquence: Differentiating the

Interpretable and Definitive, which Tsongkhapa wrote upon considering, after having completed

the beginning of Ocean, that he first had to establish unequivocally that Candrakīrti’s

Conventionalism—the basis for his own exegesis—is the most profound view of reality and,

unlike Idealism or Formalism, completely free of positing intrinsic identity (that is, a

conventionally absolute self of sorts) while still upholding causality.339

In terms of sequence and theme, Ocean establishes the accurate view—that of Centrist

Conventionalism—as the absence of intrinsic identity with respect to all phenomena, from

production to nirvana and the Buddha himself; Essence of True Eloquence distinguishes this

view from Idealistic ontology, which insists on the relative intrinsic identity of consciousness;

and Illuminating the Intent links the Centrist view with the bodhisattva path, culminating in a

discussion of the Buddha’s unique capacities that, after all, depend on the absence of intrinsic

identity as the very capacity for change, including the transformation from ordinary to

enlightened.340 Tsongkhapa’s mature writing phase, then, is bookended by explanations of the

338
Hereafter, I use the abbreviations LRCM for Lam rim chen mo; Ocean for Ocean of Reasoning; Wisdom for
Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Treatise on Centrism, called Wisdom, Mūlamadhyamakakarikā-nāma-Prajñā;
Illuminating for Tsongkhapa’s Illuminating the Intent of the Entry to Centrism and Entry for Candrakīrti’s Entry to
Centrism.
339
Although the distinction between Conventionalist (Prāsaṅgika) and Formalist (Svātantrika) interpretations of
Centrism is important and, indeed, one of Tsongkhapa’s most important contributions to Centrism exegesis, I will
not focus directly on that topic. Recent scholarship has attended to this specific topic, but I will treat it as one form
of reification, albeit the subtlest.
340
Throughout the chapter I use intrinsic identity, intrinsic reality, and intrinsic existence as synonyms. That is, for
something to exist, it should have identity conditions to distinguish it, and for something to have an identity, it

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bodhisattva path with a Centrist orientation, from Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to

Enlightenment (1402) to Illuminating the Intent of the Entry to Centrism (1418).

An important feature of Tsongkhapa’s emphasis on the bodhisattva path is its progressive

aspect whereby various elements provide, through contemplation and meditation, access to

greater depth of spiritual insight, supplementing and building on one another. Like any Tibetan

Buddhist’s life narrative, Tsongkhapa’s abounds with instances in which a specific text,

teaching, ritual, or meditation provides such access; indeed, most such life narratives are oriented

around these transformative events. The stages of the path genre, exemplified by his LRCM,

identifies the bodhisattva career as one of three options available to the Buddhist practitioner

under the rubric of the “three types” who aspire, respectively, to a better rebirth, personal

liberation, or buddhahood.341 The teachings pertaining to those lower types are, in a sense,

directed toward their limited capacities, exemplifying the concept of creative pedagogy (upāya)

that is a hallmark of many mahāyāna sūtras.342

Similarly, with respect to the supreme type of person who aspires for buddhahood—one

who has the mahāyāna lineage, in tathātagarbha genre terminology343—Tsongkhapa considers

should exist in some way. The manner of that existence or identity is precisely what is at issue in the following
pages. There are a number of Tibetan terms with precise meanings that indicate whether ontology or epistemology is
at issue, but the more general sense will suffice here.
341
Insofar as Tsongkhapa presumes there is one final vehicle to which the lower two types will aspire when karmic
conditions allow, those two types are—like those outside of this rubric—merely provisional or temporary states.
342
By providing, the metaphor goes, medicine appropriate to the specific ailments of the person—typologized
broadly as 84,000 possible delusions to be counteracted or, in this case, condensed with respect to three types—the
physician who is the Buddha cures what ails all, both temporarily and ultimately according to their individual
capacities.
343
One of the issues of this genre is its use of the Skt. term gotra (Tib. rigs) which has been translated as lineage,
clan, or family, which suggests an exclusivist model of mahāyāna Buddhism, a sort of genetic hardwiring that, on a
certain interpretation similar to that of some contemporary scientists, nature triumphs nurture quite markedly.
“Lineage,” on the interpretation that Tsongkhapa’s tradition, and others, put forth indicates the inverse: that nurture
triumphs over nature, which is itself a temporary condition of ongoing personal evolutionary development. This can
be gleaned from much of what has been discussed already in prior chapters.

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the two mahāyāna frameworks for the Buddha’s teachings on the view of reality (Centrism and

Idealism), along with the interpretations of the Indian masters derived therefrom, to be on an

ascending scale of profundity available and appropriate to specific intellectual capacities.

Tsongkhapa identifies this increasing profundity in terms of the degree to which adherence to

intrinsic identity is denied, with the Idealistic view superseded by two types of Formalist Centrist

interpretations (one attributed to Bhāviveka and one to Śāntarakṣita) until the Conventionalist

view, which argues against any form of intrinsic identity, supplants those. Articulating the

precise distinctions that account for this pedagogically oriented approach and establishing the

relative profundity of these two types of buddhavacana —termed the second and third turnings of

the wheel of Dharma—are the twin aims of Tsongkhapa’s Essence of True Eloquence.

In distinguishing which views of reality the Buddha teaches as interpretable or definitive,

Tsongkhapa addresses in Essence of True Eloquence the fact, presumably obvious, that two

contradictory analyses cannot both be correct in a final, or definitive, sense. That is, like his

colleagues in Buddhist Tibet, he regards both the second and third turnings of the wheel of

Dharma to be authentically attributed to the Buddha: the second turning, represented by the

perfection of wisdom sūtras interpreted literally, denies intrinsic identity without qualification

whereas the third turning, represented quintessentially in terms of the view by Sūtra Elucidating

the Intention, specifies that those perfection of wisdom sūtras should not be understood literally.

Given the prima facie contradiction of these two perspectives, Tsongkhapa argues that while

only one reading of the sūtras can be definitive, representing how things actually exist both

ultimately and conventionally, the other can be understood as valid for certain purposes. That is,

a provisional view of reality can be regarded as a form of medicine—similar to the aspiration for

personal liberation within the lam rim genre—appropriate temporarily for those who cannot

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stomach the true curative, the definitive view. Tsongkhapa’s Essence of True Eloquence

distinguishes the definitive view from intepretable views in order to counter others who

misunderstand the important differences among them, but also acknowledges the propaedeutic

function of such views in undermining gradually the innate, beginningless adherence to intrinsic

identity.

At least four types of opponents can be identified with respect to the arguments

Tsongkhapa advances in Essence of True Eloquence:344 (1) those, like Rongtön Sheja Kunrig,

who considers Yogic Practice/Idealism and Centrism to be equally profound and intending the

same meaning; (2) those, like Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, who considers the definitive view to

supersede both scripturally verified views, arguing for a positive, absolute reality that withstands

the rational analyses of Nāgārjuna’s Centrism; (3) those, like Rongtön’s student and one of

Tsongkhapa’s most vociferous later critics, Gorampa Sonam Sengé, who regards Formalism and

Conventionalism to be distinguished merely by use of logical forms rather than ontological

commitments; and (4) those who understand Conventionalism to be a denial of the importance of

conventional reality, both with respect to logic and reasoning and as an actual truth known by

enlightened awareness. 345 The first two opposing points—the accurate relationship between

344
It may be noticed, drawing on chapter one, that Sakyapas (here, counting Dolpopa among them) figure
importantly here, but this is simply to observe again that Sakya dominates the scholastic life of Central Tibet at this
time and there is a diversity of opinions among its scholars. Opposing views certainly would be found in other
communities as well. As discussed earlier, Rongtön Sheja Kunrig, appears to have taken personal offense at
Tsongkhapa’s writings, and this offense may have something to do with the opening of Essence where Tsongkhapa
observes that no other Tibetan—including the great Sakya Pandita—has fathomed properly the depths of
Conventionalist interpretation. Taken as an arrogant assertion of intellectual supremacy rather than an
acknowledgment of unique insight (and Tsongkhapa’s critics, especially Gorampa, insist his insight is unique – and
wrong), this surely might provoke unpleasant responses. Yet Sakya Pandita himself engaged in just such sorts of
intellectual boasts in his Distinguishing the Three Vows. Insofar as both are monks governed by the rule not to claim
false levels of insight, one should take these statements as honest self-assessments open to rebuttal—such as
Tsongkhapa offers with respect to Dolpopa in Essence.
345
It appears that Rongtön and Gorampa agree on points one, three, and four, and like Tsongkhapa, Gorampa
explicitly refutes the other-empty theory of Dolpopa.

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Idealistic and Centrist views, of which Dolpopa’s theory is, to Tsongkhapa, a disastrous

misreading of the textual sources—will be discussed initially, after which I will consider in detail

the second two opposing points in conjunction with Tsongkhapa’s own positions; the last point is

the chief concern of the chapter.

Distinguishing the Mahāyāna Views of Reality

Essence of True Eloquence: Differentiating the Interpretable and the Definitive is an

extended presentation of the verses (In Praise of Relativity, rten ’brel stod pa) that Tsongkhapa

composed spontaneously upon his breakthrough a decade earlier, verses praising the Buddha for

his unique teaching of dependent origination that is coextensive with emptiness. This is a theme

to which he returned frequently in his compositions, including the brief Three Principles of the

Path, wherein he writes that for those who truly understand this coextensive relationship, the

mere appearance of phenomena suffices to induce the realization of emptiness. In this way, all

phenomena whatsoever are illustrations of the two truths, ultimate and conventional: they are

empty of intrinsic identity and produced in dependence on three factors, causes and conditions;

parts and wholes; and the awareness that designates their identity. This coextensive relationship

of the two truths forms the basis for his understanding of the accurate view of reality, and the

necessity of an awareness that designates the identity and existence of conventional phenomena

in dependence upon the causal and mereological continuum is a hallmark of his Conventionalist

interpretation. Because the Idealistic view considers any conceptual awareness of phenomena to

be thoroughly erroneous, and because some interpreters of Candrakīrti understood his to be a

similar position, the importance of conceptual thought and language plays an important part of

my investigation, especially with respect to Tsongkhapa’s writings on tantra.

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 For the purposes of the analysis here, and to concentrate on Tsongkhapa’s critique of the

Idealistic view, one must distinguish the broader tradition stemming primarily from the future

buddha Maitreya/Maitreyanātha, Asanga, and Vasubandhu—what one may call the Yogic

Practice (Yogācāra) tradition, which Tsongkhapa calls the lineage of vast methods oriented

around the systematization of the bodhisattva deeds—from the narrower perspective of the

Idealistic view set out in many of the works of these same three figures but whose locus classicus

is Sūtra Elucidating the Intention.346 Whatever the murky history of these (or any) teachings

attributed to the Buddha from a modern perspective, for Tsongkhapa and his colleagues the

mahāyāna could be differentiated clearly into two streams of transmission: the profound view

(Centrism) taught by Mañjuśrī to Nāgārjuna, and the vast bodhisattva methods (Yogic Practice)

taught by Maitreya, the future buddha, to Asaṅga.347 Both streams originate with the Buddha,

and each stream depends on the other for buddhahood.348 Hence, Tsongkhapa is concerned (a) to

346
Recent scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism, in part drawing on the importance of Yogic Practice in East Asia, has
begun to investigate its influence outside of the shadow of Centrism, which from the earliest period is considered
superior in terms of ontology, according to the syncretic works of Śāntarakṣīta and Kamalaśīla. Yogic Practice is
anything but absent from Tibetan scholastic institutions, whether in the form of the epistemological tradition drawn
from Dignāga and Dharmakīrti or of the Maitreya-associated works noted above. Even Atiśa, that staunch
proponent of Candrakīrti, promotes the Kadampa study of Yogic Practice works, such as Ornament of the
Mahāyāna Sūtras and Bodhisattva Levels, for their detailed emphasis on the path to enlightenment. Tsongkhapa
specifically praises Atiśa for having combined in his teachings these two traditions into a single stream. Thus,
Tsongkhapa’s criticism of the ontology underlying Yogic Practice, which I am characterizing as Idealism, emerges
from his detailed study of the textual sources rather than any sort of blind devotion to Candrakīrti or disdain for
Yogic Practice as a whole. The doxographic impulse that emerges among Gandenpas after Tsongkhapa as, in part, a
way to simplify the vast material for the massive collection of monks derives from Essence of True Eloquence but
has predecessors in India. Like the textbook genre (yig cha), Gandenpa doxographic literature (grub mtha’) has been
criticized for transforming nuanced philosophical positions into lifeless caricatures for partisan ends. Given the
partisan competition within Buddhist Tibet after Tsongkhapa, this characterization may be fair, but Tsongkhapa’s
writing is largely absent polemical intent. This is true even with respect to Dolpopa, I would maintain, for among
Tsongkhapa’s early teachers was Dolpopa’s direct student Sazang Mati Panchen.
347
Even so, Tsongkhapa holds that Maitreya and Asaṅga do not personally consider Idealism to be the definitive
view but rather teach it, as does the Buddha in the third turning, for the benefit of those who cannot tolerate the
Centrist view of thorough emptiness.
348
That is, the basic framework of mahāyāna Buddhism consists of these two categories or collections, wisdom and
method/art/compassion-in-action, that must be embodied fully; their total integration is enlightenment, buddhahood.
The path to enlightenment, the bodhisattva path, is constituted by these two, and the various ways of distinguishing
levels of attainment refer to one’s embodiment of an element (e.g., generosity on the first ground) of these two.

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defend the interpretable validity of the Idealistic view as a form of compassionate pedagogy, (b)

to differentiate it from the other-empty view that Dolpopa had propounded based in part on an

inaccurate interpretation of the sources, and (c) to specify how it diverges from the definitive

view, the Conventionalist Centrism articulated by Candrakīrti.349

Tsongkhapa’s Defense of the Mind Only View

In Sūtra Elucidating the Intention, the Buddha is questioned about the interpretation of

the perfection of wisdom teachings, which appear to deny the intrinsic identity of all phenomena

without exception.350 Surely this cannot be taken literally (as Nāgārjuna’s Centrism does), his

interlocutors insist, so the Buddha is asked to clarify precisely what is empty of intrinsic identity

While wisdom may be characterized as a removal of misknowledge, it is complemented necessarily by the

acquisition or accumulation of positive qualities. This second category—the distinguishing feature of the mahāyāna
with its aim of buddhahood—occupies a central concern in Tsongkhapa’s philosophy, for disproportionate emphasis
on wisdom or the misunderstanding of wisdom as the denial of conventional reality as real could result in significant
inattention to the path in full, leaving integration at buddhahood impossible. Indeed, the precise balance between
ultimate and conventional, with specific attention to the conventional, is the hallmark of Tsongkhapa’s work.
349
One of Tsongkhapa’s earliest compositions, written well before his philosophical breakthrough, is an analysis of
the ālaya-vijñāna, Ocean of Eloquence: A Commentary on the Difficult Points of Ālaya-Vijñāna and Kliṣṭa-mānas.
This is a brief but detailed overview of Yogic Practice sources, especially Asaṅga’s comprehensive
Mahāyānasaṁgraha, that addresses the topics on their own terms. This phase of his education, focused largely on
Ornament of Clear Realizations just as his first teacher had instructed, culminated in the writing of Golden Rosary.
Ornament is attributed in the Tibetan tradition to Maitreya, with Asaṅga acting as scribe; hence, Tsongkhapa
immersed in the classics of these Yogic Practice authors for many years, parsing their meanings and internalizing
their contents without necessarily needing to contrast their metaphysics with Centrist sources. Consonant with his
own advice to study widely, and evidenced by Realization Narrative: Excellent Presence of his having done so, his
initial task was that of the first two forms of wisdom, those of listening/studying and of contemplation. It is not
surprising that his early writings do not venture into claims of experiential insight. Essence of True Eloquence,
however, does contrast the metaphysics of the two schools and does claim experiential insight: “There have been
many who did not realize That Place [i.e., the meditative direct insight into ultimate reality]…But I have seen It
quite precisely…” (See Thurman 1984 189). In presenting himself as a model for other scholars, he does not shy
away from acknowledging his initial lack of experiential insight nor, as cited here, from acknowledging what he
understands to be his own precise experiential insight. Both acknowledgments proceed from and bolster his claim
that textual knowledge precedes experiential knowledge. Tsongkhapa’s apotheosis in the later tradition, at least the
form in which he is understood to be an emanation of Mañjuśrī, could detract from the impact of emphasis of his
spiritual development in his life narratives, particularly if one becomes concerned to “explain away” inconsistencies
in his writings. Understanding Tsongkhapa to have been tutored by Mañjuśrī, without also having been an
emanation, avoids that concern; this topic deserves more research.
350
Hopkins 1999 and 2002 study Tsongkhapa’s text and commentaries to it, respectively, and Hopkins 2005
provides his own reflections on the topics related to Tsongkhapa's understanding.

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and what is not.351 Over the course of the sūtra, the Buddha introduces two concepts critical to

Yogic Practice thought: the three natures, trisvabhāva, which take the place of the two truths,

and the fundamental consciousness, alaya-vijñāna, which serves as a substratum for the six

ordinary types of consciousness in a new eight-consciousness model. The three natures, each of

which is unreal in a particular way, are (1) the imagined nature, which is established by names

and concepts but not by intrinsic identity; (2) the dependent nature, which is established by

causes and conditions (hence, not its own nature or self) and by intrinsic identity; and (3) the

perfect nature, which is the emptiness of subject-object duality, which is the dependent nature’s

being empty of the imagined nature—that is, lacking conceptual construction. This distinction is

a key point for Tsongkhapa’s presentation of the definitive view, which takes precisely the key

role of conceptual construction in the establishment of nominal reality as a robust reality—an

actual truth among the two truths, in distinction to other interpretations of Candrakīrti.

351
It may be, as Brunnholzl argues in Asaṅga, that in general “Yogācāra is not only not inferior to Madhyamaka but
actually exhibits a much more encompassing outlook on the human experience and the soteriological issues of the
Buddhist path in particular than the rather unidimensional Madhyamaka approach of just relentlessly deconstructing
everything through reasoning,” but Tsongkhapa’s specific critique of its ontological foundations remains. (xix)
Moreover, such a perspective seems to presume the sociological improbability of a complete separation of Indian
Buddhist monastic institutions between Yogic Practice and Centrists, a scenario that defies what (little) is known
about the composition of these scholastic/monastic communities. Further, it appears clear from the synthetic
philosophical positions of major Indian Buddhist philosophers (Śāntarakṣīta being a perfect example) that no such
separation existed in theory either, except as constructed by opponents. More to the point, such a perspective
presumes that any position—be it related to ethics, forms of practice, or epistemology—is somehow the sole
provenance of a specific group or “school,” which relates loosely to the ideal (above) regarding the two transmission
streams but hardly conforms to the textual sources such as Entry or Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, both of which
are quintessential Centrist treatises that integrate with their metaphysics the bodhisattva practices typically
associated with the Yogic Practice tradition. Indeed, Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland, which predates the Yogic
Practice masters by more than a century and is considered by some in the Gelukpa tradition the first lam rim treatise,
contains detailed references to the ten bodhisattva levels and its practice. The evidence for cross-fertilization of
practices and ideas retained in the textual remains of Indian Buddhism disproves such a theory, and the evidence
from the transmission to Tibet indicates that the ideal, as noted previously with respect to Atiśa, is for a scholar to
know the full scope of the Buddha’s teaching in order to separate the provisional from definitive. Thus it is not at all
the case that the leading scholars of India, whether self-styled as proponents of Centrism, Yogic Practice, or a
synthesis of the two, wantonly and unthinkingly refute opponents without having a nuanced knowledge of that
opponent’s position along with its sources and arguments. The same ideal largely holds true in Tibet, not
withstanding Tsongkhapa’s criticisms of certain colleagues who repudiated that ideal and promoted a biased
approach to a single aspect of the Buddha’s teachings.

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 The eight-consciousness model, with the fundamental consciousness as its hub, is the

psychological counterpart to the three natures. The six consciousnesses (five sensory and one

mental) enumerated in the higher knowledge literature and accepted in Centrism become in this

model part of a feedback loop of karmic imprints that dispenses completely with external

objects. This eightfold model expresses how misknowledge—which here refers to the habitual,

reflexive acceptance of subject-object duality—maintains its all-encompassing grip on mental

processes and results in the process of cyclic existence. The conceptually constructed phenomena

that constitute the imagined nature are seen in non-conceptual meditation as the falsities that they

are; the psychological addictions of aversion and desire are thereby undermined; and samsara

becomes nirvana.

With respect to (a), compassionate pedagogy, Tsongkhapa follows Candrakīrti in arguing

that Idealistic theories cannot be definitive teachings but must be understood simply as an

attempt by the Buddha to establish the power of the mind as the world’s creator, through the

processes of conceptual construction and karmic causality.352 Conceptual construction produces

the appearances of phenomena as distinct, identifiable things out of the endless flux of material

and mental processes, and karmic causality underlies the ongoing production of the continuum of

psychophysical constituents on which the designation of identity is made. Rather than positing,

as earlier scholars of higher knowledge have done, the substantial existence of irreducible

components of experience (dharmas, in the sense of ‘things’), Yogic Practice philosophers agree

with Centrist philosophers that such ostensible substantial existence is simply a form of selfhood

attributed to phenomena. The analysis of the nature of the selfhood of persons, which reveals the

352
Candrakīrti, at verses 6.84 and 6.85 in Entry cites the Lankāvatāra Sūtra, a third-turning authority, which claims
just that provisional intention on the part of the Buddha, which Candrakīrti explains should be understood to refer to
any idealistic presentation. See Huntington 1989 167 and 247.

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absence of any substantial reality for any Buddhist thinker, reveals the same absence with respect

to other phenomena as well, according to Yogic Practice and Centrism proponents.

However, for Yogic Practice advocates, taking Elucidating the Intention literally,

subjectivity itself must have an intrinsic identity for there to be awareness at all; without this, the

very possibility for knowledge, liberation, and buddhahood disappears. From the Centrist

perspective of Tsongkhapa, following Nāgārjuna’s critique of Nyāya foundationalist

epistemology, subjectivity cannot have intrinsic identity, for that would undermine the very

capacity for knowledge of something. For, the unrelenting Centrist critique is in a nutshell:

intrinsic identity/existence precludes relationality, such that causes and conditions could have no

bearing whatsoever on something thus posited. In other words, a phenomenon possessing

intrinsic identity—an essence, independent and fixed—by definition could not be altered or

transformed in any way, for intrinsicality entails immutability, permanence, independence—and

ontological isolation. And a subjectivity, in this case, possessing intrinsic identity could not

know anything, even itself, thus undermining Idealistic claims of reflexive self-awareness

(svasamvedanā, rang rig).

Nevertheless, Tsongkhapa maintains—referring to the general Buddhist principle that the

Buddha’s teaching provides medicine provisionally necessary for any and every possible

existential ailment without immediate concern for ultimate reality—that certain individuals not

equipped with the psychological capacity to tolerate the Centrist position, who consider the

second turning to be a form of nihilism, benefit from the Idealistic ontology in ways that prepare

them for the definitive view.353 By using Idealistic scaffolding to prevent the nihilistic

353
That is, the Idealistic emphasis on the role of consciousness in creating the world, rather than merely
apprehending a pre-existent world, is a significant step forward from the realism of the two non-mahāyāna schools,
Vaibhaṣika and Sautrāntrika, identified in standard Tibetan doxography, which assume just such a substantial
external reality awaiting substantial internal consciousnesses.

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misunderstanding of emptiness as non-existence, Tsongkhapa argues, persevering meditators can

and should grapple with Centrist reasoning—moving from Bhāvya's to Śāntarakṣita's and finally

to Candrakīrti's—to undermine the adherence to the intrinsic identity of the fundamental

consciousness. Recognizing that an asymmetrical ontology, in which an intrinsically real

consciousness apprehends unreal external objects, underlies an untenable epistemology, such

meditators finally can come to tolerate the Centrist symmetry of mere (essence-less)

consciousness engaging with mere (essence-less) external objects, each depending on the other

for its identity as subject or object.

Dolpopa’s Other-Empty (Gzhan Stong) Theory

With respect to (b), differentiating the Idealistic view from Dolpopa’s other-empty

(gzhan stong) theory, Tsongkhapa argues that the latter does not qualify as a Buddhist view at

all, for it explicitly repudiates conventional reality altogether. There is an important distinction

between the denial of external objects different in nature from the consciousness apprehending it

(Idealism) and Dolpopa’s wholesale denial of those objects, a distinction between non-duality

and monism. Idealism asserts that objects are deceptive in that they appear to exist as external to

consciousness due to the force of karma that shapes objective reality into apparently real,

discrete phenomena. The relative nature that is the conditioned basis for the designations of such

phenomena is, however, intrinsically real, as is the perfect nature.

Tsongkhapa’s emphasis on the interpretation of the scriptural sources for the Idealistic

view appears to be foremost a reaction to Dolpopa’s theory, which claims support from the third

turning—of which Elucidating is the principal exegetical key—and the literal understanding of

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the buddha-nature (tathātagarbha) concept in other third turning sources.354 Relying on the

literal interpretation of certain third turning scriptures, such as Ratnagotravibhāga, and

buttressed by a particular understanding of the empty-form body of the Kālacakra Tantra,

Dolpopa’s other-empty theory rejects the relative nature as an illusion and posits an absolute,

independent self that is the essence of beings. He characterizes this theory as “great Centrism”

(dbu ma chen po) that exceeds the dialectical reasoning of Nāgārjuna that deconstructs all

conceptual identities that misknowledge reifies. Once the fire of wisdom incinerates that

misknowledge, and phenomenal reality disappears, then the real, immutable nature of the self,

resplendent with the intrinsic qualities of buddhahood, shines forth—so claims Dolpopa.355

Without pausing long on Dolpopa’s other-empty theory—which is criticized widely by

leading Tibetan scholars, especially Tsongkhapa’s main teacher, Rendawa—a few pertinent

points may be observed. First, as I note in chapter two, Tsongkhapa perceived among his fellow

354
Those sources, especially Elucidating, provide little to no support for Dolpopa’s claim that an absolute exists
within sentient beings, waiting to be unveiled by the deconstructive power of wisdom. And since Elucidating
presents itself as the hermeneutic key to the third turning, to disregard it—the Buddha’s own clear statement—for a
self-formulated theory would be to step outside of the Buddha’s teachings, as Tsongkhapa regards it. Tony Duff, a
well known translator and practitioner, has promoted with vigor the supremacy of the other-emptiness view,
explains (70) that this view supersedes the Second Wheel teaching that Tsongkhapa advocates as supreme and
underlies the practice of tantra, suggesting an alternative formulation of a coordination of sūtra and tantra: “The
tathāgatagarbha is the seed of enlightenment contained in but cloaked by the dross of an ordinary being's samsaric
mind. A more profound approach is that it is not merely a seed of enlightenment within an ordinary being's mind but
is actual enlightenment existing within an ordinary being. This latter approach is the view held by the Other
Emptiness schools and is certainly the view of the tantras.”
355
Khentrul Rinpoche (in the section “How the Relative Has Never Existed,” 40-43) is very clear on this (42): “In
the Jonang system, relative phenomena are necessarily non-existent because "the relative" are equivalent to "deluded
appearances.” Thus everything which is classified as a deluded appearance is relative. As those deluded appearances
are exhausted within an individual’s mind, the essence of the mind of the knower becomes more and more manifest.
Finally, the mind of the relative is completely exhausted, leaving only the ultimate.” (emphasis mine) Khenpo
Tsultrim Gyamsto Rinpoche, a contemporary Kagyu master, says much the same, although he does not go so far as
the Jonang view: “This non-conceptual Wisdom Mind is not the object of the conceptualizing process and so is not
negated by Madhyamaka reasoning. Therefore, it can be said to be the only thing that has absolute and true
existence.” (88) It is precisely Tsongkhapa’s point that conceptualization is not the problem at hand, as posited here,
but subtle, primal misknowledge, as should become clear below. See Wallace for an exploration of the complex use
of language and imagery in the Indian Kālacakra literature, particularly in reference to perfection of wisdom
sources, which would lead Tsongkhapa to insist on the authenticity of this system in relation to other unexcelled
yoga systems, particularly with respect to concern for the Centrist view and a conservative perspective on sexual
yogas in the Stainless Light commentary, the exegetical key for the root tantra.

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Tibetans a tendency toward minimal textual learning—particularly among some meditators—and

a partiality toward a very circumscribed body of texts among some scholars. The former

tendency could result in taking scriptural pronouncements literally, such as conceiving of the

tathātagarbha as a real, intrinsic self or engaging in certain deviant practices prescribed in the

tantras (noted in chapter one as the precise cause for Yeshe Ö’s inviting Atiśa to Western Tibet).

The latter tendency could result in taking certain texts and practices as unique and superior,

thereby disregarding their context within the entirety of the Buddha’s teaching, an acute danger

among tantric practitioners taking their own community’s favorite as singularly efficacious.356

Dolpopa’s theory appears to suffer from both problems, even though he himself was by all

accounts a brilliant scholar. If one considers that Dolpopa understood his own spiritual

breakthrough to have occurred in dependence on Kālacakra, which he regards as singularly

efficacious, then he may be reinterpreting the Idealistic teaching, and other textual sources, in

relation to his other-empty discovery, using personal experience as his interpretive guide to

scripture.357

Second, Dolpopa appears to have remained among most contemporaneous Sakya

scholars an esteemed figure even after promulgating his other-empty theory, suggesting his ideas

did not strike many as problematic as they do later scholars. This in part may relate to an affinity

356
Sheehy discusses the hermeneutical elements of Dolpopa's philosophy, a prominent feature of which is to
distinguish layers of scriptural revelation according to alleged period (yuga) in which it was produced, with
advanced teachings, such as the tantras, for the vastly intelligent, like himself, coming from a different time in
cosmic evolution.
357
This inverted process may lie behind Tsongkhapa’s insistence on the traditional adherence to the four
hermeneutical keys, particularly with respect to literal interpretation, and with regard to unexcelled yoga tantra
especially, on the necessary balance between the teacher’s oral guidance and the underlying intentions of all tantric
scriptures, which are distributed unevenly and partially, for the sake of secrecy, throughout the tantras. If one does
not situate the teacher’s personal advice in relation to the full scope of the Buddha’s own teachings, or a given
tantra’s specific emphasis in relation to the primary structural elements of its class, then one has elevated the teacher
over the teaching and the surface meaning over the intended meaning, thereby abdicating the spiritual growth
derived from interpretation and reasoning and hewing to a sort of fundamentalist perspective.

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between Dolpopa’s rejection of conventional reality as illusion and the standard Sakya view of

reality in which conventional reality— due to its being a product of linguistic and conceptual

practices—is not established as a robust truth. Such a view can posit as practically equivalent

Idealism, Formalism, and Conventionalism interpretations if deft exegesis is used to flatten the

differences in these views rather than, as Tsongkhapa does, to accentuate them.358 The

commonality across this line of interpretation is the denigration of language and concepts as

sufficient grounding for causality; that is, if conceptually designated phenomena lack intrinsic

identity, then from this perspective they lack identity altogether, except as misconceived by

misknowledge.359 Existence that is not intrinsic existence, then, is a false manner of existence

that ceases to be misconceived once the fire of wisdom burns away that misknowledge, and

phenomenal reality disappears. For this position and related ones, the transformation (rather than

the unveiling, as with Dolpopa’s) resulting in buddhahood is complex and gradual.

Whereas Dolpopa’s theory suggests the raison d’etre of the bodhisattva path—the other-

oriented aspect of empathic, creative art (upāya) that underlies most of the six/ten perfections

resulting in the two material bodies of buddhahood—is an illusion, these other, similar positions

maintain the necessity of that path and its resulting two material bodies even while arguing that

358
As Thakchoe 2007 146 observes with respect to Gorampa’s position, he attempts to integrate the fundamental
consciousness of the Idealistic view with Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism. As Gorampa understood Centrist and
Idealistic views to be consonant and Conventionalism to differ from Formalism only methodologically, he is in
effect committed to undermining conventional truth as falsity due to its lack of intrinsic identity. For him, a “sheer
luminous consciousness that is uninterrupted” emerges when the six consciousnesses engaged with conceptuality
subside. This position certainly has affinities with both mahāmudrā and other-empty presentations within the Kagyu
tradition, which strongly emphasize non-conceptuality in such a manner. And indeed Gorampa claims (see Cabezon
and Dargyay 93) that his view is precisely that shared by all the scholar-adepts of Tibetan history, by which he
ascribes to Tsongkhapa complete deviance from tradition. Gorampa also suggests that Tsongkhapa’s “unique”
Centrist interpretation derives from a demon posing as Mañjuśrī.
359
This is covered fully below.

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conventional truth is strictly false.360 In the case of the Conventionalist interpretation that

Tsongkhapa opposes, this dichotomy is so strict that conventional truth, being solely the product

of misknowledge, is in principle unknowable by a buddha’s omniscient wisdom. From these

related perspectives buddhahood seems to be fundamentally a self-oriented goal that in some

manner happens, out of necessity, to pander to the needs of the illusory others misconceiving

their shared, suffering reality as real. This constellation of similar positions is what Tsongkhapa

targets in his defense of conventional truth as truth.

Distinguishing Centrist and Mind Only Views

With respect to (c), how Idealism diverges from the definitive view of reality,

Tsongkhapa observes that while this position advocates explicitly that phenomena must possess

intrinsic identity, certain interpreters of Nāgārjuna’s Centrism do so implicitly. As noted earlier,

the introduction of Candrakīrti’s writings in Tibet make some scholars aware of the problematic

nature of integrating Centrist antirealism with the ontological foundations of the epistemological

tradition, as Bhāvaviveka and the Three Easterners—all Formalism advocates—have attempted.

From the extant textual records and Tsongkhapa’s own characterizations in his writings of his

predecessors’ positions, proponents and opponents of Candrakīrti’s critique of Bhāvaviveka’s

integration understood him to be rejecting logic and reasoning completely and advocating an

anti-rationalist approach to spiritual development. That is, both groups understand Candrakīrti’s

objections to the use of autonomous syllogisms and commitment to the use of consequences

360
In the case of the Conventionalist interpretation that Tsongkhapa opposes, this dichotomy is so strict that
conventional truth, being solely the product of misknowledge, is in principle unknowable to a buddha’s omniscient
wisdom. Tsongkhapa argues that this is a serious misunderstanding of Candrakīrti’s work; however, in the context
of anti-rational interpretation of Conventionalism, this is at least consistent—although it is certainly an interesting
perspective on the meaning of omniscience.

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exposing absurdities in others’ philosophical positions to entail an epistemological skepticism

consonant with Nāgārjuna’s famed claim to have no philosophical position of his own. On this

interpretation, as nothing—existence, nonexistence, both, or neither—can be predicated of

phenomena, concepts and language are the very ties that bind one to, rather than to release one

from, cyclic existence.

Again, for Idealism, the imagined nature is constituted by conceptuality; is ontologically

false, unlike the other two natures; and is to be undermined thoroughly by non-conceptual

meditation in order to attain liberation. For some of Candrakīrti’s followers, who take up the two

truths frame of Centrism, this understanding of the problematic nature of concepts and language

is indeed accurate with respect to conventional reality, which encompasses both the imagined

and relative natures. The differentiating details are significant, but fundamentally both agree that

conceptually constructed phenomena do not possess intrinsic identity and, therefore, lack any

meaningful identity at all: they are, in some sense, illusions. In brief, existence without some

form of intrinsic identity amounts to nonexistence, and dependently originated existence must

have some ontological grounding to possess any causal efficacy.361 It is Tsongkhapa’s claim that

only Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s Centrism, as its name claims,

forges a middle path, a central way, between reificationism that insists on the necessity of

361
Acknowledging the signal Centrist critique of intrinsic identity yet unwilling to stand outside the inter-sectarian
epistemological debates roiling Indian philosophy after Dharmakīrti’s profound impact, Formalists (Svātantrikas)
defend the use of autonomous syllogisms based on commonly appearing subjects as necessary in order to debate
rival positions. As Tsongkhapa understands Candrakīrti’s critique, this appeal to commonly appearing subjects
indicates a commitment (perhaps unwitting) to intrinsic identity conventionally, as a foundation for knowledge.
This distinction between the Formalist and Conventionalist positions is one to which I will refer indirectly, for a
comprehensive analysis might lead us away from the main concern, which is Tsongkhapa’s defense of Candrakīrti’s
Conventionalism against nihilistic interpretations.

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intrinsic identity and nihilism that denies the causality that grounds ethical actions and their

results.362

Nāgārjuna’s Centrism

The foundation of the Centrist tradition is Nāgārjuna’s Wisdom, which demolishes with

analytical rigor the various categories or bedrock phenomena that seem indubitably necessary in

order to establish the very possibility for existence, spiritual transformation, and liberation. The

crux of this text, and the heart of Centrist reasoning, holds that intrinsic identity necessarily,

definitionally, precludes causality, and that any relationality whatsoever is logically possible

only because of emptiness, which is the absence of intrinsic identity. Nāgārjuna contends in

Wisdom and elsewhere that one for whom emptiness is coherent or sensible, everything is

coherent or sensible.363 Nāgārjuna argues that intrinsic identity or existence (or nature or reality)

is conceptually coextensive with immutability, permanence, and independence—and, therefore,

ontological isolation. The absurdities that Nāgārjuna reveals are manifold: ordinary phenomena

such as fire could not come into existence, since intrinsic identity would entail its immutable

existence or complete nonexistence; fire could never be extinguished; fuel would serve no

362
Although Candrakīrti himself bases his interpretation on that of Buddhapālita, whom Bhāviveka attacked for
lacking formal reasoning in his commentary on Wisdom (Buddhapālita-Mūlamadhyamaka-vṛtti), Tsongkhapa
regards Candrakīrti as the seminal Conventionalist master. This may be due to his clarification of the conventional,
or his refutation of Mind Only’s claim to definitive meaning (Mind Only not yet prominent at Buddhapālita’s time),
or his work on Guhyasamāja that draws upon the Centrist view. In any case, it is Buddhapālita’s commentary that
stimulates Tsongkhapa’s intellectual breakthrough, and Buddhapālita who appears—with the other masters of
Centrism—in Tsongkhapa’s dream to acknowledge that breakthrough, according to Haven.
363
At Wisdom 24.14 Nāgārjuna makes this claim, and he concludes Refutation of Objections with a very similar
statement; on the latter, see Roger Jackson 1988. Jackson argues, while ranging over a host of thorny philosophical
issues, that Nāgārjuna’s claim does not succeed on its own and requires the epistemological tools that, in fact,
Tsongkhapa takes up from both Candrakīrti and Dharmakīrti in particular ways. Jackson’s main point seems to be
that although Nāgārjuna succeeds in arguing against essences as being causally efficient, he does not succeed in
explaining the causal efficiency of specific dependently originated phenomena and, more importantly, prove how
liberation is possible without appealing to a series of Buddhist truth claims.

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purpose; fire could not burn an object; and so forth. As Tsongkhapa explains in his commentary

to Wisdom:

[T]he very meaning of “dependent origination” is the same as the meaning of

“emptiness of essence.” But the nonexistence of things that are able to perform
functions is not at all the meaning of “emptiness.”364

Nāgārjuna insists in Refutation of Objections (Vigrahavyāvartanī) and Crushing the

Categories (Vaidalyaprakaraṇa) that ontological isolation entails epistemological isolation: any

object qualified with intrinsic identity is, in principle, unknowable. A cognition with intrinsic

identity could not have an object of knowledge, and that object itself could not even be an object

of any knowledge. This conclusion is asserted in a number of verses in Wisdom, this blunt

observation being one:

To deny emptiness is to assert that/No action is possible;

That there can be action without effort;
And that there can be an agent who performs no action. (XXIV.37)

Nāgārjuna begins Wisdom with his famed four-parameter analysis (catuṣkoṭi) that unveils the

incoherence of intrinsic identity by focusing on the basis of existence—production or

origination:

Neither from itself nor from another/Nor from both,

Nor without a cause/Does anything whatever, anywhere arise. (I.1)

This startling assertion rightly would entail, as Yogic Practice advocates charge, nihilism

if Nāgārjuna were denying production, and thereby causality, as such. But he is not denying this,

364
Garfield and Samten 478. This, of course, is not a position shared by other interpreters of Candrakīrti, who claim
that such nonexistence is precisely the meaning of emptiness. Formalists, of course, stipulate that emptiness of
intrinsic identity pertains only to ultimate truth, whereas conventional truth—phenomenal objects—must have
intrinsic identity.

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for he is denying only—and exposing the logical absurdity of—the very possibility of

intrinsically real production, which necessarily extends to abiding and cessation: coming into

existence, continuing to exist even momentarily, and going out of existence would be impossible

for something thus qualified. The impermanence of such a phenomenon would be its very

annihilation.

Nāgārjuna’s presumption in Wisdom is that things do exist—thus, he is no nihilist. It is

the manner of existence that he investigates; indeed, the first chapter is called “the examination

of conditions,” which implies the existence of some thing, some phenomenon to which

conditions could pertain. The the manner of any phenomenon’s existence is twofold: ultimate

and conventional. Emptiness—again, the lack of intrinsic or essential identity—is the ultimate

nature of a phenomenon, and causal dependence is the conventional nature of that phenomenon.

It is the sixth verse that is of interests here, for it bears on the issue of dependence that is central

to Tsongkhapa’s presentations of Centrism:

For neither an existent nor a nonexistent thing/Is a condition possible:

If a thing is nonexistent, of what would its condition be the condition?
If a thing is already existent, what would a condition do? (I.6)

This verse highlights the concept of mutual dependence that animates Wisdom and informs the

meaning of the four-parameter analysis, particularly its rejection of intrinsic production from self

and other:

Whatever comes into being dependent on another

Is neither identical to that thing/Nor different from it.
Therefore it is neither annihilated nor permanent. (XVIII.10)

In Ocean, Tsongkhapa observes that:

[R]easoning in terms of dependent origination shows that cause and effect are neither
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 essentially identical nor essentially different. This argument shows that this position is also
free of the errors of reification and nihilism with respect to causes. Besides cause and effect,
this also should be understood as the way to dispel both reification and nihilism and
essentially existent identity and difference in all dependently designated phenomena.365

Although Tsongkhapa elaborates in his Centrist writings how Nāgārjuna’s different

strategies of undermining the unconscious belief in intrinsic identity matter contextually, his own

primary method is to emphasize this concept of dependence. That method, he explains,

undermines both the philosophical adherence to reification and the unconscious self-habit that is

the primal misknowledge constructing the cycle of suffering; that method also undermines

nihilism, the denial of causality and conventional reality. In this way, the argument from

dependence entails relative reality insofar as it confirms some manner of existence by which

dependent phenomena are posited at all, while rejecting the possibility of intrinsic existence. The

former precludes a nihilistic reading of Centrism, and the latter carries forward the primary

objective of dismantling the reflexive reification causing bondage.366

Nāgārjuna’s unrelenting concern is to dismantle the possibility for any conscious

adherence to intrinsic nature, thereby providing the grist for contemplation and meditation to

undermine unconscious adherence, the self-habit that is primal misknowledge. He does not

explicitly characterize what existence without intrinsic reality entails, presumably because that

365
Garfield and Samten 387.
366
It is important to note that mutual, merely designated dependence is what Nāgārjuna and Tsongkhapa intend, for
it is possible, as Tsongkhapa elaborates in his analysis of chapter ten, “examination of fire and fuel,” that someone
might insist that the two elements of a dependent relationship are intrinsically existent. One has intrinsically real
fuel, which then causes an intrinsically real fire to burn. But (MMK X.8) in that case, still, a burning fire would
necessarily exist prior to contact with fuel, which then would serve no purpose–indeed, in what sense would it be
“fuel” at all? The fire would have begun causelessly, from one perspective, or have been burning forever, from
another perspective. Sequential dependence between intrinsically existent relata are thus rejected. However, one
might propose that two intrinsically real things relate in simultaneous dependence, each establishing the other, but
this too is rejected on precisely the same grounds. Thus, “mutual” refers to ontological status, not temporality.
Anything qualified as intrinsically real cannot, logically, contact another object, and this is most important with
respect to the mind, for its capacity to be a knowing subject would be vitiated. Nāgārjuna emphasizes the mutual
dependence of validating cognition (pramāṇa) and object of knowledge (prameya) for this reason.

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form of existence is precisely the form one encounters in ordinary life, since intrinsic reality is

utterly false, a superimposition. What need would there be to so characterize mundane reality,

wherein fuel and fire interact without ontological reification—that is, with a recourse to

essences?

Candrakīrti, to counter the Formalist insistence on the need to posit intrinsic reality

conventionally, finds it necessary to clarify that mundane reality, as Nāgārjuna has intimidated,

is simply grounded in unanalyzed conventions of concepts and language without need for

recourse to essences. 367 These unanalyzed conventions are simply the epistemological tools and

warrants of ordinary persons who, unlike philosophers, do not seek to ground causality in

essences—though this is not to say that they do not adhere unconsciously to essences.

Tsongkhapa finds it necessary to clarify that mundane reality, as Candrakīrti has explained, is

simply grounded in unanalyzed conventions of concepts and language without any need for

recourse to essences and that such characterization does not amount to illusion based in sheer

delusion.

367
From a historical perspective, Nāgārjuna’s interlocutors are reificationists of different stripes, whether Buddhists
committed to the reality of irreducible building blocks (dharmas) of the higher knowledge scholasticism, targeted in
Wisdom; Samkhyas also targeted in Wisdom, in the refutation of production from self, according to Buddhapālita’s
commentary; Nyāyayaikas targeted in Refutation of Objections; or Vaiśeṣikas targeted in Crushing the Categories.
Several hundred years later, Candrakīrti engages with two important trends in Buddhist thought that emerge after
Nāgārjuna writes: an emphasis on formal logic and epistemology, and the Mind Only view discussed above. I have
noted above that the Mind Only view, with its insistence on the intrinsic identity of the fundamental consciousness,
is certainly reificationist; and the two main views among the philosophers in the logico-epistemological, according
to Candrakīrti, are as well. Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, along with their commentators, uphold sophisticated views
that inevitably reify consciousness in some manner—a significant trend in late Indian Buddhism, as I observe in
chapter one.367 Bhāviveka, on the other hand, employs the logical forms and commitments of the epistemologists in
his own Centrism, unwittingly succumbing to a subtle form of reification that is the Formalist view. Tsongkhapa
faces the task of distinguishing such tendencies toward reification from the unencumbered use of logic and
reasoning that certain of his contemporaries, misunderstanding Candrakīrti’s critique, claim as anathema for a
Centrism proponent. For these opponents of Tsongkhapa, reasoning can establish nothing, for the infection of primal
misknowledge distorts the perception of conventional reality so thoroughly that all ordinary consciousness,
concepts, and language are futile—perhaps even counterproductive—with respect to liberation or full awakening.

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Rescuing the Path to Enlightenment from the Extremes

Of the two extremes, reification and nihilism, Nāgārjuna identifies the former as the

primary concern with respect to the continuity of unenlightened existence, for reification in its

subtlest form is the self habit, the unconscious adherence to intrinsic reality, the misknowledge

that the Buddha identifies as the first of the twelve links of dependent origination.368 Emptiness,

as the very absence of such intrinsic reality, makes possible the interaction between causes and

conditions to bring about an effect—hence, any sort of transformation, whether physical,

cognitive, psychological. Wisdom’s twenty-fourth chapter (verses 1-6) anticipates the objection

that emptiness—the lack of intrinsic nature—entails nonexistence, for existence could be

predicated only on a thing with true identity conditions. Emptiness, therefore, would undermine

not only mundane production and cessation, but vitiate all the elements of the Buddhist path as

well; emptiness is, the objection runs, nihilism.

In response Nāgārjuna summarizes the arguments of the preceding chapters and explains

precisely how the reverse of this objection is the case, specifying in a pair of verses (XXIV.16-

17) how, in fact, causality depends on emptiness:

If you regard all things/As existing in virtue of their essence,

Then you will regard all things/As being without causes and conditions. (16)
Effects and causes;/And agent, instrument, and action;
And arising and ceasing;/And the effects will be undermined. (17)

368
Tsongkhapa, in LRCM (3, 316–7) explains that “when living beings experience or see a phenomenon, they do
not apprehend it as being set up by the power of the mind to which it appears. Rather, they apprehend it as existing
just as it appears, i.e., as existing in an essentially objective manner. This is how intrinsic existence is superimposed.
The presence of such a nature in the object is what is meant by essence, intrinsic nature, and autonomous existence.
Thus, if such a nature were present, this would contradict reliance upon other causes and conditions.”

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Nāgārjuna’s Buddhist opponents have failed to understand that emptiness is synonymous with

selflessness, which is another way of characterizing dependent origination:

That which is dependent origination/Is explained to be emptiness.

That, being a dependent designation,/Is itself the middle way. (XXIV.18)

With respect to the path to enlightenment, which I characterize as Tsongkhapa’s primary

concern, this equivalence between emptiness and dependent origination is critical, for the latter,

positive concept precludes a nihilistic understanding that would undermine the status of the path.

As I detail below, “dependent designation” forms a critical part of Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of

Centrism. From XXIV.20 Nāgārjuna addresses the consequence of adhering to intrinsically

existing elements of the four noble truths, that fundamental Buddhist framework that includes the

spiritual path, and Tsongkhapa summarizes the problem:

Just as complete understanding would be impossible, according to your view,

the abandonment of the sources of suffering, the realization of cessation, and
the practice of the path would all be impossible. This is because if the sources
of suffering already existed essentially as unabandoned, they could not be
abandoned later, because essence cannot change.369

Such would entail, as Nāgārjuna observes at XXIV.32, that someone who is intrinsically

unenlightened, rather than simply being overwhelmed by misknowledge that is extricable,

“[e]ven by practicing the path to enlightenment, [c]ould not achieve enlightenment.” That is, it

would be impossible to become a bodhisattva, and even if one somehow were intrinsically one,

the bodhisattva practices could not effect the transformation into a buddha. The bodhisattva

path—as I have noted, often associated with the Yogic Practice proponents who systematize its

practices—that animates Candrakīrti’s Entry to Centrism would be, in that case, pointless. Thus,

rather than being combined with an Idealist view that is, in certain instances at least, attributed to

369
Garfield and Samten 508.

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those same systematizers, it turns out that the path is practiced properly only in tandem with the

Centrist view of emptiness. Moreover, even Bhāvaviveka’s Formalist interpretation of Centrism,

characterized by Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa as reificationism, would fail to avoid these

critiques.

The charge of nihilism that Nāgārjuna faces and rejects from his co-religionists emerges

explicitly with Asanga’s criticism in his Bodhisattva Levels. Asanga warns that one should not

even speak with a Centrist, for that person is destined for lower rebirth personally, as he/she will

not practice ethics diligently, and also brings others to ruin by association.370 Asanga presents

the Centrist view as self-refuting in this way:371

Because, according to them, the bare [real] substance that is the [underlying]
basis of a designation does not exist, [it must also be the case that] the
designation itself does not exist at all. How, then, could [the state of being that
is] a mere designation represent [ultimate] reality? On the basis of this method
[of reasoning], these [individuals] have repudiated both [ultimate] reality and
[nominal] designations. And because of this repudiation of both [nominal]
designations and [ultimate] reality, it should be understood that this is [the
position of] a preeminent nihilist.

In other words, based on the three-nature theory discussed earlier, in which the perfect nature

(here, [ultimate] reality) and the dependent nature (here, “the bare [real] substance that is the

[underlying] basis of a designation”) are intrinsically existent, existence solely by dependent

designation (referring to MMK XXIV.18 above) would be nonsensical. For, without the really

370
As I have observed, the Buddhist monastic institutions are comprised of those adhering to the individual and
universal vehicles, as reported by Chinese pilgrims. Certain universal vehicles sūtras, as scholars of the early
mahāyāna have emphasized, portray their followers as if under siege by degenerate monks committed to the
individual vehicle view, and indicating that at least some monks adhering to the universal vehicle engaged in
rigorous ascetic practices–a far cry from the moral laxity and lay-oriented focus that other scholars by which some
scholars had characterized them. It appears from Asaṅga’s comments that (some of) these institutions also may have
been factionalized among Centrist and Yogic Practice proponents, or simply that Asaṅga was recommending this, as
he also warns that any regions sympathetic to alleged Centrist nihilism will come to ruin. Since patronage by local
rulers typically supported these monastic institutions, from the Buddha’s time to the Pāla Dynasty, this warning is a
strong one. For a comprehensive review of recent scholarship on the early mahāyāna, see Boucher.
371
See Ārya Asaṅga 82.

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real existent basis for a designation, the designation itself would be meaningless, and the

commitment to nonexistence ensues. In this manner, the veracity of path to enlightenment would

be utterly rejected by the Centrist, rather than merely obstructed, as Nāgārjuna charges of his

own essentialist opponents.

Tsongkhapa expresses a comparable concern with respect to those followers of

Candrakīrti who understand Conventionalism in a similar manner.372 For them, as for Asanga,

existence that is not intrinsic existence is for all practical purposes nonexistence, and they accept

this entailment as an inevitable consequence of the imbalanced nature of the two truths.373

Ultimate truth is, for them, the only proper truth, and conventional truth is called such in order to

distinguish it from sheer falsity.374 The horns of a rabbit are false conventionally, while the horns

of an antelope are true conventionally, but both, they claim, are untrue from the perspective of

noble beings—that is, bodhisattvas and buddhas, who abide in a non-conceptual meditative

equipoise whose object is, strictly speaking, ineffable.

372
Tsongkhapa explains (LRCM [Tsong-kha-pa 2002] 144): “Most Tibetans who claim to be Mādhyamikas seem to
agree with the essentialist’s assertion that if an argument refutes intrinsic nature, it must also refute cause and effect.
Yet unlike essentialists, these Tibetans seem pleased that reason refutes cause and effect, taking this to be the
Madhyamaka system.”
373
Tsongkhapa (LRCM [Tsong-kha-pa 2002] 142-3) writes: “The glorious Candrakīrti distinguishes intrinsic
existence from existence; he also distinguishes the absence of intrinsic existence from nonexistence. Unless you
know this you will no doubt fall to both extremes, and thus you will not know the meaning of the middle way which
is without extremes. For when it turns out that a phenomenon utterly lacks essential existence, for you it will be
utterly nonexistent; then, since there will be no way at all to posit cause and effect within emptiness—emptiness of
intrinsic existence—you will fall to an extreme of annihilation. Also, once you accept that a phenomenon exists, you
will have to assert that it essentially exists. In that case it will be impossible for you to treat cause and effect as
similar to illusions in the sense that they appear to exist intrinsically whereas they do not. Consequently, you will
fall to the extreme of permanence.”
374
The famous fourfold framework of the Buddhist teaching, though differing in detail, is (1) All compounded
things are impermanent; (2) All contaminated things are by nature suffering; (3) all things are selfless; and (4)
nirvana is the only truth. Taken literally, the fourth expresses an understanding of ultimate reality that is thoroughly
discontinuous with conventional reality, but Tsongkhapa, following Candrakīrti’s complete explanation, takes the
fourth to mean that only nirvana, or emptiness, exists just as it appears, as an absolute negation of intrinsically real
status.

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 Conventional truth, on this interpretation, refers to the distinctly benighted form of

existence, samsāra, that is radically dissimilar and discontinuous from enlightened existence,

nirvana. Like the proverbial finger pointing at the moon, language and concepts fail to capture

reality in full, and therefore they are pointless; similarly, logic and reasoning are only indirect

avenues for inferential knowledge that proves completely incapable of developing the direct non-

conceptual awareness that knows reality just as it is, as a buddha knows it. The epistemological

reductionism that characterizes much Buddhist philosophy, creating an imbalance between the

two truths, entails on this interpretation of Candrakīrti a radical ontological reductionism with

respect to the conventional, especially the status of persons.375 This interpretation effectively

375
The project of epistemological reductionism that is also ontological reductionism begins with the higher
knowledge categorization of irreducible things (dharmas) that are intrinsically real, which appears to be the target of
Wisdom’s attack. Vasubandhu extends this reductionism, captured in his Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam, to extra-mental
objects entirely, resulting in his Mind Only philosophical view that inevitably privileges a fundamental
consciousness as intrinsically real. His student Dignāga, the first Buddhist epistemologist as such, and Dignāga's
successor Dharmakīrti elaborates the principles of epistemological reductionism along with ambiguous ontological
commitments; their writings appear to support either a Sautrāntrika (higher knowledge-style) or Mind Only view,
with perhaps only the reflexivity of consciousness remaining as intrinsically real. Their epistemological
reductionism that allows the authority of only perception and inference, with the latter itself being a second-rate
form, thoroughly undermines the validity of macro-level objects that, being conceptually and linguistically
constructed, are less real than momentary instances of bare sensory data out of which they are constructed.
Conventional reality, on this interpretation, appears rather unreal, but what is ultimately real – intrinsically real
sensory data and their corresponding forms of knowing – are known indubitably. This is not very far removed from
the higher knowledge scholastic project, with the extremely significant difference being that irreducible dharmas are
said to be accessible to the refined meditative awareness whereas bare sensory data are available to every
unimpaired consciousness. This difference reflects the concern of the epistemologists to engage other South Asian
philosophies with mutually agreeable, publicly available instruments of knowledge; the logical counterpart of
perception is, as Dignāga proposes, commonly appearing subjects of debate. (Neither scriptural warrant nor expert
testimony, the two other authoritative sources of knowledge admitted by their Nyāya counterparts, counts for the
Buddhist epistemologists, who effectively bracketed their Buddhist commitments in order to advance their Buddhist
commitments. Bhāvaviveka and other Formalists take the need for commonly appearing subjects in debate as a
given, thereby exposing their – perhaps unwitting—belief in the intrinsic identity of sensory consciousness by
agreeing with Dignāga that, when unimpaired, a cognitive agent knows its object indubitably. This is the fallacy that
Candrakīrti attributes to Bhāviveka, who as a Centrist should reject the intrinsic identity of subject and object even
conventionally. Conceptual and linguistic construction is the solution, not the problem. Candrakīrti’s rejection of
this sort of foundationalist epistemology is taken by many to be a total rejection of logic and reasoning rather than a
commitment to the anti-foundationalism, both ontological and epistemological, of Nāgārjuna. In conflating ontology
and epistemology, and reducing both completely, these followers of Candrakīrti commit, though inversely, the same
fundamental error (intrinsic existence = existence; merely designated [non-intrinsic] conceptually and linguistically
constructed existence = nonexistence) as their Buddhist reductionist counterparts above.

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embraces the critique that Asanga levels against Centrism. Tsongkhapa observes in LRCM the

impoverished state of Centrism understanding in his time:

Most of those who today claim to teach the meaning of Madhyamaka say that
all phenomena ranging from forms through omniscient consciousness are
refuted by rational analysis of whether production and such exist as their own
reality. For when reason analyzes anything that is put forward, there is not
even a particle that can withstand analysis. Also, all four possible ways that
something could be produced—as an existent effect, a nonexistent effect, and
so forth—are refuted, and there is nothing that is not included in those four.
Moreover, these persons assert that a noble being’s sublime wisdom which
perceives reality perceives production, cessation, bondage, freedom, and so
forth as not existing in the least. Therefore, since things must be just as this
sublime wisdom knows them, production and such do not exist.376

Tsongkhapa here clearly considers his contemporaries to have strayed into nihilism by

overextending the scope of negation (dgag bya) involved in the four-parameter analysis to

include conventional existents altogether, in dependence on an understanding of Candrakīrti,

noted above, that (mis)takes his division of the two truths/realities as an ontological cleavage.377

376
Tsong-kha-pa 2002 127.
377
There are two aspects to this interpretation: on the one hand, Candrakīrti’s Entry chapter six is understood to
deny the validity of logic and reasoning; and on the other, its eleventh chapter is taken to deny the possibility for
buddhas to know conventional reality at all. Thus, ordinary beings cannot in any meaningful way access the
ultimate, nor can enlightened beings access the conventional, leaving a chasm that undermines the path at its
beginning and its end. Tsongkhapa attacks the first aspect in LRCM, whose topic is the means—the path, the
process—by which enlightenment is possible and again in Ocean, commenting on chapter twenty-four, whose
immediate context is the efficacy of the four noble truths but by extension is the very possibility of the path when
conjoined to a defective view. There he also takes up the second aspect immediately after responding to the first,
thereby acknowledging the relationship between the two interpretive errors in undermining the path to
enlightenment.

Tsongkhapa addresses both aspects in their relevant context (chapters six and eleven) in his commentary to
Candrakīrti’s Entry, Illuminating the Intent, written in the final year of his life. Thus, during two decades of
intensive writing and teaching he finds it necessary on three occasions to clarify in writing, presumably drawing on
the immediate reactions to his teachings, how to interpret Candrakīrti’s position on logic and reasoning. While the
topic of whether buddhas know conventional reality is important —and denying outright that they do not is so
ludicrous as to hardly warrant a response within Buddhist circles—the former topic pertains directly to the path as a
viable concept. If logic and reasoning, and concepts and language, are irrelevant to human activity, especially
spiritual activity whose goal is liberation, then there is no causality and no path—there is at best an inexplicable
breakthrough involved in meditative quiescence (as Hvashang Mohoyen asserts, as seen earlier) that is unrelated to
insight, ethics, or other foundational practices; or else there is random occurrence, which is the very antithesis of the
import of the four noble truths—that is, forward and reverse causality related to misknowledge and existence.

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On this understanding, conventional existents are not objects of knowledge for bodhisattvas or

buddhas, for to be conventional is to be established only by delusion, and to be either a

bodhisattva or buddha is to be free from delusion—hence, for these contemporaries,

conventional reality is a sort of hallucination. This interpretation, Tsongkhapa contends,

conflates intrinsic existence with existence, and he therefore insists “the system of master

Candrakīrti is a rational refutation of essential or intrinsic existence, for he refutes intrinsic

existence in terms of both truths. Thus, if something does not intrinsically exist, how else could it

exist?”378

Expressing his primary concern—relevant to both sūtra and tantra—that those who

emphasize wisdom as pertaining to ultimate truth alone—and thereby neglect the bodhisattva

deeds of the method/art aspect that create the material bodies of buddhahood that benefit

others—unwittingly undermine the path to enlightenment that depends on wisdom related to both

truths, Tsongkhapa stresses the importance of wisdom related to the conventional:

This profound knowledge understands that the relationship of cause and

effect—conventional cause and effect—is such that specific beneficial and
harmful effects arise from specific causes…[c]ertain knowledge of both
diversity and the real nature is needed because without them it is impossible to
practice the whole path…
This is the key to the path that leads to the attainment of the two embodiments
when the result is reached; whether you get it right depends on how you
establish your philosophical view of the basic situation.379

378
Tsong-kha-pa 2002 129. I may observe that here Tsongkhapa conflates Centrism and Candrakīrti’s interpretation
of it, suggesting perhaps that popularity of the Formalist interpretation of the Three Easterners, discussed earlier, has
diminished and only Candrakīrti’s remains somewhat viable. In this context it is worth recalling that Tsongkhapa is
widely regarded as having revivified Centrist study—though as Roloff rightly contends this honor should go to
Rendawa—in Tibet. This may indicate, as I have addressed indirectly at the beginning of this chapter, that Centrist
and Idealistic views are regarded by many as commensurate, thus requiring little significant attention to unique
Centrist ideas, except when understanding Candrakīrti in this flawed way. Further, it may indicate, as Tsongkhapa
maintains in LRCM and discussed in chapter two, that tantric practice is divorced from due consideration of these
views of reality by some, a thread I will take up later in this chapter.
379
Tsong-kha-pa 2002 129–30.

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In other words, establishing in advance—prior to deploying the four-parameter analysis—“the

basic situation” that both truths are critical to the path and its result would prevent the

interpretation of Candrakīrti that understands his project to be an eradication of the conventional

and, by extension, the path to enlightenment.

The Two Truths in Centrism

It is with chapter twenty-four of Wisdom that Nāgārjuna’s examination of the nature of

existence of various conceptual categories turns to issues of a directly soteriological concern: the

tenability of the four noble truths and, with them, the entire Buddhist path. Here, Nāgārjuna

brings together his presentation of the ultimate truth (emptiness) with conventional truth

(dependent origination) along with the relationship between them. Most importantly, in

Tsongkhapa’s understanding, neither truth is reducible to the other, and the two are mutually

related to one another as qualifier and qualified. Ultimate truth is simply the absence of a fiction,

a superimposition—hypostasized intrinsic reality—upon a dependently originated, conceptually

constructed phenomenon. Without that basis, emptiness would be a distinct, independent reality

of its own—a reification against which Nāgārjuna warned. In other words, if empirical

phenomena were merely the result of delusion and disappeared upon the direct perception of

emptiness (occurring on the first bodhisattva level), then emptiness would have to be an

independent entity known only to a refined awareness that could not be cultivated, since that

independent entity would have no relationship to conventional phenomena. On this

interpretation, no amount of contemplation and meditation engaging the concept of emptiness

indirectly could lead to the direct, non-conceptual apprehension of emptiness. For Tsongkhapa,

however, the two truths are ontologically identical but conceptually distinct, and emptiness is

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necessarily approached conceptually at first, whereby rational analysis gradually becomes more

refined in meditation until the superimposition of intrinsic identity is overcome. Indeed, this

gradual process of refining wisdom, in tandem with the other bodhisattva activities, is the path to

enlightenment.

Tsongkhapa takes the opportunity in his own commentary to relate Nāgārjuna’s

presentation to Candrakīrti’s analysis of conventional truth in chapter six of Entry and, in so

doing, to integrate the difficult passages of the latter in order to show how Candrakīrti’s

Conventionalist interpretation of Centrism is both the correct one and not, as others maintain,

anti-rational. It is critical for Tsongkhapa’s interpretation to emphasize that each of the two

truths is recognized as a truth and that each is accessible to a specific type of cognition that

verifies its reality. In this way, the gap between unenlightened to enlightened existence proves

gradually surmountable by engaging the entire panoply of bodhisattva deeds, in combination

with reasoning, within conventional reality—not a detachment or withdrawal from these. Verse

24:8 from Wisdom reads:

The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma

Is based on two truths:
A truth of worldly convention,
And an ultimate truth.

It is in the context of this verse that Tsongkhapa advances in Ocean, largely by drawing upon

and clarifying Candrakīrti’s writings, his interpretation of Centrism in brief.380 Central to this

380
Tsongkhapa, having made the case in Essence of True Eloquence, for why Candrakīrti’s interpretation of
Centrism is the supreme view, cites Candrakīrti’s Clear Words (Prasannapāda) as directing readers to his Entry for
understanding the two truths. (480) In LRCM, throughout Ocean, and in Illuminating the Intent, Tsongkhapa makes
many of these same points repeatedly or more extensively. Since he cites many of the same passages from
Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti in all three texts, it is clear that he considered the same errors that he addressed in 1401/2
with LRCM persists among his contemporaries until 1418, when he composed Illuminating the Intent.

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effort is his explaining precisely, in dependence on Candrakīrti’s account, what the term

“convention” (samvrti, kun rdzobs) intends within the Buddha's teachings, distinguishing three

meanings: concealer, mutual dependence, and signifier. The first is the most problematic

meaning of the three, the meaning that could suggest a hierarchy of truths, with concealment—or

obscuration—justifying, for some, the interpretation that conventional truth is, in effect, falsity.

That type of interpretation takes ultimate truth, emptiness, to be ontologically superior rather

than, as Tsongkhapa proposes, distinct epistemologically but superior soteriologically. He

observes that the sense of falsity that concealing or obscuring entails is that of the misknowledge

that superimposes the fiction of an essential reality upon dependent phenomena. Tsongkhapa

then discusses the second and third meanings, mutual dependence—which indicates a lack of

autonomy despite the (false) appearance of independence—and signifier, in the sense of

expressions as well as objects of expressions, awarenesses and their objects; here,

epistemological dependence is entailed as well. He glosses the third as “mundane or worldly

nominal convention” (’jig rten pa’i tha snyad) and specifies that this indicates that conventions

are established with respect to the unmistaken awareness of ordinary people.

Building upon these three related meanings of convention and their establishment with

respect to ordinary, unenlightened minds, Tsongkhapa turns to verse 6:23 of Candrakīrti’s Entry.

The extensive presentation of conventional truth prior to the next verse of Wisdom, which

pertains to both truths, indicates just how important is the clarification of the conventional for

Tsongkhapa. Suggesting on the face of it that conventional truth is simply falsity, verse 6:23

reads:

Through seeing all phenomena both as real and unreal,

The two natures of the objects that are found are grasped.
The object of the perception of reality is the way things really are.

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 That which is seen falsely is called the conventional truth.

The two natures are synonyms for the two truths, and each truth—and the importance of this

cannot be overemphasized with respect to Tsongkhapa’s presentation—is discovered by a

different but equally valid cognitive process. Because each truth, or nature, is accessible to only

one type of cognitive process, neither invalidates the other: the analytical mind that searches for

the ultimate nature of the sprout cannot discover its conventional nature, and the non-analytical

mind cannot discover its ultimate nature. Tsongkhapa explains this with an analogy: a visual

consciousness will never discover a sound, but that certainly does not invalidate the existence of

sound or auditory consciousness.

What this entails is this: both emptiness and dependently originated phenomena may be

known by any person—in particular, ordinary phenomena are accessible to ārya beings—for

neither nature is inaccessible, in principle, to anyone. However, in practice—as Tsongkhapa’s

own life narrative indicates—the true experiential realization of emptiness requires significant

spiritual development, and that development distinguishes ordinary beings from noble (ārya)

beings who have refined their concentration and analytic minds to an profound degree.381

Nevertheless, the capacity for anyone to develop the tools of concentration and analysis to such a

degree and, in dependence on that, to know each truth accurately is critical insofar as that

maintains the integrity of the path.382

381
The coordination of these two, along with the necessary balance between the stability of concentration and the
probative force of analysis, is an important feature of LRCM. As Tsongkhapa stresses, precise analysis depends on
an extraordinary capacity for concentration, but concentration alone is soteriologically limited, as it is common to
Buddhists and Hindus, and it does not on its own provide the means to liberation but instead can bind one to cyclic
existence due to the blissful states of awareness that it produces.
382
As I discuss below, it appears from Tsongkhapa’s writings on Centrism that many contemporaneous interpreters
of Candrakīrti’s work took him to be rejecting conventional truth as simply illusion. Also, however, it appears that
some, like Ngog Loden Sherab, consider ultimate truth unknowable, perhaps out of concern for hypostatizing
emptiness, as some of Chapa’s students accuse the famed Sangphu abbot of doing. Regarding this, Tsongkhapa

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 And, because conventional truth is a truth that is known correctly by ārya beings as

dependent on causes and conditions—and thus as illusion-like—rather than independent of

causes and conditions, true and false have particular meanings in this context. Drawing on

Candrakīrti’s other works, Tsongkhapa clarifies this:

The respect in which ultimate truth is a truth is that it is nondeceptive. It does

not deceive ordinary beings by existing in one way and appearing in another.383
[S]ince it is said that the meaning of “nondeceptive” is true, and since that it is
also the case according to nominal convention, and since the sūtras also say
that the meaning of “nondeceptive phenomena” is truth, and since the meaning
of “unreal” in “all compound phenomena are unreal, deceptive phenomena,” is
deceptive, the meaning of “true” should be understood as nondeceptive.384

It is important to note, with regard to this quote, that Tsongkhapa refers to canonical sources, not

merely Candrakīrti’s writings, as qualifying phenomena as “nondeceptive.” This indicates that

the understanding of the dependent origination of phenomena—which are necessarily

conventional— as referring to truth, not sheer falsity, underlies at the very least the Buddha’s

teaching that inform Centrism. Hence, the interpretation of Candrakīrti’s work—which is itself

based on the two truths of Centrism and its sources such as the perfection of wisdom

discourses—that regards the conventional as equivalent to illusion is fundamentally

inaccurate.385

argues that emptiness—the absence of intrinsic existence—is most certainly an object of knowledge, perhaps the
most important one. And knowing it in a conceptual manner in order to attain the direct, nonconceptual
understanding of emptiness is, for Tsongkhapa, absolutely critical, as I have explained. In LRCM 3 194) he writes:
“Why should the mere negation of intrinsic nature imply the refutation of the object of wisdom (i.e., the absence of
intrinsic identity)? It should not, for such knowledge remedies the conceptions of the two selves as signs and it lacks
even a trace of misconception. If you regard as defective even such a conception, and all conceptuality of any
sort—good or bad—then it is evident that you want to set up the system of the Chinese abbot Ha-shang.”
383
Garfield and Samten 487.
384
Garfield and Samten 488.
385
Regarding this, Tsongkhapa notes: “Some are very happy to hear that the āryas, through the wisdom of
meditative equipoise, realize freedom from fabrication, but are very unhappy when they hear that the ārya realizes
the external negation free from fabrication. The reason is that without understanding the meaning of external
negation, which is the mere elimination of the object of negation, they erroneously believe that all external negations

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Conventional Truth in Conventionalist Centrism

Thus, Tsongkhapa takes the distinction between the two truths as an epistemological one,

and hence it is in dependence on the refinement of one’s means of knowing—the mind—that the

insight into how the two actually exist becomes possible. Among both ordinary beings and ārya

beings (those, respectively, who have not and who have had a direct, nonconceptual perception

of emptiness), there are differences in refinement that, in the case of the latter, are typologized

with respect to the bodhisattva path. Tsongkhapa presents the basic difference in this way:

Ordinary beings grasp such things as pots as truly existent, and grasp them as
ultimately existent as well. Therefore from the perspective of their mind, such
things as pots are ultimately existent, but they are not conventional objects.
These things, such as pots, which are ultimately existent from their
perspective, are conventional objects from the perspective of the āryas, to
whom things appear as illusionlike. Since they cannot be posited as truly
existent as they are apprehended by an āryan consciousness, they are referred
to as merely conventional.386

Thus, ordinary beings apprehend objects that are the result of causes and conditions inaccurately,

for they perceive them to be intrinsically existent.387 Noble bodhisattvas, having experienced

directly the emptiness of a given phenomenon through the precise analysis searching for its

imply complete nonexistence, as in the case of the horns of a rabbit. But if nothing existed, it would be contradictory
to say that there are external negations.” (Garfield and Samten 492)
386
Garfield and Samten 489.
387
In LRCM (3, 182) Tsongkhapa explains: “When we posit things such as forms and sounds as conventional truth,
“truth” here means that they are true through the force of a particular thought. Since that thought must be
considered a conception of true existence, forms, sounds, and so forth are truths for the ignorance that superimposes
intrinsic existence on them. Therefore, Candrakīrti refers to the two types of arhats who have eliminated afflictive
ignorance (on which see below) and to bodhisattvas on the eighth ground and above when he says, “They see these
appearances as fabrications and not as true because they do not have an exaggerating conception of true existence.”
For this reason, Candrakīrti says that those who do not have the conception of true existence (the superimposition),
forms and so forth are “mere conventionalities.”” The Fourteenth Dalai Lama explains that so ingrained is the
superimposition “even at the level of sense perception, things appear as solid, concrete realities, things able to exist
on their own power…based on that perception, we think of and grasp at things as existing in this way,” thus further
inscribing that conception-perception error into reflexive habit. (From Here to Enlightenment 150)

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ultimate nature, instead perceive objects accurately as unreal, illusionlike, as dependently

originated—that is, as conventional.388 (The case of buddhas is unique and will be distinguished

below.) Ordinary beings can develop the conceptual understanding of emptiness that, in

dependence on heightened mental stability, transforms its precise analysis into the nonconceptual

perception that distinguishes the ārya form of life.

Nonconceptual perception, however, refers to the meditative state in which empirical

objects are unavailable, for therein only the absence of intrinsic existence—emptiness—of those

objects is known in a nondual manner.389 It is in the post-meditation period of aftermath wisdom

(rjes thob ye shes), in which phenomena appear again, that their illusory, constructed nature

becomes apparent to bodhisattvas.390 The fiction that is the superimposition of an intrinsic

388
As Garfield 2011 29 puts it, using a mirage as an analogy: “[C]onventional phenomena appear to ordinary,
deluded beings to be intrinsically existent, whereas in fact they are merely conventionally real, empty of that
intrinsic existence; to the āryas, on the other hand, they appear to be merely conventionally true, and hence to be
empty. For us, they are deceptive, false appearances; for them, they are simply actually conventional existents.”
389
Garfield and Samten 492-3: “An ārya, who through wisdom, directly perceives the way things really are, without
the slightest appearance of subject-object duality in his perspective, just like water poured into water, is absorbed in
meditative equipoise. Thus, he does not directly perceive empirical phenomena, because he would have to perceive
them, and they cannot be perceived indirectly. Instead, they would have to be perceived directly. To perceive
something without a perceptual aspect is not possible in this system. Therefore, it is not possible for the cognizing
mind to which the perceptual aspect of such things as material form or sound appear directly to be without the
appearance of subject-object duality. That it does not perceive empirical phenomena does not entail the absurd
consequence that the characteristic and characterized are detached. This is because from the perspective of the
rational mind that perceives reality (that is, critical rational cognition), the relation between characteristic and
characterized is not posited and because from the perspective of a conventional authoritative cognition (a
conventional validating cognition) of blueness, since in that perspective there is no ultimate truth, these two would
also not need to be detached.” Two points should be highlighted here. First, the detachment of characteristic and
characterized refers to the ontological isolation entailed by intrinsic identity—if something is an essence, it is an
essence that is, by definition, independent and, therefore, detached. Second, subject-object duality is an inescapable
feature of conventional reality for the Centrist system. For Idealism, subject-object duality is precisely the problem
to be overcome, insofar as the mind is the sole reality.
390
Regarding this, in acknowledgement of the tendency for reification, Prof. Thurman (personal communication)
explains: “The reification of the absence of empirical objects’ intrinsic identities that is experienced in space-like
equipoised samadhi is an experience of the ultimate reality of the objects previously sought, but there is, of course,
the danger of perceiving that emptiness itself as itself having intrinsic identity, seemingly nondually verified, i.e.,
being a non-empty emptiness, which can lead to the misinterpretation that leads to gzhan stong types of theories.”
Thus, the unavailability of empirical objects and their subsequent reappearance to sense faculties does not, and must
not be taken to, indicate somehow that empirical objects/conventional phenomena are inferior to and distinct from
the emptiness by which they are qualified, which can be misunderstood as intrinsically real in this context. Indeed,

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identity on merely existent objects reappears, due to the deeply ingrained habit that is the

unconscious adherence to intrinsic identity, but that fiction is understood by inferential wisdom

to be fictional. Thus, there is an alternating sequence of deepening these two types of wisdom

inside and outside of meditative equipoise. It is critical to emphasize that—despite the obvious

importance of nonconceptual meditation on emptiness to undermine that unconscious

adherence—progress on the path from ordinary, unenlightened existence to enlightened

existence depends primarily on the cultivation of forms of conceptual knowledge, including the

intellectual understanding of emptiness, just to make such nonconceptual meditation possible.

As seen earlier, there are, in effect, ten levels of the noble (ārya) bodhisattva form of life

that distinguish, in conjunction with the transcendences of the path, their deepening attainment of

wisdom, but two of special importance: the first, marking the initial insight into emptiness; and

the eighth, marking the cessation of afflictive misknowledge. As Candrakīrti explains, afflictive

misknowledge—the first link in the chain of dependent origination—causes the manifest

distortion of empirical phenomena by habitually superimposing upon them an intrinsic reality

that they do not, in fact, possess.391 The first level marks the transition from an intellectual to an

experiential understanding of emptiness, and with that comes a literal transformation of

existence. Because the first link in the chain of unenlightened existence has been undermined

directly, the massive facticity of intrinsic existence that seems to qualify conventional reality and

Nāgārjuna’s warns about this in Wisdom, and understanding emptiness itself to be empty is critical in undermining
such potentially disastrous misunderstanding.
391
This afflictive misknowledge is the foundation for karmic causality and the manifest addictions that underlie it,
addictions that may be enumerated from as few as two (desire and aversion) to as many as eighty-four thousand.
Afflictive misknowledge itself is the fundamental addiction that, as an innate belief in the intrinsic reality of self and
others, rather than their interdependence, brings about the desire for what one wants—what seems intrinsically
satisfying—and aversion from what one does not want—what seems intrinsically dissatisfying or harmful. By
understanding viscerally the constructed nature of all things, the value judgments related to desire and aversion
disappear, as does the tragic misunderstanding of an intrinsically real—rather than nominally dependent—self that is
their locus.

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to ground knowledge of it diminishes; with repeated effort across the succeeding levels, that

facticity becomes replaced with the knowledge of its falsity, and the appearance of objects as

simply causally constructed and thus deceptive predominates. At the eighth level, that manifest

distortion disappears completely, and the bodhisattva perceives objects only as being constructed

and illusory, hence conventional. Nevertheless, unlike buddhas, bodhisattvas at levels eight

through ten are characterized by the latent habit of adhering to intrinsic identity, and their

capacity to know all objects remains obstructed.

Buddhas, however, differ. As noted above, some interpreters understand Candrakīrti to

deny that buddhas know conventional reality—ordinary objects such as pots—at all and thus

understand the two truths to be ontologically and epistemologically distinct. This understanding

takes conventional reality to be simply the product of misknowledge, which is transcended

completely at buddhahood. The extent to which bodhisattvas perceive causally constructed

phenomena at all is the extent to which their perception is distorted by language and concepts.

On this account, buddhahood seems to be a permanent escape room in which no one and no thing

is known, leaving conventional “truth” an oddly named vestige with which (unknowingly?)

buddhas nevertheless engage in their effort to liberate living beings.

Tsongkhapa understands Candrakīrti to be offering no such account of buddhahood.

Instead, because there are two natures that characterize each phenomenon, buddhas—who are by

definition omniscient, according to mahāyāna accounts—it would be absurd for the enlightened

state to know only one. In fact, a buddha’s unique capacity is to know both truths simultaneously

rather than alternatingly, and this represents a nonduality specific to buddhas.392 That is, a

392
In Illuminating the Intent (141), Tsongkhapa observes: “Although the aggregates and so forth do not appear to a
buddha’s exalted knower of varieties through it being polluted by the latencies of ignorance, since they do appear to
other persons’ knowers, which are polluted by ignorance, they must appear to buddhas because their non-appearance
to them is not feasible in that if conventionalities exist they must be observed by an exalted knower of varieties.” In

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buddha is unceasingly aware of both the multiplicity of phenomenal objects (conventional truth)

and the emptiness (ultimate truth) of those objects. Indeed, it is the unique capacity of a buddha

to know all objects of knowledge, which are conceptual constructs insofar as they are

dependently originated. This epistemological nonduality is correlated with the two buddha

bodies: the truth body that is the fruition of the wisdom aspect of the path and the material body

that is the fruition of the compassionate art aspect of the path. Again, this nondual integration of

ultimate and conventional is the culmination of effort made along the bodhisattva path but

commencing from the stage of an ordinary, unenlightened being; therefore, there is a complete

continuity across these existential states.

Two Types of Validating Cognition

The next verse of Wisdom may be taken to indicate that the two truths are distinct ontologically

or epistemologically, leading to the different interpretations I have emphasized:

Those who do understand

The distinction between these two truths,
Do not understand
The Buddha’s profound teaching. (24.9)

For Tsongkhapa the distinction between the two truths is epistemological, following from

Candrakīrti’s Entry verse 6.23 cited above. He explains: “The sprout, for instance, has a nature

Ocean he explains similarly, but more expansively: “When the objects that are conditioned by the latent potential for
ignorance appear to the Buddha through the wisdom by means of which he knows empirical phenomena, they
appear to the Buddha in virtue of appearing to a person who is affected by the latent potentials for ignorance, but
they do not appear in the Buddha’s own perspective independent of their appearance to that other person. Therefore,
the fact that the Buddha knows the appearance of such things as form and sound that do not exist through their own
characteristic, but appear to do so, in virtue of their appearance to those who are ignorant. However, the Buddha
does not know them in virtue of their appearance to him in that way from his own perspective, independent of their
appearance to that other person.” (Garfield and Samten 494) Thus, buddhas not only perceive both emptiness and
illusion-like conventionalities simultaneously, but they understand those conventionalities as if intrinsically existent,
through the perspective of ordinary beings, so that they may be able to provide optimal assistance to those ordinary
beings; without this perspective, this assistance would be mere guesswork.

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that is found by a rational cognitive process, which see the real nature of the phenomenon as it is

[i.e., emptiness, the absence of an essence], and a nature that is found by a conventional

cognitive process, which perceives deceptive or unreal objects.”393

Tsongkhapa specifies three criteria for establishing why conventional truth is regarded as

truth and, therefore, not negated by the analysis that searches for intrinsic identity, contrary to the

understanding of Conventionalism he refutes. As he remarks in Ocean: “The conceptual thought

that grasps the object of negation is not just any conceptual thought grasping any thing as

existent; rather, it is that which grasps things as existing ultimately or in virtue of their own

characteristics.”394 Because of the nihilistic (and self-refuting)395 conclusions that other position

advances, Tsongkhapa is concerned to clarify that Candrakīrti’s epistemological distinction

between the two natures maintains the validity of the conventional.396 While the ultimate nature

393
Garfield and Samten 483.
394
Garfield and Samten 37.
395
The position that understands Prāsaṅgika to dispense with the conventional fails to appreciate that without the
qualified basis for the qualifier that is emptiness, it is not possible to posit emptiness itself. As Tsongkhapa observes
(Garfield and Samten 482): “Since the refutation of true existence and the proof of the absence of true existence are
presented through nominal convention, it is not tenable that their true existence is posited through nominal
convention. If it were not so presented, they could not be presented ultimately, either, and it would follow that no
framework would be coherent.”
396
Such indiscriminate application of rational analysis fails to limit the scope of negation to what is superimposed
on the dependent phenomena that comprise conventional reality, negating instead conventional reality. Such
indiscriminate analysis is analogous to the mindlessness quietism embodied by the legendary Hvashang Mohoyen
that Tsongkhapa derides at the beginning of LRCM, but with more disastrous potential results. The identification
must take place before undertaking that analysis simply to be able to determine whether the hypothetical object
exists. In this way, ultimate analysis is like any investigation searching for a purported fact that is in doubt– here, the
intrinsic nature of the self that, on the principle of the excluded middle, must be either completely identical to or
completely distinct from the psychophysical continuum. Failure to specify precisely what is to be negated by that
analysis will cause one extreme, eternalism or nihilism, to be maintained: negating too little leaves that hypostasized
self untouched whereas negating too much causes the conventional, dependently designated self, the nominally
existent person who is the agent of actions and effects, to be refuted. As I have shown, virtually all non-Buddhist
and Buddhist philosophers—including Formalist Centrists—fall into eternalism, according to Tsongkhapa, by
conflating substantial, true, or intrinsic existence with mere existence. Those who fall into nihilism also conflate
these two types of existence, but their negation overextends to “any conceptual thought” rather than that which
fabricates, or superimposes, intrinsic existence on mere existence.

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is established by rational analysis, the conventional nature is, by contrast, established precisely

without that analysis, in dependence on what is regarded through ordinary language usage to be

existent.397

The ultimate nature of a phenomenon is that found by critical rational analysis, which

searches for an intrinsic nature by deploying the four-parameter analysis.398 This analysis,

introduced in Wisdom, as discussed above, is exhaustive, leaving nothing in its wake: if some

essence or nature were to exist, it would have to do so in one of the four ways specified,

One could argue, along with Sakya Pandita in his polemical three-vows treatise, that certain forms of great seal
(mahāmudrā) meditation are susceptible to such quietism if their sole focus is wisdom disengaged from bodhisattva
deeds. Tsongkhapa himself trains extensively in mahāmudrā practices under Kagyu masters but chooses not to
emphasize its practice, keeping it as a secretive master-to-disciple lineage that, in its distinctive Geluk form, is
attributed to Mañjuśrī. This transmission’s secrecy makes sense in the context of Tsongkhapa’s deep concern for
Centrist analysis as a buttress against quietism and, moreover, an antidote to the other-empty views (often tied to
mahāmudrā) that, at least rhetorically, claim that enlightened awareness emerges spontaneously. The interpretation
of Conventionalism claiming that conventional reality is simply illusion, that logic and reasoning are conceptual
proliferations to be avoided, and that enlightened awareness cannot access unenlightened awareness shares with
these quietistic forms a fundamental, if tacit, belief that enlightened awareness does emerge strictly by disengaging
from conventional reality and, hence, the bodhisattva deeds are, in the end, a fool’s errand on behalf of fools. This is
why, I would suggest, that Tsongkhapa explains: “Certain knowledge of both diversity and the real nature is needed
because without them it is impossible to practice the whole path, both method and wisdom from the depths of your
heart.” (Tsong-kha-pa 2002 130).
397
As I observe in chapter one, the issue of validating cognition (pramāṇa, tshad ma) takes precedence among
certain Buddhist thinkers beginning in the fifth and sixth centuries CE and flourishing throughout the tenure of
Buddhism in India. Tsongkhapa takes special interest in this tradition, noting its significance for him in Presence.
Nevertheless, he acknowledges that the tradition maintains an essentialist position, as does the Formalist
interpretation of Centrism that integrates that tradition’s insights—which Candrakīrti rejects forcefully, following
Nāgārjuna’s rejection of epistemological foundationalism. Tsongkhapa 2002 165 writes: “[T]he logicians hold that a
perception is a consciousness that is free from conceptuality and non-mistaken. It is non-mistaken in that it
apprehends the intrinsic character of the object just as it is. Thus, since all five sensory perceptions comprehend the
intrinsic character of their objects, the intrinsic characteristics of forms, sounds, and so forth are the objects
comprehended by those five perceptions. Therefore, it is in relation to the intrinsic character of those five objects
that they consider such perceptions to be valid.” Later (259) he explains further, saying that essentialists “claim that
even an inference that comprehends a non-thing is not mistaken regarding a conceived object that has such an
intrinsic nature. Every consciousness that is non-mistaken with respect to such an intrinsic nature must also be non-
mistaken with respect to its appearing objects and conceived objects; and since this makes such a consciousness
non-mistaken with respect to ultimate reality itself, our own system does not hold that such a valid cognition
establishes the subject, etc. However, we do not deny that there are, in the mind-streams of both parties,
conventional valid cognitions that perceive things like eyes and forms.” That is, the Centrist rejection of “the given”
that is intrinsic existence does not entail the rejection of knowledge or the means to knowledge at all.
398
Tsongkhapa argues forcefully that it is critical to understand that an external negation, which leaves nothing in its
wake, is the result of the four-parameter analysis, lest “essencelessness” be established as existent by that analysis;
thus, since the analysis is not an implicit negation, nothing is affirmed by that analysis.

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following the law of the excluded middle.399 It must be—as an essence, ostensibly—distinctly,

precisely and unequivocally findable when sought. The conventional nature, on the other hand, is

not analytically established; it could not be so, lest it be intrinsically existent. Candrakīrti offers a

sevenfold analysis to exclude that possibility that an object’s nature could be its shape, for

instance. Unanalyzed, a conventional phenomenon is, as Nāgārjuna explains at Wisdom 24.18,

simply a dependent designation, a conceptual construction whose boundaries are established

merely by the consensus of ordinary beings—that is, conventions—in dependence on unimpaired

cognitive faculties.

First, a conventional phenomenon, such as a pot, must be an existent taken for granted by

ordinary people.400 Second, its existence cannot be undermined by a conventional validating

cognition—an eye consciousness, for instance, does not invalidate the existence of a given taste

or sound. Third, a phenomenon’s conventional existence is not undermined by the critical

rational analysis that searches for the ultimate nature—the nature, the essence—of that

399
Tsongkhapa’s final topic of Essence of True Eloquence confirms that Centrist analysis is an external negation,
not an internal negation, and therefore leaves no possibility for intrinsic identity/existence to be untouched by the
four-parameter analysis; however, this does not entail that mere (tsam) conceptual identity/existence is negated. In
LRCM he discusses the process at length and notes: “Limiting things to two possibilities—either they intrinsically
exist or they do not—derives from the universal limitation that anything imaginable either exists or does not exist.
Similarly, the limit that what truly exists must truly exist as single or truly exist as plural is based on the universal
limitation that anything must be either single or plural. (Tsong-kha-pa 2002 146) Later in the same text (312), he
explains the four-parameter analysis succinctly: “Here, if something is intrinsically produced, it is limited to two
possibilities: either it relies upon a cause or it does not rely on a cause. Hence, if it relies upon a cause, the cause
and the effect are limited to two possibilities: they are either intrinsically one or intrinsically different. Production in
which cause and effect are intrinsically one is called production from self; production in which cause and effect are
intrinsically different is called production from another. Production that relies upon a cause is certain to be either
production from self or production from another—which can be considered individually—or else to be production
from both self and other in combination. Individually, there are two cases—production from self and production
from other. Therefore, this is how we rule out other possibilities while refuting just four possible types of
production.”
400
In LRCM Tsongkhapa explains this: “Ordinary people do not understand karma and its effects, the levels and
paths, or such matters, but they hear about and experience them, thereby taking them as objects. As this is so, they
appear even to ordinary consciousnesses that are not analyzing how things actually exist.” (Tsong-kha-pa 2002 179)

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phenomenon.401 As critical rational analysis does invalidate intrinsic identity, and no

conventional validating cognition validates it, intrinsic identity is completely nonexistent. And,

Tsongkhapa argues—following Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti—ordinary people do not assert the

existence of intrinsic identity; that is an error committed by errant philosophers.402

However, ordinary people and errant philosophers, like all other unenlightened beings, do

adhere unconsciously to intrinsic identity with respect to phenomena.403 And only critical

rational analysis validates emptiness, the absence of intrinsic identity, while conventional

validating cognition validates the dependently originated phenomena qualified by that absence.

Thus, the two types of validating cognition are distinct but complementary authorities.

Tsongkhapa refers to Candrakīrti’s autocommentary (bhāṣya) on Entry 6.23, which states that

the ultimate is “found by being the object of a particular kind of wisdom of those who see

reality” and explains by distinguishing types of objects available to the two types of wisdom,

thereby emphasizing also their mutual dependence and merely designated status:

By saying “the particular kind of wisdom,” he means that for the ultimate, it is
not enough to be found by just any kind of ārya wisdom, but it must found by
the particular wisdom that knows things just as they are. The meaning of “to be
found” is to be established by that cognitive faculty. The meaning is similar in
the case of the conventional. The way in which it [the conventional] is found

401
In LRCM again, (Tsong-kha-pa 2002 181) he explains: “Since the objects conceived by conceptual
consciousnesses that apprehend the aggregates as permanent and so forth do not exist conventionally, reason can
refute them. However, the referent objects of the conceptions of the aggregates as impermanent, etc. do exist
conventionally; hence, reason cannot refute them.”
402
Thurman 1984 89–111 has drawn a compelling comparison between Wittgenstein’s later work and that of
Tsongkhapa and his Candrakīrti in particular, describing them as non-egocentric philosophers for whom the
absurdities following from holding to private objects and private languages must be exposed as a form of liberative
therapy—literally so in the Buddhist case. He remarks (99) “Thus, it is precisely the reaffirmation of language, free
of any supposed absolute substratum, as a practical, conventional process, an ordinary activity of human beings, a
“form of life” that sets the non-egocentrist analytic philosopher apart from the skeptic” for whom emptiness of
intrinsic nature entails nonexistence.
403
In LRCM (Tsong-kha-pa 2002 319) Tsongkhapa writes: “When other living beings see something as produced in
dependence on causes and conditions, they see it as essentially or intrinsically existent, and thus they are bound in
cyclic existence; but for noble beings, production in dependence upon causes and conditions is reason enough to
refute intrinsic existence and develop certainty about the lack of intrinsic existence.”

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 through this kind particular kind of wisdom is as follows: When the eye is
affected by cataracts sees falling hairs in empty space, the eye that is not
affected by cataracts does not even see the appearance of falling hairs. In the
same way, when those who are impaired by the cataracts of ignorance see such
things as the inherent existence of the aggregates, that which is seen by those
buddhas who are free from the latent potentials for ignorance and by those who
have the uncontaminated wisdom that see things just as they are [i.e., ārya
bodhisattvas in meditative equipoise], just like that which is seen by eyes
without cataracts, in virtue of not being seen to be even the slightest bit
dualistic, is the ultimate truth.404

There is not, in other words, some privileged manner of knowing ultimate truth,

emptiness, that is unique to highly realized beings such as bodhisattvas and buddhas. 405

Conventional truth in a buddha’s case is not contaminated by dualistic appearance and the latent

potential for misknowledge by which dependent phenomena appear to ordinary beings as

intrinsically existent.406 These conventional truths, then, are not simply illusions, and there is a

404
Garfield and Samten 489.
405
It is clear that those who advocate the position that any conceptual thought is deleterious and therefore serves as
the proper target of rational analysis nevertheless, as mahāyāna Buddhists, have to admit that there must be some
form of (non-conceptual) knowing that is the basis for the enlightened awareness of buddhahood, the dharmakāya.405
Inaccessible to ordinary conceptual thought, such a form of knowing would entail a strong separation between
conceptuality and non-conceptuality. Such a position could become dangerously close to Dolpopa’s other-empty
view, which denies conventional reality as complete falsity altogether. And, indeed, various iterations of “soft”
other-empty views do promote such a strong separation, and the distinctions between them and anti-conceptuality
proponents of Conventionalism whom Tsongkhapa refutes seem minimal. The manner in which such a non-
conceptual awareness would become manifest would have to be a negative one, whereby the misknowledge—that is,
conceptuality—obstructing its manifestation would be purified until the natural luminosity of that primordial mind
emerged. It is difficult to see just what the bodhisattva deeds—which accumulate a treasury of merit that develops
the form bodies of a buddha—contribute with respect to such views, given the singular focus on non-conceptual
wisdom and an explicit understanding of conventional phenomena, and other living beings specifically, to be
products of delusion.
406
Tsongkhapa poses in Ocean (Garfield and Samten 493) what surely must be an actual objection from a
contemporary to his interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Centrism, an objection that seems to hold that enlightenment
entails the nihilistic extinction of all conventionalities: “Here someone might argue as follows: Is it or is it not
maintained in this system that at the level of buddhahood, there is a wisdom by means of which empirical
phenomena can be known? On the second alternative, the account in Madhyamakāvatāra of the knowledge of the
ten powers would not be tenable. It would hence not be possible to accept the Buddha’s omniscience, and this would
be a deprecation of the teacher (that is, the Buddha). On the first alternative, if it were not the case that although
things do not exist through their own characteristics they appear to fools to do so, then nobody would be in error; but
of course they do appear that way. Then they would have to appear through the wisdom by means of which the
buddhas know empirical phenomena. In that case, since they do not exist as they appear, the Buddha would be in
error.”

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clear distinction between mistaken and unmistaken minds (those not seeing and seeing with

cataracts) among ordinary beings who, by means of concepts and language, can use reasoning

with respect to the validity of causes and effects.407 Those most important of these, of course, are

those related to the path to enlightenment, which—on Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of

Candrakīrti—is anything but an alogical, mystical journey to an unknowable conclusion.408

407
As I have observed, the disagreement regarding the illusory nature of relative reality/truth hinges on the meanings
of samvṛṭi (in samvṛṭi-satya), which is contrasted with paramārtha (ultimate), in enumerating the two truths, or two
realities, in the Centrist literature. This ambiguity allows for interpretative frameworks to emphasize samvṛṭi’s
primary meaning as obscurational truth or as conventional truth, the former rendering “truth” more figurative than
literal and implying its being inferior to what is ultimate. One could interpret with a figurative meaning this third
important verse, 24.10, in the sequence I have traced above in Wisdom: “Without depending on the conventional
truth, The meaning of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the meaning of the ultimate, Nirvana is
not achieved.” This interpretation would regard conventional truth as a ladder to be kicked away upon having
ascended beyond it, a raft to be discarded upon reaching the proverbial further shore. While this interpretation would
preserve the need for inferential reasoning along the path to enlightenment—a need denied by Candrakīrti’s
proponents who read Entry 6.23 as refuting logic altogether, as noted above—it nevertheless would undermine the
capacity of buddhas to make use of conventional truths in leading suffering beings along that path. The ability of a
buddha to teach at all, then, seems impossible, and the very purpose of buddhahood—foregoing personal liberation
in order to amass the arsenal of enlightened qualities that culminate in the material bodies of enlightened existence
that can optimally engage with unenlightened beings—would be effectively destroyed. Along these lines,
Tsongkhapa argues in Ocean (Garfield and Samten 385-6): “[W]hen someone with cataracts (i.e., an ordinary being)
sees falling hairs, someone without cataracts (i.e., an ārya) might say that apparent falling hairs are not real.
Nonetheless, though the person with cataracts cannot know the absence of falling hairs in the same way as the
person without cataracts who does not see the falling hairs (that is, directly), he can at least understand through his
explanation that as there are no falling hairs, the appearance is erroneous. When the cataract is cleared through the
application of medicine (here, one can refer to the oft-used metaphor of the Buddha’s teaching as medicine), the real
nature of those falling hairs is realized in virtue of not seeing the appearance of falling hairs in the visual field that
had appeared to be full of falling hairs.” Thus, through faith in a teacher whose testimony is reliable, an ordinary
being may generate correct inferential understanding of the absence of intrinsic existence that then may lead to
direct perception, thereby becoming an ārya. Hence, as I have discussed previously, the bodhisattva path depends
first on the reliable guide to lead, in dependence on the conventional.
408
Tsongkhapa notes (Tsong-kha-pa 2002) 158) that certain problematic (from his perspective) understandings tend
to cluster together: “[E]ven some earlier scholars, not to mention those today, seem to have erred by not
differentiating, and instead considering identical, the following pairs: (1) something unable to withstand rational
analysis vs. something invalidated by reason; (2) the non-perception of production and cessation by a noble (i.e.,
ārya) being’s wisdom of meditative equipoise vs. the production and cessation as nonexistent by a noble being’s
wisdom of meditative equipoise; and (3) the non-discovery of production and cessation by a reasoning
consciousness which analyzes whether they intrinsically exist vs. the discovery that production and cessation are
nonexistent.”

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What Remains: The Person as Dependent Designation

On Candrakīrti’s account of Nāgārjuna’s middle way between the reificationism of an

intrinsic existence superimposed on mere conventional phenomena and the nihilism that refutes

any manner of existence that is not intrinsic, what remains as a locus for positing existence at all?

Wisdom 24.18 provides the answer:

That which is dependent origination/Is explained to be emptiness.

That, being a dependent designation,/Is itself the middle way.

Having refuted both intrinsic existence and nonexistence, Nāgārjuna equates dependent

origination, the interaction between causes and conditions, with emptiness and glosses this as a

dependent designation, a conceptual construction. A conventional phenomenon cannot exist as

either completely identical to or completely distinct from its support—its basis of designation—

without, on the one hand, being exactly that collection or, on the other, being wholly separate

from it. Critical rational analysis that refutes intrinsic existence proceeds precisely from taking

these two possibilities as the only feasible ways of establishing such a mode of existence.409

Candrakīrti explains that, in virtue of the sevenfold analysis of the chariot serving as an analogy

for the self, there can no definitive relationship between a whole and its parts, where some

intrinsically existent parts aggregate into an unreal whole.410 As “parts” are as unreal as

“wholes,” and each can be regarded as either in dependence on its relationship to the other, there

can be only a conceptually designated existent based on what ordinary people call, in one case, a

409
Wisdom 20.20: “If cause and effect were identical, Producer and produced would be identical. If cause and effect
were different, Cause and noncause would be alike.” (Garfield and Samten 417).
410
Entry verses 6.150-151 explain: “Therefore, the support of the conception of I is not a thing. It is not other than
the aggregates, not the entity of the aggregates, not the support of the aggregates, not their possessor. Just as a
chariot is not asserted to be other than its components, it is not not other, it is also not the possessor of them, and it is
not on its components, the components are not on it, it is not the mere assembly (of the components), and it is not
the (mere) shape.”

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chariot or, in the case of the five aggregates in Buddhist parlance, a self. Tsongkhapa addresses

this topic in this way:

The self is established in dependence on the aggregates. Just as when asserting

that “In dependence on this, that arises,” in order not to eliminate the
presentation of conventional truths, one does not assert production from the
four, without causes and so forth; likewise, also in the context of the self, when
asserting it to be designated in dependence on the aggregates…one should
assert merely that “It is designated in dependence on the aggregates” in order
that the conventions of the world completely remain, because of seeing that it
is not possible to deny that [which is] conventionally designated as the self.

Conventionalities, then, are posited only through the force of conventional consciousness

designating the identity of an object in dependence on the meeting of causes and conditions that

support the basis of designation for that “thing,” such as a chariot or self. That unanalyzed

appearance of a particular phenomenon has no secure foundation beyond the consciousness that

constructs and designates its identity.411 As long as the conditions supporting the continuity of

that basis of designation endures, that unanalyzed object may be said to exist. Since its identity

conditions remain loosely stipulated—adjudicated merely by convention that is communal

consensus derived from mundane linguistic usage that defies strict justification, as Wittgenstein’s

ordinary language philosophy contends—just what specific parts constitute a whole object

remain without definitive certainty.412

411
Again, it is the notion that a sensory consciousness apprehends the intrinsic existence, rather than the mere,
unanalyzed appearance, of a conventional object that Tsongkhapa considers the pivotal mistake of Formalism.
Commenting in Illuminating the Intent on Entry verse 6.158 [which reads “That is indeed not established by the
seven ways/In thusness or the world,” (that is, conventionally, as Formalism asserts). However, it is designated here
in the world/In dependence on its components without thorough analysis.], Candrakīrti explains: “When that chariot,
the designated object, is sought by the seven ways in thusness, that is, ultimately, or in the conventions of the world,
the chariot is indeed not established. Nonetheless, the chariot, like blue, feelings (or sensations), and so forth, is
designated here among the conventions of the world in dependence on its components, the wheel and so forth,
without the thorough analysis seeking [the intrinsic nature of] the designated object.”
412
Apropos of this, Entry 6.163 states: “Because the thing does not exist [intrinsically], it is not stable and/it is not
unstable. It is not produced and does not disintegrate. Also permanence and so forth in regard to that/Do not exist. It
does not exist as oneness or as otherness.” In other words, because it is not a really real thing, but rather a

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 As Entry 6.167 indicates, the sevenfold analysis certainly refutes the intrinsic identity of

parts or wholes, yet “they do exist in terms of being renowned in the world as other than that,” as

mere objects of knowledge whose identity rests solely on intersubjective norms of their causal

efficacy. Drawing on the exploration of the construction of personal identity earlier, I can

observe here that the very capacity for designating conventionalities derives from the primary

socialization that enculturates the individual by means of shared conceptual and linguistic

practices. However, those shared practices are also the very means by which spiritually advanced

beings—bodhisattvas and buddhas who have transcended the error of conflating mere designated

object and intrinsically existent object—can communicate with ordinary beings; hence, the

edifice of mahāyāna Buddhism depends on conventions.413

Just as any object is established conceptually in dependence on that causal efficacy, the

capacity for its transformation depends on harnessing the conditions contributing to the

continuity of its trajectory. Specifically, the self habit that binds living beings to the cycle of

suffering existence depends on a fiction that can be undermined, and because the continuity of

existence is not thereby severed—inasmuch as mere existence is not nonexistence—then

alternate forms, enlightened forms, may emerge in the wake of the destruction of cyclic

dependently originated “thing,” such definite identity conditions do not apply. One may—and must, for the sake of
intersubjective communication, use words and concepts that specify phenomena are impermanent rather than
permanent, for instance.
413
One of the primary elements of the path, as Tsongkhapa lays out in LRCM, is the understanding of the
preciousness of human life, based on the human capacity (due in part to the brain, no doubt) to comprehend
conceptually the nature of suffering, the capacity for transcending it, and so forth. In unexcelled yoga tantra, there is
a focus on human physiology as uniquely configured to accomplish the perfection stage. Nevetheless, the karma
involved in causing the attainment of human rebirth, especially that with the opportunities available for undertaking
Buddhist practice, is dependent on virtuous behaviors that themselves require a conceptual understanding of virtue
and non-virtue. As Śāntideva explains, it is the appearance of a buddha that causes ordinary beings to appreciate
virtuous behavior; despite the inviolable principle that even buddhas cannot contravene karmic causality, the fact
that buddhas have attempted, throughout beginningless time, to forge karmic bonds with ordinary beings in order to
stimulate virtuous behavior accounts for this possibility. This topic is considered more in chapter five.

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existence. For Tsongkhapa, such emergence is not a foregone conclusion, not an unveiling

destined to occur with the eradication of misknowledge, as some Tibetans appear to have

understood. Instead, the achievement of the enlightened form/s of buddhahood is a positive

causal process dependent, Tsongkhapa contends, on the tantric art of deity yoga whereby those

forms of life become the very path to their attainment. This process is described in terms of

tantric asceticism in chapter three. Due to deeply ingrained negative psychological habit patterns,

identified in the Guhyasamāja literature, directly oppositional patterns must displace them: these

positive, oppositional habit patterns involve foremost the resolute appropriation of oneself of

such forms—that is, deity yoga, which Tsongkhapa identifies as the unique feature of tantra.414

Hence, I turn to Tsongkhapa’s account of unexcelled yoga tantra self-construction that integrates

the Centrist analysis of emptiness-dependent origination with the depth psychology of tantric

arts.

Tantra: Psychology, Embodiment, and Soteriology

Although I have framed the Centrist enterprise of deconstructing the misknowledge that

sustains cyclic existence in terms of epistemology, insofar as that misknowledge infects the

perceptions of unenlightened beings, it would be a grave error not to acknowledge how much

psychological patterns perpetuate that misknowledge. That is, while misknowledge produces the

two other primary afflictions, the poisons—desire and aversion—in turn reproduce

misknowledge in the ongoing feedback loop that is cyclic existence. That enterprise of

414
Although it may be unnecessary to note here that yoga derives from the verb yuj, to yoke, it may be worth
observing that deity yoga is indeed the conceptual yoking of the unenlightened person’s identity, displaced
temporarily during the actual meditations, to an enlightened identity that is its future reality; this is known as taking
the result as the path. Tsongkhapa is adamant that this yoking, what I discuss as appropriation in chapter three, is an
absolutely necessary element of Mantra practice and, as such, the attainment of enlightenment at all.

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deconstruction is, in fact, intended to uproot that primary affliction so that the entwined elements

of cognition and emotion—the five aggregates that together comprise the basis of designation

“self” in Buddhist thought—function in an enlightened rather than unenlightened, that is, painful

manner for both oneself and others. Thus, that deconstruction itself serves little purpose if

unmoored from the fundamental soteriological aims that transform psychological patterns from

negative to positive. If, as Śāntideva claims, the bodhisattva practices are for the sake of wisdom,

then, it should be added, wisdom is for the sake of liberation.415

And if psychology, generally speaking, is the study of the mind, its processes, and its

ensuing behaviors—the three doors of body, speech, and mind in Buddhist terminology—then

Buddhist psychology generally is the application of that study to their positive transformation.

That application necessarily occurs outside of meditative equipoise, for it is within the realm of

language and concepts that any transformation, informed by the wisdom of emptiness-dependent

origination, may proceed. This is the provenance of the creative arts, the method/skillful means

aspect of the bodhisattva path, and from Tsongkhapa’s perspective the arts involved in

unexcelled yoga tantra are the most magnificent since they involve the simulation of a buddha’s

activities. I have emphasized that Tsongkhapa contends that buddhas necessarily know emptiness

and dependently designated phenomena simultaneously, and the practice of unexcelled yoga

tantra is to create oneself as a sort of virtual reality buddha that appropriates such enlightened

knowing, discussed earlier. However, while a buddha actually knows these two simultaneously,

the yogi/ni416 first meditates on emptiness and on the basis of that apprehension of emptiness

415
Śāntideva’s ninth chapter, the chapter on wisdom, begins with this observation, which could suggest, if taken out
of context, that those practices are simply means to an end—a reading made more plausible for some by the verse
following, which seems to align with the interpretation of Candrakīrti that Tsongkhapa take pains to refute. On this,
see Künzang Sönam and Williams.
416
Following the convention used by Thurman in the translation of the Guhyasamāja Tantra accompanied with
Candrakīrti’s commentary (see Vajradhara), I am using “yogi/ni” to express the bi-gendered nature of the

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arises in the objective aspect of the deity and views all things—perceived as extraordinary,

maṇḍala residents or habitat—as illusion-like; hence, the yogi/ni is more like a bodhisattva in

this way.

But by mimicking enlightened activities in dependence on the appropriation of deified

self-conception, the yogi/ni solidifies (but not reifies) that buddha-identity and approaches

enlightenment significantly quicker than practicing the exoteric path alone. In particular, the

processes of identity dissolution and recreation in literal and symbolic terms, as enacted in the

sādhana, are of primary interest in the context of Tsongkhapa’s integration of sūtra and tantra.417

In the creation stage, the yogi/ni fabricates this deity-identity and, through a series of

visualizational yogas approximating the processes of death, between-state, and rebirth, comes to

have an incontrovertible perceptual and conceptual sense of (empty) self as that deity. In the

perfection stage, the yogi/ni transforms that deity-identity from fabricated to unfabricated by

means of a series of yogas that reshape the psychophysical continuum to align completely with

that identity. Because of the homologous relationship between the symbolic elements of the

creation stage and the literal, i.e., psychophysical, elements of the perfection stage, the creation

stage processes of wholly restructuring the conceptual field are necessary.

The mind is, from the standpoint of any Buddhist tradition, significantly more important

and powerful than inanimate matter, given its capacity to directly overcome the effects of matter

enlightened being that they (the appropriate pronoun, therefore) intend to become, discussed below. In chapter three
I noted the potential for virtual reality immersion to disrupt ordinary uni-gender identification.
417
As is clear from Haven, Tsongkhapa’s first teacher, Dondrub Rinchen, is a scholar-adept trained in both sūtra and
tantra; hence, the ideal Buddhist figure—at least as far as Tsongkhapa is concerned—is precisely this, which may
contribute to his dismay, expressed at the beginning of LRCM, that a sizeable number of practitioners in Central
Tibet are actively opposed to sūtra or tantra. It is, however, Tsongkhapa’s synthesis of Centrism and unexcelled
yoga tantra, which I explore here, that distinguishes his legacy; moreover, as I explain in the fifth chapter, his
establishment of tantric scholarship at Ganden Monastery serves as the basis for that legacy to expand throughout
the Tibetan cultural region and into China.

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and biological processes. From the mahāyāna standpoint, the connections between mind and

matter provide the means for a thorough reconfiguring of material reality when analytical

concentration is sufficiently stable. The tantric perspective, which regards mind and matter as

indivisible in their subtlest state, plumbs the depths of mind-matter connections to sever the

conceptual and physiological constraints that prevent enlightened existence. 418 Indeed, their

indivisibility in ordinary psychophysical existence finds expression in the indivisibility of the

two buddha bodies, wisdom truth and material (form), to which they give rise. Tsongkhapa

stresses, given the pronounced emphasis on the physical in certain aspects of tantric practice, that

the conceptual reorientation of deity yoga must precede direct interventions. This is consonant

not only with the importance of dependent origination and conceptuality in the Centrism of

Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti but also with their central role in Guhyasamāja—and hence

unexcelled yoga tantra in general—creation stage practice. Along these lines, with an emphasis

on path sequence, Tsongkhapa states the following:419

[T]he wise should distance themselves and abandon the following two
positions, having understood them as essenceless messages: [1] that in the
[exoteric] Transcendence Vehicle, since the deeds component is interpretable
in meaning and [mentally] elaborated, all one needs to rely on is mere
emptiness; and [2] that in the [esoteric] Mantra Vehicle, since the creation
stage, [mantra] repetition, etc., are conceptual, elaborated, and interpretable in
meaning, then if one knows the definitive meaning [such practices] are
unnecessary. Rather, [the wise] should train sequentially in the path of the
integration of [exoteric] art and wisdom and the integration of [esoteric]
creation and perfection…

418
Although the subtle material factor, wind or air (prāṇa, rlung), is the aspect uniquely and explicitly manipulated
in tantric practice, its implicit manipulation in exoteric mahāyāna practices is taken for granted due to the indivisible
nature of mind and wind at their subtlest.
419
Tsong Khapa 124.

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Guhyasamāja and the Framework of Unexcelled Yoga Tantra

The importance of Guhyasamāja for Tsongkhapa no doubt derives in some measure from

its leading exegetes being, according to him and the Indo-Tibetan tradition before him, the

Madhayamaka greats: Nāgārjuna systematizes its perfection stage practices in his Five Stages;

Āryadeva clarifies its gradual practice in his Lamp that Integrates the Practices, a particularly

important text for Tsongkhapa; and Candrakīrti explicates its brilliant hermeneutical keys in his

Illuminating Lamp, keys that unlock the meaning hidden in the root tantra and applicable to the

other unexcelled yoga tantra systems.420 Thus, the Madhayamaka presentation of the view,

emptiness and dependent origination, fits seamlessly with the supreme arts of unexcelled yoga

tantra, the apex of the bodhisattva path. Nevertheless, it would be a disservice to Tsongkhapa’s

obvious discernment as a scholar to suggest that he would place teachers’ fame over content, as

this would undermine the first of the four reliances central to mahāyāna scholasticism.421 Further,

taking the concern with which he initially approaches Candrakīrti’s Centrist work, according to

Haven, as an example, it would be simply uncharacteristic. In fact, for my purposes here, of great

interest is the importance not of Nāgārjuna’s exegetical lineage—the “noble” system (‘phags

lugs) of interpretation—but of the other lineage, that of Jñānapāda and his heirs. That lineage

provides the interpretive framework critical to Tsongkhapa’s understanding of deity yoga and the

place of conceptuality in unexcelled yoga tantra, discussed below.

420
Wedemeyer, introducing Āryadeva 2007 7-43, discusses at some length the issue, raised in chapter one here, of
the chronological difficulties raised by these attributions. That is, Nāgārjuna who wrote Wisdom is accepted in both
modern academia and Indo-Tibetan traditions to have composed his Centrist classics around the second century CE.
The tantric works, however, emerged centuries later—a fact recognized by certain astute Tibetan scholars, as
Wedemeyers explains. How to approach this problem without succumbing to an Orientalist dismissal of such
attributions and their context altogether? This can be done, as Wedemeyer suggests, by realizing this is not a
problem from the perspective of the Indo-Tibetan traditions, much as such would not be a problem within the South
Asian religious milieu more generally.
421
On this see Thurman 1984 255.

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 Tsongkhapa champions the value of the Guhyasamāja tantric system over other

unexcelled yoga systems for a number of important reasons. First, he regards this system,

particularly as explicated by the Noble exegetical community, to provide the practical and

hermeneutical framework by which to understand all other systems;422 in this way, Guhyasamāja

functions for unexcelled yoga tantra in a manner similar to the stages of the path literature.

Second, the Buddha himself provides, scattered in a set of explanatory tantras, those

hermeneutical keys that Candrakīrti explicates, thereby imbuing unique authority to

Guhyasamāja and allowing Tsongkhapa the justification for reconciling all unexcelled yoga

tantra systems423 within a consistent framework that accounts for individual differences while

articulating a comprehensive perspective.424 Third, Guhyasamāja is the clearest source for the

critical three transformations of the ordinary, impure states of death, the between, and rebirth

into the three bodies of a buddha, the wisdom, beatific, and emanation bodies, discussed below.

In these ways, Guhyasamāja acts as the unexcelled yoga tantra template whereby its key

422
On this, see Yarnall 20. As David Gray 2009b observes, Tsongkhapa hesitates to accept the comprehensive
approach of the so-called bodhisattva commentaries on Kālacakra, which aim to subsume the unexcelled yoga
tantras within its purview. It may be that, in addition to the unique presentation that Kālacakra offers—a uniqueness
Tsongkhapa acknowledges in Presence—Tsongkhapa understands the Guhyasamāja interpretive approach,
especially because it is sanctioned by the Buddha and championed by the noble exegetes, to be more relevant to the
other systems, especially regarding its hermeneutical keys.
423
With respect to Kālacakra, it has been the approach of the Ganden tradition, following Tsongkhapa, to
acknowledge the differences in this system with respect to the other unexcelled yoga systems. Tsongkhapa’s main
teacher, Rendawa, openly rejects the authenticity of the Kālacakra—perhaps in part because of his differences with
Dolpopa, who draws on Kālacakra for his other-empty theory, discussed earlier—while Tsongkhapa accepts it
without reservation. On this, see Jinpa 2009.
424
Yael Bentor, whose recent research focuses on the differences in Sakya and Ganden/Geluk interpretations of the
unexcelled yoga tantra literature, explains: “One reason for the importance of the Guhyasamāja Tantra in Tibet,
especially for the Geluk tradition, is its remarkable hermeneutic system that was later applied to other tantras as
well. Hence an understanding of the Guhyasamāja Tantra has been regarded as a key to the tantric system as a
whole.” (Bentor and Dorjee 2) One could go further and say that, given the apparent disparities among the
unexcelled yoga tantras, without these hermeneutical keys there would be no “system” at all; there would be only
individual sets of rites dedicated to a specific deity, rites sharing rough similarities that evince mimesis among
practice communities, but no underlying coherence.

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points—such as the subtle levels of mind, the death process, and the eighty instincts—should be

ascribed to others, in which they remain concealed.425 Hence, when discussing unexcelled yoga

tantra theory and practice here, it is frequently the case that Guhyasamāja is the specific

underlying authority.

Unexcelled yoga tantra psychology elaborates on the mahāyāna understanding of the

mind as self-world creator and identifies three levels of integrated mind-body creativity to be

engaged to transform these, by means of creation stage and perfection stage yogas, from

unenlightened to enlightened. I discuss these in a different context in chapter three. There is an

explicit understanding here that the mind and body are interdependent and, at the subtlest level,

indivisible. The gross layer of the mind consists of the sense consciousnesses, which corresponds

to the five-element body, together comprising the five aggregates of standard Buddhist thought;

these are directly involved with the external world that is, in other contexts, a maṇḍala or a

buddhaverse. The subtle level of mind refers to the three states known as luminance, radiance,

and imminence associated with the primal afflictive psychological habit patterns—the three

poisons, here divided into eighty instincts or drives—that underlie manifest behavior.

For my purposes, unpacked below, these are the focus of the creation stage yogas and, in

terms of unexcelled yoga tantra that is my concern, deity yoga. The associated subtle body is

constituted by wind energies, nerve channels and centers, and neural drops manipulated directly

425
This point relates to the fact, discussed in chapter one, that Tibetans from early in the Later Diffusion upheld
certain tantra systems as supreme in terms of unique elements qualifying them as non-dual and thus exceptions to
the mother/father classifications. Tsongkhapa, based on his extensive study, would have none of this, contending
that all systems are necessarily nondual in terms of their presenting a path combining great bliss (art) and emptiness
(wisdom) indivisibly; their differences relate to an emphasis on teaching one of these, for lacking either aspect
would entail them not being an actual path to buddhahood (or vajradharahood, the tantric term for the result).
Apropos of this, David Gray has observed (in Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa 2017 17-22) that Tsongkhapa’s
commentary on the Cakrasaṁvara Tantra makes special effort to reveal the teaching of emptiness in this important
text, which does not use the term anywhere in its fifty-one chapters. Nevertheless, as a mother tantra, the wisdom
aspect is its emphasized feature, and as a mahāyāna scripture it must present both wisdom and art in some way,
however much concealed.

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by the perfection stage yogas. The extremely subtle level of mind is the clear light transparency

associated with the extremely subtle wind-energy that is its mount; at the heart center, they reside

inseparably within the indestructible drop that is composed of the seminal essences derived from

the biological mother and father. The uninterrupted continuum of the “two,” the extremely subtle

wind-mind, are the fundamental basis for the designation of the person, whether enlightened or

unenlightened.426

Emptiness in Unexcelled Yoga Tantra Practice

It is the task of the creative arts of unexcelled yoga tantra to transform these ordinary

mind-body levels, which are themselves correlated with the ordinary states of waking (gross),

dreaming (subtle), and deep sleep (extremely subtle), into the three bodies of a buddha. Despite

these natural correlations, due to entrenched negative psychological habit patterns, Tsongkhapa

insists that the exoteric path of the bodhisattva must precede tantric practice and that, in turn, the

creation stage yogas must precede perfection stage yogas. That is, the three principles of the

exoteric path—renunciation, enlightenment spirit, and emptiness-dependent origination—must

be deeply appreciated in order to engage in the creation stage yogas. Otherwise, visualizations

involving one’s own death, ritualized sexual yogas, and oneself as a fully qualified deity simply

426
Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche 121 identifies the subtle aspect of the life-sustaining wind (one of five primary winds
described in unexcelled yoga tantra) as the extremely subtle wind, saying “it has existed from beginningless time as
we have coursed through samsara, and will continue until we reach buddhahood, for it acts as the substantial cause
of the form (i.e., material) bodies of a buddha. In particular the extremely subtle life-sustaining wind has an array of
five colors that give rise to a buddha’s emanation body and a resonant tone that gives rise to a buddha’s enjoyment
(i.e., beatific) body.” It is interesting, given the central place of both speech/language (mantra) and visualization in
tantra, that these two are, like consciousness, fundamental elements of existence. Speech is regarded as one of the
three “doors” of action by which karma is accumulated, and it is correlated to the beatific body and the dream state,
thus directly purified in unexcelled yoga; and vision is undoubtedly the primary offender among the sense
consciousnesses in reifying ordinary appearances that deity yoga must counteract.

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would enhance negative psychological habit patterns—such as aversion, desire, and pride—

rather than undermine them.

However, if such visualizations are undertaken with an unshakable understanding of their

lack of intrinsic existence, then those negative reactions should be transformed into positive

reactions. Negative and positive in Buddhist psychology must be understood, as with ontology

and epistemology, in terms of isolation and mutual dependence, respectively. Because, as the

Buddha’s cosmological insight affirms, all sentient beings exist in mutual dependence rather than

isolation, benefit and harm/positive and negative refer to which of these ensues as well as the

underlying motivation. Harm to another derives from the unconscious belief in intrinsic identity

of self and other, due to which that other appears as a true cause of pleasure or pain independent

of conditions. Harm to others necessarily brings harm to oneself, and that indivisibility of self

and others is reflected, one could say, in the indivisibility of the two buddha bodies that involved

in the well being of self and others.427

Two types of meditation on emptiness occur in unexcelled yoga practice, as reflected in

the sādhana practice. A sādhana—a “means of achievement” of identity with the deity—is the

distillation of the points of creation stage practice drawn from a root tantra and its related

literature. The first type is, of course, the meditation engaging the absence of intrinsic existence,

which serves as the potential for dependently originated things to exist, to relate, and to change;

here, it serves as the capacity for the transformation from unenlightened to enlightened. Since the

focus of the sādhana is to develop divine pride—that is, self-identification as the deity whose

427
That is, causing harm to another will necessarily plant a karmic seed that will ripen, if not purified, in a future
event of one’s own suffering that is, therefore, of one’s own making. The bonds of karma are thoroughly exhausted
at liberation, which differs from the enlightenment of a buddha, of course; but while the wisdom truth body of the
buddha represents, in part, the exhaustion of karma and hence the harm done to others, the material, or form, bodies
of a buddha represent the infinite aspiration to assist them, which aspiration would play a role in that exhaustion.

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identity is contemplatively appropriated—along with vivid vision of self and environment

experienced as celestially pure, meditation on emptiness is not the central focus, though it is

certainly indispensably essential that mindfulness of emptiness imbue the various processes of

establishing divine identity.428 For instance, Tsongkhapa’s sādhana for the Solitary Hero

(ekavīra) Yamāntaka-Vajrabhairava calls for an instantaneous visualization of the yogi/ni as the

deity, followed by a series of preparations, after which the yogi/ni recites two important mantras

prior to contemplating: “Due to being dependently designated, I, the deities of the field of merit,

and all other phenomena are free from the four extremes of permanence, annihilation, and so

forth, empty of intrinsic existence, devoid of self.” This is a direct reference to Nāgārjuna’s four-

parameter analysis, thereby establishing the dependently designated nature of both enlightened

and unenlightened existence and, therefore, the very possibility for the performances to produce

their effects.429 Importantly, prior to this contemplation, the yogi/ni affirms divine pride through

two mantras: the first confirms the naturally empty—glossed as “pure”—reality of all

phenomena; and the second confirms the indivisibility of objective emptiness and subjective

great bliss that is the basis for the appearance as the deity and maṇḍala.430

428
On the need to meditate on emptiness, enumerated by Tsongkhapa, see Tsong Khapa 187. Tsongkhapa
summarizes (Tsong Khapa 195) his points, saying “although it is indeed the case that in the context of the first stage
[i.e., the creation stage] one principally meditates the circle of deities that is the perception side, nonetheless one
does train oneself in everything arising as an illusion by developing intense certitude about the import of the
intrinsic identitylessness of all things.”
429
Thurman has argued that the enactment of the sādhana, better translated as “performance script” due to its
process as a rehearsal for enlightenment, is best understood as a performance, rather than a practice. While there is
clear overlap in meaning, “performance” better captures the other-oriented nature of the activities of those who
actually do, based on deeper attainments, fulfill the other-oriented obligations of the bodhisattva path.
430
The first is Oṁ svabhāva śuddhaḥ sarva dharmāḥ svabhāva śuddho ‘ham, which is taken as “I am the purity that
is the nature of the pure nature of all phenomena.” The second is Oṁ śūnyatā jñāna vajra svabhāva ātmako ‘ham,”
which is taken as “I am the self that is the adamantine nature of intuition (i.e., subjective great bliss) and (objective)
emptiness.” The former emphasizes the empty nature of the deity, as well as all external phenomena to be perceived,
and the latter emphasizes the conventional reality that is the unbreakable continuity of mind and wind that is the
basis for designation of that self.

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 The second type of emptiness in unexcelled yoga practice is a visualization and

meditational experience of the absence of phenomenal appearances (as in the space-like

equipoised samādhi of the exoteric meditation that fails to find things as intrinsically

identifiable) imagined as occurring with the destruction of the world system, as described in the

higher knowledge literature. Unlike the natural purity that is the absence of intrinsic existence,

this type of emptiness involves the destruction, that is, the seeming dissolution, of existent

things—in a sādhana, it is the imagined dissolution of the entire inanimate world system that

complements, in a sense, the imagined dissolution of the psychophysical constituents of the

yogi/ni in the process of transforming ordinary death into the wisdom truth body of a buddha. In

Tsongkhapa’s Guhyasamāja sādhana, the dissolution of phenomenal appearances corresponds to

the “empty eon that follows the destruction of the previous world,” which serves as the capacity

“for the arising of the extraordinary appearances of the celestial mansion and the deities of the

mansion.”431 The absence of appearances is not nonexistence, and it is axiomatic for Tsongkhapa

that the indivisible continuum of mind and wind, the basis for the designation “I” for either

unenlightened or enlightened, is beginningless and endless; it is indestructible, as symbolized by

the vajra. As discussed below, there is an explicit connection between the death⇾between

state⇾rebirth process and the transformation from unenlightened to enlightened existence, and

here one can see a similar connection in that deity yoga entails an extended self-identification

with the entire world system that is recreated. This is in effect a literal envisioning of the

cosmological interdependence that the Buddha experiences upon his awakening, noted earlier,

and an extension of the mind training meditations intended to nurture the experience of karmic

interdependence.

431
Bentor 2019 6, 17–19.

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 Just as the nonexistence of conventionalities in the exoteric context would entail the

impossibility of producing the material bodies of the buddha and hence undermine the very

purpose of the mahāyāna, here too such nonexistence would do the same. In fact, buddhahood

itself, as Tsongkhapa observes, is dependent on the indivisibility of the two bodies, so the effect

of such a position appears to be the negation of the possibility of buddhahood. Rather, the

absence of phenomenal appearances provides the potential for the emergence of a new world

system in which the yogi/ni, shorn of the egocentric self-habit, retains their place at the center,

but now possessing the divine pride and vivid appearance of an enlightened being whose

selflessness-habit is oriented toward the welfare of all other beings, who have come—if only in

the yogi/ni’s imagination, initially—under their care within the maṇḍala, that new world system.

While meditation on emptiness, undertaken by means of the four-parameter analysis, directly

opposes the unconscious self-habit pattern that superimposes the fiction of intrinsic reality upon

dependent designations, the process of embodying the divine pride and vivid perception—deity

yoga, examined below—undertaken in dependence on emptiness meditation, directly opposes

ordinary conceptual thought.

Here, in order to clarify the importance of the foregoing, it is critical to emphasize that

for Tsongkhapa, there is an important continuity in the exoteric and esoteric forms of analytical

deconstruction that does not entail nihilism. Just as the identification of the object of negation in

the exoteric context (belabored earlier) does not extend to all phenomena but rather to the

putative intrinsic reality that purportedly makes possible their very existence, here too in the

esoteric context actual nonexistence is not intended. In the exoteric context, Tsongkhapa insists

that four-parameter analysis does not undermine mere objects, for that would entail the

destruction of causality and undermine the spiritual path completely. The same is true here,

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building on the exoteric insight that emptiness means dependent origination; hence, the

meditative dissolution of phenomenal appearances makes possible the conceptual

transformations leading to buddhahood. If this were predicated on nonexistence, then the

psychophysical continuity would be destroyed and buddhahood rendered impossible. For

Tsongkhapa, death is not nonexistence, as modern medical science would have it; rather, it is the

subtlest state of existence, a moment of separation from the subtle instincts when complete

transformation is possible. An important part of Tsongkhapa’s coordination of sutra and tantra is

the emphasis on causality (detailed throughout this chapter) that becomes eviscerated by any

misinterpretation regarding the scope of the object of negation.

Conceptuality in Tantric Buddhism

The problem that Centrist deconstruction solves is the adherence to the conception of

intrinsic existence, thereby showing the mutual dependence of subjects and objects, etc., and

proving that nothing exists independent of causes and conditions. That erroneous conception is

not without consequences, as observed above, for it is the root of all suffering. In taking self and

others to be naturally so, desire and aversion generate a manifest egocentric standpoint—the

intentionality that defines evolutionary actions (karma)—conceiving subjects and objects as “I”

and “mine.” The cycle of unenlightened existence that ensues from this self-habit pattern is

predicated on self-interest rather than other-interest, unlike enlightened existence. It is, in that

sense, ordinary. Ordinary beings, then, are trapped in a reifying self-habit/self-interest spiral,

failing to understand the dependently designated nature of conventionalities. And even as

bodhisattvas, who do understand that fact in whatever measure, work for the welfare of others,

the self-habit retains a certain hold. But, Tsongkhapa emphasizes, it is not any conception

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whatsoever that is to be eliminated through the negation of the four-parameter analysis, as

certain of his opponents maintain, but this specific conception of intrinsic existence

superimposed on dependently designated phenomena.

The problem that tantric reconstruction solves is how to counteract directly that

misconception with its opposite, a positive conception based in the other-oriented selflessness

habit rather than the egocentric self-habit. Because selflessness entails dependent origination, a

pattern of perception, conception, and behavior—a bodhisattva form of life—based on it is

unmistaken.432 The self-habit pattern is the erroneous perception and conception of intrinsic

existence and is the egocentric standpoint conceiving “I” and “mine” that Centrist reasoning

undermines, for it is the root of suffering. It is also, as Tsongkhapa explains, known in tantric

treatises as ordinary conceptual thought. This is why the primary method that he identifies as

salutary in effectively counteracting ordinary conceptual thought is extraordinary conceptual

thought—that is, deity yoga. Because, again, it is not any and every conceptual thought but one

specific type of conceptual thought—one glossed in tantric thought as “ordinariness”— that

binds sentient beings to cyclic existence, its direct opponent, extraordinariness, is utilized to

counterattack it.433 Tsongkhapa cites the Samantabhadra Sādhana of the Guhyasamāja exegete

Jñānapāda—who like Tsongkhapa had a visionary experience of Mañjuśrī—as an authority:434

There is no other suffering of existence [produced]

From anything other than the stream of ordinary

432
Here one could think of chapter twenty-five of the Lotus Sūtra, in which Avalokiteśvara, out of universal
compassion, takes on any appearance needed for suffering beings trapped by their self-habit.
433
One way to think about this topic concerns karmic causality and the results of virtuous and nonvirtuous actions.
Misknowledge, which is the misconception of intrinsic existence, is the root of desire and aversion, which manifest
in various ways that plant the seeds for future instances of desire and aversion. However, they also condition, in
complex ways, the future embodiments—the ordinary sensory appearances—of the karmic agents.
434
See Tsong Khapa 2013 63. Tsongkhapa (64) goes on to cite later authorities in the Jñānapāda exegetical lineage
who clarify ordinary conceptual thought to be the self-habit and the opposing mind to be deity yoga.

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 conceptual thought.
The mind holding a pattern opposed to that
Will come to have direct realization.
Whatever [mind] has the nature of the profound and the
magnificent
Will not perceive [ordinary] imaginary thought.

The operative theory underlying tantric Buddhism is that the very afflictions of desire and

aversion that, with misknowledge, form the basis for cyclic existence may be embraced, if

perceived as empty rather than intrinsic—that is, from a selflessness-habit pattern rather than

self-habit pattern—in order to undermine their nature as afflictions.435 The potency of the

poisons is due to their negative force in reifying the perception of the intrinsic reality of the

objects with which they engage, conceiving them as naturally, unconditionally desirable or

deplorable. The three principles (renunciation, compassion, wisdom) developed in the exoteric

context contribute in different ways to the capacity for engaging and undermining the afflictions

in tantra, and Tsongkhapa—following one of the Indian commentarial sources—argues that the

four classes of tantra derive from four differing capacities to embrace desire, in particular.436 In

unexcelled yoga tantra, the subtle minds—luminance, radiance, and imminence—associated with

435
As Yarnall (in Tsong Khapa 2013 35) puts it: “[D]ifferent psycho-physical responses triggered by the arousal of
different types and levels of desire give rise to successively more refined states or subtler types of “(bliss-)
consciousness” or subjectivities, and that while these would normally bind one more strongly to saṁsāra, if these
subtler subjectivities are intentionally aroused in a controlled meditative environment and then utilized to meditate
on special empty objects (that is, extraordinary objects nondually perceived/conceived to be empty, rather than on
ordinary objects of desire reified as intrinsically real), then there can be effected a liberative realization and a
transformation at a subtler and more profound level.”
436
It is clear that in Buddhist thought generally, desire and aversion are two sides of the same coin: getting what one
wants and avoiding what one does not want are linked. Nevertheless, in one presentation of dependent origination, it
is desire that serves as the first link, indicating its importance as a manifest affliction binding one to cyclic existence.
Unexcelled yoga tantra deals directly with the natural processes of death, the between state, and rebirth; aversion is
naturally related to death, and desire for embodiment—as well as the Oedipal/Elektra complex—compels the
movement from between state to rebirth. In this way, these two poisons are linked by the irrationally protective self-
habit.

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the instincts of the three poisons and the gross minds associated with their manifest expressions

are the performance arena, as it were, in which the three are engaged directly by the

extraordinary, selflessness habit pattern, deity yoga.

The creative arts of tantra—as the complement to the wisdom aspect—are precisely the

means to buddhahood, for they transform the conceptual bases of self/mind and world/body from

negative to positive. In the exoteric mahāyāna the engagement of these two aspects, wisdom and

art, alternate depending on whether the meditator is in meditative equipoise or not, respectively.

In tantra, the esoteric mahāyāna, however, these two are united simultaneously in a single

moment wherein a subtle subjectivity—which is innately blissful, according to the tantric

literature—apprehends empty conventionalities reconceived as extraordinary, or divine. This is

deity yoga, the art that Tsongkhapa identifies as the unique feature of the four classes of tantra.

This art, explored more below and discussed earlier, directly mimics the simultaneous direct

knowledge that a buddha has of the two truths, a feature Tsongkhapa takes pains to establish.

In unexcelled yoga tantra, ordinary (i.e., misknowledge-obscured) sights, sounds, and so

forth are replaced by extraordinary aspects, such that divine forms of deity and maṇḍala (sight),

mantras (sound), nectar (taste), incense or flowers (scent), and pervading orgasmic bliss (touch)

become the sensory field. This is accomplished gradually by transforming, within the creation

stage, the conceptual field in the subtle mind, developing—albeit artificially—through

meditation the extraordinary aspects of the sense fields while attenuating sense

consciousnesses.437 This leads eventually to the divine conceptual field’s replacing the ordinary

437
Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche 133–4 identifies the subtle mind as the “mental awareness and its retinue of eighty
natural conceptions (i.e., the instincts of desire, aversion, and misknowledge) that are present during the experience
of” the three, luminance, radiance, and imminence. Geshe Thubten Loden 185–189 adds that coarse conceptuality
ceases at luminance, and during the subtler half of the imminence state subtle conceptuality ceases as the clear light
transparency dawns. Ngawang Palden (see Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche 115) explains that the sense consciousnesses
are still operative but ordinary objects appearing to them are not apprehended due to the strong engagement of
mental awareness with its object.

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perceptual field at the yogi/ni’s will, at which point they can proceed to the perfection stage,

wherein physiological and biological transformations are thought to occur. This is the path that,

by counteracting the unconscious belief in intrinsic existence that compels ordinary processes of

death, between state, and birth, causes the attainment of the three buddha bodies that are the

extraordinary homologues of these three processes.

Deity Yoga: Divine Pride and Vivid Appearance

Tsongkhapa identifies deity yoga as the unique feature of the vajrayāna, as deity yoga

uniquely captures the result of tantric practice at the time of the path. That is, deity yoga

simulates the three buddha bodies that are the results of the bodhisattva path by taking them as

causes from the outset, yoking the ordinary states of death, between state, and rebirth to their

extraordinary homologues. As discussed, the yogi/ni engaging in deity yoga must dissolve any

conception of ordinary self—the sense predicated on misknowledge, desire, and aversion—and

any perception of the external world prior to assuming the identity of the three bodies, which is

accomplished successively in the sādhana, so it is not the case that their ordinary identity

becomes mixed or confused with the extraordinary one.438 Deity yoga is the art required to create

the conditions for the arising of the material bodies of the buddha, which are indivisible from the

wisdom truth body, which is itself produced by meditation on emptiness.439 Tsongkhapa

438
As Geshe Thubten Loden 89 explains: “The reason that one’s coarse flesh and blood body melts into emptiness is
because one’s coarse body, which is a cause [and a result, as well] of suffering, cannot itself” become the deity.
439
As observed earlier, although the wisdom truth body is so produced, it is not the case that it can be produced
separately, without the two material bodies. Tsongkhapa follows Candrakīrti in asserting arhats—those liberated in
the Individual Vehicle—must apprehend emptiness-dependent designation in a manner similar to bodhisattvas (but
lacking the impact that bodhisattvas attain through repetition), but they do not attain any buddha body since they do
not generate the causes for both. The corollary of this, though I have not seen it addressed this way, is that
unexcelled yoga tantra practice is therefore necessary for attaining buddhahood at all, since only unexcelled yoga
offers the methods that simulate the indivisible buddha bodies as a path. It is the case that Tsongkhapa, like (most)
Tibetans accept this, and this logical necessity explains why Tsongkhapa is adamant about the need for deity yoga,

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considers divine pride, the conception of oneself as the deity, to be more important than the vivid

perception of oneself as the deity and maṇḍala, a fact that underlines the primacy of

conceptuality in constructing perception, which is therefore never in touch with any unmediated

“given” content of experience. Experience is malleable, intersubjective in its content, and—due

to the force of conceptual consciousness in shaping its dynamics—constructed repetitively out of

positive and negative habit patterns. Deity yoga’s purpose, in this sense, is to redirect reflexive

patterns of negative behavior into positive ones so that new, extraordinary forms of life may

become real. I have elaborated this process in chapter three, in terms of tantric asceticism, but

here I attempt to relate it more closely to the philosophical principles above.

For Tsongkhapa this process of intentionally reconstructing one’s form of life is, in

effect, the path itself, as one moves from effortful practice to effortless performance to actual

embodiment—Presence itself hints at this in general terms. Divine pride, like vivid perception, is

the result of intense familiarization.440 There is, from beginningless time, the ongoing but

unconscious familiarization with ordinary, afflicted pride—egocentricity, the conceptuality that

is the self-habit pattern—that generates cyclic existence. This negative form of familiarization

can be counteracted only with its opposing form, the selflessness-habit pattern embodied in the

aspect of the deity. Deity yoga is, in effect, a more holistic form of modelling than guru yoga441,

creation stage practices, and the place of conceptuality in tantric practice. See Tsongkhapa 2016 107-9, where
Tsongkhapa draws on Jñānapāda to assert that tantric practice lacking art—i.e., deity yoga—will result in an arhat’s
liberation but not buddhahood. He makes the point that the wisdom truth body and material bodies are cooperative
conditions for each other’s attainment, so the need for the integration of wisdom and art is most critical. And since
Tsongkhapa establishes that deity yoga operates in both ceation and perfection stages.
440
See Bushell 2009 for a provocative analysis of neuroscientific discoveries of memory and vision that support the
unexcelled yoga methods for creating, via a memory palace, alternate conceptual fields.
441
What we have seen previously is the exoteric context in which the guru, as a substitute for the Buddha, serves as
a living model for integrating the path into the actions of body, speech, and mind so as to come to embody the path
just as the guru does. In the esoteric context, the guru is the living embodiment of the Buddha, all buddhas, not
entirely distinct from the buddhas and perhaps an emanation of the Buddha—considered kinder than the departed
historical Buddha for taking personal care of the yogi/ni. Especially in the unexcelled yoga context, the guru is a

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examined previously, insofar as the ideal, in unexcelled yoga tantra, becomes reality through the

transformation/purification of the five aggregates—the basis of designation for ordinary

identity—into the five wisdoms, represented by the five lineage tathāgatas (i.e., buddhas) that are

personified singularly as Vajradhara, through the transformations of the three ordinary states into

the three buddha bodies, and so forth.442

The entirety of the yogi/ni’s experience—the world system, or uni/multiverse—becomes

transfigured through a series of practices designed to replace all ordinary conceptual categories

with deified substitutes. This may be most effectively represented by the Guhyasamāja body

maṇḍala, in which thirty-two constituents of the yogi/ni’s ordinary body are visualized and then

transformed into the thirty-two deities of the maṇḍala.443 The divine pride that holds the self-

identity of the deity, established through such yogas reinforcing empty-extraordinary reality, is

maintained outside of formal meditation sessions by means of repeating the mantra Oṁ sarva

tathāgata kāya vajra svabhāva ātmako ’ham—“I am the self whose indestructible nature is the

body of all tathāgatas,” keeping the strong intention to perceive all sensory objects as divine, and

buddha, embodying the five lineage tathāgatas (see below) and, in the Guhyasamāja sādhana of Tsongkhapa,
explicitly inseparable from the main deity.
442
In the Guhyasamāja Tantra, the five aggregates/five primary afflictions, when transformed, become the five
basic wisdoms personified as the five lineage tathāgatas: the material (or form) aggregate, the affliction of
misknowledge, appears as Vairochana and is the dharmadhātu wisdom; the consciousness aggregate, the affliction
of anger, appears as Akṣobhya and is the mirror-like wisdom; the feeling/sensation aggregate, the affliction of pride,
appears as Ratnasambhava and is the equality wisdom; the perception aggregate, the affliction of desire, appears as
Amitābha and is the discernment wisdom; and the formation aggregate, the affliction of jealousy, appears as
Amoghasiddhi and is the all-accomplishing wisdom. Just as the five aggregates are the basis of designation for the
unenlightened person, who is regarded a single phenomenon when unanalyzed, these five wisdoms are the basis of
designation for the enlightened person, who—when regarded as a single phenomenon—is Vajradhara, the beatific
body. As Gyumé Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa 131–2 explains, to say something has been purified in this
context “means that its characteristic of being produced by karma and the mental afflictions has been eliminated.”
443
Bentor and Dorjee 27 observes that yogi/nis “do not simply meditate on the deities at various locations on their
bodies but rather transform their mental and physical components into the deities residing in the body mandala. The
foundation of this practice is the special link between the ordinary impure psycho-physical elements of the body and
their purified aspects in the forms of the thirty-two deities of the Guhyasamāja mandala.”

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attending to artistic representations of divine images—such as statues and thangkas—that

supplement divine perception.444

Deity yoga, then, is a thorough mimetic integration of the bodhisattva path—to be

considered at the end of this chapter—that entails the deepest meaning of the third form of

wisdom, that born from experiential realization in dependence on learning and contemplating

elements of the path. This is bhāvanā/sgom, often translated as “meditation,” but with related

meanings ranging to “cultivation” or, in this context, “realization”—to make real, to bring into

being, to produce from meditation or imagination.445 This is the culmination of familiarization,

which is the necessary force in the sādhana’s performance in terms of both divine pride and vivid

perception. Tsongkhapa cites Dharmakīrti’s seminal epistemological treatise Pramāṇavarttika on

this point:446

444
The commitment to perceive objects as divine is one of the tantric vows undertaken at the time of initiation.
Keeping artistic representations is not a similar requirement but is recommended. Extensive material artifacts would
not be possible within a retreat context, especially in Tsongkhapa’s case, as his retreats are typically undertaken in
caves. But the monasteries and the temples all across Tibet are houses of such sanctifying artifacts, which—upon
being consecrated—literally contain the enlightened presence of the buddhas (on which, see Bentor 1996). The
importance of this material culture as a socially cohesive force can hardly be overstated, and we return to the topic in
the fifth chapter, where we will see such material culture form a central part of Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds.
445
See Monier-Williams 755.
446
This is chapter III, verse 285. The verse 284 reads: “It is stated [by the Buddha] that such things as the earth-
ugliness-totality,/Even though unreal—being manifest by the force/Of meditation—are nonconceptual,/ And have a
vivid appearance.” As Tsongkhapa 2013 100 acknowledges, “when an object of familiarization is vividly perceived
it is the same whether you are familiarizing with a genuine thing or a false thing—just to familiarize is all that is
intended.”

Along these lines, Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche, commenting on Ngawang Palden’s widely used nineteenth-century
manual Illuminating the Tantric Tradition, explains: “In the generation of clear appearance, analytical meditation is
predominant, for when we cultivate clear appearance [i.e., vivid perception of the deity], we must become familiar
with all the details of the mandala. Such familiarity arises through repeatedly analyzing the celestial mansion and its
resident deities. In this respect the protector Maitreya has said anything can be mastered through repeated
contemplation.” (See Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche 116.)

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 Therefore, whatever you really familiarize yourself with,
Whether it is real or unreal.

If you become completely familiarized,

The result is its vivid, nonconceptual cognition.

Deity yoga brings into being the yoking of the yogi/ni’s mental awareness to the deity; makes

real the homologous relationships between the yogi/ni’s ordinary death, between state, and

rebirth and the three bodies of a buddha; and binds, through means of divine pride and vivid

perception, the yogi/ni’s self-conception to the extraordinary reality of buddhahood.447

Deity yoga, however, goes beyond both Bruner’s “narrative construction of reality” and

mimesis into the appropriation typologized by Urban earlier, for it transcends the

conceptual/perceptual aspects and effects material, physiological reality through creation stage

processes that transform the indivisible subtle mental and physical components into a

qualitatively different result. This result occurs in the perfection stage, in which deity yoga

continues to operate, but the creation stage yogas—particularly the three transformations and

simulated rebirth processes—are the ripening agents that give deity yoga its force.

However, as Yarnall emphasizes, these processes are not simply the mashing together of

random elements that through intense familiarization but rather, with respect to vivid perception,

“special signifiers (letters, implements, moons, and so on, visualized in special locations within

the body) directly link to the signified referents (subtle minds, drops, and so on) through a

447
Tsongkhapa, in his Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra, cites the Vajra Pavillion Tantra (Vajrapañjara
Tantra) and its commentary by Devakulamahāmati in this regard. The citation goes: “Therefore, through the “circle
of the mandala,”/The method is a blissful binding,/The yoga of Buddha pride,/Buddhahood will not be distant.” The
following verse, as Tsongkhapa cites it, indicates that method is also to have the Buddha’s form—that is, appearing
as the deity, thus linking divine pride and vivid perception. Tsongkhapa explains that binding “should be taken as
an indivisibility of method (i.e., art)—appearing in the aspect as a divine circle—and wisdom—realizing its nature
as empty of inherent (i.e., intrinsic) existence.” See Tsongkhapa 2016 102-5.

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homological relationship.”448 Without the knowledge of these signifiers, the yogi/ni would be

engaged in mere pretense that would not result in identification with the deity and, hence, the

activation of the signified referents would be rendered impotent. Tsongkhapa explains:449

[B]y meditating the complete set of the habitat and inhabitant mandalas that
purify [respectively] the ordinary vessel and contents that are the bases of
purification…one correlates the many distinctive relativities of the bases of
purification and the means of purification, and [thereby] one thoroughly
develops the roots of virtue which [later] produce the superlative realizations
of the perfection stage.

Unlike the examples of causal efficacy to which Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa appeal with

respect to reasoning in Centrism, examples such as seeds and sprouts or snakes and ropes, the

cause-effect relationship between the phenomena within unexcelled yoga tantra is not a simple

one. Nevertheless, the relationship is a natural one in the sense that, as the Guhyasamāja

literature explains, at their subtlest levels physical and mental processes are indivisible, each

conditioning and supporting the other. And just as seeds have no intrinsic reality but with

appropriate conditions transform into sprouts, and a barley produces barley rather than rice

without any intrinsic reality as barley, such distinctive relative circumstances (rten ’brel khyad

par can) pertain to the homologous relationships between the psychophysical constituents, which

are conceptually conditioned, involved in the transformations of the two unexcelled yoga stages,

the most important of which are, for the purposes here, examined next.450

448
Tsong Khapa 2013 44.
449
Tsong Khapa 43–44.
450
As Tsongkhapa (Tsong Khapa 2013 131) puts it, referring here to the five manifest enlightenments of the Noble
Guhyasamāja systems, “the ability to set up the distinctive relative circumstances that ripen one’s continuum for the
development of the yogas of psychic heat and the drop—which are the signified meanings of all those things [letters,
hand-symbols, moons, etc.]—[that ability] does not exist in the [Tantras which are ] not Unexcelled.” Earlier in the
Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra (see Tsongkhapa 2016 122–3) Tsongkhapa makes the point that the resultant
buddha bodies must have causes of a similar type (such as barley seed for barley) conditioned by these yogas,
themselves dependent on emptiness meditation, not some sort of literal, intrinsic buddha bodies waiting to be

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The Three Transformations and Simulated Rebirth

The actual yogas that prepare the psychophysical continuum for the perfection stage

purifications of ordinary death, between state, and rebirth are those concentrations, rehearsed in

sādhana practice, that simulate these processes by bringing their resultant aspects, the three

buddha bodies, into the path, thus taking the result itself as the path. It is well known that

“mantra” is glossed as mind protection,451 and this process of deity yoga that dissolves the

yogi/ni’s ordinary, suffering identity and assumes a divine identity, is one significant form of

such protection; the specific harnessing of uncontrolled death, between state, and rebirth to their

intentional, enlightened counterparts is another important one. Indeed, the entire sādhana, which

begins and ends with the explicit creation of protection fields, can be understood as a way of

isolating the yogi/ni from the harm of misknowledge, desire, and aversion—along with these

three contaminated states that are there results—through their sublimation; thus, the best mind

protection is perceiving-conceiving all things as empty-dependent-divine, no small task.

The primary practice of the creation stage is the successive purification of these three

most significant states of ordinary existence by rehearsing, in particular, the psychophysical

dissolutions at death as a means of undermining their traumatic aspects—including the loss of

personal identity at death, the bewildering, terrifying array of karma-influenced appearances in

the between, and the sexually charged compulsion to take rebirth—conditioned by the protective

impulse oriented by the self habit. The self habit is here counteracted by the intentional,

controlled dissolution of personal identity (purifying death), the taking up of subtle identity

unveiled. Kirti Tsenshap Rinpoche 121 identifies the extremely subtle mind as the substantial cause of the dharma
body and the extremely subtle wind as the substantial cause of the material bodies, with each (noted earlier) serving
as cooperative conditions for one another.
451
See Tsongkhapa 2016 88.

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aspects, through the five manifest enlightenments (purifying the between state), and finally

emerging in a fully formed divine aspect (purifying rebirth)—all three here separated from

afflicted misknowledge, desire, and aversion while embracing the latter two in their unafflicted

forms. These are the three concentrations, taking death, the between-state, and rebirth into the

path to enlightenment, discussed below. In this way, the eighty instincts that propel cyclic

existence are undermined directly, and the self habit that is egocentricity, that grasps after

intrinsic personal identity, transforms eventually into the divine aspect of an enlightened being

whose identity, separated from the self habit, embrace all existence, as represented by the

yogi/ni’s inseparability from the maṇḍala and its inhabitants.452

Tsongkhapa’s extensive Guhyasamāja sādhana is very complex, illustrating the totalizing

nature of unexcelled yoga practice, and involves successive phases of simulated rebirth—distinct

from the three primary yogas—explicit in their symbolism of sexual intercourse in the

production of a new deified identity.453 That Tsongkhapa, whose ardent concern for monastic

discipline ranks among his four great deeds, discusses in his tantric work graphic details with

utter frankness should alert one to the basic mahāyāna distinction operable here, that between

actions driven by afflictions and not, and so on. Among the many details worthy of mention,

applicable to the root tantra, of course, are (1) that the principal deity of the maṇḍala, the male

beatific body Vajradhara, is actually indistinct in identity from the female “consort”

Vajradhatvīśvarī, being simply one pair of symbols embodying the union of great bliss and

emptiness (such as vajra and bell, penis and vagina, etc.), and hence a buddha or buddhahood is,

by extension, nondually bi-gendered; and (2) that during much of the sādhana, the yogi/ni takes

452
For a lucid discussion of these topics, see Thurman 1995.
453
This sādhana is now publicly available in English translation, based on Gyumé Khensur Losang Jampa’s oral
instructions, in Gyumé Khensur Losang Jampa.

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on the nondual identity of male Hatred/Anger Vajra and female Touch/Texture Vajra, thus

representing the purification of the two afflictions, aversion and desire, that with

misknowledge—the three poisons—constitute the three categories subsuming the eighty

psychological instincts underlying the manifest behavior of body, speech, and mind propelling

cyclic existence. Again, chapter three has discussed some of this already.

Repeatedly in the sādhana, the sexual union between male and female enlightened beings

produces “enlightenment spirit,” a combination of their seminal essences—the divine counterpart

to ordinary semen and ovum—that either create an enlightened being, the five lineage tathāgatas,

or the entire maṇḍala and its deities, or provide transformative blessings (byin gyi brlabs) for all

sentient beings. In terms of the three transformations, the transition from divine between state to

rebirth explicitly proceeds in this very manner, with the yogi/ni who is the subtle being called

“the first lord” (adinātha) entering into a single Akṣobhya produced by such enlightenment

spirit, thus becoming the manifest being, Vajrasattva. In this way, the most dangerous (in terms

of engendering unenlightened, painful cyclic existence ) of manifest afflictions—namely, desire

enacted in sexual union—is itself transformed into a transcendent activity, creating not further

bondage in cyclic existence but release. Thus, although the death-between state-rebirth process is

explicitly purified, the primary biological impulse that binds—or “reproduces”—the afflicted

being, bound conceptually (hence more deeply) by the self habit, is also purified. In the

perfection stage, the yogi/ni transcends even this conceptual bondage by consciously melting

their subtle material and mental factors into the orgasmic intuition that is the innate state of

consciousness, rather than the contaminated bliss of ordinary orgasm—that is an unrecognized

access to clear light transparency—associated with dis-ease (duḥkha) the Buddha identifies as

the ordinary condition of unenlightened existence, the first noble truth.

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Enacting Enlightenment

When this newly birthed (future) deity has completed the (self-)creation process,

consecrating the divine identity by absorbing the enlightenment spirit dripping from the mother-

father pair visualized on the crown, the transformation of the yogi/ni into the three indivisible

buddha bodies is—with respect to the creation stage—complete. The extensive first

concentration of the sādhana finished, the yogi/ni now enacts the enlightened deeds of a buddha

in the second and third concentrations, corresponding to enlightened deeds of body and speech

and mind, respectively. And since, as I have explained, the deeds of a buddha are typologized,

such that all buddhas perform them to verify their status,454 enacting these deeds is a mimetic

extension of divine pride that enriches that identity. In particular, the ability to take any

appearance in any location instantaneously for the welfare of one specific sentient being is a

feature of the emanation body of a buddha dependent on the prior karmic connections forged

throughout beginningless time; however, as the egocentricity of the yogi/ni, like all others, would

have contributed to the sort of malignant behavior the very inverse of enlightened deeds, the

yogi/ni must counteract that critical interpersonal boundary: in the sādhana, this is accomplished

by the regeneration of the disintegrated world system as one’s own field of care and the repeated

blessing of all sentient beings by the maṇḍala deities and the yogi/ni during the first

concentration.

These activities create the conditions for the enlightened deeds enacted in the latter two

concentrations, two of which are—due to their centrality to the Buddha’s life narrative

454
That is, as I show in chapter two, the same twelve deeds, from descending Tuṣita heaven to parinirvāṇa, are
enacted by all the thousand buddhas of this aeon, and this literary motif was taken up by numerous Tibetan
biographers to structure the lives of their subjects, considered buddhas themselves. In this sense, the deeds are a
performance of an already-enlightened being who fulfills a prophecy to inhabit the role in such ways. In the case of
the historical Buddha, the verification of his status takes place just after birth, when a seer foretells of his future as
either world-conquering monarch or buddha, the physical marks of each being similar, as I show in chapter five.

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specifically— particularly salient.455 First, the parinirvana of the Buddha is reenacted through

correspondence when, in the third concentration, the yogi/ni-deity couple dissolve into clear light

transparency. From a non-mahāyāna perspective, this singular historical event terminates the

continuity of consciousness of the Buddha, and what remains are the teachings (Dharma jewel)

and the community of followers (Sangha jewel). From a mahāyāna perspective, this is but one

performative moment in an infinite series of apparitional events designed to prompt others

toward the path, in this case by recognizing their impermanence and the looming specter of

death. In no way is this any sort of endpoint for the continuity of consciousness of an enlightened

being, and this is represented by the next sādhana enactment in which goddesses summon by

song the dissolved buddha-deity to arise again for the sake of all beings. These goddesses are the

personification of the four immeasurable states—four contemplations on love, compassion,

empathic joy, and equanimity shared by both non-mahāyāna and mahāyāna traditions—that,

together with the buddha-deity’s prior aspirations and transcendent compassion, cause the

buddha-deity to generate further emanations—infinite illusionlike “rebirths,” in a sense.

Regarding how the yogi/ni practicing deity yoga should understand such enlightened

activities, Tsongkhapa confirms that buddha bodies, specifically the beatific and emanation

bodies—while appearing to an unenlightened person, including the yogi/ni presumably, to be a

particular individual inhabiting a specific point in space and time—must not be conceived as

constrained in any such manner: “you are meditating in terms of its totality—without

determining from a limited perspective the extent of the excellences, places, and times of the

455
It is also the case that certain practices in the sādhana relate specifically to instances during the Buddha’s
teaching of the root tantra itself, and since the historical Buddha, Śākyamūni, is one of few to teach tantra at all,
these are not enactments related to each buddha’s performance. See Gyumé Khensur Lobsang Jampa (492) and
Bentor and Dorjee, 30-33.

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form bodies, etc., of all the transcendent buddhas—and thus it is magnificent.”456 As an

enlightened being is, by definition, not bound by the self habit, the ordinary conceptual thought,

committed to an ontologically and epistemologically determinate identity distinct from every

other such identity, the enlightened being is able—by means of the various exoteric and esoteric

practices, from the four immeasurable contemplations to deity yoga devised to counter the self

habit—to identify with every other being. Tsongkhapa observes that upon attaining buddhahood:

“that body which had the quality of being ordinary [is revealed to have] had the quality of being

an incidental erroneous deception, while the buddha body [is known to] have the quality of

something impossible to lose, since it abides as long as space endures.”457 Thus, the belief in a

self as an intrinsically existent, spatio-temporally localized, impermeable truth, as the inviolable

center of reality, dissolves, unveiling the cosmological knowledge of a buddha: the basic

existential equality and interdependence of all sentient beings, along with the specific cataracts

of misknowledge and bonds of desire and aversion preventing their sharing this same knowledge.

The buddha-deity now at the de-centered center of reality, a buddhaverse birthed by prior vows

and prayers, whose maṇḍala-self embraces all mother sentient beings with spontaneous,

transcendent love and compassion, gives birth to limitless illusionlike bodies to serve their needs

until each has reversed their own incidental erroneous deception for themselves.

Conclusion

The coordination of sūtra and tantra—specifically Candrakīrti’s Conventionalist interpretation

integrated with the unexcelled yoga practice based primarily on Guhyasamāja—is Tsongkhapa’s

456
Yarnall 283.
457
Yarnall 280-1.

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unique contribution to Tibetan Buddhist religious life. His emphatic rejection of his

contemporaries’ understanding of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism as antirational, combined with

his advocacy of the stages of the path approach, emphasize the centrality of soteriology with

respect to his philosophical commitments. This is well illustrated by his insistence that even

buddhas, despite the insistence of some exegetes of Candrakīrti’s to the contrary, know

conventionalities established by mere, rather than intrinsic, existence. On this interpretation, all

objects of knowledge, being dependent designations without essence or nature, are shared by

ordinary and noble beings, including buddhas; hence, social reality includes even enlightened

beings, whose vow as bodhisattvas to remain part of that social reality, therefore, does not

become a false promise. More importantly, Tsongkhapa’s philosophy rejects the corollary

premise of that nihilistic understanding of Candrakīrti, a premise lurking in essentialist Buddhist

philosophies as well: that ordinary beings, due to their addiction to conceptual thought, lack the

basic tools to become enlightened, and that only a complete liberation from language and

concepts make such possible. Tsongkhapa roundly refutes such exaggerated valorization of

nonconceptuality in both sūtra and tantra contexts, showing instead that language and concepts

are the very tools for enlightenment, especially with respect to unexcelled yoga tantra.

For Tsongkhapa, these philosophical principles that promote a robust social reality do not

pertain to scholarly musings but rather gain their force precisely in the social arena. While

Tsongkhapa himself often withdraws from society for extended retreats in order to deepen his

realizations, this always results in his sharing these realizations—as public teachings, as writings,

and as community projects whose success draws upon those realizations—just as he understands

the bodhisattva vow to demand. Thus, although Tsongkhapa’s writings constitute an obvious and

fundamental component of his legacy, the heirs of his tradition have concluded that his legacy is

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also represented by his social impact, as indicated by the four great deeds that encapsulate its

breadth. Following from the discussion of the importance Tsongkhapa gives in his writings to the

material bodies of a buddha as access points to unenlightened beings and taking the traditional

Buddhist division of body, speech, and mind as interrelated sites of behavior, one could liken his

writings to activities of speech and the four great deeds as activities of body.

Although modernity, with its printing press and individualist ethos, arguably has

foregrounded a conception of religion based on private faith and interior spirituality opposed to

rationality, my examination of the social grounding of conventional reality, life narratives, and

the very possibility of knowledge suggests that Tsongkhapa’s philosophical commitments and, in

turn, the emphasis on his four great deeds as exemplars of those commitments represent an

alternative to such reductionism, an alternative more accurate in its portrayal of the deep social

grounding of religion. I explore this possibility in the following chapter.

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 Chapter 5: Performing the Tibetan Buddhist Self: The Four Great

Deeds

Introduction

In this final chapter I turn to the production of Tsongkhapa’s legacy in Tibetan society as

constituted by his four great deeds, which I analyze as expressions of his understanding of the

social role of Buddhist thought and practice.458 Although the formulation of these four specific

deeds as representing Tsongkhapa’s social impact likely postdate both Tsongkhapa’s lifetime

and Khedrup’s Haven, nevertheless these four help to clarify the relationship between the

abstract ideal of the engaged bodhisattva extolled in the Indian Buddhist literature and the

particular sociohistorical context in which Tsongkhapa participates. Again, as has been

emphasized repeatedly, there is a gap between Indian literary ideal and Tibetan sociohistorical

reality that Tsongkhapa attempted to close, and more generally there is an ongoing dialectic

between the abstract [e.g., transcendent samboghakāya archetype] and the specific [e.g.,

immanent nirmaṇakāya instantiation] that represents the tenacity of that gap: because the self

habit informs or underlies the ongoing spatio-temporal production of unenlightened existence,

the sociohistorical specific, which manifests as this or that historical figure such as Tsongkhapa,

naturally tends to seem more important to those of us caught in socio-temporal flux.

458
I should note that the precise understanding of what constitutes the four great deeds differs slightly according to
some sources. Jinpa 2019 192 gives the second as the entire event at Namsé Deng whereas others focus on the
monastic rejuvenation aspect, which is what I prefer. Also, the fourth may be taken in a narrow or broad way, to
consider just the tantric maṇḍalas within Yangpachen tantra temple; the construction of the temple itself, thereby
including the maṇḍalas; the temple as a general precursor to the distinct tantric colleges founded later; or, as I am
doing based on my discussion with Geshé Lobsang Dhargyé of Sera Mé, the institutionalization of the coordination
of sūtra and tantra in Ganden Monastery and Yangpachen tantra temple together. Also, as noted earlier (see footnote
2), this precise grouping appears to be written down only in the seventeenth century, during a period of Gandenpa
consolidation around the Fifth Dalai Lama, but referencing an existing tradition.

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 I foreground the importance of both monasticism and unexcelled yoga tantra art and

practice in the foundations of Tibetan culture that Tsongkhapa inherited—both predicated, for

Tsongkhapa, on the nondual worldview of universal altruism and Centrist emptinesss as

dependent origination. I examine how Tsongkhapa built on, reinforced, and expanded the

cultural expectation of the availability of enlightened beings to the whole populace, thought to be

represented or mediated by virtuoso religious professionals—the spiritual elite, such as

Tsongkhapa. These four deeds express also the importance of communities and institutions to the

flourishing of society, predicated on the ideals of governance and patronage preserved in the

Indian Buddhist literature. Again, they reflect Tsongkhapa’s attempt to bridge the gap between

the ideals of that literature and the realities of the Tibetan Buddhist social, political, and religious

life around him. The rules and responsibilities enshrined in the monastic discipline, as well as the

formal pledges of the bodhisattva and tantric vows, are the guides Tsongkhapa expected his

robed followers to follow scrupulously—to benefit their own spiritual growth and to foster faith

among the laity. Similarly, Tsongkhapa anticipated that the faithful laity, whatever their

socioeconomic status, should adhere to the relevant norms narrated in the literature. With such an

infrastructure of social relations functioning appropriately, spiritual elites and political leaders

together could implement projects, such as the Great Prayer Festival, that would support the

short- and long-term welfare of the overall society, as specified by the workings of karmic

causality. This is the ideal scenario to which, I contend, Tsongkhapa’s deeds aspire.

To recap, the four great deeds, enumerated chronologically, are as follows. First, in 1393,

before his spiritual breakthrough but based on visionary experiences, Tsongkhapa led the

restoration of the Maitreya statue and temple at Dzingji Monastery, an event in which the

collective effort of ordinary people and skilled artisans under his direction resurrected, as it were,

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the very possibility of the continuity of the Buddhist teachings as embodied by Maitreya, the

future buddha known to all traditions. Second, in 1401 Tsongkhapa oversaw, together with his

mentor Rendawa and other scholars, a gathering of several hundred monks dedicated to the

rejuvenation of the rules of monastic discipline, whose laxity of observance he bemoans at the

outset of LRCM, composed soon afterward. Third, in 1409, instead of using the abundant

donations received from the Lhasa rulers to build his home monastery, Tsongkhapa inaugurated

the Great Prayer Festival in Lhasa, a two-week event, beginning at the lunar new year and

bringing together monastic and laity alike in celebration of the legend of the Buddha’s

miraculous display and comprehensive teachings for the benefit of kings and people of north

India, including other rival teachers. Although the festival would continue for nearly six hundred

years, its first iteration began with Tsongkhapa’s offering to the famed statue of the Buddha in

the Jokhang ornaments and a crown that symbolized the transformation of its iconic appearance

from representing the Buddha’s long absent emanation body to representing the eternally present

beatific body—thus suggesting the transformation of the audience from ordinary to bodhisattva

status. Fourth, over the course of several years Tsongkhapa constructed Ganden Monastery and

within it a special tantra temple, Yangpachen (dbyangs pa can), to house complete three-

dimensional representations of the maṇḍalas of the unexcelled yoga systems most important to

his presentation of the pinnacle of Buddhist practice, thereby institutionalizing his presentation

of the teachings, the coordination of sūtra and tantra. Together these four deeds represent

Tsongkhapa’s overarching concern for the Buddhist teachings in their present and future aspects,

with respect to enlightened embodiment in the world and to the form of discipline involved in

attaining such embodiment in service of the world.459

459
One might wonder why, if these four deeds are so important, Tsongkhapa himself did not reference them in his
autobiographical work, Presence. Of course, there is no way to know this, especially because there is no certainty

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The Social Foundation of the Four Great Deeds

Tsongkhapa accomplished three of his four great deeds after his spiritual breakthrough in

1397, indicating a definitive shift from his role as student/disciple to his role as teacher/spiritual

guide. Although this breakthrough resulted from his intense focus on the Centrist view of reality,

the direct apprehension of which completely altered his prior comprehension, Tsongkhapa’s

entire understanding of the scope of the correct view—the perfect compatibility of emptiness and

dependent origination—transformed the conventional relative world from being the province of

karmic causality to being the plane of unexcelled yoga tantra vision and practice. This

transformation that coordinates sūtra and tantra levels of teaching and practice accords with his

championing of Atiśa’s four-square path in both LRCM and his own autobiography, Presence,

each written after this breakthrough. Thus, although neither his spiritual breakthrough itself nor

his voluminous writings are considered in this category of great deeds, they nevertheless inform

those four. It may be worthwhile to compare Tsongkhapa’s deeds to Indian Buddhist narrative

writings, in distinction to his own systematic writings that are links in the chain of transmission

of their respective topics. That is, the enlightened activities of specific historic persons, such as

Tsongkhapa, embody the abstract principles of the Buddhist teachings just as do narratives of

mythical figures, such as Padmasambhava or the Buddha. Neither narrative nor systematic

writing fully accomplishes the goal of edification without the other, neither meaningfully

reduced to the other.

regarding the date of composition of that work—clearly, however, Presence portrays Tsongkhapa as a mature
teacher, which means it postdates 1397. But Presence is a template for study and emulation in a general sense—it
does not, nor would it make sense to, exhort others to do exactly what he has done. That would be nonsensical. A
teacher adapts to the needs, however slightly differentiated, of the times: what Tsongkhapa would do in 1415 cannot
be compared in principle to what Khedrup would do in 1435, despite their both being head of the Gandenpas.
Khedrup’s four great deeds, were the tradition to have designated them, would not have resembled Tsongkhapa’s
except in the broadest details. In that respect, one could argue that almost any important Tibetan Buddhist figure
accomplishes something similar to Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds, which may well be true, and then the formulation
becomes meaningless—this is not a grouping like the twelve deeds of a supreme emanation buddha, e.g.

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 What is the conceptual tissue connecting these four deeds? Setting aside the issue of just

what, from the perspective of the later Ganden tradition that formulated this grouping,

distinguished these from other accomplishments of its founder, one can observe that each relates

thematically to a specific concern about which Tsongkhapa wrote and/or lectured. Each pertains

fundamentally to soteriology: the restoration of the Maitreya statue pertains to the increasing

progress of the communal participation in effecting Maitreya’s arrival; the restoration of

monastic purity pertains to the basic reciprocal relationship between mendicant and layperson

underlying Buddhist social norms; the Great Prayer Festival pertains to the potential for ordinary

beings, assisted by spiritual elites in developing karmic connections, to participate in the

presence of enlightened existence, thus underscoring the capacity for spiritual transformation;

and the construction of Ganden Monastery and its tantra temple pertains to the necessity of

institutionalizing unexcelled yoga tantra as a cumulative form of asceticism, the logical

fulfillment of monastic discipline and the universalist commitment of the spirit of enlightenment,

within the broader scholastic wisdom-oriented curriculum—thus coordinating sūtra and tantra

fully.

Taken together, these four deeds indicate the primary responsibility of the spiritually

mature, molded by monastic and tantric asceticism, to lead society and its individual members in

their own development, reflecting in effect the entire path to enlightenment from its earliest to its

most advanced stages and the centrality of the spiritual teacher, whether ordinary or enlightened,

in all those stages. This is precisely what the preceding three chapters have suggested in different

ways. To clarify this responsibility, I must analyze the social formations and hierarchies based on

ethical/spiritual accomplishment that it presumes.

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The Binary Social World: Mendicant Community and Laity

Throughout earlier chapters, I have explored how Tsongkhapa relies on ideals and

idealized figures from Indian Buddhist literature and lore as well as the Tibetan cultural mythos,

such as the Samyé debate over gradualism and Atiśa’s travel from India, to elaborate a vision of

religious practice grounded in broad educational efforts and rigorous ethical discipline. The key

moments of Tibetan history, as refracted through this vision, underscore in particular the singular

importance of monasticism to its cultural transformation—a transformation, observed in chapter

one, foretold by the Buddha and overseen by Avalokiteśvara. The construction of Samyé

Monastery along with the taming of hostile indigenous gods subverting the possibility for

monasticism; the return of the Eastern Vinaya monks to Central Tibet after the empire’s collapse;

and Atiśa’s sojourn in Tibet, where his personal example sets the tone for rigorous adherence to

the three forms of discipline, based in monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric vows: these scenes and

more from the Later Diffusion historiography indicated to Tsongkhapa that the basis for Tibetan

society rests in the primary relationship between monk and laity.460 More generally, the literature

related to monastic discipline provides the Indian evidence for a flourishing monk-laity

symbiosis on which to model Tibetan society.

The symbiotic relationship between the laity and an individual mendicant traces its

history to before the time of the Buddha, when wandering ascetics emerge as part of the social

fabric in post-Vedic India. The Buddha famously abandoned his princely life upon having seen

460
It is may not be directly relevant to Tsongkhapa’s consideration of the importance of monasticism, but the social
institution as an antidote to military institutions may be observed. In the early 1390s, Khedrup reports, Tsongkhapa
had to shelter in a cave for several months due to ongoing regional warfare; so even though he arrived in Central
Tibet after the Phagmodru-Sakya battles that brought the former to power, the issue would not have been unknown
to him. Of course, in the Indian context, certain voices have argued that the “success” of the Buddhist monastic
movement brought about a general cultural pacificism that left it open to the invasions in the late first millennium,
much as the same “success” left Tibet open to the machinations of geopolitical maneuvering and finally conquest in
the twentieth century.

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such an ascetic whose footsteps, as it were, he followed into the forest, which is understood in

the tradition as the effect of prior causes in the former lives of the bodhisattva reborn as

Siddhārtha. The Buddha formalized this cultural phenomenon by creating communities (sangha)

of monks and nuns dependent on the largesse of the laity, with annual monsoons necessitating

the creation of housing, first temporary and then semi-permanent, and ongoing relations with

local communities.461 As monastic communities spread across the subcontinent, this pattern of

creating and maintaining social and economic ties with the lay population developed initially in

dependence on its establishment within the disciplinary rules determined by the Buddha.462 This

pattern became a self-replicating one by virtue of the powerful image of the Buddha as a

transcendent moral figure serving as advisor to the powerful and humble alike and the sangha as

461
Prebish 1975 4 explains what is understood about the development of the monastic community as sedentary
rather than wandering: “The only pause to the mendicant’s wandering came during the rainy season or varṣā. This
custom was certainly not unique to the Buddhists...travel during the monsoon season was made thoroughly
impractical by the severity of the rains, and damage to the crops, which would certainly result from attempts at
travel, would prove most harmful. By this time too the Jain notion of ahiṁsā or noninjury compounded the problem,
for many small forms of life would fall prey, even inadvertently, to man’s crude efforts at rainy season travel. All
these factors led to Buddha's injunction to pass the rainy season in settled dwellings.”
462
Clarke 2014 11, perhaps the leading contemporary academic scholar on the Indian vinaya traditions, explains:
“Most, if not all, monastic rules are presented as promulgations in reaction to criticism ensuing from specific actions
of particular monks and nuns.” It will prove useful to cite three other statements from Clarke that unsettle the
idealized monastic figure who, following the Buddha’s precedent, abandons the family, regardless of the
consequences to them: “Continued familial and, to a certain extent, even marital relations seem to have posed little
threat to the success of the monastic movement. That one could renounce the world together with one’s family or
visit lay family members after renunciation seems not to have elicited lay criticism and thus required little, if any,
monastic legislation. Issues surrounding pregnant nuns, however, clearly presented the monastic legislators with
delicate and difficult situations to diffuse.”(12-13); “That men and women might leave home for the religious life
with, as opposed to abandoning, their spouses or children was simply part of renunciation as known to our monastic
lawyers [that is, the Buddha, as far as Tsongkhapa is concerned]. The canonical jurists, however, do make the case
for the accommodation of pregnant nuns. This was something that had to be carefully negotiated and legislated
given the probability that the presence of pregnant nuns would give rise to criticism concerning the celibacy of the
community.” (16); “While a hardline position such as expelling a pregnant nun certainly would reinforce the
community’s image as one of hardcore celibates, arguably this kind of inflexibility would do more damage to the
reputation of the monastic community than accommodating her within the religious life. Indeed, hardcore asceticism
was not the market into which Indian Buddhist jurists sought to make inroads. Moreover, even the accommodation
of pregnant nuns seems not to have been unique to Buddhist monasticism.” (158) All this suggests that application
(and, from Clarke’s perspective, creation) of the vinaya reflects a consistent effort to provide pragmatic and
empathetic solutions to messy problems arising within or entering into the monastic ranks. Given the foreignness to
the modern West of both Buddhist monastic life and the scholastic commentarial literature that addressed it, these
statements provide some insight into the complexity of this topic.

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his worthy heirs.463 The vinaya literature is replete with cautionary tales of monks and nuns

incapable of rising to the challenge in ways small and large, but the success of the community as

a whole indicates that most heeded those tales.

With the legendary support of the Maurya Dynasty’s emperor Aśoka, whose zeal in

promoting a vision of social welfare and religious patronage strikingly like the Buddha’s, the

monastic communities thrived, to various degrees, in many parts of the subcontinent (and

beyond, of course) into the twelfth century. Following the example set by the Buddha’s own

powerful supporters, such as Anāthapiṇḍada, who donated to the monastic community the famed

Jeta Grove near Śrāvastī, rulers like Aśoka participated in the social sanctioning of the monastic

community; and charismatic monks, such as Nāgārjuna, became counselors to local rulers,

following the Buddha’s example.464 What had once been semi-permanent dwellings became

extensive educational institutions serving various needs of the local lay populace and, in the case

of Nālandā, became an international university.465

463
As Cabezon and Dorjee 36 explains: “As the monks of the new Buddhist order traveled and taught, they received
requests for ordination. In the earliest days, monks would send prospective candidates for ordination to the Buddha
himself...[but] as the number of requests increased, and as those seeking ordination came from increasingly more
remote regions, this method of ordination was seen to be unfeasible.” Decentralizing his authority over ordination,
the Buddha tasks the decision to the local community as whole.
464
In addition to the Buddha’s well known council to regional kings, such as Bimbasāra and Prasenajit, Nāgārjuna is
believed to have advised the Satavahana Dynasty’s King Udayibhadra in the middle of the second century, as
witnessed by his council on social reform to unnamed royalty in Letter to a King and Precious Garland.
465
Prebish 1975 4-5 continues from the earlier passage: “Thus the monks found it most successful to carry out
intensified study and meditation in temporary residences. Also blossoming from the foregoing enterprise was an
opportunity for the laity to have a brief but sustained interaction with the monkhood, obviously resulting in mutual
benefit. During the varṣā, the monks were also able to engage in scholarly debate, sūtra discussion, and similar
activities, fully utilizing their close proximity for intellectual (as well as spiritual) advancement.” This pattern would
explain the further development, with sufficient support, of the scholastic traditions and their great institutions.
Although the numbers suggested for the student population at Nālandā, based on the testimony of Chinese pilgrims,
have been as high as ten thousand, while Cabezon and Dorjee 94 gives five thousand as the probable highest
number, Kumar 146 claims that the archaeological ruins indicate a population of more than three thousand seems
unlikely. Kumar 172–181 notes that included in the curriculum are astrology, astronomy, and medicine as well as
painting and, perhaps to a lesser degree based on the sculptural artifacts, metal casting. That little of the material
culture would remain in the aftermath of the Muslim raids is unsurprising, given the general prohibition against the
idolatry that Buddhists, one might say, celebrated. Cabezon and Dorjee 78 recalls that Xunzuang in the seventh
reported there the teaching of non-Buddhist religious topics—a feature of the times during which the Buddhist

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 The implicit expectation of this general symbiotic relationship, along with support from

local rulers, pervades Indian Buddhist literature. The rules enshrined in the vinaya are not ex

nihilo dictates of the Buddha, for even when urged by his great patron King Bimbasāra he

refused to institute such top-down commands: each (in the case of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya)

is introduced with a narrative explaining its origin in actual situations necessitating the Buddha’s

judgment, often lenient with respect to extenuating circumstances. Importantly, as Warder

explains: “the motive for formulating disciplinary rules is very frequently said to be public

opinion, of the laity whether Buddhist or non-Buddhist: the outward conduct of the community

should be such to inspire confidence and respect, even though it may concern trivial matters...”466

All of this suggests that the ideal of the mendicant-lay relationship enshrined in the vinaya takes

shape extra-textually as a sociological reality due to the efforts of the monastic communities to

adhere to their vows.467

logical tradition in particular vied for intellectual supremacy against Orthodox schools. In any case, notice the
parallels: Tsongkhapa studies medicine early in his Central Tibetan days; his studies in unexcelled yoga tantra
include training in the arts and astronomy (an important feature of Kālacakra); and his fourth great deed includes the
creation (in terms of direct oversight rather than personal physical construction) of three-dimensional gilt bronze
sculptures of unexcelled yoga tantra maṇḍalas. Also, one may notice that the tradition of learning the scope of South
Asian philosophies, Buddhist and otherwise, is maintained—if only in an abbreviated format—in the grub mtha’
(established tenets) literary genre of the Ganden tradition.
466
Warder 60. Cabezon and Dorjee 37 observes that the continued growth of the monastic communities leads, once
the responsibility for ordination had been delegated locally, as discussed above, to the need for oversight of the new
monks: “As more individuals joined the Saṅgha, however, the laity began to complain that because monks had no
one to supervise them, they were…not well trained, not well formed…and did not know the proper etiquette of
renunciants. Moreover, because no one was responsible for a newly ordained monk, each of them was on his own.”
467
Whether one takes the author of the monastic code to be the Buddha or a later redactor/s, it is clear that the spirit
of that code is flexibility, a double-edged sword to be sure. Whether, like Weber, one takes the figure of the
wandering monk to be the original ideal and the settled community a later (unfortunate) development (as perhaps do
some early mahāyāna proponents) depends on the literature one takes as primary and the degree to which one takes
as literal rather than rhetorical the trope of the Dharma’s decline. The historical fact of settled monasticism and
increased institutional complexity remains, and the vinaya reflects that. The fortnightly recitation of the Prātimokṣa
indicates an early commitment to maintain the discipline, and the later commentarial efforts—such as those by
Guṇaprabha on the MSV—indicate the same. According to Cabezon and Dorjee 96, drawing on the testimony of
Chinese pilgrims, Nālandā was an exceptionally selective institution, requiring of its entering students a thorough
grounding in Buddhist scholasticism prior to matriculation, and its faculty is similarly top tier; additionally,
adherence to the vinaya was quite strict. Institutionally, there appears to be a commitment to replicating the
conditions of the earliest communities as well, per Kumar 200: “The affairs of the monastery of Nālandā were
administered by a representative body of monks, which looks to be modeled on the political pattern of the republican

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 The essence of the rules of monastic discipline, again, relates to the cultivation of an

individual possessing moral rectitude along with keen concentration and analytical discernment,

on the one hand, and that same individual possessing the competence and decorum to negotiate

interpersonal relations beyond the monastic community, on the other. These are different skill

sets, the latter set tending toward the capacities required of a teacher, a spiritual guide, who can

model the former set for the broader community as, for example, the bodhisattva career requires.

Despite the rhetorical emphasis of the universal vehicle (mahāyāna) literature focusing on the

selfish nature of the individual vehicle goal of mere liberation—as opposed to the unsurpassed

enlightenment of buddhahood—there is no necessary relationship between monasticism and that

modest goal.

Instead, the corporate solidarity of the community members fosters an outlook very much

in line with a universalist concern, especially in light of meditations such as the brahmavihārā,

known also in Tibetan as the four immeasurables (tshad med bzhi).468 The structure of the

monastic community, with its ongoing oversight of junior members and shared efforts at

personal accountability through the fortnightly recitation/confession ceremony, lends itself to

understanding individual outcomes as shared.469 It is not difficult, then, to perceive the discipline

states of ancient India.” Cabezon and Dorjee 66 notes that settled monasticism may have occurred at different times
by region, as suggested by the remains of Sañci, where a settled community appears to have been active by the
second century BCE, while Aśoka’s contemporaneous edicts make no mention of settled communities as such.
468
This meditation, which in its current form in Tibetan recitations takes on an explicitly universalist perspective in
that its focuses is “all sentient beings” (sems can thams cad), is common to all Buddhist traditions, appearing in the
Pāli canon. It may be understood as an expression, though apparently pre-dating its Buddhist adaptation, of the
cosmological interdependence that we have explored in earlier chapters.
469
Prebish 1975 24-6 explains that the fortnightly confession ceremony (poṣadha, gso sbyong), during which the
rules of conduct (prātimokṣa) are recited collectively to affirm the purity of the group, comes into being because
King Bimbisāra, the first royal supporter of the Buddha, asks why—unlike other ascetic groups—the Buddhist
community does not gather fortnightly, which he relates as an occasion for gathering adherents. That the ceremony
emerges from a concern related to lay perception is certainly germane to the concerns here. Cabezon and Dorjee,
emphasizing the itinerancy of the early community, relates: “In their travels, monks would spend the night in parks
and groves, under trees, in caves, or, when so invited, in people's houses or in empty buildings, like the town

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and orderly functioning of the entire monastic community as reflecting the discipline and orderly

functioning of its individual members, with the welfare of the parts and the whole mutually

constitutive.470 Nor would it be, from Tsongkhapa’s perspective, difficult to transfer this same

understanding, which is fundamental to the bodhisattva perspective and the understanding of

karma as interpersonal, to society as a whole.471

To refer to this relationship as symbiotic or reciprocal is not to suggest equality between

its two members. The sangha always considers itself—the repository of potential or actual

spiritual power and of the Buddha’s unique insight into the nature of reality—as primary

regardless of the economic or social status of the other. Indeed, the avowed adherence to rigid

personal restraint in pursuit of a transcendent goal that supersedes wealth or status is precisely

what separates the two groups. They may be complementary social formations, but by the

measure of karma—the Buddhist measure of all things—the ethical guidelines of the monastic

community elevate its members above the laity.472 The vinaya makes it clear that the monastic

community serves a social good by being materially dependent on the laity and therefore

prohibits complete isolation; renouncing the social relations based in biological kinship, as

meeting hall. Other mendicant sects were also itinerant, but they remained sedentary for the three or four months of
the rainy season. The peripatetic life was so ingrained into the earliest Buddhist order, however, that monks initially
traveled even during the rains. But this led to criticism, as mendicants of other sects denounced Buddhist monks to
the laity as uncaring about the insects—more common during the rains—that they might trample underfoot.” See
also Clarke 2014 60.
470
Kumar 194-5 observes that, unlike the "disorganized, scattered gurukulas" of the Brahmanical tradition,
Nālandā's centralized organization, itself resulting from the centralized nature of the Buddhist monastic community,
lends itself easily to patronage by the Gupta and Pāla rulers. Vikramaśīla and Odantapurī, for instance, exchanges
teachers and administrators with Nālandā, indicating that the complexities of institutional affiliation or networking
that occurred in Tibet had its origins in late Indian Buddhism.
471
Cabezon and Dorjee 52-3 calls attention to the fact that the rains retreat ceremony, in which each monk agrees to
remain within the boundaries established for the community for the length of the rains, usually three to four months,
has that pledge directed to the sponsor of their dwelling space and to the town that would be supporting them
materially.
472
Certain mahāyāna discourses, like the tales of the great adepts, complicate this simple fact, but these inversions
always relate to the failings of specific monks in adhering to the vinaya, not to the monastic code itself.

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reified by the Brahmanical codes, is not a renunciation of all sociality but rather just those

relations that restrict or deny the universal kinship perceived by the Buddha upon his awakening.

Further, the legacy of the Buddha’s role as disinterested advisor to rulers on topics of good

governance and social norms displayed in the sūtras confirm the overlap between mundane and

supramundane concerns. From this perspective, obligations to limited notions of kinship, to

sexual reproduction aimed at extending biological lineage, and to physical toil at a livelihood

focused on wealth accumulation marks one as inferior. To model a distinct alternative, with the

Buddha’s image as its guarantor, is to mark the monastic community as superior and worthy of

material support.

The Character of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya

The largest of the vinaya collections is the Mūlasarvāstivāda, and the Tibetan translation

is the most complete version of it, the extant Sanskrit being but a fragment of its original

whole.473 As noted previously, the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (MSV hereafter)—the official code

of monastic discipline of Tibet from imperial times and hence the basis for Tsongkhapa's

understanding of the monastic discipline—serves not merely as a repository for the regulations

by which monks and nuns shape their behavior to conform with attitudes and expectations of

ethical comportment held by the laity.474 Such comportment is an important element of the

473
Clarke 2015 73 observes that the Tibetan, though the most complete extant version, differs from at least one
specific Sanskrit version, leading to the conclusion that multiple recensions existed, a conclusion based also on the
presence of the bhikṣuṇīvibhaṅga and bhikṣuṇīprātimokṣa portions of the Tibetan MSV that matches, but is not
identical to, the Chinese version and, more importantly, matches the material in Guṇaprabha's seminal Vinayasūtra,
well known to Tsongkhapa. The differences between the Chinese MSV and Guṇaprabha's work establish strongly
that these are two different recensions—one found in Nālandā and translated into Chinese and one known in
Mathurā to Guṇaprabha, whose work forms the basis for the Tibetan tradition—and, contrary to Butön's assessment,
that the bhikṣuṇīvibhaṅga does belong to the MSV tradition.
474
Interestingly, though Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla are Nālandā scholars, and of course the former is famously
implicated in the founding of Samyé Monastery and ordaining its first cohort of monks, the Tibetan translation of
the MSV derives from Kaśmir, as Clarke 2015 74 notes. This would seem to account for the textual differences

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discipline, insofar as it ostensibly guarantees the inner purity of the mendicant whom the laity

supports with material sustenance.475

Much more than this, the MSV presents those regulations within a panoply of

narratives—including jātakas and avadānas found independently elsewhere—focused on

bodhisattva activities. From the Buddha’s own biography to tales of his prior lives as a striving

bodhisattva to narratives of other early luminaries in the Buddha’s orbit, the MSV frames the

disciplinary rules within a normative expectation of their being carried out while, presumably,

engaging simultaneously in deeds dedicated toward enlightenment for all living beings, thereby

setting those rules within an expansive interpretation of their significance.476 From this

perspective, monastic asceticism may be regarded as complementary to the bodhisattva vows,

rather than advocating a necessary path to individual liberation, which seems to have been

precisely the case when the mahāyāna teachings emerged in the Indian monasteries around the

turn of the first millennium.477

between the Tibetan and Chinese versions. The extensive footnote regarding the occasionally messy nature of the
monastic community at the opening of this chapter should be borne in mind. Although the unique focus of the MSV
on narrative framing is emphasized here, Clarke 2014 27 affirms that this monastic code is, in its attention to family,
consonant with other codes.
475
Cabezon and Dorjee 49 notes that the MSV downplays the significance of Bimbasāra’s donation of the grove
Veluvana but celebrates effusively the donation of Jetavana by Anāthapiṇḍada, the latter explicitly donated to the
community for establishment of a monastery: the Buddha taps Śāriputra to advise the project, which from the outset
includes the construction of an extensive set of buildings—a monastic compound. This suggests, perhaps, that by the
time of the redaction of the MSV (in the early centuries CE, apparently), the significance of settled monasticism in
creating the conditions for the development of educational institutions, as monasteries had become, is clear. By
contrast, Bimbasāra’s donation (originally given to another ascetic group and then retracted!) initially is but a rest
stop for wandering monks.
476
Anālayo, discussing the relationship between jātakas and the MSV, writes: “Vinaya texts as the source for rules
to train monastics in behaviour and etiquette naturally lend themselves to the incorporation of other material
considered relevant for training monastics, such as training their teaching skills. This almost inevitably leads to the
integration of various stories, which not only serve to attract (and entertain) potential monastic reciters by providing
narrative background to legal actions, but also equip them with material that can be employed in teaching activities.”
477
Although influential Japanese scholarship posits the rise of the mahāyāna as a lay movement based around stūpa
worship, that explanation has been overturned by recent work that, corroborating the eyewitness accounts of Chinese
travelers, draws on Indian Buddhist texts indicating that monks for and against the viability of the bodhisattva path
reside together in monasteries. This possibility could explain many instances of textual borrowing found in Indian

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 Tsongkhapa’s study of the monastic discipline, then, reinforces the sense that the

reciprocal nature of the monk-laity relationship is relatively unimportant compared to the

overarching framework of the path to enlightenment implicit in the MSV—the supramundane

over the mundane. Rather than as a reciprocal relationship that stands as a sort of formal

contractual obligation, this perspective provides a novel way of understanding the importance of

monasticism in Tibetan society and Tsongkhapa’s concern for rigorous adherence to the

disciplinary rules as a social good.478 As suggested above, there is no significant leap in logic

from relating the welfare of each sangha member to its overall well-being and, further, to that of

the lay populace with which it is engaged, especially when that logic is conditioned by the

mahāyāna understanding that all living beings have been one’s mother at some past time, for

example. Nevertheless, many of the Phagmodru rulers, based in Lhasa, looked to Tsongkhapa for

Buddhist literature, where the concern would not lie in fidelity to a text as an inviolable unit but the pragmatic utility
of specific material within the text to different contexts...which in turn could explain the borrowings, textual and
otherwise, in the tantras, whether or not the borrowing is to or from Buddhist contexts from elsewhere.
478
In emphasizing the better angels of the sangha’s nature, I do so with awareness of (1) many textual instances in
the vinaya and mahāyāna sūtras in which monastic behavior in Indian Buddhist communities is shown to be less
than ideal; (2) similar instances in Tibetan literature, including Tsongkhapa’s own LRCM, which decries monastic
laxity; (3) records of Tibetan monastic communities, including the great seats of Tsongkhapa’s tradition, engaging in
acts of violence, for example. Since Tsongkhapa draws upon ideals from the Indian literature, and Atiśa as an
idealized figure, in order to embody the ideals of monastic discipline, I simply attempt to make sense of his efforts
and to extend their theoretical reach. To cite Cabezon and Dorjee 47: “Strict adherence to the Pratimokṣa discipline
was considered an ideal. A select few have always followed the Vinaya strictly, and have been praised and
venerated for it. But the majority of monks have always considered adherence to all of the Vinaya’s minor rules as
close to impossible.” They write earlier (42): “Monasticism in Tibet was for many individuals a profession rather
than a deeply felt religious calling. This does not mean that some monks did not go on to develop a profound sense
of religious vocation and even a deeply felt sense of renunciation. The historical record shows that the monasteries
produced great saints, but these have always been in the minority, and even in these cases the sense of renunciation
was something that usually developed over a lifetime rather than being present from the start.” Indeed, this
dissertation's premise is that the various elements of the path to enlightenment, including renunciation, are learned
and developed through the three, learning, contemplating, and meditating. The language of religious calling suggests
a Saul-Paul type of dramatic conversion event that, while relevant perhaps to the Buddha and others moved
personally by his charisma, does not seem useful in understanding monasticism as a cultural norm or expectation, as
in Tibet and other predominantly Buddhist regions. Certainly Tsongkhapa's life narrative indicates the extent to
which his education transforms him, and how purification practices during his extended retreat lead to his
intellectual breakthrough. It is precisely this process of cultivating an ascetic self in a tradition's ideal that is
culturally mediated, as discussed earlier, that makes the social aspect of Tsongkhapa’s life and work relevant,
particularly his focus on revitalizing monasticism and institutionalizing the education of unexcelled yoga tantra.

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spiritual advice, some of which he gave in the form of brief compositions, and they supported the

construction of Ganden Monastery, the restoration of the Jokhang and other temples, and the

production of the Great Prayer Festival.

To what extent these rulers shared the perspective that the welfare of the monastic

community has some bearing on the welfare of the larger society or their claim to power is

debatable. The entanglement of clan allegiance and partisan religious commitment from the

beginning of the Later Diffusion was observed in chapter one; one can observe again here that

Tsongkhapa had no clan affiliation or special relationship to other powerful figures, suggesting

that the Phagmodru support of his efforts do not derive from anything other than a

straightforward acknowledgement of his status as a respected religious figure and their

longstanding relationship with him. Social capital may be a powerful motivator, but within

Buddhist cultures the theory of karma may be as well. It is notable, perhaps, that the MSV

uniquely narrates the journey of the Buddha and four hundred ninety-nine monks to the shores of

Lake Anavatapta in the Himalayas, where many—including the Buddha—recount events of prior

lives and their pertinence to the present. The importance of the appreciation of karmic causality

to spiritual progress—in monastic and bodhisattva registers, which now appear of a kind—that is

itself a social phenomenon, may be difficult to overstate with regard to Tsongkhapa's writings or,

by extension, as I discuss below, his four great deeds.

The Central Importance of Karmic Causality

It is well known that the concept of karma (lit., action) originates in its pre-Buddhist

Vedist form as ritual action directed to the gods for material goods, health, prosperity and

success. This Vedist understanding of karma is a sort of reciprocal transaction, a quid pro quo

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relationship in which material support would be exchanged for deity-pleasing ritual actions. The

Buddha transformed this term, using it for a causality of ethical action of body, speech, and mind

that produces successful results—no longer looking to the gods for help but placing

responsibility with the karmic actor, thus cutting out the middle man, as it were. Furthermore, the

relationship between mendicant monastic and lay supporter is not a quid pro quo transaction but

is rather an acknowledgment by the laity that the mendicant’s quest for wisdom and liberation is

intrinsically worthy, and to be supported by the lay person as that lay person’s vicarious opening

up to their own future liberation, cultivating openness to new possibilities through the act of

generosity, thus supporting the mendicant’s education as if supporting a student’s scholarship in

a modern academy.

The Buddha explicitly forbade sangha members from performing rituals in competition

with Vedist specialists, the priestly class of Brahmins. Some of the discourses explicitly show the

Vedic deities, Brahmā in particular, as supporting and glorifying the Buddha’s attainment over

their own; Brahmins as mistaken in their vaunted self-assessment; and the contemporaneous

Vedic offering rites as a misguided application of a formerly appropriate performance. By

reinterpreting karma as ethical action, the Buddha thereby reinterpreted the whole cosmic order

as grounded in ethical action. The entire movement of living beings through cycles of suffering-

laden existence was repositioned as depending not on quasi-sociological notions of intrinsic

selfhood born into an established social status but rather on a quasi-biological understanding of

ethical actions in former lives as the causal factor of intentional (cetanā) action that determines

one’s destiny and status. There exists, that is to say, a fundamentally interpersonal character to

the Buddhist cosmic order. As I have shown, however, that interpersonal character is pervaded,

on the part of each person, by primal misknowledge, the self-habit, that distorts the clear

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awareness of this truth—the cosmological knowledge, discussed in chapter two, that the Buddha

perceived directly at his awakening and enlighenment.

Intentionality, which serves to identify the object as an object with which the primary

mind and its concomitant mental factors engage, underpins the process of evaluating that object

in positive, indifferent, or negative terms. This process, of course, is underlain by prior habit

patterns and instincts of desire and aversion associated with them, as I have discussed in earlier

chapters. The task of the monastic ascetic, as I discussed previously as well, involves

transforming that habitus, that constructed self, to become thoroughly qualified by a standing

disposition, an automaticity, so that positive evaluations dissociated from egocentricity emerge

spontaneously. This task rests principally on deconstructing the self-habit through analytical

wisdom and reconstructing the other-habit—universal altruism—through various techniques,

including meditating the four immeasurables, noted above. All of the efforts of monastic

asceticism—a precursor to tantric asceticism, I have determined, and of a kind, properly

construed, with the bodhisattva practices—aim to purify the distortions related to intention,

which propels ethical actions and their results—that is, karma broadly taken.

The mendicant, the monastic ascetic—the renouncer of the social order that accepts those

patterns of distortion as natural facts—would seem to be a lunatic were not the pain of ordinary

existence so obvious (one could take the Buddha’s early life as an exaggeration of general

human obliviousness) to anyone paying any attention and, according to the discourses, the

serenity, composure, and exceptional personal radiance of the Buddha and his well disciplined

followers so palpable to others. Whatever the factuality of those qualities or the spontaneous

conversions, such as those of the Buddha’s former forest companions, that sometimes ensued

(keeping in mind, conversely, that the Buddha's own cousin, Devadatta, who attempted to

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undermine his authority and to kill him, and also others, including the first person the Buddha

met post-enlightenment, are not so moved) it is clear that the acceptance of this Buddhist

understanding of karma, however implicitly or poorly understood, as it pertains to the monastic-

lay relationship helps to determine the course of Buddhist social history throughout Asia for

more than two thousand years.

Material support of the monastic community, or an individual mendicant, derives from

the belief that the code of discipline transforms that individual mendicant into a suitable recipient

worthy of offerings, a state known as being a field of merit. Merit (puṇya) is the abstract

quantification of positive results, or good karma, that accrues to the layperson from offering of

material support. The mendicant does nothing in return for that support. Nevertheless, a social

contract obtains, for in embodying the disciplinary code, mendicants not only benefit themselves

in terms of spiritual progress, but also their supporters through the accumulation of merit—and

all others outside that relationship. As stressed above, the interdependence of all living beings in

the web of interpersonal relations, structured by ethical actions, entails that this symbiotic

relationship lifts all boats, as it were. On this understanding, then, those committed to an

alternate social order unknowingly harm themselves and others; hence, the Buddhist teachings,

as a rule, are to be given without expectation of material support, for the prospect of

transforming the social order in line with this more expansive perspective is a better outcome

than a new robe or a full bowl of food. Moreover, as Strong observes, Buddhist narrative

literature tends to emphasize the potentially transformative nature of making offerings to the

Buddha, whereby a simple act driven by faith alters the trajectory of spiritual progress with an

immediacy that ordinary merit-making exercises involving the local sangha would not entail.479

479
Strong 1983 57: “In the Buddhist tradition, any good deed, especially any act of offering to the Buddha, the
Dharma or the Sangha, is thought of as making merit that will, according to the laws of karma, bring about

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Of course, such faith itself could hinge on, or even derive from, an appreciation of the workings

of karma.

Buddhist Other-worldliness: Weberian and Other Misinterpretations

The reception of Buddhism in the West can be understood, for the purposes here, as a

play in three acts. The first: late nineteenth-century European scholars and spiritual seekers

discovered (and helped to create) in Śrī Lanka a supposedly eminently rational Theravāda

tradition shorn of the aberrations of the Hinduism-inflected Buddhism reported by a few to exist

in the Himalayas. The second: beginning in the early part of the twentieth century and continuing

over the course of several decades, including a stint at Columbia University, D.T. Suzuki

presented a similarly rationalist yet exotic vision of the East Asian tradition of Chan/Zen, but in

this act, ritual practice and meditation are emphasized as romantic complements. The first act

valorized the monastic elite; the second act appealed to the common person—especially the

common hippie and Beat writer. The third act: in the final decades of the twentieth century, the

Dalai Lama of Tibet took the world stage by storm by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and

articulating in a number of best-selling books a vision of Tibetan Buddhism simultaneously

rationalist and ritualistic. This is an abbreviated and simplified play, indeed. However, one may

consider the late 1950’s: D.T. Suzuki completed his teaching appointment at Columbia

University in 1957; the English-language translation of Max Weber’s The Religions of India was

published in 1958; and the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959. It was from the 1960’s, for

several reasons, that each form of Buddhism found its Western audience, but it was Weber’s

interpretation of Buddhism that interests me here.

beneficial rewards for its does in this or a future life. In avadāna literature, the Buddha in particular is seen as a vast
and fertile field of merit (puṇyakṣetra) where devotes can "plant" their meritorious deeds.”

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 Weber’s The Religions of India was published in 1916 as part of his broader survey of

religions of the world, and his sources necessarily reflect an understanding of Buddhism drawn

from act one, the European encounter with the Theravāda tradition. This interpretation

emphasized a pristine original moment in which the Buddha, having abandoned home and family

for the sake of enlightenment, counseled others to renounce the world in quest of individual

escape.480 As Steven Collins, perhaps the foremost scholar of the Theravāda tradition, observes:

It is often said that monks and nuns “leave” or “renounce” the world, and indeed the phrase
“world renunciation” has been standard since Weber...[this notion] “tends almost always to
be used by others [that is, not Weber] as equivalent to “leaving society,” which is of course
impossible. All monastics depend on others in society and are always and everywhere parts
of it, often important parts.481

Donald Swearer, another Theravāda authority, explains: “It is largely because of these earlier

writers, especially Weber, that the West has acquired of Buddhism as a skewed portrait as a

world-denying religion.”482 Schedneck, drawing on pointed critiques of Weber’s analysis by

recent specialists, summarizes the crux of these: “[E]conomic interactions of Buddhist monks are

seen to be inauthentic expression of Buddhist practice. This analysis, which focuses on Buddhist

texts and monastic life, treats anything outside of a posited “pure Buddhism,” as a transformation

of the “original” teachings into something new and different.”483 Tambiah's classic 1976 World

480
Swearer 86.
481
Collins 2020 xxxix-xxxx. He makes a similar observation in Collins 1988 109.
482
Swearer 86.
483
Schedneck 34. Schedneck praises his own lived religion approach as the panacea for such Weberian errors,
arguing (45) that “Buddhist texts and the monastic life of early Buddhism are an insufficient standard to judge how
monastic actors are making economic decisions in the contemporary world.” Collins (2020) xlvii regards such a
rupture of the present from the past in this case untenable: “[T]o dismiss textual ideals as irrelevant to Buddhist
history, especially to its intellectual history, is to miss a vitally important point: it is precisely the preservation of
such ideals, whether or not they are actualized, which constitutes, in part, Theravāda civilization.” This could not be
more pertinent to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition generally and to Tsongkhapa’s interpretations specifically.

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Conqueror and World Renouncer directly refutes Weber’s claim that Buddhism is isolated from

political and economic concerns, in part based on the Buddha's relationships with his patrons

discussed above. Among recent scholars, only Heinz Bechert seems determined to defend

Weber’s position on the thoroughly other-worldly nature of Buddhism, with this stunning

passage:

[S]ome Asian sociologists, and also some Western ones, feel compelled, on the basis of
individual passages of the text wrenched, for the most part, arbitrarily out of context, to
advance these, formulated in modish sociological terminology, concerning a “political
dimension” of early Buddhism or the like; for this purpose they reinterpret the pertinent
passages or read into them propositions that contradict what the Buddha himself repeatedly
emphasized, namely, that his teaching had only a single goal, that of deliverance, the end of
suffering.484

There is much here, in light of Tsongkhapa’s understanding of the gradual nature of the

path to enlightenment, especially in terms of Atiśa’s formulation of distinct goals, with which to

take issue. More interesting is to consider Weber’s own meta-analysis,485 which sounds

remarkably close to the nihilistic interpretation of Candrakīrti’s Conventionalism that, as I

discussed in chapter four, Tsongkhapa rejects forcefully:

Its [i.e., Buddhism’s] salvation is a solely personal act of the single individual.486

[M]an’s ultimate fate depends entirely on one's own free behavior. And karma doctrine does
not take the “personality” for its point of departure, but the meaning and value of the single act.
No single world-bound act can get lost in the course of the ethically meaningful but completely

484
Bechert 183.
485
Tambiah and others argue against Weber’s position regarding the alleged asocial nature of Buddhism, which
position takes the settled monastic community and its sustained “economic” interactions with the laity to be a
distortion of its true spirit, as we have seen. This argument counters directly the statement early (206) in the section
on Buddhism in Weber’s The Religions of India: “Ancient Buddhism is a specifically unpolitical and anti-political
status religion, more precisely a religious “technology” of wandering and of intellectually-schooled mendicant
monks.” As with modern co-opting and commodification of mindfulness and yoga, these two technologies have
been removed, largely, from their broader context, but that does not entail that they lack them and are not somewhat
impoverished without them. That is, technologies emerge within cultural contexts, not despite cultural contexts.
486
Weber 206.

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 cosmic causality.487

One might think that an ethic based on these premises must be one of active conduct, be it
within the world (like those, each in its particular way, of Confucian and Islam), or in the
form of ascetic exercises, e.g., Jainism, its main competitor.488

Thus far, Weber’s discussion is tenable, for it is axiomatic that no one, not even buddhas,

can intervene directly into the “salvation” of others, only indirectly through teaching, as I have

discussed earlier. One could argue against the notion of “free behavior,” which Candrakīrti

eviscerates in the opening of his Entry and which, similarly, contradicts Tsongkhapa’s

understanding of the role of misknowledge at the beginning of the chain of dependent origination

in cyclic existence. Next, Weber moves directly to the interpretation of selflessness against

which Tsongkhapa argues so vehemently:

[Because of selflessness,] it is senseless to be attached to all or any inclinations, hopes, and

wishes connected with the belief in this-worldly, and above all, other-worldly life. All this
means attachment to imperfect nothing.489

What is sought is not salvation to an eternal life, but to the everlasting tranquility of death.490

For Weber, like Candrakīrti’s early Tibetan interpreters, selflessness entails the non-

existence of conventional reality. But for Weber, unlike mahāyāna Buddhists, the continuum of

consciousness can be severed; Candrakīrti’s early proponents, as I have shown, presumed that a

distinct, fully enlightened “consciousness,” the wisdom truth body (dharmakāya) somehow

emerges at the end of the path—it is a stretch, but not impossible, to call this “the everlasting

tranquility of death.” This does speak to the underlying assumption that some intrinsically

487
Weber 207.
488
Weber 207.
489
Weber 207.
490
Weber 207.

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existent awareness or self, which experiences that tranquility or utterly transcendent enlightened

state, persists. This seems to be what Weber means by “personality” above: something

impersonal not deserving of the term “soul” or “self” must be present, underlying the personal

self, for existence to be possible at all. And this appears to be similar to what Candrakīrti’s

interpreters must contend, for when the illusion of conventional reality in which the personal self

operates is deconstructed completely, the enlightened awareness of buddhahood—completely

distinct from conventional reality—is realized.

After dismissing the very possibility of social responsibility or “active brotherliness” due

to the tenet of selflessness, which posits conventional existence as “the grand and pernicious

basic illusion,” Weber explains that universal compassion—though cultivated—disappears “in

the final state of mind, by the cool stoic equanimity of the knowing man.” In sum, Weber

concludes:

Salvation is an absolutely personal performance of the self-reliant individual. No one, and

particularly no social community can help him. The specific asocial character of all genuine
mysticism is here carried to its maximum.491

This appeal to mystical transcendence—to ineffability, to non-conceptuality—is hardly absent

from Tibetan Buddhist thought, if only rhetorically, as I have explained. Tsongkhapa argues

against such an appeal precisely due to its potential to undermine ethics, logical reasoning, and

compassion. Thus, Tsongkhapa’s work, which draws on the whole range of Indian Buddhist

thought, proves illuminating in its clear opposition to Weber’s explicit characterization of

Buddhism as asocial, other-worldly, and essentially nihilistic. Weber’s characterization of

Buddism has been refuted before, but it is important to see, in light of the Tibetan cultural model,

just how critical the social foundation of universalist Buddhism proves to be.

491
Weber 213.

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The Two Spheres of Governance: Kingship and Sangha

Having rejected the Weberian notion of an early, authentic Buddhism untainted by “the

world” that its virtuosi, most notably the Buddha himself, had abandoned, I now may consider

the relationship between the two poles of authority—political and spiritual—that Weber

dismissed but that Buddhists in all times and places have regarded as complementary at least.492

Although the large Indian Buddhist monastic communities were governed by a group of

representatives, and although their communal decision-making process, according to the vinaya,

must be a unanimous affair, Buddhists throughout much of history have lived within kingdoms

or empires. As I have noted above, the Buddha’s relationships with Bimbasāra, Ajataśātru, and

others functioned as the model for later sangha leaders to serve in similar advisory capacities, as

Tsongkhapa did with the Phagmodru leadership of Lhasa.

The cosmological concept of the wheel-turning monarch (cakravartin) whose benevolent

command of the political order explicitly mirrors the Buddha’s command of the spiritual order

provides Buddhists the discursive tools by which to authorize or to critique local rulers, a

concept which bears the ambivalence of the Buddhist attitude toward violence inherent in the

political order. The figure of Aśoka, whose blood-soaked imperial ambitions gave way to

magnanimous support of the sangha, acted as the precedent for the apotheosis of the Dharma-

protecting king. The flexibility of this traveling concept allowed would-be wheel-turning

monarchs and their supporters throughout Asia, particularly Tibet, to craft an image of their

dominion in novel terms resonant with its Buddhist cosmological origins. Nevertheless, the

sovereignty of the monastic community remained in all cases—narratively at least—sacrosanct,

492
Tambiah 22 explains that whereas the Vedic model holds a separation between Dharma, over which the
brahmins hold authority, and politics, the field of the kṣatrīya, the Buddhist model holds the two to have little
separation.

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its superiority reflective of the fundamental source of both the political and spiritual order, for

both individual and society: karma, interpersonal ethical action.

Two models of kingship emerged in the Indian Buddhist literature, one that explains the

origins of kingship based in popular consensus over governance and another that reveals the

potential for righteous rule, based in conformity with the Buddhist teachings, on the part of a

wheel-turning monarch.493 The former model, enshrined in the Discourse on Origins (Aggañña

Sutta), suggests the influence of the republican states of Magadha where the Buddha taught, and

inverts the Vedic presentation of cosmologically established rule,494 whereas the second,

expounded notably in the Cakkavatti Sutta, echoes that cosmological presentation but locates its

authority in the Buddhist Dharma. Perhaps playing on the image of the chariot wheel of the ruler

whose territorial authority would be marked by the Vedic ritual of the horse sacrifice, the

Buddhist ruler’s political authority lies in the wheel of Dharma as a counterpart to the Buddha's

authority in spiritual matters; these two, again, are not entirely distinct realms, and in a rather

literal sense cakravartin and buddha are mirror images of each other. That is, both are Great

Beings (mahāpuruṣa), who are distinguished by thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of

physical attractiveness. Both have amassed the positive karma to become either a cakravartin or

a buddha, which karmic impetus, presumably, determines which career would serve the

circumstances of living beings at a specific time. This choice indicates the extent to which social

conditions play a role in the possibility for religious practice to thrive, a possibility codified in

the lam rim notion of the leisure and opportunity (dal ’byor) afforded by optimal social

493
Halkias 2013 498.
494
Tambiah 22.

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conditions that maximize the potential of a precious human life in spiritual development.495 On

this understanding, the idea that the Buddhist elite are not concerned about political

circumstances—or, cynically, that they would be for economic gain—appears ludicrous. The

ideal of the just ruler may remain just that—much like that of the ideal monk—but the

importance for optimal social conditions of both just rulers and detached, disciplined monks

remains a horizon of hope.

In India the cakravartin concept transformed from discursive ideal to actual ruler in the

figure of Aśoka, the emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who conquered much of the subcontinent in

the third century BCE. Reflecting on his bloody slaughter of some hundred thousand persons in

his victory over Kalinga, Aśoka came to adopt Buddhist social principles, including non-

violence, and to support the monastic community extensively. The pious legends—quite distinct

from the self-representation on the famed pillar edicts—that came to surround Aśoka among

Buddhists thereafter included his intention to bequeath the entire empire to the monastic

community, and a past-life narrative (avadāna) emerged among certain Buddhist groups to

situate his devotion in a larger context that emphasized his dependence on and subordination to

monastic hierarchs as well as the fundamental workings of karma that would determine the

course of his heroic activities. Nevertheless, the Aśokāvadāna retains, rather than glosses over,

the murderous acts for which he expressed deep remorse, suggesting that the redactors of the

narrative—likely Sarvāstivāda monks in Aśoka’s own northern region—wished to commit to

social memory their apprehension regarding the inherently violent reality of kingship.

495
In the stages of the path literature, the topic of “leisure and opportunity” that characterizes the ideal conditions to
make use of a precious human life expresses the importance of social factors, such as access to the Buddhist
teachings. Tsongkhapa addresses this topic early in LRCM. See Tsong-kha-pa 2000 117–128.

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 As John Strong notes in his study of these legends, while Aśoka was lauded at the Sañci

complex by the first century BCE as the avadāna likely was taking shape, the later Great

Chronicle (Mahāvamsa) of the Lankan Theravāda tradition—though acknowledging Aśoka’s

importance in sending Buddhist missions to the island—decried his elaborate patronage of the

monastic community, which is portrayed as leading to its ranks being filled with heretics lacking

interest in the Dharma and simply seeking escape from social or familial responsibility.496 So

although the cakravartin concept—combined with other flexible notions and images of kingship

as it traveled throughout Asia—eclipsed the contractual model from the Discourse on Origins,

the concept’s first embodied iteration in Aśoka does not quite match the literary ideal.

Tsongkhapa likely would have encountered this ideal not from the discourses but from,

among other sources, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa, perhaps the most influential scholastic

manual of Indian Buddhism, during his early intensive study of higher knowledge and perfection

of wisdom. From Vasubandhu’s account, Tsongkhapa likely would have had little interest in the

ideal, for while Vasubandhu agrees that cakravartins, as Great Beings, share with buddhas the

hundred and twelve physical marks, he insists that a buddha’s marks are more brilliant and

complete—and, of course, a buddha’s mental qualities are incomparable.497 Vasubandhu

distinguishes four types of cakravartin based on their wheel’s mineral—gold, silver, copper, and

iron. The first, the golden wheel-turning monarch, corresponds to the literary ideal above, one

who rules over all four continents of Buddhist geography, while the last, the iron-wheeled

monarch—corresponding to Aśoka—rules only one, India itself. In fact, on Vasubandhu’s

496
Strong 1983 23-27.
497
The highly influential commentary Ornament of Higher Knowledge by the thirteenth-fourteenth century Kadam
master Chim Jampalyang (Chim ’jam dpal dbyangs), well known to Tsongkhapa from his higher knowledge study,
discusses the cakravartin topic by including references to Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland, which further emphasizes
the distance between buddhas and cakravartins. See Chim 507.

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account, Aśoka would not qualify as a cakravartin, for not only do such kings not kill in their

conquests, but they can appear only when the average human lifespan is at least eighty thousand

years, for otherwise “the world is no longer a suitable receptacle for their glorious prosperity.”498

Thus, based on the most influential scholastic account, no king (or queen) in the last two

thousand years, at least, could claim to be a cakravartin—though this did not stop certain

attempts, especially once the ideal became combined with other possibilities, as I discuss next.

However, one can observe the dependence of virtuous kingship on the merit of the populace,

indicative of the irreducibly social nature of karma; this is an important point discussed later.

As I explained in chapter one, Tsongkhapa inherited a view of Tibetan history in which

three early emperors—Songtsen Gampo, Tri Songdetsen, and Ralpacan—are portrayed as

emanations of bodhisattvas. This portrayal appears to be the culmination of the pre-Buddhist

conception of divine kingship intersecting with the cakravartin ideal as it had developed in India

and elsewhere.499 Implicit in the idea of the Great Being who chooses to become either

cakravartin or buddha is the necessary fact that the cakravartin must be an advanced bodhisattva.

Interestingly, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa specifies that a buddha lives seven prior existences

as a cakravartin, suggesting that exercising dominion over the political order is a prepatory

practice for exercising dominion over the spiritual order.500 Developments in mahāyāna literature

would make this implicit claim explicit: both Ornament of the Mahāyāna Sūtras and The

Twenty-Five Thousand Verse Perfection of Wisdom affirm that a bodhisattva may take the

498
See Vasubandhu Vol. II 484-487 for his discussion of the topic.
499
Halkias 2013 501.
500
Vasubandhu Vol. II 747.

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cakravartin role in order to promote social conditions beneficial for the practice of Dharma.501

Moreover, symbols of royalty became an important expression of the universal scope of the

power and intuitive wisdom of buddhahood: “In the Lankāvatāra and Daśabhūmika sūtras, the

ritual of coronation is firmly embedded in the narrative of a bodhisattva at the tenth stage of his

spiritual evolution, gaining confirmation by the buddhas of the ten directions, who shower him

with light.”502 The tantric literature, which focuses on the technology by which to accelerate that

spiritual evolution, obviously transfers that regal symbolism to the practitioner engaged in deity

yoga, which is the appropriation of enlightened, divine identity, the mimesis of buddhahood.503

Thus, from the beginning of the recounting of the Buddha’s life narrative and especially by the

time Tibet adopted Buddhism from north India, the lines between enlightenment and royalty

were blurred.

Although Tri Songdetsen may have been considered a bodhisattva before the empire’s

collapse, perhaps within his own lifetime, the narrative construction of the imperial triumvirate

501
Ishihama 171. Vasubandhu’s Treasure, written prior to his conversion to the mahāyāna perspective, affirms that
cakravartins are, like buddhas, inordinately rare, with only one appearing in a world system at any given time. The
mahāyāna literature, however, emphasizes the incomprehensible nature of a buddha’s attainments while also
refuting the cosmic rarity of buddhas; The Lotus Sūtra, for example, famously explodes that one-buddha-per-world
system by having another buddha appear in ours with Śākyamuni and by having Śākyamuni travel to others.
502
Halkias 2013 502.
503
Ronald Davidson’s Indian Esoteric Buddhism (Davidson 2002) contends that the tantric literature is a direct
appeal to the contemporary conditions in post-Gupta “medieval” India, with royal imagery and symbolism—despite
its appearance in earlier literature—intended to persuade post-Gupta regional rulers to patronize struggling Buddhist
institutions, apparently flattering through imitation. Despite the complexity of tantric literature and Indian Buddhist
thought more broadly, many scholars adopt Davidson's flattened interpretation. Although Davidson does not appear
to posit any authentic first moment to the Buddhist tradition, as does Weber, he shares with him the rhetoric of
decline that attends the narrative of latter day Buddhists insinuating themselves into the socio-political order for
economic gain. Halkias 2013 503 summarizes part of Davidson's thesis approvingly: “The appropriation of royal
metaphors, symbols, and ritual acts played a vital role in mapping territorial and supra-regional claims
corresponding to the Buddhist religious universe, legitimizing the consolidation of the state process, and sacralizing
rule among the subject population. In fact, it is only in tantric practice that one may identify a notion of kingship that
is in some sense sacral or divine.”

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as emanations of specific bodhisattvas appears to postdate the dynasty.504 The imperial

descendants—including Yeshe Ö, discussed in chapter one—rejuvenated the transmission of

Buddhism from India to their newly formed kingdom three generations later, beginning in the

middle of the tenth century, and they emphasized the role of Buddhism in its governing

principles and their own leadership in supporting monasticism. However, the re-construction, or

re-articulation, of imperial history as Buddhist mythic history, developed discursively in stages

away from the pre-Buddhist vision of the emperor as divine. The first literary interventions into

the imperial identity assign generic, unnamed bodhisattva status to the emperors, and the second

such interventions specify those identities—Songtsen Gampo as Avalokiteśvara, Tri Songdetsen

as Mañjuśrī, and Ralpacan as Vajrapāṇi, thereby overwriting their individual historical identities

and submerging imperial history under Buddhist mythology.505 The third and final intervention

displaces the bodhisattva emperors from center stage and ascribes primary agency in the

transmission and transplanting of Buddhism to (quasi-) historical actors, principally among them,

as seen in chapter one, Padmasambhava.506 This third phase coincides with the attempts to

capture social authority on the part of the expanding clan-based monastic communities and the

intrepid translators, such as Marpa and Drokmi, who returned from India with tantric technology

previously unknown in Tibet. Nevertheless, imperial glory and bodhisattva kingship remained

thematically important even as these later textual sources emphasized other elements of the

primary topic: Tibet’s preordained centrality as a Buddhist realm.507

504
Doney 2015 34.
505
Davidson 2004 65. At the earliest the first period would date from the ninth century, the second from the eleventh
century, and the third the thirteenth, respectively—although these remain tentative ascriptions.
506
Doney 2015 42.
507
Davidson 2004 65. Davidson notes that the Pillar Testament (bka’ ’chems ka khol ma), a treasure text attributed
to Songtsen Gampo and (purportedly) discovered by Atiśa in the Jokhang, narrates the descent of the first king from

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Interdependence, Future Building, and Social Supremacy

Tsongkhapa evinces no interest in the issue of kingship or the Tibetan imperial era, and

his writings focus almost entirely on his original insights, supported by his explication of the

Indian Buddhist classics. This is not to say that the interventions of enlightened beings in Tibetan

history are irrelevant to Tsongkhapa, for it is precisely the contention of the final portions of this

chapter, analyzing his four great deeds, that Tsongkhapa’s social deeds intended to create the

conditions for such interventions, and the mechanism for this is the topic at hand; moreover,

among his writings are many poems addressing or praising members of the bodhisattva class. It

may be that Tsongkhapa, who often refers to himself in colophons as “the Easterner” due to his

being from Amdo and hence an outsider in Central Tibet, did not grow up surrounded by the

Yarlung Dynasty mythology that would have echoed throughout Lhasa and so that mythology

simply failed to matter to him. While many of his colleagues in Central Tibet (claimed to)

descend from notable clans associated with the imperial court, neither Tsongkhapa himself nor

Khedrup claims for him any sort of illustrious lineage—except that most important one, the

vinaya.508

“the gods of clear light,” suggesting that the bodhisattva emperors were to be regarded as divine as well. his may
have been a vestige of the pre-Buddhist notion of the Yarlung Dynasty's kings as divine. In any case, as Davidson
observes, the text draws from the Discourse on Origins, but only the king, not the whole populace, descends from
divinity, attempting perhaps to retain the privileged claims of the imperial court while speaking also in a Buddhist
voice.
508
Gray Tuttle, in written communication, observes that the status of Tsongkhapa’s father, noted earlier as an
important figure within the Longben tribe and for some duration an official of the Yuan court, is routinely ignored,
but at the very least explains why the Fourth Karmapa would have paused in his travel to Beijing to ordain
Tsongkhapa. Whether this connection would have made any difference to Tsongkhapa’s reception in Central Tibet,
keeping in mind that his earliest studies were among Kagyupas, deserves consideration. Nevertheless, Khedrup was
either unaware of this connection or chose to ignore it in his narrative, which in turn means that, on the first option,
Tsongkhapa did not relay this information to his followers, for reasons unknown, or, on the second option, Khedrup
(acting as official biographer) omitted this information for reasons unknown. Considering the sociopolitical
context—that is, the ongoing patronage of the early Gandenpa community by the Phagmodru Kagyu rulers—at the
time of the composition (1427), one might expect Khedrup to emphasize this fact. Instead, the omission of this on
the part of Tsongkhapa or Khedrup points, on my interpretation, to the emphasis on monasticism as an alternate
social formation that I emphasize here.

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 That is, the essence of Tsongkhapa’s philosophy—from monastic asceticism to Centrism

to tantric asceticism—lies in the understanding that identity, whether social or biological, is

entirely constructed, and that its conventional basis, whether social or biological, depends on the

confluence of prior ethical actions, karma. It is clear that the accumulation of positive ethical

actions and purification of negative ethical actions—again, Tsongkhapa’s own extended retreat

that resulted in his breakthrough included profound purification efforts—as an individual matter

serves as the crux of the spiritual order. However, that the spiritual order, the monastic

community, finds its support from the political order in particular and the social order (i.e., non-

political laypersons) in general should lead one to recognize the extent to which karma—ethical

actions and their results taken together—are, in fact, shared phenomena, interpersonal creations

that bind together individuals, whether ordinary or enlightened, in the cosmic tragicomedy that is

cyclic existence. On this understanding, I have moved as far from the Weberian construction of

individualistic, asocial Buddhism as is likely possible.

The importance of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda, rten ’brel) for Tsongkhapa

can hardly be overstated, for it refers broadly to the causal processes that ground knowledge

within conventional reality, as detailed in chapter four. Much of this dissertation addresses this

topic directly or indirectly, for the reasoned faith (dad pa) that makes any element of the

Buddhist teachings or a spiritual guide—a haven (’jug ngogs)—for the aspiring bodhisattva

depends on their capacity to participate efficaciously in those causal processes—as chapters two

and three relate.509 Tsongkhapa’s first order of business on the morning of his spiritual

breakthrough is to compose spontaneously a poem of praise to the Buddha for teaching

509
An extremely important subject that has not been possible to discuss in this dissertation is the importance for
Tsongkhapa’s of the epistemological tradition of reasoned faith relative to the path to enlightenment as explicated by
Dharmakīrti in the second chapter of his Pramāṇavarttika, epitomized by the name that Dharmakīrti’s grand-
mentor, Dignāga (sixth century), gives to a buddha—reason personified (pramāṇabhūta).

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dependent origination. In terms of karma, which is interpersonal to the extent that ethical actions

depend on the intentionality that engages living beings, rten ’brel may be understood best as

inter-dependent relationality or simply interdependence. The importance of karmic

interdependence for understanding the Tibetan social order and the meaningful nature of

Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds can hardly be overstated.

The relationship between an individual mendicant or a monastic community and lay

supporters, from king to commoner, proves fundamental to the monastic code of conduct and

structures the Buddhist social order in all times and places. While this relationship often has been

framed as reciprocal, with economic support exchanged for teachings, this aspect is, in fact,

secondary. The primary “good” received by the laity is merit. But this too suggests a direct

reciprocity, however intangible merit might be, that does not capture the sense of “good” on

which the moral economy of the cosmos, in which both giver and recipient participate, turns. The

capacity of a monk to serve as a field of merit depends on his good-ness, his overall embodiment

of the Dharma, while his failure to embody the Dharma, to conduct himself according to the

vinaya, results effectively in his cheating the laity of their merit. Profoundly sublime faith on the

part of the laity may counteract that failure, but that level of faith—again here, not blind faith,

but reasoned and hence unwavering conviction in the efficacy of the object—is rare, for it

depends on cultivating logical proofs examined in the epistemological literature, which in turn

depends on literacy, access to texts, and leisure for such cultivation that is, in most cases,

unavailable to laity.510 There exists, then, a profound social responsibility on the part of

510
Here I refer to Tsongkhapa’s own experience, to which he refers in his spontaneous praise on the morning of his
breakthrough. His direct understanding of relativity as emptiness deepened his faith substantially, though his study
of Dharmakīrti’s second chapter of the Pramāṇavarttika already had proved the Buddha’s incomparable status as a
haven of faith—this experiential understanding derived, in some measure, from his intellectual understanding.

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monastics to adhere to their vows, which explains the importance of Tsongkhapa’s second Great

Deed, his efforts at renewing the commitment to such adherence among his monastic colleagues.

Martin Mills relates this understanding of the field of karmic responsibility to notions of

kingship and the state as well as other hierarchical institutions more generally, explaining that

karmic interdependence:

combines together notions of social inter-connectedness, exchange and inheritance, and

kingly and religious responsibility in a single indigenous field of discourse...that in many
ways represents an indispensable backdrop to Tibetan understandings of the "moral economy
of the state."511

An anthropologist, Mills draws on Mauss’ interpretation of gift giving and contends that the

interpersonal relationships involved in these exchanges, which bear karmic consequences, entail

a “moral valence” that renders such economies “intrinsically moral” rather than simply

transactional or bureaucratic.512 What I have discussed as the Buddha's cosmological knowledge

refers to this karmic interdependence in its totality; on a local scale, interpersonal relationships

function to bind together individuals known to each other within communities, specifically

family members—whose prior karmic connections result in current kinship—and figures of

importance, with whom individuals hope to be bound in future circumstances. It is the latter,

particularly spiritual guides and enlightened figures—and not family members nor figures of

importance within the political order—that concern Tsongkhapa, for the building of this sort of

relationship, as it were, is precisely what the processes of emulation and modeling, detailed

earlier, entail. Nevertheless, this understanding of karmic interdependence pertains to political

institutions such as kingship in important ways. Mills notes its pervasive influence:

The hierarchical nature of karmic responsibility and the perils of gift exchange applied
equally to Tibetan understandings of the moral formation of their central institutions—

511
Mills 2015 190.
512
Mills 2015 191.

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 whether of the state, of wider civil society, or of religious institutions. Indigenous
understandings of history, society, and religion have always been discussions of the great and
the good, and people’s relationships with those exemplars. Post-dynastic Tibetan “political
theory” clearly presented the centre as leading and the periphery as following, a view at odds
with the more sociological interpretive tendencies of many modern scholars.513

When one speaks of power in contemporary discourse, almost inevitably the Foucauldian

sense of difference and domination is at issue—power that is oppressive in large and small ways,

but never absent from various hierarchies, which are virtually inescapable. That sense is certainly

not absent from Tibetan understandings of social situations, but present as well, and arguably

primary, is the expectation that the political and spiritually elite wield power for the social good

because of karmic interdependence. For—and one can dismiss Tibetans as irredeemably naive in

so thinking—if one’s worldview, to echo the discussion of Taylor's Sources of the Self, hinges

upon the reasoned faith that ethical actions, present and past, are determinative of one’s future

well being, then presuming that the elite act in accord with this worldview as well is not

surprising. For it is precisely the case, on the fundamental understanding of karma that I explored

earlier, that to become an elite, whether political or spiritual, in the present one must have

performed ethical actions to that end in the past. This underlies Tsongkhapa’s presentation of the

path to enlightenment as causal, as it does the narratives of the past lives of the Buddha and other

spiritually evolved persons, and of course Aśoka’s legends just above. Although it is certainly

possible—and here is where any presumed naiveté ends, as expressed in Tsongkhapa’s warning

to spend even twelve years determining the character of a spiritual guide—that those same elites

(except the Buddha, post-enlightenment, of course) can fail to adhere to ethical actions in the

present, which also is unsurprising given the depth of cultivated egocentricity acknowledged in

the Tibetan worldview.

513
Mills 2015 200.

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 The responsibility that Tsongkhapa believes to accrue to those who have taken the

bodhisattva vow, monks, or spiritual guides depends largely on their influence in guiding others

to engage the Dharma but also, in part, on their capacity on behalf of others to ameliorate the

negative karma and to share their own merit, which in turns depends on the strength of their

interpersonal connection. Because of the intentional nature of ethical actions, it is possible “to

mitigate the effects of an intentionally negative action, through subsequent profound regret. A

past act thus remains karmically (if not historically) available because its intention can later be

modified.”514 Were this not the case, then purification techniques such as Vajrasattva meditation

or the recitations associated with the confession buddhas that Tsongkhapa undertook during his

extensive retreat,515 would be unable to counteract the oceanic volume of negative karma and

hence make liberation unattainable.516 As Mills observes, Tibetans long have understood that

“since it is possible to look at one's own actions as it were from outside, and to either regret or

rejoice in it, it is similarly possible to karmically engage with the moral actions of others in the

same way,” which entails “the karmic process is seen to rest upon a relationship between people,

514
Mills 2015 193.
515
During his extended retreat in the early 1390s, Tsongkhapa is said to have made at least a million maṇḍala
offerings, a ritual in which one offers the entire universe to the enlightened beings of the ten directions—hence, a
form of gift exchange. (Khedrup notes only that Tsongkhapa’s fingers were raw from the efforts.) But the efficacy
of such offerings resides, as Śāntideva clarifies in his Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, in the power of the
intention to offer, not in the materiality of the offerings. Enlightened beings accept the entire universe, represented
by a significantly smaller representation, for the benefit of the giver, for they already possess the universe through
being coextensive with it. Similarly, gifts to the politically and spiritually elite aim to forge bonds that will enable
the giver to participate in the virtue of the elite. This must be appreciated with respect to Tsongkhapa’s four great
deeds.
516
Apprehending clearly the nature and function of karma in terms of ethical actions and their effects is notoriously
difficult in the Buddhist case, for the insistence on there being no intrinsically real self on which to predicate these
actions and effects appears to violate common sense. This is an important issue for Tsongkhapa’s philosophy as
presented in chapter four. The Buddha himself explains this in relation to the famed fourteen unanswered questions
posed to him and to which he remains silent, for in responding either affirmatively or negatively to queries that
presume a real, intrinsically existent self rather than a dependently designated self would lead to the interlocutor
reifying his or her belief in such a self, if affirmative, or denying all merely existent conventional phenomena if
negative—thus, resulting in eternalism or nihilism.

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in which one person takes some kind of moral engagement with and responsibility for the actions

of another.”517

Whereas practices encompassed in the mind training (blo sbyong)518 genre are in some

sense imaginative and predicated on the bodhisattva vow that assumes the burden of

responsibility for others without the direct participation of those others necessarily, what is

entailed by the engagement that Mills discusses is the direct participation by those others, those

less spiritually mature, in the fostering the relationships that enable the responsibility on the part

of the elite. Mills explains:

Such close karmic relations are often seen as being created by relations of faith (dad pa) that
have been rendered concrete through the giving of offerings—a combination, in other words,
of intention and execution. This allows disciples and patrons to actually participate in the
virtuous actions of others, especially those seen as morally superior.519

Such relationships ordinarily are pursued by the spiritually immature, for the burden placed on

the spiritually mature is tremendous. According to Khedrup’s account, Tsongkhapa’s life was

extended by several years due to the intervention of his disciples, who performed extensive long-

life prayers on his behalf, as discussed below, but presumably—and this is not made explicit in

any sources—his lifespan was shortened by taking upon himself the negative karma of others.520

517
Mills 2015 193–194.
518
The term sbyong refers to purification or cleansing, but “mind training” has become a standard English
translation of blo sbyong. The distinction is significant.
519
Mills 2015 197.
520
It is axiomatic in discussions of karma that the effect of an action cannot be experienced by one who does not
create its cause. But, as Mills observes throughout his article with respect to profound interpersonal links that
unsettle this, it is axiomatic also that the spiritually elite can affect the circumstances of others with whom such links
have been created. Mills (200) explains: “The matrices of religious respect and offering that surrounded high lamas
in Tibet were thus seen to be fraught with moral peril—danger which linked people together in manners far more
complex than a simple individualistic interpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of karmic retribution might imply. In
particular, gift-giving was seen as a legal and metaphysical connection that bound two people in a way that, for
example, simply rejoicing in another's actions did not.”

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One could see, on the other hand, Tsongkhapa’s avoidance of the emissaries of the Chinese

emperor, a significantly powerful individual, in order to preclude a burdensome direct

relationship that might have detracted from his capacity to help many others as relevant here.521

Mills, drawing on a range of sources over time, observes:

Creating a karmic link to specific teachers through the exchange of gifts has always been an
important element of Tibetan Buddhist devotionalism in both legendary and historical
accounts. The autobiographies of prominent lamas are replete with journeys to other lamas in
order to create “karmic connections,” which were seen as essential to ongoing spiritual
development.522

I should note here that Tsongkhapa always repurposed offerings made to him,

particularly with respect to the projects involved in the four great deeds: whether the repair of the

Dzjingji temple, the production of the Great Prayer Festival, or the creation of Ganden

Monastery. In every instance, Khedrup explains,Tsongkhapa redirected offerings made to him

toward the activities of enlightened beings, which would then generate merit in which those

making the offerings could participate along with Tsongkhapa, but which they themselves also

would accrue directly, thus forging links with him and the sphere of enlightened beings invoked

in the projects. Any peril for Tsongkhapa, per Mills, therefore was minimized in this process,

and maximum karmic profit, as it were, would accrue to those making offerings by way of

Tsongkhapa’s mediation.

521
Tsongkhapa sends in his place Jamchen Chöje Shakya Yeshe (Byams chen chos rje Śākya ye shes), who returned
to Tibet in 1416 and founded Sera Monastery in 1419.
522
Mills 2015 197 refers to writings spanning some seven hundred years to make the point that this understanding is
not aberrant.

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 Mills makes the important connection to kingship and state, contending that the populace

generally follows the example, virtuous or otherwise, of the king, in this context, a way of

understanding not dissimilar from the traditional Chinese model:

This vision of monarch-subject relations is more than simply a question of representation.

There is, rather, an implication that the sovereign is somehow the karmic primum mobile of
social change rather than simply one political player amongst many.523

Nevertheless, it is critical to affirm the superiority of the spiritual order over the political order,

as is clearly the case with respect to Tsongkhapa and his Phagmodru patrons. It is he, not they,

taking the lead in directing social change, and through their political and economic clout in

support of Tsongkhapa they affirmed this. If this is so, then one can understand the importance of

pure, rigorous monasticism in providing a form of social stability that would complement that

offered by a virtuous political ruler. This also provides clarity with respect to the next topic,

alternative conceptions of kinship relevant to normative Indo-Tibetan Buddhism as articulated by

Tsongkhapa.

Tibetan Clan and Family Relations and Alternative Buddhist Kinship Conceptions

From this discussion of karmic interdependence, which pertains, on Mills’ account, to

familial and elite relationships, one can understand the extent to which clan affiliation proves

critical to Tibet social formations.524 I have shown that from the imperial court forward,

important clans appear to have been at the forefront of social change in an attempt to assert,

523
Mills 2015 201.
524
Samuels makes the convincing case that the concept of clan in historical accounts of Tibetan history is
problematic and that its centrality as an organizing principle of Tibetan society is misplaced, with the emphasis on
family names (rNgog, Khon, etc.) indicative of an idealized vision of a unified past rather than coherent social
organization. Nevertheless, that idealized vision, to the extent that it becomes an accepted social fact in Central
Tibet, maintains its force, even as it asserted against other claims to authority.

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maintain, or challenge power, and as the primary form of social capital in the empire’s wake,

Buddhist religiosity was typically one critical element of claims to power. The complex

entanglement of the spiritual and political orders is perhaps nowhere better displayed than in the

earliest days of the Later Diffusion, when in Western Tibet some clans descended from the

defunct imperial court gather around the former Yarlung Dynasty’s heir to form a new kingdom

and, in their swift move to incorporate the territory of Zhang Zhung to the west, perhaps to build

a new empire.525 But the kingdom’s efforts were decidedly spiritual rather than militaristic, and

those efforts in sending translators-in-training to India and later inviting Atiśa from Vikramaśīla

Monastery are a critical factor in the resurgence of Buddhism, as seen in chapter one.

Nevertheless, the Buddhism that Tibet inherited from India brought alternate forms of kinship

that—for Tsongkhapa at least—proved more important than clan or family: just as the spiritual

order necessarily eclipses the political order, so too these three forms of kinship—based in

monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric discipline—eclipsed for him clan and family.

Tsongkhapa’s self-description, noted earlier, as an “Easterner” may indicate not only his

conscious outsider status with respect to Central Tibetan culture in general—that is, imperial

nostalgia—but also to clan networks and their political machinations in attempting to reclaim

past glory in particular. Lacking any alignments, he was free to create any, socially and

spiritually; thus, his career was not predetermined by affiliation to clan or tradition. With respect

to family, Tsongkhapa left their care at a very young age, given over to Dondrub Rinchen.

Khedrup does not provide any evidence for ongoing contact, though there is no reason to

presume Tsongkhapa has none at all. Tsongkhapa not only determined for himself to travel to

Central Tibet at age sixteen, but Khedrup makes no mention—as one might expect—of

525
Jahoda 80.

348
Tsongkhapa’s meeting with his family before departing; perhaps Dondrub Rinchen’s own return

to Amdo gave them hope of Tsongkhapa’s return later. Years later, however, Tsongkhapa

received a plea from his aged mother to return home, and he wavered before resolving to remain

steadfast in his spiritual pursuit in the Central Tibetan academies. Not being heartless nor,

apparently, powerless, Tsongkhapa sent in return a portrait of himself that could speak and

interact—strikingly similar to the emanational power of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Tsongkhapa

did not “abandon” his family to pursue monasticism, as the Weberian intepretation would have

it, but rather understood alternative Buddhist models of kinship to be more effective in caring for

them.

First, with respect to monasticism, I have explained that the concept of merit determines

the interaction between the laity and the monastic community and that the power of that merit

depends at least in part on the discipline of the individual mendicant. Although the logic

involved in karmic interdependence discussed above entails that family members have stronger

karmic connections to each other than to others and hence can play important roles in events

such as death, that logic also entails that the political and spiritual elite are sites of power more

broadly, not restricted to family relations. And among the spiritual elite, monastics (ideally) have

left behind the limited social roles involved in family relations for the unlimited capacity to

provide merit to anyone at all. Thus, even if the monastic career is not accessorized with the vow

of the bodhisattva—surely not ever the case in Tibet—there still exists an element of universal

availability on the part of the mendicant as a field of merit. Among monastics, as Collins has

emphasized, there is a sense of friendship that binds them together as a community oriented

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toward individual adherence to the disciplinary code,526 and the relationship between preceptor

and novice in the MSV and related literature is explicitly compared to that of father and son.527

This adherence to the code of conduct ensures their own spiritual development and that of others

by serving as a merit field. Serving their own welfare directly, monastics serve indirectly the

welfare of others in this manner.

Second, the bodhisattva vow enjoins a direct effort to serve the welfare of others, without

exception, by becoming a perfect buddha, who is, at least by definition, maximally competent to

serve each and every living being, as I have shown in prior chapters. It is important to reiterate

that monastic discipline does not contradict bodhisattva discipline, for the former pertains

primarily to personal behavior to be restrained, which indirectly benefits others through the

absence of manifest desire and aversion that taint interpersonal relations, whereas the latter

emphasizes the proactive intervention in the welfare of others. In fact, the two may be properly

regarded as complementary, for only through the active suppression and elimination of

problematic behavior rooted in desire and aversion could other-oriented intervention, untainted

by explicit self-interest, actually occur. Much could be said of bodhisattva discipline, but the

point here is there is an explicit effort to include all living beings within one’s sphere of active

concern, and, moreover, there is a concerted deployment of the imagination to that end.

I have shown that the two methods for generating the spirit of enlightenment, which

underlies the bodhisattva vow, depend on the imagination by counteracting the habitual tendency

to view kinship in extremely limited terms, based on immediate family relations in particular.

526
See Collins 1988 112-115, where he also observes that the idea of a fellow monastic, typically a senior monk,
who is a good friend (kalyānamitra) in supporting one's efforts to uphold the Dharma becomes in certain instances a
specific formal relationship, that of the meditation teacher for a younger monk.
527
See Cohen 2000b 14-15.

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Asanga’s method accepts the biological understanding of kinship in order to foreground the

logical necessity entailed by the twin facts of karma and beginningless time: all living beings

have been, in prior lifetimes, in every possible kinship relation and provided each other the

material and affective support to survive. There is specific emphasis on frailty and care

epitomized in the infant-mother relationship that is imaginatively transferred to all relationships:

just as one’s own mother has extended limitless self-effacing care to her frail, helpless newborn

in this lifetime, so too have all other beings previously, and the appropriate attitude one should

cultivate is the grateful intention to repay that kindness to each and every one. Here the gift

exchange concept that Mills connects to karmic interdependence is explicit. The only reasonable

understanding of kinship, then, is an extended, universal one to be cultivated imaginatively in

this manner until that limitless care shown to oneself emerges for all others as spontaneously, as

the spirit of enlightenment, as if for one’s own mother of this lifetime.

Third, with respect to tantra, I have explained that Tsongkhapa insists that its practices

are part of the bodhisattva path to enlightenment; the distinguishing feature of tantric practice,

deity yoga, somehow enables the three countless aeons of exoteric bodhisattva effort to be

condensed radically, but otherwise tantra proceeds from the bodhisattva vow and incorporates all

its ethical standards. The antinomian elements of unexcelled yoga tantra are, for the most part,

imaginative and performative and do not, Tsongkhapa contends, subvert the bodhisattva attitude

of limitless care cultivated by means of exoteric methods. On his interpretation, then, tantric

practice—whatever its symbolic references to kingship—should not entail narcissistic pleasure-

seeking or abusive domination of others; any such references to the political order still remain

subject to the supremacy of the spiritual order, even when the social order is fully internalized, as

with the practice of deity yoga.

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 In terms of kinship, the universality of its sentiment necessarily remains, but something

of a simulation of family, like the simulations of royalty and enlightenment, is enacted. To the

extent that biological kinship, royal status, or enlightenment—as do all other existential states,

interpersonal relationships, or social roles—depend on prior ethical actions, these are created

intentionally, if not purposefully. Mills makes the point that Tibetans long have attempted to

establish karmic connections with political and spiritual elites due to this fundamental

understanding of the pervasive nature of karmic interdependence, and this underlies the

importance that Tsongkhapa attributes to the process of investigating the qualities of a spiritual

guide in the context of tantra. The bond between the tantric preceptor and disciple mirrors the

intimacy of the tantric classes, with the practice of unexcelled yoga entailing complete trust and

faith while the lama, regarded as enlightened, guides the disciple through the terrors of

confronting the instincts and experiencing simulated death processes. Even though imaginative

practice reaches its apogee in unexcelled yoga creation stage practice, the imagined becomes real

in perfection stage practice, so the comingling of the aspirational (universal kinship) and the

actual (biological kinship) speaks to the intense transformation these practices portend.

In the context of unexcelled yoga, there is an explicit attempt to create a new spiritual

family, ritually and discursively, around the figure of the lama through consecration rites that

draw upon the symbolism of biological reproduction. To some extent, each of the unexcelled

yoga tantra systems is a world unto itself, yet it must conform, however obliquely, to the

template of this class as articulated by the Guhyasamāja system; as I have explained,

Tsongkhapa emphasizes this unity in diversity. Similarly, each lama, enacting the identity of the

buddha at the center of the maṇḍala, creates a spiritual family through the consecration rites, and

that family is ritually bound to the lama and, simultaneously by extension, to the maṇḍala’s

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inhabitants—all living beings. But the immediate focus is on the lama, who in the karmically

contingent context of this constructed family personally represents all enlightened figures and

their aspirations for the welfare of all living being: “these familial terms were widely understood

as referring to the social community organized around the guru, its central authority figure...these

rituals were meant to powerfully generate a new sense of identity, involving membership in a

new community...”528

This process, then, is similar to the ritualized construction of a new social identity

involved in the monastic community’s rites, which should orient one to the fact that the conduct

enjoined in both the monastic and tantric contexts is best understood in terms of asceticism in

Flood’s work, discussed in chapter three, where my interest lies in psychological and biological

interventions. Flood emphasizes the creation of a new subjectivity, an ascetic self, that attempts

to reverse the biological constraints on the body through the appropriation of a symbolic identity

that bears the memory of tradition and, therefore, is a social construction. I cite again a central

passage from Flood529:

The ascetic self is formed through ritual, which is the performance of the memory of
tradition, but which is intimately connected to subjectivity in the ascetic case. This is to
separate subjectivity from modern notions of individuality and to set subjectivity within the
public realm of tradition. Asceticism as the subjective appropriation of tradition is the
enactment of a cultural memory. Indeed, the performance of tradition can be seen as the
performance of memory: reversing the body’s flow is enacting the memory of tradition, a
tradition that becomes encoded in the body.

Here, monastic asceticism embodies tradition in the sense that mendicants and the greater

monastic community, as holders of the monastic code of conduct, reproduce the fundamental

Buddhist social structure, which depends on the concept of merit. The monastic code of conduct

528
Gray 2013 55.
529
Flood 2004 7–8; see chapter three for a full discussion.

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reflects both the Buddha’s own relationships with all strata of society and his ethical perfection

as the guarantor of faith, proving him a field of merit, and the monastic community acts as

something of a mirror of the Buddha in different spatiotemporal contexts. Tantric asceticism

literally embodies the Buddha, appropriating the specific individual enlightened identity of the

central figure of the maṇḍala (who is the Buddha disguised, as it were, for specific psychological

purposes), who acts something of a mirror of all enlightened beings, all buddhas. In both cases,

the notion of kinship grounded in immediate relationships dependent on biological reproduction,

which restricts the capacity for the selfless care of others to an extremely limited circle, is

rejected in favor of symbolic kinship grounded in universal karmic interdependence.

The Four Great Deeds: Synthesizing Immanentism and Transcendentalism

Having accentuated the social nature of Buddhism, against the Weberian claims of its

authentic asocial, otherworldly emphasis, in relation to the monastic community, to conceptions

of kingship and governance, and to the ascetic forms embodying the appropriation of the

tradition’s ideals, now I can turn to Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds, which epitomize, largely on

the basis of these topics, his social impact. However, it should prove useful to the analysis of

these four to consider two fundamental concepts of religiosity—immanentism and

transcendentalism—that express the tension, perhaps already apparent, between the locations of

spiritual power in the ordinary world or entirely beyond it. Drawing on Alan Strathern’s

Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History, I explore the complexities

involved in Tsongkhapa’s integration of relative and ultimate, an integration central to his

philosophical efforts that I relate here to the social order. Strathern’s characterizations of

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Buddhism, moreover, provide a final effort to counter portrayals that overemphasize or

exaggerate the importance of a dichotomy between relative and ultimate.

Drawing on the Axial Age literature in discussing the rise of universalist transcendentalist

systems against localized immanentist traditions, Strathern focuses primarily on the Christian

and Buddhist examples to exemplify the ontological cleavage between the two types. Providing

brief definitions, Strathern explains that immanentism may be understood as “a form of

religiosity oriented towards the presence of supernatural forces and agents in the world around

us, which are attributed with the power to help or thwart human aspirations” whereas

transcendentalism “is a form of religiosity towards the transcendence of mundane existence and

the imperative of salvation or liberation from the human condition.”530 Among the features of

immanentism, I note the following: widespread anthropomorphism; monistic cosmology;

localization; the concern for access to supernatural forces in order to obtain flourishing in the

present; and metapersons defined by power rather than ethics.531 By contrast, transcendentalism

emphasizes a radical distinction between a sacred transcendent reality and the profane mundane

world:

Mundane existence is therefore not just afflicted by transcience, corruption,

unsatisfactoriness, and negligibility, it…it is defined by it. It is cast into the shadows by the
pure light of the transcendent. This dimension of reality is…considered as inherently
superior to that of normal life, but it is so distant from us that it is radically unknowable…and
ineffable.532

530
Strathern 322. Following Marshall Sahlins, Strathern helpfully refers to supernatural agents as “metapersons” to
highlight the anthropomorphic tendency in immanentist traditions in particular throughout the book.
531
Strathern 27. These particular features certainly pertain to the pre-Buddhist religious forms that, in the form of
mountain cults in the eastern regions of Tibet, persist to the present.
532
Strathern 48.

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 Much in this understanding is problematic with respect to Tsongkhapa’s presentation of

the relationship between ultimate and relative, part of which derives from Strathern’s privileging

of Theravāda sources and Tsongkhapa’s own insistence on a very specific distinction between

the two.533 There is not an ontological distinction between ultimate and relative, as chapter four

emphasizes, but rather an epistemological distinction, and therefore the ultimate is not radically

unknowable and ineffable. This, however, would characterize the positions of other Buddhists, in

particular those who interpret Candrakīrti’s Centrism as asserting such an ontological break. And

mundane, conventional existence as such, Tsongkhapa insists, is not afflicted by the qualities

indicated: unenlightened existence is so afflicted, but that is critically different from mundane (or

relative, conventional, consensual) existence; these two are not necessarily coextensive. Buddhas

transcend primal misknowledge, along with its latencies, as well as its manifold, concomitant

addictions, but not the world of ordinary experience. Nevertheless, as detailed in chapter four,

such an understanding could well characterize the position of other Buddhists, especially the

majority of Tibetan proponents and opponents of Candrakīrti’s work prior to Tsongkhapa. Thus,

one is reminded again just how distinct from certain other Buddhists are Tsongkhapa’s positions.

As Strathern observes, traditions characterized as transcendental “are always unstable

syntheses of transcendentalist and immanentist forms...as the transcendentalist traditions are

forced to gradually make peace with the structures of mundane reality in order to thrive and

survive. Every single defining feature of transcendentalism was subject to reversal, contradiction,

533
Strathern 61, following the work of Steven Collins on the Theravāda tradition, claims: “The focus on the self was
so acute that, on the theoretical plane, it dissolved from sight...a most extraordinary achievement of anti-
anthropomorphic, anti-agential mental labour. It amounts to a kind of denial of personhood not only to all other
forces in the world but the human subject itself.” This is a profoundly inaccurate, but rather common, conflation of
“self”—the intrinsically existent, essentially real Self of the Upaniṣads—that all Buddhists reject and “person” that
is the referent of the term “I,” for instance.

356
and subsumption.”534 Although this hints at a Weberian distinction between an authentic first

moment of uncorrupted otherworldliness and subsequent decline, one can take the point that

transcendence and immanence are (in the case of transcendentalist traditions) not thoroughly

distinct.535 Strahern cites Jan Assmann as opposed to asserting too radical a distinction between

immanentism and transcendentalism and to denying the former a clear separation between sacred

and mundane, resulting in cosmological monism. Assmann refers instead to “conceptual

compactness...from a will to connect and to integrate, to establish alliances, equations, and

identities” and claims “[t]ranscendence in the sense of otherworldliness is common to all forms

of religion and concepts of the sacred. These gods and spirits are, however, not extramundane.

Their otherworldliness does not prevent them from being immanent in nature.”536

This last point, that transcendence does not preclude immanence, is critical for

understanding Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds. Buddhas and bodhisattvas, according to mahāyāna

“theology,” do not reside in thoroughly transcendent realms, unable to participate in

conventional reality; as chapter four details, Tsongkhapa objects to the (mis)interpretation of the

eleventh chapter of Candrakīrti's Entry as claiming that buddhas are sequestered from

conventional reality. Although the distinction between buddhahood and any other existential

state, whether as an ordinary being or an advanced bodhisattva, is enormous, any positing of this

distinction along the lines of Strathern’s ontological cleavage is problematic. One can appreciate

534
Strathern 81.
535
Strathern makes his lack of knowledge of the mahāyāna obvious when he claims (76) that bodhisattvas “may
become godlike metapersons endowed with the power to release people into nirvana.” As far as I know, no tradition
asserts this, and even the most radical Japanese Buddhists who believe in some other-powered salvation attribute
such power to buddhas, not bodhisattvas. The mainstream understanding of karma refutes any such assertion. Not to
nitpick, but Strathern also claims (93) that bodhisattvas are incarnations of the Buddha, which is another egregious
error.
536
Cited in Strathern 32.

357
the need, in a competitive religious environment like South Asia, to emphasize the transcendent

qualities of buddhahood, but this entails the danger of effacing immanence. Famously, Mañjuśrī

advised Tsongkhapa to balance ultimate and relative, transcendent and immanent, but to

emphasize the relative. The very point of the path to enlightenment and the resultant state of

buddhahood, as opposed to mere liberation conceived as extinction, is optimally beneficial

participation in the unsatisfactory lives of others.

And as I discussed just above, the concern to establish connections of karmic

interdependence applies equally to buddhas and bodhisattvas, for much of the ritual life of

Tibetan Buddhism aims to establish such connections through repetition of mantras,

visualization, and so on, whose force is developed and strengthened by supportive art and

material culture. Monastic and tantric asceticism transform Tsongkhapa into a spiritually elite

agent who could serve as a field of merit himself and also provide others access, through his own

karmic connections, to enlightened figures such as Sarasvatī, Mañjuśrī, and Maitreya. Creating

the social and educational possibilities for rigorous mass monasticism, communal celebrations

intended to forge such connections, and the institutionalization of tantric study, Tsongkhapa

radically altered the possibilities for Tibetans to transform themselves into the spiritual elite as

well. It is to the four great deeds that, in large part, afford these possibilities to which I now turn.

Great Deed One: The Restoration of the Dzingji Maitreya temple

As the first in the set of the four deeds, the restoration of the Dzingji Maitreya temple in

1394 was the only one to occur prior to Tsongkhapa’s spiritual breakthrough, and in a sense it

heralded his transformation from student to teacher, for this effort occurred during the extended

retreat in which he was the leader of eight other monks. Putting the timing in context,

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Tsongkhapa had been in Central Tibet for some twenty years, during which he studied

intensively all the major topics of the Buddhist scholastic education; taught in one extensive

session seventeen classic texts; received the entire tantric teachings of Butön’s lineage;

composed the massive instant classic on the perfection of wisdom literature, Golden Rosary; and

came to have direct communication with Mañjuśrī, who advised him to enter this extended

retreat. Mañjuśrī advised Tsongkhapa not to follow his inclination to turn to teaching

immediately, in response to his growing renown, and this advice led Tsongkhapa to accomplish

his first deed soon after entering retreat.

Following Mañjuśrī’s advice, Tsongkhapa’s efforts focused on purification practices,

specifically the Three Heaps Discourse (Triskandhadharma Sūtra), and accumulation practices

of the bodhisattva deeds detailed in the Flower Garland Discourse (Avatamsaka Sūtra). This

purification practice, which is a general confession and homage to a series of specific buddhas,

Tsongkhapa combined with extensive full-body prostrations and maṇḍala offerings, making the

practice a thoroughly embodied one. Khedrup specifically relates the Avatamsaka to the process

of modeling idealized bodhisattva behavior and cites the text as a prominent inspiration for

Tsongkhapa; as I have explained, Maitreya sits at the head of the lineage of mahāyāna

compassionate activity, whose practices he transmits directly to Asanga. This fact may explain

why Tsongkhapa, upon experiencing a pair of visions of Maitreya, visited the Dzingji temple

soon upon taking up the retreat, for it was not, as it would be with the Great Prayer Festival, that

Tsongkhapa consciously invoked the future buddha for communal karmic connection, but rather

that he himself was in the process of becoming the powerful spiritual figure who could do so.

The following events at Dzingji appear to have accomplished that transformation.

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 As Khedrup explains, Tsongkhapa and his colleagues found the temple and its images in

terrible disrepair but had virtually nothing to offer by way of payment for the extensive work

required, so they performed a propitiation ceremony to Vaiśravana, the god of wealth, by

fashioning a torma (gtor ma, a symbolic offering sculpture) with butter donated by a local. From

the following day, offerings began to pour in to the project, with artisans from Yarlung drawn

inexplicably to the temple; an air of reverence took hold of everyone working toward the

restoration, and various miraculous occurrences took place. Two of these are especially notable:

many people saw ḍākinīs making images in the sky over the temple,537 and from a great distance

Namkha Gyeltsen, the abbot of Lhodrak Chagdor monastery, saw in the sky seven buddhas,

who—apparently through his own supernormal powers—he learned had been invited for the

dedication ceremony of the temple.538

Inexplicability is an in-built feature of the theory of karma: how the ripening of various

negative and positive ethical actions occur at any given time is considered a very hidden

phenomenon, one known only to buddhas. Inflexibility seems to be another such feature: the

result of an action cannot be experienced by someone who did not create its cause. Heightened

537
As is well known, the ambiguity surrounding these female figures extends to how to characterize them. The
Tibetan “khandro” (mkha' gro) is simply sky-goer. These figures are potent tantric personages, but like tantric
practice itself dangerous to those unprepared to encounter them, as many mahāsiddha narratives display.
538
In addition to the ability for certain ordinary people to see dakinis and other miraculous elements, the Dzingji
event caused Namkha Gyeltsen, a mystic of the Kadampa tradition, to invite Tsongkhapa to his monastery. From
him Tsongkhapa received important lam rim teachings as well as instructions on Dzogchen, a somewhat
controversial topic due to its affinity in some respects with the teachings of Hvashang Mohoyen, the errant Chan
master whose legendary loss in debate to Kamalaśīla in the eighth century solidifies the Indian gradualist orientation
of Tibetan Buddhism. Tsongkhapa disclosed to Namkha Gyeltsen his interest in traveling to India to receive further
instructions on Centrism and Guhyasamāja magic body teachings from the mahāsiddhas Maitrīpa and Nāgabodhi,
respectively. The abbot, who was known to channel Vajrapāṇi, persuaded Tsongkhapa to remain in Tibet, explaining
that although he would find fame as a scholar in India, he would be of far greater service to others by staying. Thus,
one can see at this pivotal time, before his intensive Centrist study that culminated in his 1397 breakthrough,
Tsongkhapa evincing an interest in an Indian teacher, Maitrīpa, well known for his “non-mentation” (amaniskara)
doctrine (along with important mahāmudrā contributions to the Kagyu tradition) and receiving dzogchen
teachings—both sharply removed, on most interpretations, from his later position.

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occasions, such as the temple restoration, enable otherwise ordinary persons to participate in the

power of the spiritual elite, as Tsongkhapa proved to be. This event appears to be the first

instance of Tsongkhapa’s being able to mediate on behalf of others access to the transcendent, to

make the transcendent immanent.

The concept of karmic interdependence pertains to the creation of both present and future

positive connections to the spiritual elite—prominent lamas, bodhisattvas, and buddhas. The

elimination of negative connections, those caused by egregious manifestations of the poisons

rooted in the self habit, is necessary in order to tip the balance of the karmic scales, as it were.

One way to do that is through the accumulation of merit, which I have discussed in relation to

the gift-giving relationship between monastic community and laity, and the other is through

purification practice; the practice Tsongkhapa undertook combines the two. It is significant that

Tsongkhapa’s significant spiritual development occurred in relation to purification, for this

foregrounds negative karma in his life narrative, and Tibetan Buddhist life narratives, as the tales

of the spiritual elite, rarely refer to such practices explicitly.539 That these purification practices

resulted in Tsongkhapa’s having direct visions of Maitreya points to their power to catalyze

karmic connections. Again, this event—a spontaneous occurrence according to Khedrup’s

account—appears to be the first in which Tsongkhapa could mediate such connections on behalf

of others, but it seems to have persuaded him of his developing spiritual power, for he would

return to Dzingji soon after his breakthrough to lead a New Year’s prayer festival that would

539
Milarepa’s life narrative is a famous exception, and given the remarkable transformation from utter lost cause to
enlightened being in a single lifetime, this is understandable. Even there, though, the emphasis is on the tantric
practice of guru yoga, whereas Tsongkhapa’s practice is a common, exoteric one. As I observe in chapter two,
Tibetan Buddhist life narratives tend to center on tantric practice and other advanced elements, and so the emphasis
on his education along with such common practice make Tsongkhapa’s, especially Khedrup’s telling, rather unique.

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serve as a rehearsal, as Jinpa puts it, for the Great Prayer Festival of 1409, the third of the four

great deeds. This event, then, was a turning point in his becoming a public figure.

Great Deed Two: The Vinaya Conference

I have already discussed above and in chapter three the significance of the monastic

community to the conception of the Buddhist social order and monastic asceticism to the

individual capacity for self-transformation. I have framed the Dzingji temple restoration in

relation to purification practice, which may be understood as the unmaking of the past—as well

as making of the future as progressively better than the present, rather than simply further

degenerated—in terms of karma. Monastic asceticism, by contrast, may be understood as the

making of the present and future by fashioning the self of the present and the future (their

conceptual identity being “the same” in dependence on the continuity of the five aggregates on

which that identity is designated, as noted in chapter four) in relation to the code of conduct. In

addition, the analytical wisdom that perceives subjective and objective selflessness certainly

serves to unmake the past and present, and by extension the future, in a radical way as well; this

is why the wisdom of selflessness is considered so transformative. In unmaking the past,

purification practice makes possible the success of present and future transformation in any

register: monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric. Through fortnightly confession, the compounding

effect of negative behavior is prevented, although Tsongkhapa’s valorizing of Atiśa for having

counteracted any vinaya infractions immediately indicates that even with the fortnightly

confession, infractions still can fester unnecessarily.

In any case, the spirit of the vinaya, despite the communal nature of the confession rite

and the fundamentally interpersonal nature of ethical actions, pertains to rigorous self-

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examination of personal behavior intended to restrain even the slightest contravention in order to

retrain behavior to be reflexively stainless. Khedrup quotes Tsongkhapa as saying of his own

exemplary adherence to the vinaya: “The basis of all knowledge is a pure morality. I have never

experienced any major transgression of my vow of individual liberation, and whatever minor

infractions of the codes of conduct may have occurred, I have repented and renewed my vow.” In

many writings Tsongkhapa emphasizes the foundational nature of monasticism for spiritual

development, hoping to become ordained in future lives precisely to be able to continue pursuit

of buddhahood, such as in his prayer for rebirth in the famed “pure land” of Amitābha, Prayer

for Birth in Sukhāvati (bde ba can du skye ba’i smon lam bzhugs so): “In all lives may I grasp the

essencelessness of all existences, be motivated by the thoughts captivated regarding the

excellence of liberation, and go forth into the monastic discipline well taught by the Buddha.”540

In Prayer for the Virtuous Beginning, Middle and End (Thog ma dang bar dang tha mar dge ba’i

smon lam), Tsongkhapa suggests (vv 4–6) that monasticism is an important precursor to entry

into the mahāyāna, including—though not specified—tantra: “May there be no interference to

becoming a monk from family, friends, or possessions...Once ordained, as long as I live may I

not be stained by any proscribed or natural negative actions/As promised in the presence of the

preceptor./ By relying on such pure moral conduct, for the sake of all mother sentient beings/may

I devote myself over countless eons with difficulty/to every vast and profound teaching of the

Mahāyāna.”541 This is important because Khedrup complains that there is a common opinion

among meditators prior to the effort of Tsongkhapa and his colleagues convened at Namsé Deng

that strict adherence to the vinaya is not necessary for those engaged in the mahāyāna path.

540
See Thurman 2018/1982 193–198 for a full translation, or Kilty 82–95 for an alternative translation.
541
For a full translation, see Thurman 2018/1982 87-91.

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 Thus, following his spiritual breakthrough from which he understood unerringly the

nature of dependent origination, which necessarily entails the efficacy of karma, Tsongkhapa,

along with the Sakyapa Rendawa and the Kagyupa Lochen Kyabchok Palsang, convened a

gathering of some six hundred monks from Central Tibet in order to restore among them a

rigorous adherence to the vinaya.542 I showed in chapter three that Tsongkhapa laments the state

of monasticism in LRCM, which was composed shortly after this gathering; this event, attended

by so many monks prior to the wave of mass monasticism brought about by the rapid expansion

of the Ganden monastic network, confirmed that his despair was not rhetorical. As Khedrup

explains it, the group first consults Guṇaprabha’s root text on the vinaya, the preeminent source

for the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition, and supplementary texts in order to confirm collectively the

exact procedures for practice.543 Based on that process of textual confirmation, the group spent

the next many weeks as a single-minded community adhering to those procedures. During this

convocation, moreover, Tsongkhapa and his colleagues taught topics in both validating cognition

and Centrism, indicating that Tsongkhapa already had arrived at his synthesis of the teachings in

which ethics, reasoning, and dependent origination are of a kind—and that Rendawa may have

held quite similar views.544

542
Jinpa 2019 211 notes that Kyabchok Palsang is among the important figures to request Tsongkhapa to compose
his two encyclopedic presentations on the path. He first meets Tsongkhapa, along with Rendawa, a decade earlier at
his own Taktsang (sTag Tsang) Monastery at a large teaching event he convenes, on which see Jinpa (2019) 78-79.
543
Gyaltsab took extensive notes on the proceedings, specifically recording Tsongkhapa’s explanation of the novice
vows, whose modified form prepare the aspiring monastic ascetic for the full code of conduct. Shortly after
composing LRCM, Tsongkhapa turns to instructions on the classes of vows—bodhisattva, tantric, and monastic.
According to Khedrup, he composes first the extensive commentary on the chapter of the ethics of the bodhisattva in
Asanga’s Bodhisattva Levels (byang sa’i tshul khrims gyi le’u), followed by a commentary on the vinaya root
infractions (presumably Essence of the Vinaya Ocean [’dul ba rgya mtsho’i snying po]) and then his commentary on
Fifty Stanzas on the Guru (bla ma lnga bcu pa).
544
I show in chapter one that Rendawa apparently was criticized by his fellow Sakyapa Rongtön Sheja Kunrig for
his interest in Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Centrism, an interest obviously shared by Tsongkhapa. In the absence
of a careful examination of Rendawa’s extant writings, one cannot be certain of where he and Tsongkhapa may have
diverged in their positions, but even after Tsongkhapa’s experiential breakthrough one sees the two of them teaching

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 Hence, throughout Central Tibet, due to this gathering, the entire social order—dependent

as it was on the purity of the monastic community—could have been assured of the heightened

value, as it were, of their karmic connections. By educating six hundred monks from all

traditions in both the need and the procedures to follow exemplary monastic ethics prescribed by

the textual tradition, as he himself modeled, Tsongkhapa—from the traditional perspective that

understands the social order to be dependent on the spiritual elite and, to a lesser extent, the

political elite—altered, in inexplicable but necessarily positive ways according to the workings

of karma, the communal future of Central Tibet. Khedrup and other sources do not indicate how

this conference occurred or by whom initiated; it appears to have been a spontaneous event, with

Tsongkhapa and Rendawa having been invited by Lochen Kyabchok Palsang to join the summer

rains retreat with the six hundred monks gathering there.545

There appears to have been, then, something of a centripetal karmic force bringing

together this gathering—a fusion of collective karmic connections combined with the intentions

of the three teachers in particular (Khedrup attributes this to Tsongkhapa, of course546) to shape

those connections. There is nothing specific with respect to this second deed with which to

consider the transcendent-immanent dichotomy, for here there is no attempt to create karmic

together topics for which Tsongkhapa has become famed. But for Rendawa’s affiliation with Sakya and
Tsongkhapa’s availability to the Phagmodru Kagyupa rulers of Lhasa, who sponsor the Great Prayer Festival and
Ganden Monastery, etc., might their fortunes be reversed?
545
It is important to note the distinct absence of partisanship represented by this event: Rendawa is an important
teacher in the Sakya tradition, Tsongkhapa of course straddles several traditions, and various Kagyu hierarchs are
involved in sponsoring the event. Although Khedrup, in the following footnote, seems to strike a partisan tone, one
can appreciate that as a hagiographic impulse. His recounting of the event gives due credit to all involved.
546
As Khedrup, at the end of his biography, explains: “Nowadays from Kashmir to China everyone has the proper
signs and utensils of monkhood, they have given up intoxicants and eating after noon, the way of proper virtuous
existence of a devotee has become widely spread for observance of the most minute precept of the basic ethic,
through sleeping with awareness and eating only alms, and washing the mouth before and after meals, up to the most
important observances. If this is not the result of the great kindness of our glorious holy Lama, think of whatever or
whoever else could be its origin!”

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connections with transcendent beings. However, if one recognizes that monastic asceticism, on

Tsongkhapa’s understanding of the path, leads to tantric asceticism, which causes buddhahood

more directly, then from this perspective creating karmic connections with dedicated monastics

is tantamount to creating them with transcendent beings.547 With the third deed, one finds

Tsongkhapa himself deliberately bringing about another great gathering, this one also oriented

toward future communal well-being but encompassing the entire social order, including the

political order, within his efforts. In the episodes that comprise this third deed, one finds a

complex combination of transcendence and immanence.

Great Deed Three: The Great Prayer Festival

Of the great deeds, Khedrup spends the most amount of narrative space by far on the

miraculous events surrounding the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo). This may be due

to its ongoing, annual presence in the cultural life of Lhasa or because the memory of the festival

would have remained among celebrants, as well as in the social memory of Tsongkhapa’s

followers. Or, quite simply, Khedrup may be emphasizing the event with the impact on the

largest number of people, with no agenda other than focusing on the obvious extent of

Tsongkhapa’s influence. However, in the context of theorizing about the potential for

constructing of an alternate social reality through communal karmic acts by means of creating

bonds with the spiritual elite and enlightened beings, I take Khedrup’s lingering over the events

of the Great Prayer Festival as providing a glimpse of that possible future.

547
More generally, the concept of their being one final goal, buddhahood, entails this as well. The tale in the Lotus
Sūtra of the bodhisattva Sadāparibhūta (Never Disparaging/Despising), who acknowledges the inevitable
buddhahood of all beings, provides a canonical model for regarding others as proto-transcendent. This bodhisattva
becomes the Buddha.

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 Whatever the case, to appreciate the cultural impact of this event, which I analyze with

respect to two episodes, I must clarify the context of the Great Prayer Festival: the two-week

(fifteen-day) period, known as Chötrul Duchen (chos ’phrul dus chen) from the new moon of the

New Year (Losar, lo gsar) to the full moon, which commemorates the supernormal powers that

the Buddha displayed at Śrāvastī in defeating the so-called six heretics (tīrthika, mu tegs)—rival

teachers whose followings derived from such displays rather than the ethical, compassionate

guidance that the Buddha is shown to provide and that the monastic community continues to

offer. The event at Śrāvastī encapsulates the tension within the Buddhist tradition regarding the

public display of such supernormal powers, which are taken to be natural by-products of yogic

attainment, for the temporary benefit or protection of others and the concern that faith will be

misplaced in those powers and the person wielding them rather than in the Dharma that provides

the means to their own liberation. This tension becomes particularly pronounced in the Tibetan

context, where past figures like Rva Lotsāwa or Lama Zhang used fierce tantric practices largely

in order to subdue others. Tsongkhapa’s coordination of sūtra and tantra, among other things,

explicitly subsumes tantric practice within the strict conduct of the vinaya to preclude such

questionable use of the teachings.548

A brief synopsis of the episode—as recounted in the MSV, the source from which

Tsongkhapa would have known the tale—will help to clarify some of the issues at hand.549 The

Buddha was challenged to a display of superhuman power by six rival teachers, each convinced

548
The MSV narrative, it may be noted, concludes with the Buddha drawing an explicit connection between the rival
teachers as external foes and the poisons as internal foes, indicating a very clear psychological interpretation of
externalities, which is very much consonant with the often non-literal interpretation of the tantras that Tsongkhapa
endorses, following Candrakīrti’s hermeneutical exegesis of the Guhyasamāja Tantra.
549
See Fiordalis for a translation of the event contained in the MSV, which he compares to the account found in the
Divyāvadāna. The event also is narrated in the Discourse of the Wise and Foolish (Damamūka-nidāna-sūtra, mDo
mDzangs blun).

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that the other five had such power, whose patronage was suffering due to the Buddha’s presence

in the region.550 The six, certain that with the help of a community of yogis from the Himalayas

they could defeat the Buddha, convinced King Prasenajit to encourage the Buddha to take part in

the competition; the Buddha, knowing that this challenge was one of five events in which a

buddha must engage, accepted.551 Repeatedly the six rival teachers encountered yogis, including

the Himalayan troupe on whom they depended for assistance, who expressed their dismay that

anyone might challenge even the Buddha’s disciples, much less the Buddha himself. Indeed, a

number of the Buddha’s disciples and admirers (also possessing such power) offered to take the

Buddha’s place in the competition in order to spare him the useless effort, and the Buddha

confirmed that the superhuman displays that he had produced were nothing that any number of

his disciples could not create. Nevertheless, these displays—emitting streams of fire and water

from opposite ends of his body and emanating limitless duplicates of himself teaching within a

lotus—caused the tens of thousands of gathered spectators to have deepened faith in the Buddha,

on account of which the Buddha’s brief teaching induced many to attain exceptional levels of

spiritual development.

Clearly, then, the supernormal displays themselves were not the true focus of the

narrative nor an end in themselves. Rather, those were—like the many forms of performance art

(upāya, thabs) that the Buddha is presented as employing in mahāyāna literature—intended to

lead ordinary beings to, or further along, the spiritual path. Those were, as the phrase repeated

550
The beginning of the MSV narrative has Māra, the trickster figure who appears prominently in Buddhist literature
as ever attempting to disrupt the Buddha’s awakening and career, take on the physical appearance of six rival
teachers, but the remainder of the story fails to make much sense if Māra is taken to have to convince himself in
various disguises of the need to challenge the Buddha.
551
The five are (1) to cause sentient beings who have not generated the spirit of awakening previously to do so; (2)
to consecrate an heir apparent, such as Maitreya; (3) to establish his mother and father in the Dharma; (4) to train in
the monastic discipline anyone prepared to be trained; and (5) to display the great miracles at Śrāvastī. The
specificity of the fifth in comparison to the other four is remarkable. See Fiordalis 12.

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throughout the narrative indicates, intended to “bring happiness to gods and humans...joy to the

hearts and minds of good people,” thereby implying that superficial faith, without further

conviction in and experience of the teachings themselves, is trivial—at best perhaps establishing

some weak form of karmic connection. That the Buddha’s rivals resorted to such displays for the

purpose of patronage confirms why the Buddha prohibited his monastic followers from their

overt performance, for reliance on wonder-working rather than strict ethical discipline would

cause the destruction of the Buddhist social order, which is predicated on the currency of merit

and purity. Moreover, in emphasizing what appears to be extraordinary for gods and humans to

be completely ordinary for the spiritually mature, the narrative displaces the focus from the

Buddha (or any other capable individual) as the agent wielding power to the Dharma as its

source. Again, however, those practicing the Dharma with reasoned conviction, an experiential

form of faith, concern themselves with their ongoing spiritual development, as the finale of the

narrative indicates.

Faith (dad pa) may be understood, from the foregoing, in two ways: (1) the relatively

trivial faith of those awed by displays of superhuman power, faith placed in the abilities of others

(as the six rival teachers had in the Himalayan yogis) rather than in one’s own potential to attain

such power through monastic and/or tantric asceticism; and (2) the reasoned conviction in one’s

own potential to emulate the Buddha, to create an ascetic self that appropriates an ideal of the

tradition, which causes one to engage the Dharma at whatever capacity.552 Although the first

form, as the Śrāvastī story indicates, pales in comparison to the second, it is a necessary

552
Three types of faith are enumerated in reference to the Avatamsaka Sutra, of which the first, clear faith, which
has an appreciation for the qualities of the Buddha and the other two “jewels,” appears to conform to the weak faith
discussed here, though even that appears stronger than what is indicated here. The other two, aspiring faith and
reasoned conviction/faith, are a blend of what is discussed here; reasoned conviction/faith is based on direct
understanding of some kind, whether intellectual or experiential, that does not waver.

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precondition for the second. This explains the emphasis on material culture of ancient Indian

Buddhism, such as the stūpa complexes of Amravati, Sañci and Bharhut or the cave paintings of

Ajanta and Ellora, and its literary culture, beginning with the Aśvaghoṣa’s epic poem,

Buddhacarita.

Artistic representations of events in the Buddha’s life, including the Śrāvastī episode,

have played an important role in the transmission of Buddhist principles among the laity in

particular but also figure into monastic life, particularly representations that assist in the

visualization processes so important to tantric practice. This also helps to contextualize

Tsongkhapa’s concern for refurbishing the Dzingji Maitreya image and the Jokhang’s images as

well as the temples themselves, for these are public sites not restricted to monastics. As I have

shown, Tsongkhapa himself expressed his deep faith in the Buddha based on his own experience

in directly apprehending the meaning of emptiness as dependent origination, but it would be

inappropriate to posit too great a distinction between this elevated form and the simpler form that

brings “happiness to gods and humans,” for the two exist on a continuum and, most importantly,

it is the very purpose of a buddha or bodhisattva to instill faith/reasoned conviction at whatever

depth conditions allow, as shown in the finale of the Śrāvastī narrative, with various levels of

spiritual progress attained by many in attendance.

With this context for the Great Prayer Festival, one can appreciate the importance of this

communal event as representing a commitment to the Buddha’s teachings broadly and the

leadership, if only nominally, of the spiritual order, the monastic community, atop the social

order specifically. One can understand this in terms of those with the lesser capacity for faith

affirming their trust in those with the greater capacity, again recognizing lesser and greater as

being on a continuum but with Tsongkhapa, the festival’s director, clearly at the far end.

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Khedrup details the events in the following way. At least eight thousand monks from all different

schools were on hand for the festival, and some ten thousand laity—from the ruling class of the

Phagdru hierarchy to ordinary folks making simple offerings—attended the ceremonies and

teachings or otherwise engaged in religious activities, of which Khedrup mentions in particular

non-stop circumambulation of the Jokhang. Quarrels were absent, and reverence pervasive. As

Khedrup narrates, the extent of the light from the many lamps atop temples around Lhasa

dimmed the stars and gave the appearance of continuous daylight, and the scent of incense and

saffron-soaked water for offerings pervaded the air. Although he claims that the wonders defy

description, the extensive sensory input that Khedrup enumerates would suggest to an educated

reader a mass subjective experience of a temporary pure land created by the confluence of

karmic connections directed by Tsongkhapa. One may understand Khedrup to imply that this

extraordinary atmosphere surrounding the two week long Great Prayer Festival is similar to the

miraculous display created by the Buddha, though this atmosphere differs in that it was a truly

communal effect, unlike the Buddha’s spectacle at Śrāvastī.

Moreover, Khedrup notes, with little emphasis or apparent embellishment, an event to

which I attend here, for it appears to allude to the Buddha’s miraculous abilities. He refers to the

report of a certain person’s meditative vision of the Jokhang’s being embraced by an enormous

female who explained she was preventing it from being harmed by fire from the massive vessels

of burning butter. Without further information, one could speculate that this might be the very

goddess (or demoness, as sometimes described) of the land whom Padmasambhava famously

suppressed in order for the Jokhang to be built. The following night, one such vessel burst into

flames, threatening to burn out of control; however, Tsongkhapa immediately appeared and

through his meditative concentration caused the winds to subside, allowing the blaze to be

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controlled. Although the mysterious female attempted to protect the Dharma, embodied by the

Jokhang, and therefore seems to contrast with the six heretics who are explicitly antagonistic to

the Buddha, the tension between pre-Buddhist immanentist forces (the various local spirits and

gods that Padmasambhava marshals in service of the Dharma) and Buddhist transcendent figures

may be apropos here. That is, given the desperate state of the Jokhang and its images prior to

their restoration for the festival—and here I might note that the Jokhang, the quintessence of

Tibetan Buddhist culture, had been subject to cycles of disrepair and repair since the fall of the

empire—it may be appropriate to interpret the Great Prayer Festival, with the episode as an

interpretive guide, as a reclamation of this specifically Tibetan sacred space as well as

Tsongkhapa’s own claim to spiritual authority over Central Tibet.

With respect to the analysis of the religious symbolism involved in the Great Prayer

Festival, there are two particularly important episodes, which I distinguish by their appeal to the

permeable notions of transcendence and immanence, deserving of distinct treatment: (1) the

crowning of the Buddha statue, the Jobo, within the Jokhang, and (2) the final prayer sessions

devoted to the future buddha Maitreya. The crowning takes place with a relatively limited

audience and was Tsongkhapa’s activity alone, whereas the final prayer session was a large

communal event that Tsongkhapa led; I may be correct in designating the former as esoteric and

the latter exoteric. In each, however, Tsongkhapa somehow mediated the capacity of these

audiences to access transcendent figures meaningfully.

Crowning the Jobo and Transcendent Spatiality

When dawn broke on the first morning of the Great Prayer Festival, Tsongkhapa offered

to the holiest image in Tibet, the Jobo—the statue of the Buddha brought, it is held, from China

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at the time of Songtsen Gampo—a gold crown symbolizing the five buddha families, the

personifications of the five purified aggregates who, in a sense, together comprise the (would-be)

enlightened individual. This transformed the representation of the Buddha from the supreme

emanation body—that of a saffron-clad monk who is a historical individual who passed away

from his human embodiment at his parinirvāṇa—to a trans-historical beatific body, still very

much present and to be recalled when encountering the crowned Jobo. However much the

historicity of the emanation body of a buddha is a matter of performance art, a spectacle for the

spiritual benefit of others, the fact remains that such a body in the case of an enlightened being

like Śākyamuni is necessarily historically contingent—one of only a thousand of this aeon, the

current cycle of birth-abiding-destruction of the cosmos before a bardo-like period. I have

explained that the MSV stipulates ten activities that such a supreme emanation body must fulfill

as well as five events—one being the miraculous display at Śrāvastī—in which he must engage

for the welfare of those in his field of omnipresence. Appearing as a renouncer is a necessary

aspect of this supreme manifestation.

The beatific body, by contrast, is not bound by such stipulations and is free from the

fetters of spatio-temporal determinism. The primary difference between emanation and beatific

bodies, however, is their audience: the emanation body appears to ordinary beings in a manner

suitable for their spiritual development, whereas the beatific body appears only to advanced

bodhisattvas. In the tantric context, the Buddha teaches in the sambhogakāya form Vajradhara,

whose archetypal identity the yogi/ni appropriates in the process of deity yoga—an appropriation

inappropriate with respect to the emanation body. The distinction between emulation and

appropriation, discussed in chapter three, is critical in this regard; it is the difference between the

exoteric and esoteric bodhisattva portions of the path to enlightenment. Nevertheless, it would be

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incorrect to posit a strong distinction between Śākyamuni and Vajradhara, for they are neither

identical nor entirely different, and this may be precisely what Tsongkhapa intended to

emphasize in the act of crowning the Jobo. That is, the artificial distinction that many

contemporaries made between monasticism and tantric practice, which Tsongkhapa refutes in his

writings, he displays as being inaccurate, emphasizing the continuity between sūtra and tantra.

More importantly, Tsongkhapa symbolically transformed the participants, at least those within

the space of the Jokhang, into advanced bodhisattvas and—if tantric implications were

intended—also maṇḍala inhabitants together as tantric brothers and sisters, in the manner of an

initiation ceremony, receiving the blessing of Vajradhara, bearing the import of the discussion of

such a community earlier in this chapter.

One may note here that the repair of the Dzingji temple and its Maitreya icon, the

extensive restoration involving the Jokhang and other area temples, and the construction of the

tantra hall at Ganden, which is part of the fourth great deed, all involve sacred images of

enlightened figures. Tibetans inherited from Indian Buddhists, among so much else, the general

South Asian understanding that such images are not merely inanimate representations or passive

objects but are themselves, when properly consecrated, animate and capable of transmitting

enlightened energy, or blessing, in the manner of a tantric initiation. This is not dissimilar from

yogi/nis who, in enacting certain performance scripts, are commitment beings (samayasattva)

consecrated by intuitive-wisdom beings (jñānasattva) summoned from the ten directions, except

that these images maintain their efficacy continuously. These images therefore are just as much

participants in the process of creating karmic connections as emanation bodies and beatific

bodies or the spiritual elite, and in transforming this process of the past historical emanation

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body of the Jobo icon into its manifesting Śākyamuni’s eternal beatific presence, Tsongkhapa

asserted for himself remarkable spiritual authority.553

If one considers this event in relation to Alan Stathern’s presentation of immanentism and

transcendentalism above, one can see how imperfectly any strong distinction between the two

applies to this context specifically and the Tibetan Buddhist context generally. The crowning of

the Jobo, in fact, may be taken as an expression of the ontological inseparability of the

transcendent and the immanent, of nirvana and samsāra—as a reminder to the festival’s

congregants that enlightened presence, with which they may make karmic connections, was not

elsewhere but tangibly accessible even though transcendent. In crowning the Jobo, Tsongkhapa

caused the Jokhang to become a space in which the festival’s participants themselves drew closer

to transcendence due to their proximity to the transformed sambhogakāya, for in its presence

they became, temporarily at least, bodhisattvas.554

This spiritual authority, though Khedrup mentions the episode quite briefly, exceeds

Tsongkhapa’s leadership displayed during the rest of the festival, for that leadership was invested

in him in economic terms largely by the N’eu family, a branch of the Phagmodru, ruling Lhasa

and in spiritual terms by the respect and devotion earned over the prior decades. This authority,

which Khedrup associates with a prophecy within the Pillar Testament (bka’ chems khol ma)

attributed to Songtsen Gampo and discovered in the Jokhang by Atiśa centuries earlier, is

historic, for no one had transformed the role of the Jobo in any manner in its more than seven

553
Warner discusses a handful of objections raised by later Tibetans over the crowning of the Jobo, which pertain
mainly to the transformation of the image as being unacceptable on the grounds of its inherent inviolability and the
incompatibility of monasticism and tantra. In a sense, that is just what Tsongkhapa symbolically rejected. Others cite
a prophecy from an unknown source that this act would cause the sun and moon to fall from the heavens. I owe
thanks to Sera Mé Geshé Lobsang Dhargye, of DNKL in Redding CT, for his insight into these topics.
554
Tsering 126-127 discusses Tsongkhapa’s actions.

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previous centuries in Tibet.555 In this act, then, Tsongkhapa asserted an unprecedented degree of

spiritual power, such that one may consider it an implicit claim of spiritual supremacy over

Central Tibet—a claim not unlike that made explicitly in his recently completed Essence of True

Eloquence, discussed in chapter four, and perhaps not unlike that made soon after festival in his

decision to have Ganden Monastery constructed, part of his fourth great deed.

Prayers to Maitreya and Immanent Enlightenment

The Great Prayer Festival commenced with Tsongkhapa himself transforming Tibet’s

most famous image of Śākyamuni, the fourth buddha of the thousand buddhas of the current

aeon, from his supreme emanation aspect, his appearance as a monk. The festival closed with

Tsongkhapa leading a communal prayer directed to Śākyamuni's successor, the fifth of the

thousand buddhas of the current aeon, Maitreya. In the pantheon of enlightened beings known to

Tibetan Buddhists—or inherited from Indian Buddhists—none seems, in principle, as removed

from the travails of cyclic existence as Maitreya, currently a tenth-ground bodhisattva, who is

prophecied to undertake a fully enlightened buddha’s act, beginning with the descent from

Tuṣita—in Tibetan, of course, Ganden (dga’ ldan)—in the very distant future, long after

Śākyamuni’s teachings disappear.

By contrast, advanced bodhisattvas such as Mañjuśrī or Tārā seem very accessible, the

former somehow available to the semi-literate shepherd Umapa and the latter in her green

appearance famously ready to save the wretched from the terrors of ordinary life. Tantric deities,

too, seem available to the intrepid willing to seek out an encounter, as evidenced by tales of the

Indian great adepts, and the unexcelled yoga tantra deities Cakrasaṁvara and Vajravārahī are

555
Khedrup cites this prophecy in chapter five of The Haven of Faith.

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understood to be present, in some manner, at twenty-four locations across the Himalayas.

Spiritual guides, moreover, are regarded in the tantric context as the quintessence of enlightened

qualities and inseparable from all enlightened beings (who are identical with respect to those

qualities); and, because they are personally present, tantric spiritual guides are to be regarded as

kinder than the Buddha and deserving of more devotion and respect than any other enlightened

beings. From this perspective, the arrival of the fifth buddha of this “fortunate aeon” (bhadra

kalpa) seems incomprehensibly remote.

Jan Nattier provides a fourfold typology of the Maitreya myth as it appears in Buddhist

textual sources and historical circumstances, a typology that helps to clarify the binary model of

Strathern’s discussed above. Nattier lists a (1) here/now option in which devotees anticipate

encountering Maitreya in the spatio-temporal present, the least common form of the myth and

typically an apocalyptic hope; (2) here/later option in which the devotee aspires to be among

those present in the incomprehensibly distant future when Maitreya descends from Tuṣita as the

fifth supreme emanation buddha of the Fortunate Aeon, the most common form of the myth,

supported by the canon; (3) there/now option, in which a devotee encounters Maitreya in Tuṣita

by means of meditative/visionary access; and (4) there/later option in which the devotee aspires

for rebirth in Tuṣita under the care of Maitreya.556

All of this bears scrutiny to a point; however, the ambiguity of identities (Mañjuśrī and

Tārā, for example, are routinely considered buddhas appearing as bodhisattvas) and multiplicity

of forms of enlightened appearance (consider the numerous emanations of Avalokiteśvara in

Tibetan history alone) undermines any definitive clarity, which may lead one to acknowledge

that there is, as it were, an open canon of enlightened appearances. Although Maitreya is

556
See Nattier 25-32 for the typology and the discussion of each option, and 32-33 for the cautionary note applicable
to what follows here.

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consistently, across the history of Buddhism, acknowledged to be the successor to Śākyamuni in

the vast expanse of cosmic space-time unfolding and hence residing as regent in Tuṣita, this has

not prevented him from appearing—perhaps only in visionary or meditative experiences—to

Indian and Tibetan luminaries, Tsongkhapa among them. It was through the legendary efforts of

Asanga, meditating strenuously for twelve years to encounter Maitreya, that Maitreya’s five

treatises—important particularly with respect to the Yogic Practice view, Idealism—entered the

human world: once Asanga’s perception, obscured by the addictions/poisons, became clarified,

he could perceive Maitreya directly, though others continued to perceive him just as Asanga had,

as a dog (making Asanga no doubt seem, as he triumphantly carried Maitreya/the dog on his

shoulders into the nearby town, a complete lunatic); thereupon, Asanga traveled (in some

manner) to Tuṣita and acted as scribe for Maitreya’s treatises and thereby brought into this

human realm the systematized bodhisattva activities known as the lineage of the vast practices.

This event blurs Nattier’s here/now and there/now options, and she acknowledges the

permeability of these four forms. Tsongkhapa himself had two visions of Maitreya during the

early period of his extended retreat, visions that seem to have come from his own emphasis on

the topic of compassion that typifies the bodhisattva and that caused Tsongkhapa to recognize a

special connection to Maitreya, leading to the Dzingji restoration.557

This is the Maitreya—the mythic, “transcendent” future buddha who is an immanent

bodhisattva, who waits unperceived for a dozen years by Asanga’s side, not the symbol of East

557
See Jinpa 2019 123–129 for details.

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Asian millenarian hopes558—of Tsongkhapa’s devotion and prayers.559 Perhaps due to his close

relations with the Phagmodru rulers, or perhaps due to his understanding of karma as an

interpersonal and hence collective reality, Tsongkhapa sought to transform society not through

political machinations, as in millenarian cults devoted to Maitreya, but through processes to

amass collective karmic connections to alter social conditions, such as the Great Prayer Festival.

These processes—here, the festival’s final prayer sessions—are communal efforts that make

their object (Maitreya) sensible, for it is such supreme emanation buddhas who reach the largest

collective audience while propounding the Dharma anew. Advanced bodhisattvas, spiritual

guides, etc., all reach a significant audience but not in the same manner; they do so in a more

individualized way and, generally speaking, to more advanced practitioners. Buddhas like

Śākyamuni and Maitreya, who re-present the Dharma in systematic ways for the masses

following its decline and disappearance, provide teachings in their simplest and most accessible

forms, recreate a monastic community with its code of conduct, and so forth. While the Dharma

never disappears as such—pure lands overseen by other buddhas maintain the teachings for

bodhisattva audiences, for example—its popular dissemination across the least spiritually

developed falls to these thousand buddhas. This is why Tsongkhapa and his followers at the

festival directed their prayers to Maitreya: to forge the karmic connections that would create their

place somewhere within his circle of disciples when he descends from Tuṣita. This in no way

precludes forming aspirations for rebirth in Sukhāvati, for example, or practicing the tantric path

558
David Ownby, “Chinese Millenarian Traditions: The Formative Age” The American Historical Review, Dec.
1999, Vol. 104, No. 5 (Dec., 1999), 1513-1530, traces the millenarian movements in China to the second century
Daoism, before Maitreya became an escapist symbol of sorts for socially or politically oppressed groups.
559
Tsongkhapa’s praise of Maitreya (see Thurman [2018/1982] 183-191) refers to the process of creating individual
karmic connections that will cause Maitreya to be present immediately.

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in order to become enlightened in a single lifetime, since the potential for any particular outcome

of the vast treasury of ethical actions remains unknown.560

It is tempting to connect the finale of the Great Prayer Festival, the prayers directed to the

temporally distant Maitreya residing in the spatially distant Tuṣita/Ganden heaven, to

Tsongkhapa’s decision to construct the simulacrum, Ganden Monastery, just outside Lhasa. This

act, part of his fourth great deed, signals the institutionalization of the prior decade of his

teaching and writing following his breakthrough and set the course for the next decade, his last,

of institutionalizing his teaching and writing as Ganden Monastery. This is not only with respect

to the curriculum of study at Ganden— as well as at Sera and Drepung, the two other

monasteries created before Tsongkhapa’s death, that would form the core of the Ganden

monastic network—but significantly the construction of the tantra hall within Ganden. The

implication in selecting the name Ganden,561that Tsongkhapa and his successors would sustain

the viability of the Dharma until Maitreya’s descent, seems clear enough, but the connection

should not be pushed beyond that general implication.562 This is particularly true because

Maitreya, unlike Śākyamuni, will not teach tantra, and the coordination of sūtra and tantra within

560
Tsongkhapa wrote, or transcribed for Mañjuśrī, just such a prayer (see Thurman 2018/1982 192-198) and of
course he made significant efforts in his tantric practice; his coordination of sūtra and tantra speaks to the
importance of inclusivity of all aspects of practice, embodied in the lam rim genre. Similarly, one does not propitiate
a single deity or summon a single bodhisattva in times of need, nor does one practice a single tantric system, since
many have different techniques directed toward particular outcomes, all of course, as Tsongkhapa insists, aimed at
buddhahood. It might be useful to note that there is very little available material on Maitreya as a tantric deity, but
apparently within the Sakya and Jonang traditions—based on what is contained in the Buddhist Digital Resource
Center—some practices occur. The contemporary Geluk lama who influenced significantly the spread of Tibetan
Buddhism in the West, Lama Thubten Yeshe, taught an unexcelled yoga tantra method whose source he does not
cite in the published form, Universal Love:The Yoga Method of Buddha Maitreya. This is a useful area for research.
561
Tsongkhapa’s was not the first monastery with Ganden in its name; an earlier Sazang Ganden (Sa bzang dGa’
ldan) affiliated with Sakya and the seat of his teacher Sazang Mati Panchen, dates to the fourteenth century at least.
562
Beyond the scope of this dissertation is the guru yoga practice known as “The Hundreds of Gods of Tuṣita”
(dGa’ ldan lha gye ma) in which Tsongkhapa and his two heirs, or spiritual sons, Gyaltsab and Khedrup, are
visualized as emerging from clouds billowing from Maitreya’s Tuṣita, a practice attributed to Tsongkhapa himself. It
would be difficult not to see the explicit connection in light of this.

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the institutional framework of Ganden—and beyond, of course—is Tsongkhapa’s great

contribution to the continuity of the whole of Śākyamuni’s Dharma within Tibet. I turn to this,

the fourth great deed, now.

Great Deed Four: Ganden Monastery and Institutionalized Tantra

Over the course of previous chapters, I have emphasized the importance that Tsongkhapa

places on the entirety of the Buddha’s teaching, from the initial trust placed in a spiritual guide to

becoming a spiritual guide oneself to becoming a buddha. I also have emphasized with respect to

his own life narrative, as reflected by Khedrup’s Haven and Tsongkhapa’s own Presence, the

process of assimilating and embodying the classical treatises of Indian Buddhism that brings

about the two aspects of the scholar-yogi, textual knowlede and experiential knowledge. For

Tsongkhapa, thorough textual knowledge must precede experiential knowledge for the latter to

qualify as authentically (mahāyāna) Buddhist, grounded in the three principles of renunciation,

compassion, and emptiness/dependent origination. Moreover, the complementary practices of

monastic and tantric asceticism are necessary for the attainment of buddhahood; separated, as he

finds them to be among most contemporaries, that sublime state could not be reached. These are

the cornerstones of Tsongkhapa’s study and understanding of the Dharma institutionalized in his

Ganden Monastery. The latter—the complementary nature of monastic and tantric asceticism,

which when combined with Maitreya’s lineage of compassionate activity, the bodhisattva deeds,

are the practice of the coordination of sūtra and tantra—results in the construction of the tantra

hall, with its three-dimensional unexcelled yoga tantra maṇḍalas, within Ganden Monastery.

Here I consider Tsongkhapa’s fourth great deed to be the institutionalization and material

embodiment of his understanding of the Dharma, which I regard as tripartite: the emulation and

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appropriation of traditional ideals related to monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric identities. In this

way, one can appreciate how Ganden Monastery and its tantra hall, along with the institutions

following it, can be understood as the material embodiment of Tsongkhapa’s teaching, which is

itself portrayed (in both Presence and Haven to some extent) as the synthesis and quintessence of

the entirety of the Buddhist Dharma.563 Although the entire path to enlightenment depends on the

immanence of transcendent beings, nowhere is that more heightened than in unexcelled yoga

tantra, wherein the ritualized consecration of the yogi/ni by the transcendent-immanent wisdom

beings help to transform the yogi/ni into a transcendent-immanent enlightened being as well.

1409 serves as a turning point for Tsongkhapa, for within that year—commencing with

the New Year’s events of the Great Prayer Festival—he solidified his position as the leading

spiritual figure of the Lhasa region, if not all Central Tibet, and institutionalized that position

with the construction of Ganden Monastery. Khedrup reports that within the year, in addition to

the main temple and Tsongkhapa’s own residential space, seventy residential buildings had been

completed, with a hundred more under construction. The extent of the construction indicates that

Tsongkhapa understood clearly that Ganden would be a significant draw. The question of

whether Tsongkhapa intended to create a new school remains debated, but Khedrup’s simple

remarks—that Tsongkhapa was offered by many patrons existing monasteries but decided the

conditions favored a new one—suggests Tsongkhapa was well aware of the unique combination

of insights and expectations that his teaching entailed as well as the possibility for capturing the

momentum of the festival’s energy and directing it to the creation of something new—the

563
There does not appear to be a consistent understanding among the sources for exactly how to delimit the fourth,
whether as the construction of Ganden alone, or the tantra hall alone, or both. Geshé Lobsang Dhargye, Lharampa
from Sera Mé (personal communication), explains that it should be considered broadly to encompass both the
physical spaces themselves as well as the underlying unique holistic presentation of the teachings for which they
were constructed.

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institutionalizing of his teachings, based on decades of tireless study and meditation, to replicate

his attainment with greater ease and less effort. The process of replication, which is the multi-

stage process of emulating the spiritual guide, becomes institutionalized for both teacher and

student, as I have explained of the ideal expectations in the Indian Buddhist community. At

Ganden, however, unlike even the great universities of late Indian Buddhism that served as

models for the construction of Tibetan Buddhism, the study and practice of tantra became part of

the curriculum.

Near the beginning of the following year, 1410, Tsongkhapa returned to Ganden and

resumed the rigorous schedule of teaching and writing that typified the prior decade, with the

teaching at his new monastery a cross-section of favorite topics: lam rim, higher knowledge,

validating cognition, and Guhyasamāja. However, his writing over the next decade—based at his

own monastery and perhaps with an eye toward establishing a distinct tradition, one with a

decided concern for textual knowledge of the tantras—turned almost entirely to the detailed

exposition of unexcelled yoga tantra. The initial period focused on Guhyasamāja exegesis and

practice, featuring commentaries on two of central explanatory tantras (Four Goddess Dialogue

and Intuition Vajra Compendium) and, the following year (1411), two explanations of its

perfection stage practice, Brilliantly Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages and Five Stages in

One Sitting.

One could say that in the decade prior to the establishment of Ganden, Tsongkhapa had

written definitive statements on three essential sūtra topics central to his unique presentation of

the Dharma embodied in Ganden Monastery: lam rim (Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path

to Enlightenment); Centrism (Ocean, his commentary on Nāgārjuna’s root verses); and

hermeneutics (Essence of True Eloquence, his masterpiece distinguishing Idealism and

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Centrism). Of course Tsongkhapa wrote on tantra during the first decade of the 1400s, notably

The Great Treatise on the Stage of Mantra, but with the construction of Ganden, his

compositional focus of its second decade turned decidedly to unexcelled yoga tantra and, within

that category, to what he regards as the primary representatives of each class, father and

mother—Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṁvara, respectively.564 This focus expresses his concern for

the sequential nature of the path to enlightenment, which culminates in unexcelled yoga practice.

In a similar way, the construction of Ganden Monastery proceeded in two important

stages. The first stage was, as above, the basic edifice of the temple and monastic residences,

largely completed in 1410. The second stage was the construction of the tantra temple,

Yangpachen, to which Tsongkhapa turned his attention in 1415.565 As Khedrup tells it,

Tsongkhapa expressed concern that Ganden monks who had not received the appropriate tantric

initiations prevented those properly empowered from performing rites or methods of attainment

in the main temple hall. Thus, Tsongkhapa intimated his interest to build a separate space to

ensure the respective progress of beginner and advanced disciples alike, and donations to that

end began to accumulate. Nearly two years later, with the necessary funds and skilled artisans in

place, construction began. Khedrup relates that great care was used to construct the images

564
See Jinpa (2019) 257-312 for extensive information on this period.
565
Tradition has it that in 1419, Tsongkhapa taught at Sera Choding his Four Combined Commentaries to the
Guhyasamaja Tantra and upon completion asked who among his disciples would take responsibility for preserving
his tantric teachings. Apparently overwhelmed by the prospect of such responsibility, or perhaps concerned about
the recent poor health of Tsongkhapa, the audience remained quiet, but finally Sherab Senge presented himself. He
went on to establish, in the early 1430s, both Ségyu Monastery—a tantric institution in the Sé district of Tsang
province, which he then entrusted to Dulnakpa Palden Zangpo (who disseminated the Ganden Lha Gyema practice
given by Tsongkhapa)—and Gyumé (Lower Tantric College, its name related to its being in the lower/southern area
of Lhasa). Almost fifty years later, Sherab Senge’s disciple Kunga Dondrub established Gyutö (Upper Tantric
College) in the northern area of Lhasa, apparently after being snubbed as abbot of Gyumé. See Champa Thubten
Zongtse 1-19. Other sources indicate this occurred in 1414—notably, His Holiness the Dalai Lama convened in
2014 a gathering to celebrate the six hundredth anniversary of this transmission, giving official weight to this date.
As Professor Thurman has observed, Yangpachen (dbyangs pa can) translates as Vaiśalī, where the Buddha spent a
significant amount of time, where the Second Council of the Sangha took place and, importantly here, the Buddha
taught tantra.

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according the specific tantras and ritual manuals and that brass, silver, and gold as well as fine

gems and silks were employed. A number of images were created, but paramount to the project

were complete three-dimensional maṇḍalas of the unexcelled yoga systems central to

Tsongkhapa’s tantric legacy, those that Mañjuśrī had advised him to practice in combination:

Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṁvara, in coordination with Mañjuśrī-Yamāntaka. 566 The third of the

three-dimensional maṇḍalas was the Śrī Vajradhātu.567 Khedrup relates that the completion of

the various images occurred quite unexpectedly: the artisans discovered the images were

polishing themselves and spontaneously emitting the five “rainbow” colors associated with the

extremely subtle wind of tantric physiology.

The main features and images of the temple were completed in 1417 itself, and by the

following year the final portions, walkways and outer walls, were completed. Throughout much

of that following year (1418) Tsongkhapa gave extensive teachings on both Guhyasamāja and

Cakrasaṁvara as well as Kālacakra. He also spent time preparing for the xylographic printing of

his own super-commentary on Candrakīrti’s Illuminating Lamp commentary on the

Guhyasamāja Tantra—the first xylographic printing in Tibet. That Tsongkhapa chose over any

566
It may be useful to recall that from Tsongkhapa’s perspective Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṁvara are
complementary systems, classified as father and mother, respectively, that emphasize the production of the magic
body that is the method aspect of unexcelled yoga tantra or the inner heat processes related to the wisdom aspect,
respectively. These two are inseparable processes in the perfection stage of unexcelled yoga tantra with respect to
systems other than Kālacakra, which Tsongkhapa acknowledges as quite distinct in Presence. Khedrup recounts that
Tsongkhapa spent a significant amount of effort in studying this unique unexcelled yoga tantra system, classified as
a mother tantra. Yamāntaka, on the other hand, is classified as a father tantra but functions within Tsongkhapa’s
tradition primarily to remove stubborn obstacles to spiritual progress—note that Yamāntaka is invoked in the rites to
avert the obstacles to Tsongkhapa’s life, recounted in the next section.
567
It is not clear why Tsongkhapa chose this maṇḍala, which is associated with the Sarvatathāgatasaṃgraha, one of
the most important texts of the yoga tantra class, with Vairocana at its center. This text appears to be the “original”
source for the narrative of the Buddha’s enlightenment from the tantric perspective, to which Nāgārjuna refers in his
Five Stages, the primary systematization of the perfection stage practice according to the noble (Ārya) lineage
Guhyasamāja, which is of course singularly important for Tsongkhapa. Vairocana is also central to the imagery at
Samyé and Tabo Monastery, founded in 996 by Lochen Rinchen Zangpo on behalf of Yeshe Ö, and thus serves as a
symbol of the imperial embrace, in both the Early and Later Diffusion, of Buddhism, and scholars generally contend
that there is potent political symbolism available in the maṇḍala that the Tibetan rulers aimed to exploit.

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other work or genre the commentary that elucidates the polysemy of the fundamental discourse

of the unexcelled yoga category—what Tsongkhapa regards as the king of tantras due to its

being the exegetical key to all others—indicates its overarching importance for him. Considering

that Tsongkhapa regards the practice of tantra to depend on the exoteric bodhisattva path, which

includes the correct Centrist view and complete renunciation comparable to monastic conduct,

one could say that Guhyasamāja encompasses the Dharma entirely—a position that his tradition

does hold. Finally, in 1419, not long before his death, Tsongkhapa completed his massive

commentary to the fundamental mother tantra, Cakrasaṁvara, Illuminating the Hidden Meaning.

Taken together Tsongkhapa’s institutional, editorial, and compositional efforts in his final

few years to make available the material conditions and textual foundations for the practice of

unexcelled yoga tantra indicate the extent to which he prized this esoteric portion of the

bodhisattva path. Prior to these efforts, the study and practice of tantra was disconnected from

the systematic training in the exoteric subjects available in the monastic institutions. As I have

shown, Tsongkhapa decries at the opening of LRCM the widespread misunderstanding that

monastic education and tantric practice are different species of Dharma, with tantra regarded as

opposed to or distinct from ethical discipline, logic and reasoning, and so forth. This mirrors the

misunderstanding that Tsongkhapa decries in the latter portion of LRCM and elsewhere—that

Candrakīrti's Conventionalism is opposed to or distinct from ethical discipline, logic and

reasoning, and so forth.568 By creating this special temple devoted to advanced tantric study

within Ganden, Tsongkhapa achieved in physical space what he has argued in textual space: the

568
Earlier I noted that Tsongkhapa devoted the first decade of the 1400s almost entirely to explicating exoteric
subjects and the second to esoteric subjects, that is, tantra. However, ten years after completing his commentary on
Nagarjuna’s Wisdom, which relies thoroughly on Candrakirti’s interpretation of Centrism, he composed in 1418 an
extensive commentary on Candrakīrti's Entry to Centrism, whose eleventh chapter, as I have shown, Tsongkhapa
regards as critical in refuting the notion that buddhahood is isolated from conventional reality.

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path to enlightenment—from elementary to advanced subjects, from monasticism to Centrism to

unexcelled yoga tantra—is a sequential program of study and practice to be understood as a

unified whole. Thus, the construction of Ganden Monastery and its tantra temple, Yangpachen,

which provided the material conditions for this unified program of study and practice—the

coordination of sūtra and tantra—serve together as Tsongkhapa's fourth great deed.

Creating Community Through Crisis

If the second decade of the fifteenth century was remarkable in terms of construction of

Ganden Monastery and its tantra temple as well as the extensive compositional efforts

Tsongkhapa undertook—all dedicated toward the creation of a community of like-minded

disciples—then it is more remarkable when placed in the context of Tsongkhapa’s health crisis,

which brought all this to a virtual halt for three years. As noted above, 1410 and 1411 saw the

near-completion of Ganden, Tsongkhapa’s extensive teachings taking place there, and his intense

work on Guhyasamāja. However, the following three years were consumed by his followers’

efforts to avert the threat to Tsongkhapa’s life, occurring in his fifty-seventh year (1413), about

which he had been warned years earlier. Thus, from 1411 to 1413 Ganden Monastery was

devoted to the important task of preventing Tsongkhapa from departing—that is, dying.

As Khedrup explains, Tsongkhapa’s followers throughout the region placed their efforts

into prayers and rites designed to avert his death, beginning with rites associated with

Yamāntaka Vajrabhairva (Slayer of Death, the Indestructible Terrifier) taken up by more than

thirty close disciples. These appear to have lasted through most of that year, after which

Tsongkhapa suggested these efforts be abandoned. The next year (1412) another group of forty

repeated these practices, but Tsongkhapa discerned them to be unsuccessful as well but, as

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Khedrup recounts, this group vowed to practice with heightened intensity in order to appeal to

Tsongkhapa not to depart. This is an important shift. For the remaining months of 1412 and into

1413, the problematic year, efforts were almost entirely devotional, with prayers and meditation

directed to the well-being of Tsongkhapa. In the final few months of 1413, the monks of Ganden

made devotional efforts practically without pause while some thirty of his most devoted, long-

term disciples gathered and made such efforts with extremely intense concentration, apparently

resulting in Tsongkhapa’s constant intense pain alleviated only by his own deep trance-like

concentration; he was unable to sleep for some twenty days during the final month. Finally, these

efforts proved successful, as all signs of danger disappeared, and Tsongkhapa returned to health.

I pause over these events not only because Khedrup claims that the entire region was

devoted to prayers for Tsongkhapa’s health out of fear for being without his guidance and that

this outpouring of devotional effort to a spiritual guide’s welfare was unmatched in Tibet’s

history. I also take note of the apparent ability of his most faithful students—those with whom

Tsongkhapa had forged deep karmic connections—to restore his health through devotional

practices within a few months when other efforts over two years proved fruitless. The Ganden

monks spent those same months forging such karmic connections to Tsongkhapa. This illustrates

powerfully the concept of karmic interdependence that animates so much of Tibetan religious

life and finds expression in practices of guru yoga. Here, although Khedrup does not specify, it

may be that these faithful students employed the esoteric practice of taking and giving (gtong

len), whereby one visualizes taking on the suffering of another and giving one’s own well-being

in place of that suffering. While this practice may be performed by anyone as a general

imaginative effort in which the breath takes in any sort of illness or trauma from another person

and replaces it with one's own well-being—that is, though esoteric, it does not require initiation

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like tantric practice—when performed by someone with a special interpersonal connection and

intense concentration, then its power is claimed to be magnified manifold. The Buddhist spiritual

economy, as it were, is predicated on the salvific activities of just such spiritually mature

practitioners. This holds true for the ideal of the monk who is a pure field of merit just as it does

for the advanced yogi/ni whose practice of deity yoga far surpasses the beginner. That is,

devotional practices such as guru yoga are on a continuum with these others, all of which rely on

the force of karmic interdependence and the power of the spiritual elite such as Tsongkhapa.

Karmic interdependence underlies community creation in both present and future tenses.

It is a truism from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective that every living being has been in every

possible relationship with every other living being, and that current interpersonal relationships,

whether sweet or sour, have developed out of past ones. The very essence of karmic

interdependence illustrated through the Dzingji restoration and Great Prayer Festival is that of

future-building—that is, aspirational community creation. The same may be said of the 1401

vinaya conference in a different way, for adherence to monastic conduct may pertain primarily to

one’s own spiritual development and in that respect the aspiration may be, as Tsongkhapa says of

himself, to become a monk in all future lives, and so to become part of a monastic community.

Nevertheless, adherence to the monastic code also entails karmic interdependence, as I have

emphasized. The notion of karmic interdependence in this final great deed, however, relates very

specifically to Tsongkhapa, as illustrated by this illness and the quest to return him to health.

There are at least two ways one could understand the creation of community within

Ganden Monastery as evinced by the efforts to prevent Tsongkhapa’s death. The first is to

recognize the personal relationships that many of the Ganden monks had developed with

Tsongkhapa during whatever length of time they considered him their primary teacher. This may

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explain how those who had been at his side were able to restore his health and avert the calamity

of his impending death. The second is to consider this episode in relation to how I have

characterized the nature of the bodhisattva path as an ascetic transformation into an impersonal,

archetypal enlightened figure. From this perspective, neither the Ganden monks—especially

those with the spiritual power capable to restore Tsongkhapa’s health—nor Tsongkhapa would

regard these efforts in a strictly personal way; just as the practice of guru yoga is predicated on

regarding the teacher as an enlightened being rather than the flawed individual known

personally, so such efforts would transcend the personal. Those who had been longest at

Tsongkhapa’s side, who had created with him a teacher-disciple bond akin to community, also

would be those most inured to this way of conceiving their efforts. If Ganden Monastery is the

institutional extension or expression of Tsongkhapa’s writings and teachings, which emphasize

this ascetic transformation, this process of emulation and appropriation in exoteric and esoteric

contexts, then this second way of considering these efforts among the monks now part of that

institution’s community may be the primary understanding.

From this perspective, although strictly speaking the creation of community within

Ganden the institution depended explicitly on a commitment to Tsongkhapa’s teachings, due to

the fundamental commitment of those teachings to the attainment of buddhahood, the creation of

the Ganden community depended implicitly on the universal commitment to the welfare of all

living beings with whom relationships of karmic interdependence are to be transformed

thoroughly, through adherence to Tsongkhapa’s teachings on the part of its members. Just as the

members of the Ganden community entrusted themselves to Tsongkhapa as their spiritual guide,

they in turn resolved to transform themselves into spiritual guides worthy of just such trust. In

this way, the basic fact of karmic interdependence and the aspiration toward a positive collective

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future that depends on karmic connections with the spiritual elite—including the aspiration to

become a spiritual guide for the welfare of all others—play a critical but complex role in

Tsongkhapa’s fourth and final great deed.

Conclusion
Having analyzed the fundamentally interpersonal and social nature of Tsongkhapa’s four

great deeds in their historical and religious context, I have moved quite far from the Weberian

construct of Buddhism as an otherworldly, asocial phenomenon. Throughout preceding chapters,

such a construct appears implausible, for the social nature of life narratives and even

communication itself militates against it. In the same way, the Indian Buddhist tradition

emphasizes in its narratives, such as jātakas and avadānas, and its systematic literature

fundamental elements of education, role modelling, and lineage transmission. Tsongkhapa in

turn emphasizes these elements in his own writings devoted to the bodhisattva path to

enlightenment, and I have focused on the two forms of asceticism, monastic and tantric, to

highlight the emulation and appropriation of traditional ideals as a way to foreground the

radically non-individualistic nature of the path to buddhahood, which is itself a form of existence

utterly opposed to singularity in its complete identity as a wisdom truth body to all other forms

of enlightened existence (other buddhas) and in its complete performative aspect as a material

body with respect to all other forms of unenlightened existence (non-buddhas). Tsongkhapa’s

own philosophy, which prioritizes soteriology above all else, precisely because of the socially

constructed, dependently originated, merely designated nature of all subjective and objective

realities, rejects any interpretation of the Buddhist teachings that attempts to isolate personal

experience above the scriptural tradition, which he argues is from a soteriological perspective a

complete and irreducible whole.

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 Tsongkhapa’s four great deeds illustrate the social nature of Buddhist thought and

practice in an exceptionally rich way, as they touch upon monastic, bodhisattva, and tantric

elements and attend to the capacities both the ordinary and spiritually advanced Tibetans of his

time. These four great deeds enact, as Buddhist life narratives do, the principles abstracted in

systematic literature, within the historical context of specific individuals with whom Tsongkhapa

forms karmic connections that serve as the foundation upon which his monastic and tantric

asceticism, embedded within the bodhisattva attitude, create the positive future personal,

interpersonal, and social conditions by which each specific individual may emulate

Tsongkhapa’s model. His own extensive writings, whether commentaries on Indian Buddhist

classics or independent treatises, explicate these principles, and his autobiographical Excellent

Presence maps their sources and sequences to be followed by means of his coordination of sūtra

and tantra. These writings do not count among the four great deeds, yet they serve as the

foundation for Ganden Monastery and its tantra temple, the infrastructure for the community of

followers gathering around him to establish the tradition that would retain, in artifacts such as

Khedrup’s The Haven of Faith, the remarkable accomplishments of the Easterner whose

conscious adherence to the scope of the Indian Buddhist tradition transformed the religious and

physical landscape of Central Tibet.

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 Epilogue: Placing the Dissertation within the Field of Religious

Studies

This dissertation is, to refer to the Centrist perspective on ontology, a product of specific

causes and conditions, among them being the interests that I brought to the project and the

interests that developed as I grappled with the story that I wanted to tell. The story that I wanted

to tell, however, evolved as I attempted to find ways to explain concepts that, if left in the source

frameworks of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (such as I understand them), would do little to clarify

their importance beyond a narrow audience. Because I knew that my advisor, Robert Thurman,

would be amenable to an interdisciplinary perspective (he, after all, may be the person most

responsible for the interface between Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary sciences, an interface

that has brought the study of science into the curriculum of certain Tibetan monastic institutions

in exile), I let serendipity and extensive reading guide my inquiry. Even so, I also knew, or

thought I knew, that the remaining members of the dissertation committee would humor the

pushing of only so many boundaries; thus, based on my expectations of their presumed

expectations—much of which was guided by my experience in graduate seminars and qualifying

exams, including their readings—I proceeded with care.

This dissertation, then, is the result of a very specific matrix: the Department of Religion

at Columbia University and the particular faculty members involved. Although interdisciplinarity

is an academic buzz word, I doubt that my actual practice of it in this dissertation would have

been received well (if, indeed, it was) in any field but Religious Studies, which is (to my mind,

anyway) resolutely interdisciplinary. If I were to attempt to outline or to propose what I take to

be some of the contributions this dissertation makes, I would insist on the caveat that, as I have

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just mentioned, the practice of wide reading and the prospect of serendipity entail that I might

have little idea just how these topics might resonate with others.

As I had done to elucidate for undergraduate students the semantic density of everyday

religious practices while teaching an introductory Asian Religions course prior to beginning the

dissertation, I relied while writing the dissertation on the definition of religion, offered somewhat

begrudgingly, by Thomas Tweed in Crossing and Dwelling:569

Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront
suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.

Central to this broad definition, that Tweed explicates so well in relation to his fieldwork, is the

inseparability of the organic (biological/natural) and the cultural, which is central to the Buddhist

theory of karma, which is in turn central to understanding both the fundamental worldview, as it

were, that Tsongkhapa takes for granted as fact (no less factual than gravity) by which to live and

that he locates, in the related but broader sense of causality/dependent origination/emptiness, as

the heart of Buddhist thought and practice. From this perspective—that is, both Tweed’s and

Tsongkhapa’s—the natural sciences are a necessary part of the explanation of existence, so to

bracket them, on whatever justification (Buddhists never did brain science. Abhidharma

cosmology is premodern rubbish—where is Mt. Meru, after all?), is to ignore the “bigger”

picture, in which (attempts at) meaningful action on the part of religious actors, whether elite or

ordinary, encompass however unartfully or haphazardly, the organic and the cultural together.

So then what does this dissertation, which attempts to deliver a credible account of the

correlation between Tsongkhapa’s life and work, contribute to the field of Religious Studies?

569
Tweed, Thomas A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2006 54.

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 In one sense, this dissertation does what it claims to do: to provide for the first time an

analysis of the unity of Tsongkhapa’s thought, ranging from the value of monasticism to the twin

peaks of Centrist (Madhyamaka) thought and tantra. It is important to appreciate the distinctive

approach of Tsongkhapa, for he insists that conceptual thought—the use of language and

concepts and imagination—is fundamental to spiritual progress in Buddhist terms. In this way,

the dissertation can be read in relation to the contributions of other Buddhist thinkers who have

navigated the scriptural terrain in order to produce a coherent “system” of interpretation and

practice. In the same way, the dissertation can be read in relation to other religious traditions

with respect to methods of interpretation, for example. Similarly, the role of the life narrative in

the Tibetan Buddhist tradition could be very useful in a comparative frame—my discussion of

the work of Campany and Taylor attempts to express the parameters for comparison, while

acknowledging the very specific elements that concern the Tibetan Buddhist aspect through the

discussion of Willis and Gyatso. In other words, the dissertation attempts to show how

Tsongkhapa’s life and work can be appreciated from very narrow or broad interests, balancing

the macro- and micro- level perspectives as much as possible.

Additionally, the dissertation makes a very important case for the role of monasticism in

Buddhist history. Given the movement of Tibetan Buddhist traditions to the West in recent

decades, and the attempts at secularizing or modernizing Buddhism by some (e.g., Stephen

Batchelor), it is important to present Buddhist monasticism not as a premodern relic of Indian

society or a vestige of Tibetan culture but as a fundamental, perhaps indispensable component of

the Buddhist worldview. It is critical to acknowledge the hierarchies involved in the Tibetan

Buddhist social order and the reasonings behind them, especially in light of the alleged

egalitarian nature of Buddhist principles. If there is a disjuncture between philosophical

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principles and social forms, and there is an attempt to address this disjuncture, then it is

important to understand its origins and developments. The Dalai Lama, for example, frequently

refers to himself as a simple monk, but his devoted followers treat him as anything but that. The

dissertation provides some historical and sociological perspective on this matter, and the

importance of recognizing the central position of the spiritual elite, whether rhetorically or

actually, within the historical development of Buddhist cultures such as Tibet, if only to chart the

deviation of the Asian past(s) from the global present, remains.

In a similar respect, the ethical principles that are said to underlie spiritual progress, a

topic addressed in the dissertation, are not often elaborated in either the academic or traditional

spaces of Buddhist education. This may have to do with the general absence of explicit

discussions about such things in the secular West, to speak broadly—that is, a sort of

public/private divide may inhibit even the discussion, much less the adoption, of ethical

principles among those who otherwise might refer to themselves as Buddhists in the secular

West. Whatever the reasons, it is important to understand the perspective that Tsongkhapa

provides, in which even the elementary capacity for simple mindfulness is regarded as dependent

on ethical behavior, which in turn depends on motivation and, despite the Buddhist modernist

argument to the contrary, an appreciation of the cosmic karmic backstory that makes ethical

behavior meaningful beyond random acts of kindness. Tsongkhapa’s specific presentation is a

historically contextual one, of course, but the principles underlying them are not. Mental well-

being depends on ethical behavior—this is axiomatic in Buddhist discourse. So when the Dalai

Lama discusses happiness, it is not individualistic indulgence he intends—rather, he draws

directly from principles that Tsongkhapa articulates, based on Indian Buddhist sources, and that

the dissertation emphasizes in order to highlight Tsongkhapa’s concern for monastic discipline

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and tantric practice. The continuity of these two, which Tsongkhapa took pains to articulate in

his writings, would strike as odd nearly anyone with a passing familiarity of tantra. The

dissertation’s presentation of this continuity, strictly in terms of the Indo-Tibetan context that

Tsongkhapa’s work addresses, is important in this respect. I have stressed extensively the social,

and therefore ethically charged, nature of Buddhist theory and practice, and the scope of its

relevance pertains to economic and political issues, even if matters of ethics are routinely, if

implicitly and very quietly, bracketed from such matters.

Another area in which this dissertation could play a role in expanding the scope of

discussion would be with respect to topics around transcendence and immanence, themes

approached in the dissertation somewhat tangentially. In the dissertation, reference is made to

Strathern’s Unearthly Powers and its failure to capture an important facet of the Buddhist

tradition’s perspective on these themes. This is due to a privileging of certain sources and a

disregarding of certain others, an error made by Weber and other early interpreters and

apparently not yet corrected in all quarters. Although it is not fair to say that Strathern replicates

Weber’s exact errors, insofar as he does distinguish between Theravāda and mahāyāna sources,

Strathern does not adequately address their differences and presents the latter in a rather

uninformed manner. (There remains even in certain academic disciplines, perhaps because of a

lingering commitment to disciplinary boundaries among some scholars, something of a reflexive

dismissal of Buddhism in general and its [potential] contributions to philosophical questions in

particular. This has been addressed recently by Bryan Van Norden’s Taking Back Philosophy.)

This dissertation does important work in discussing these themes from a mahāyāna perspective,

and it would behoove scholars in other disciplines to take seriously the differences across these

two primary forms of Buddhism that remain viable to the present—leading some scholars to

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refer to Buddhisms. The complex “theology” involved in mahāyāna thought, in which

transcendence and immanence are indivisible aspects of enlightened existence, represents an

important intervention into discussions around how ordinary individuals participate in lived

religious practice, especially with respect to material culture. How Indo-Tibetan Buddhism

participates in South Asian religious practices, the similarities and differences, is one topic to be

explored more fully, for example. In particular, Tsongkhapa’s emphasis on the immanent aspect

not only sets him apart from a number of other Tibetan Buddhist figures but also provides, due to

his concern for rationality, interesting points of entry for comparative discussions regarding

mysticism and so on. That is, discussions regarding the accessibility of the transcendent could be

enhanced with reference to Tsongkhapa’s work along with counter-positions of his philosophical

opponents. And there may be points of interest with respect to Taylor’s discussion of the

immanent frame in his influential A Secular Age—perhaps approaching his concerns from

altogether different premises could enliven and expand the discursive arena. The strides made in

recent decades gives hope that a deeper appreciation of these traditions will emerge.

In a broader sense, where the dissertation makes important interventions within Religious

Studies is in its attempts to articulate the processes of self-making or self-construction that occur

at multiple levels: socialization in its most basic sense, in which one becomes acculturated to

norms and values that remain, for many, the invisible, unquestioned guides to life; narrative self-

making, by which those norms and values are expressed in the specific context of a life story that

is, in that sense, unique; and ascetic self-making, which on my account is a specifically religious

impulse that should not be reduced, as sometimes occurs, to socialization or cultural

transmission.

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 There are certain avenues of inquiry that I had hoped to take during the course of the

dissertation, ones that I hope to pursue at a later time. One of these would be to relate the classic

work of Winnicott regarding play in child development to the process of deity yoga, which is

discussed in chapters three and four. Another of these would be to relate the polyvagal theory of

Stephen Porges to elements of Buddhist psychophysical theories, for the former details the

biophysiological evolution of the central nervous system, specifically how the vagus nerve

pertains to the intuitive sense of danger and safety that impacts in a very direct way social

relations. One could attempt to relate both of these to aspects of unexcelled yoga tantra practices

that appear to address, albeit in a metaphorical way, child development; the perimeter that one

constructs near the beginning of sadhana practice, for example, could be related, in a general

way, to the need for safety when developing the appropriated deity identity. Since scholarship

builds on other scholarship, I hope that I am unaware of productive applications of what I have

attempted to accomplish. Religious Studies as a field of inquiry might do well to investigate the

creation of the habitus, through play or its absence and through trauma or its absence, that co-

mingles with the more explicitly religious elements of the person and how the formation of that

habitus informs those elements.

The matter of socialization and its extent in forming the person is a matter open to debate.

There is no doubt that the Buddhist perspective in general and Tsongkhapa’s in particular

represent, as I have contended within the dissertation, perspectives that do not align well with the

essentialism of much “Western” thought, religious or philosophical (to whatever extent those

two are separable). However, the issue of rebirth, whereby the imprints of past actions, especially

thought actions, determine future aspects of embodiment and behavior, which entails that there is

no “blank slate” with which one (re-)enters the world, entails further that there is certainly no

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one-to-one match between a Buddhist perspective on socialization and any other perspective,

even if epigenetic transference is granted. This should not, however, preclude any discussion of

socialization from diverse perspectives. In any case, as the dissertation mentions briefly, there is

certainly potentially productive discussions to be had in further comparing the insights of

Wittgenstein and Sellars regarding language and conventions to those of Tsongkhapa, who draws

on Candrakīrti and Nāgārjuna so extensively. Indeed, the re-creation of the self from a seed

syllable in sādhana practice expresses the fundamental role of language in Indian Buddhist

philosophy generally (and simultaneously implies that the [proto-]enlightened self becomes

socialized in an entirely new way, as the dissertation attempts to detail). Hopefully the

dissertation provides insight on this constellation of topics.

With respect to the narrative construction of the self, an idea that the psychologist Jerome

Bruner has articulated so well and others have taken up more recently, much more could be done

than the dissertation attempts (I was warned not to follow every avenue of inquiry, however

enticing, lest the project become impractical and excessive, advice I attempted to follow) in a

theoretical manner. The dissertation tries to show how a specifically Tibetan Buddhist self could

be understood as a construction of both narrative and systematic sources, a process that relates to

the large theme of self-construction that is inseparable here from that of the ascetic self and so

on. It might be that among Tibetan Buddhists of a less scholarly bent—that is, most figures

whose life narratives have been given academic study are those whose source of authority has

related to tantric practice—this more complex model need not be invoked, for the transmission

of tantric practices takes place, especially outside of Tsongkhapa’s tradition, non-institutionally,

and so the narrative aspect of transmission is more pronounced. Perhaps what would be most

appropriate to consider in terms of narrative construction would be the sādhana itself, based on

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the discussion of deity yoga presented in the dissertation. This entails literally, one might

contend, the narrative (re-) construction of reality, to paraphrase Bruner’s famous article. As the

dissertation observes, and that could be explored in this context, Tsongkhapa’s sādhana makes

reference to specific events in the life of the Buddha, which not only involves the concept of

emulation explored in the dissertation, but also blurs the lines between emanation and beatific

bodies—the latter, as the dissertation explains, is akin to an archetypal form—in something of a

similar manner that Tsongkhapa’s crowning of the Jobo in Lhasa that the dissertation explores in

chapter five. Although these are unique aspects of Tsongkhapa’s life and work and exemplify

Tibetan Buddhist practice specifically, certainly themes in Religious Studies could be marshalled

to explore such elements in diverse contexts beyond my treatment of them here.

It is with the third aspect of the theme of self-making, that involving asceticism, that the

dissertation makes its most valuable intervention. There is among most scholars of Buddhism,

arguably, a tendency to think of asceticism in terms of self-mortification, the sort that the

Buddha rejected but that appears to have been prevalent within the wanderer (śrāmaṇera)

subculture—an extreme version that the desert fathers of early Christianity may not have

approached. As the dissertation discusses, but not in great detail, certain scholars of asceticism

take the minimal exercises of interpersonal self-restraint involved in the making of culture

possible to be the stuff of asceticism. This is not the model that I prefer to follow, for it strikes

me as overly broad. Gavin Flood’s theory of asceticism, which I employ in chapter three of the

dissertation, focuses on the specific application of self-restraining and self-making exercises in

relation to a number of religious traditions. Although Foucault does not appear to be his primary

interlocutor, certainly Foucault’s turn to self-care in late Antiquity—which has spurred a thriving

scholarly subfield that investigates the interface between Greco-Roman and early Christian

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communities and the adoption by the latter of the former’s self-making exercises—reflects the

positive understanding of asceticism, as opposed to negative self-mortification, that is my

interest; Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life would be another useful resource for consideration

in this regard. Since Flood focuses, like Strathern, on the Theravāda tradition of Buddhism,

which is profoundly different from the mahāyāna tradition of Tibet, there are important positive

features of practice that Flood does not address.

I have focused in the dissertation on exploring how asceticism can be understood in

relation to tantric practice, largely because of the misunderstanding of tantric practice as a form

of hedonism rather than of discipline—a misunderstanding not confined to any particular time

and place. Because Tsongkhapa’s writings on tantra have been relatively neglected, and because

monasticism—as Tsongkhapa decries in his writings—has been understood as opposed in spirit

to tantra as discipline is to hedonism, I have attempted to explore the contours of unexcelled

yoga tantra as a form of asceticism. In so doing, I have not explored as fully as should be done

either the ways in which monasticism may be seen as complementary not how the exoteric

bodhisattva practice should be as well—indeed, an unpacking of these three forms of discipline

would be an important freestanding project. Given Tsongkhapa’s commitment to these three

forms, which are properly taken as commitments to tradition in the manner of Flood’s theory, his

writings would form an ideal foundation for this unpacking, and the dissertation has provided

something of a conceptual template toward that end. That is, the three forms of discipline are not

the central themes of the dissertation, but they do appear in sufficient detail within discussions of

emulation and appropriation and so forth as to make the case for their complementary nature.

The element of scholasticism, which itself could form an important aspect of self-making

in that it is certainly a form of discipline that shapes one in the ideal of a tradition (on Flood’s

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account), has been left virtually untouched as an abstract concept in the dissertation. However,

the attention to Tsongkhapa’s Excellent Presence and the fundamental role of scholastic

education in forming his capacity to undertake ascetic practices more akin to the desert fathers,

for instance, entails that scholasticism is a key element of self-making. Indeed, that is a central

concern of Tsongkhapa’s with respect to the divergence of monasticism (which all but entails in

the Tibetan context scholastic study) and tantric practice. Not only does monasticism, in the

Tibetan context, shape behavior of body, speech, and mind, but it also provides the tools for

scriptural realization that, on Tsongkhapa’s interpretation, form the basis for experiential

realization—the same end that tantric practice seeks. That is, one cannot just expect to come to

accurate and unwavering certainty about the nature of reality without clarity from the tradition,

as Tsongkhapa’s own extensive process of study displays—this is the moral of Excellent

Presence and Condensed Stages of the Path.

More than this, and critically relevant to the misunderstanding of unexcelled yoga tantra

that has characterized its reception in late Indian, Tibetan, Euro-American communities, the

polysemous nature of tantric scriptures is virtually impenetrable—unless one is, against the

advice of those very scriptures and the exegetes of the tradition, committed to their literal

interpretation only—without training in their hermeneutical import. That is to say, the concern

for secrecy that surrounds the practice of tantra is, in part, related to the simplistic literal

interpretation of the literature as enjoining its practice as such—and the problem of that

interpretation is related in chapter one of the dissertation. Tsongkhapa was concerned not only by

the tantric practitioners themselves, who—from his description—do not seem to have been

practicing with the tantras themselves as a basis, but rather the transmission of the practices

derived therefrom alone, but also by those scholarly monks who dismissed tantric practice out of

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hand as well. In other words, neither group was making any effort to understand the complexities

of the scriptures themselves and to apply them to practice—presumably taking their literal

meaning as primary and hence deserving of being ignored. This might not be terribly different

from the context of the contemporary Euro-American diffusion of Buddhism, in which

academics largely ignore tantra as a form of mere hedonism or sorcery based on, if anything, the

scriptures taken strictly literally and in which practitioners base their understanding strictly on

the transmission through tradition. Each is problematic on Tsongkhapa’s interpretation, for

neither comes to appreciate the polysemous value of the scriptures themselves, which on the part

of practitioners is an actual problem. On the other hand, dismissing the tantras themselves as

unrelated to the remainder of the scriptural canon on which late Indian and Tibetan Buddhism

are based is a different kind of problem, as the dissertation discusses briefly.

In terms of ascetic formation, however, scholasticism—with its embodied practices of

reading, recitation, and so forth—constitutes an aspect of self-making that must be considered in

relation to other embodied practices, as scholars of early Christianity have begun to articulate.

These are not just esoteric niceties but rather the formation of the self in a purposeful rather than

haphazard manner. I have focused in the dissertation on the conceptual terrain of deity yoga, for

that is not only Tsongkhapa’s signal concern with respect to tantric practice, but it also needs to

be understood within its context as more than simple pretense, as the discussion of Urban’s work

attempts to show. The thoroughly embodied practices that attend deity yoga—the extensive

transformation of the objects of the five senses—could certainly be examined and analyzed

within a separate study or in conjunction with these other self-making practices. They are so

totalizing and symbolically significant, yet contextually specific according to the particular

unexcelled yoga system, as to deserve a complete analysis, for there is an important relationship

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between the material culture that incorporates these images, such as Ganden Monastery’s tantric

temple, the images/paintings/scultpures themselves, and the yogi/ni who attempts to embody

them. How these move from the discourse/text (the tantra itself) to the discursive/textual

community (distinguishing oral tradition that transmits the text and the preserved text might be

difficult, after all) that systematizes the content into practice manuals or performance scripts to

the yogi/ni attempting to embody this chain of transmission/traditional ideal is a complex topic

that, with respect to scholastic practices, deserves further study. It is certainly not enough to say

that scholasticism is a group project of the monastic community but tantric practice is an

individual effort outside the monastery, for even when this has been the case, the formation of

the self through exoteric scholasticism that creates the capacity for esoteric accomplishment must

be taken into account. In this way, scholasticism as an ascetic practice that relates to tantric

practice should be a topic for further study. Analogues to these topics abound in other religious

traditions, and comparative analysis would begin to excavate the richness of the issues that I

have discussed briefly.

Although, then, there a number of elements that the dissertation does not or could not

address sufficiently, the dissertation does make important contributions in addressing the primary

disjuncture between monastic and tantric asceticism and, moreover, proposing the category of

tantric asceticism. However one might come to understand the historical development of Indian

Buddhist categories of experience, from the perspective of Tibetan Buddhists who inherited their

understanding largely in dependence on the institutions of northeast India, those categories of

experience are understood, to a great extent, in the same way in the exoteric and esoteric

discourses. In other words, in whichever ways the heuristic of the five aggregates may have

developed in the context of higher knowledge (abhidharma), yogic practice, and tantric

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presentations, their points of reference remain basically the same and thus may serve, as they do

for the dissertation, to represent the primary conceptual scheme for making sense of ascetic

interventions. Self-making and world-making are, especially on the understanding of cosmic

interdependence put forward in the dissertation, coextensive. Even so, distinguishing between the

interpersonal domain, which both monastic and tantric asceticism effect in different ways, and

the individual domain—that is, the continuity of the person in terms of potential and manifest

aspects of the addictions/poison (kleśas, nyon mongs) characterizing unenlightened existence—is

a critical process that the dissertation attempts to do. As Flood observes, the individual and

cosmological typically are bound together in some important way in many religious traditions,

and scholars attempting to analyze their traditions in terms of asceticism would have to account

for both individual and social components of self-making in order to present a comprehensive

understanding of such practices as lived.

However, the dissertation also has insisted that the individual domain is/has been

conditioned by social factors (since beginningless time, according to the tradition), so any

emphasis on the individual domain, which entails the separation from external stimuli at the bare

minimum, is something of a necessary pretense. A more robust examination of these forms of

asceticism would have to account more fully for the ongoing role of trauma and so forth in

perpetuating unenlightened existence. That is, as contemporary psychologists would insist,

interpersonal relationships do not exist in a vacuum but are conditioned by patterns learned in

childhood (this relates to the imagery around childhood in the Kālacakra system) that must be

considered; from the Buddhist perspective, there is an infinite storehouse of patterns to be

transformed. These patterns are both psychological and physiological, as the dissertation

attempts to make clear; the emphasis here on deity yoga, as a conceptual transformation, does

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not entail either that organic/biophysiological patterns are unimportant or that they are entirely

separable. This is why understanding the presentation in unexcelled yoga regarding the subtle

and extremely subtle states is key, for these help to clarify the depth of the layers of feedback

from interpersonal relationships. On a broader level, the dissertation attempts to present this

coordination of sūtra and tantra as a way of highlighting these continuities that Tibetan

Buddhism understands as inseparable, at least from the perspective of Tsongkhapa.

In other words, Tsongkhapa’s presentation of these continuities, such as I understand it

and them, is the most detailed effort to link them explicitly. Other presentations by earlier or later

scholars and adepts may well touch upon the same topics, but Tsongkhapa went to great lengths

to clarify these continuities. In this way, by focusing on Tsongkhapa’s work, the dissertation

should provide the groundwork for others to follow in treating the topics of asceticism from a

Buddhist perspective in the context of other figures. To be sure, any number of tantric adepts

whose attainments are highly regarded but who are not monastics must have accomplished, in

one lifetime or another, the neutralizing of the manifest addictions that monastic asceticism

entails—or, at least, that is what the tradition would hold. Tsongkhapa’s pointed barbs against

those who would forsake or disparage monastic or tantric asceticism should be understood as

reflecting a specific historical context but also as a general warning against ignoring their

combined efforts in attenuating and dismantling the machinery of cyclic existence. If that general

warning helps other scholars to map out how specific Tibetan Buddhist figures (or their late

Indian counterparts) engaged with that machinery, then this dissertation will have assisted in

providing that groundwork for further study. Certainly these topics studied together or

separately, and in distinct contexts involving other forms of practice, could produce a number of

insights into the broader themes proposed in the dissertation as pertinent to the study of Indo-

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Tibetan Buddhism specifically and Religious Studies generally. There is, at the heart of

Tsongkhapa’s coordination of sūtra and tantra, a deep appreciation of the role of the cultural and

the biological as interdependent units of analysis, an interdependence that deserves a far greater

understanding and appreciation in Religious Studies if, as the repository for interdisciplinarity in

the humanities, the expanding hegemony of the natural (and unnatural) sciences is to be

informed by an ethics serving the aims and flourishing of all, rather than a few, living beings.

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Yamamoto, Carl. 2015. ““Only Kingly Deeds”: Zhang Tselpa and the Symbolism of Kingship,”

Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie, vol. 24, 1-12.

Yoshimizu, Chizuko. 1993. “The Madhyamaka Theories Regarded as False by the dGe Lugs

Pas,” Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde Sudasiens, vol. 37, 210-227.

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 Appendix One

A Brief Biography of Khedrup Gelek Palsangpo

Khedrup Gelek Palsangpo (mkhas grub dge legs dpal bsang po), the author of Haven of Faith

(dad pa’i ’jug ngogs) and third hierarch of the Ganden school, deserves a complete study of both

his biography and principal works, that effort will have to wait. Here I can only sketch some of

the important elements of his biography and principal works as they relate to the dissertation. In

contemporary academic writing Khedrup has become associated with his polemical defense of

Tsongkhapa’s work and the related fissures between the Ganden and Sakya traditions.570 As the

dissertation proposes in chapter one, these fissures appear to predate Khedrup, yet it would be

disingenuous to claim that Khedrup did not exacerbate them. Nevertheless, a nuanced and

balanced examination of the issues—political, doctrinal, institutional, interpersonal—would be

an enormous challenge, for the reasons underlying the growth of the Ganden monastic network

and the concomitant decline of Sakya influence would be difficult to tease apart. In any case,

there is no overt anti-Sakya polemic within Haven of Faith, even though this would have been

written in the aftermath of tensions involving the creation of a shared Ganden-Sakya institution,

discussed below.

Khedrup was born in 1385 in Tsang, the region of Central Tibet dominated by the Sakya,

and took novice monastic vows at customary age of seven. From an early age, perhaps soon after

taking novice vows, Khedrup became a student of Rendawa, yet it appears that he did not cross

paths with Tsongkhapa during the entire time of studying under Rendawa. Khedrup studied the

typical classic texts of the Indian tradition as well as the tantric systems that are the Sakya

specialties, Hevajra and the Path and Fruit (lam ’bras) practice. Khedrup excelled in his studies,

570
See Cabezon 1992 and Bentor 2017 on this topic as it relates to Khedrup.

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particularly the logico-epistemological treatises of Dharmakīrti, and at sixteen (1401, when

Rendawa and Tsongkhapa oversaw the Vinaya conference at Namsé Deng) he apparently

defeated the prominent scholar Bodong Choglé Namgyal (see chapter one), his senior by a

decade, who had dared a scholastic assembly to refute his critique of Sakya Pandita’s famed

treatise on validating cognition.571

In 1405, at twenty, again the customary age, Khedrup received full monastic vows from

Rendawa, and then two years later (1407) traveled to U to meet with Tsongkhapa, having heard

of his remarkable qualities. (By this time, Tsongkhapa had composed his Great Treatise on the

Stages of the Path and Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra, but it appears Khedrup did not

know of them. This suggests that the dominance of Sakya in Tsang at the time, to the exclusion

of the largely Kagyu region of U, was extensive. Gyaltsab traveled to study in U prior to meeting

Tsongkhapa, and of course Tsongkhapa went from U to Tsang and back to U, where he

remained. The Sakya-Kagyu political hostilities may have resulted in few daring—or perhaps

bothering—to travel between the regions.) Immediately Khedrup was overtaken by the humble

nature of Tsongkhapa and his companions, and during the next few years Tsongkhapa spent

intensive effort in teaching Khedrup lam rim and tantra in particular. It is unclear, however, just

how long Khedrup spent with Tsongkhapa before returning to Tsang. Based on his polemical

defenses and biographical writings of Tsongkhapa, the length was sufficient for Khedrup to have

become fully immersed in his professional and personal aspects.

By 1412, the year of Rendawa’s death, Khedrup had returned to Tsang, for that year he

founded Riwo Dangchen (ri bo mdangs can), presumably following Tsongkhapa’s teachings.572

571
For these details, included in an overview of Khedrup’s life story, derived from a traditional source, see Cabezon
(1992) 13-19. See also Ary 38-66.
572
See https://treasuryoflives.org/en/institution/Riwo-Dangchen.

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In 1413 (the year when Tsongkhapa nearly died) Khedrup took up leadership of Changra (lcang

ra) Monastery, a Kadam institution, near Gyantsé in Tsang.573 Then in 1418, with the patronage

of the powerful ruler of Gyantsé, Rabten Kunzang (Rab brtan kun bzang), Khedrup was involved

in the creation of Pelkhor Chödé (dpal ‘khor chos sde), which appears to have been a shared

Ganden-Sakya site. 574 Apparently the institution was founded in 1424, and Khedrup remained for

four years—during which he would have composed Haven of Faith.

During this period—while presiding over this ecumenical Ganden-Sakya institution—it

appears that his relationship with two prominent Sakya scholars turned sour. Apparently, the

Gyantsé ruler made arrangements for Khedrup to debate Rongton, the Sakya scholar whose

students later became Tsongkhapa’s preeminent detractors (see chapter one). According to

biographies of Khedrup, Rongton finally refused to debate, and due to the clear favoritism on the

part of Gyantsé’s ruler toward Rongton, Khedrup’s relationship with him and the institution

diminished.575 Also, among those involved in the creation of Pelkhor was Ngorchen Kunga

Zangpo (kun dga’ bzang po) another prominent Sakya scholar who later would create an entirely

new tradition within Sakya. In 1425, not longer after Pelkhor opened its doors, Khedrup wrote a

scathing critique of the Sakya interpretation of certain aspects of Hevajra practice. Ngorchen had

produced, after Tsongkhapa’s death, two critiques of elements of Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of

points of tantric practice, which prompted Khedrup to respond witheringly. Ngorchen had

studied with Tsongkhapa, and it seems Khedrup took his critiques personally.576 It may be that in

Tsang, far from Ganden, Khedrup was struggling to gain respect for Tsongkhapa’s teachings,

573
See https://treasuryoflives.org/en/institution/Changra.
574
This is also known as Pelkhor Dechen (dpal ‘khor sde chen). See Akester 491-495 for this institution.
575
Cabezon (1992) 17-18.
576
See Bentor 2017 for these episodes.

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and the creation of Sera and Drepung would have indicated to any concerned Sakyapa that the

Ganden tradition had become formidable rather quickly. In any case, it seems Khedrup’s critique

was taken as a direct challenge to the authenticity of the Sakya practice of the Hevajra body

maṇḍala—this certainly would have caused irreparable harm to Sakya-Ganden relations.

In 1428, having composed Haven of Faith and the polemical defense of Tsongkhapa’s

Madhyamaka interpretation, A Dose of Emptiness (stong thun chen mo), Khedrup left Pelkhor

Chödé for Riwo Dangchen. Among Khedrup’s other notable works are a text on the three-vow

system, Polishing the Jewel of the Buddha’s Teaching, (sdom pa gsum gyi rnam par bzhag pa

mdor bsdus te gtan la dbab pa’i rab tu byed pa thub bstan rin po che’i byi dor); a presentation on

the Guhyasamāja creation stage process (Tsongkhapa had focused on the perfection stage),

Ocean of Attainments of the Creation Stage (bskyed rim dngos grub rgya mtsho), which includes

his anti-Sakya critique; and A General Presentation of the Tantra Classes (rgyud sde spyi’i rnam

par bzhag pa rgyas par bshad pa), something of an abbreviation of Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise

on the Stages of Mantra.

Three years after departing Pelkhor Chödé (1431), Khedrup met with Gyaltsab Darma

Rinchen in Nenying (ngas rnying) Monastery—far from Lhasa but rather close to Riwo

Dangchen. Gyaltsab Jé requested Khedrup to become his own successor at Ganden; Gyaltsab

passed away the next year.577 For the following several years, until his death in 1438 at age fifty-

three, Khedrup served as head of the Ganden school, whose three core institutions were just

decades old.

Given the above information, it seems clear that the choice of the aggressive young

polemicist Khedrup as the third Ganden Tripa was intended to endorse the independence of the

577
Cabezon (1992) 18-19. Ary 52 contends that Khedrup was chosen due to being Gyaltsab’s own student and that
this teacher-student succession was common in such early succession events.

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growing new tradition. Perhaps Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen perceived that his own mission of

internal consolidation of the expanding Ganden community after the death of Tsongkhapa would

be followed by a period of defending that community from external attacks on its interpretive

approaches—just the sort of debate battles that Khedrup seems to have weathered over the prior

decade. Although there was no shortage of accomplished scholars or upholders of Tsongkhapa’s

teachings who could have been chosen to lead the community,578 Khedrup had experience as

head of monastic communities in Tsang—specifically, experience with a difficult patron and an

aggressive detractor in Rongtön that might prove important. That Khedrup was chosen to

produce Haven, having already compiled authoritative notes on Tsongkhapa’s lectures on

Kālacakra and Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika, suggests that Gyaltsab and other senior figures in

the Ganden community recognized Khedrup’s skill in, and devotion to, preserving Tsongkhapa’s

teachings.579

And Gyaltsab, himself a former Sakya acolyte and Tsangpa, apparently acknowledged

that the impending circumstances might require a counterpoint to his own reserved and

easygoing temperament. In traditional iconography of Tsongkhapa and his two successors, “the

three holy father and sons” (rje yab sras gsum), the difference between the two is expressed by

Gyaltsab’s serene countenance and Khedrup’s slight sneer that is intended to reflect his readiness

to defend Tsongkhapa’s teachings.580 In selecting Khedrup, Gyaltsab may have been signaling

578
See Ary 54 where a number of classifications of Tsongkhapa’s important disciples is given.
579
See Jinpa (2019) 333-334.
580
This distinction in appearance was noted (personal communication) to me by Geshé Losang Dhargey of Sera Mé,
who explained made reference to the skillful deployment of both peaceful and wrathful efforts to persuade others
and oneself of the accuracy of interpretations of difficult points. This perspective coincides with the understanding
of the tenet/established conclusions (grub mtha’) literary genre and the practice of debate to be about self-
transformation through adopting, testing, and finally rejecting positions that are (according to tradition, of course)
inaccurate interpretations of difficult points.

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to those both inside and outside of the Ganden community that Tsongkhapa’s teachings were to

be understood as a distinct tradition.

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 Appendix Two

Haven of Faith: A Biography of Tsongkhapa

CHAPTER ONE: The Period of Birth and Youth

I bow in reverence at the feet of the inconceivably holy lama!

Whose moon of bodhisattva discourse rises

Over the mount of both kinds of momentous deeds,
Whose radiance makes blossom the lily of Buddha’s teaching,
To clear the darkness from our hearts—
Triumph holy lama!

I bow down at your feet, Losang Drakpa,

Master of the sweet Sārasvatī speech,
Exalted as the crown jewel of the wise
Who marvel at your adamantine glory.

Well disciplined in the best observance,

Peerless in discrimination and precision
In all fine points of the buddha-teaching systems;
How you pleasantly surprised us
By coordinating them all.

O Protector!
Your knowledge is an ocean
Infinite in depth and breadth.
Powerful beings have raised up your vehicle,
Though faintly I have felt the divine touch,
What more is there that I can do?

Yet the fire of my strong faith

Boils the ocean of my heart,
And the few drops flicked out by the royal whisk
Relieve my burning more than nothing.

O Protector!
Who never will abandon me,
Even in future worlds,
May I be nourished by the nectar of your teaching!
May my heart be freed from the chains
Of ambitions in my own self-interest!
May the flock of white geese of conscious faith
Delight in your milk-ocean of infinite knowledge!
To this I dedicate this effort.

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How the world wonders
When March rain clouds, rumbling thunder,
Bring forth crystalline flowers in full spring,
And the young peacock displays his mating pride!

And how the buddhas fascinate,

Inspiring the firm minds of wise men,
The miraculous story of their holy exploits
Heard by the fortunate and enjoyed as nectar:
How they are as youths,
How happens their renunciation,
How they strive through suffering to great ends,
How finally they triumph in supreme enlightenment—
This is the subject of our amazing story.

Our glorious lama possessed the great tradition of the holy Buddha Bhagavān, and a natural
disposition of affection toward all worlds that was singularly pleasing and spontaneous. He
surpassed even the tremendous conduct of the bodhisattvas over a long period of time. He
possessed pure vision encompassing the full scope of knowledge, for the lotus of his mind was
opened by radiance from the heart of Holy Mañjuśrī. It is difficult to speak the name of this great
being whose heart was a bursting treasury of precious qualities of ordinary and extraordinary
clear realizations. He had accomplished the ten stages many eons earlier. In some worlds he had
been a cakravartin king, and in some a regional king. In some worlds he took the form of Indra
and Brahmā. In that way the bodhisattva displays countless emanations in the world, living as
monk or layperson, appropriate to the needs of the beings to be taught. He is similar to the single
moon across the path of the sky, displaying manifold reflections in the many waters upon the
earth. For our benefit he took an appropriate reincarnation, accomplishing our purpose by
manifesting himself as a spiritual teacher.

Although the manner of this is indeed difficult for ordinary beings to understand, yet our good
fortune and nature exist in such a way due to our own meagre capacity of contemplation and
faith that with the power of clear vision there is good rational evidence to confirm the truth of his
superhuman manifestations. Our lama saw clearly the nature of contemporary beings and the
weakness of their conscious faith, so he avoided any claim to supernormal powers. So here I do
not insist upon experience of the extraordinary experience of his life. Since we have not attained
higher stages of consciousness and are incapable of fathoming the vast scheme of this, to succeed
in our aims we must strive to learn the bodhisattva path. Meanwhile, on the level of ordinary
appearances, we can understand this biography in general, yet I intend to point the finger of faith
more than once. I assemble this narrative, a garland of flowers of speech, for the ears of fortunate
beings.

This is how the story goes. The place where this great being enacted the deed of taking rebirth
was a part of Amdo known as Eastern Tsongkha. In prior times this place was brought under the
sway of the lords of Tibet, such as Lha tsenpo of Ngari. This very place is regarded as a region of
marvellous qualities physical characteristics.

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His father was brave, noble, honest, disciplined, and an ornament of the Dharma appropriate to
the mentality of other people. His name was Dara Hlalu Bumgé. His mother was straightforward,
with an excellent mental disposition. Everyone knew her to be goodness itself. Coming from a
land of agreeable people, her name was Sinmo Achö. They had six sons, this great being was the
fourth. Regarding ancestry, he was from the lineage of Mal, which counted a thousand
generations. From the seventh generation, direct and tribal relatives had been widely scattered.
Among recent ancestors, many perfectly took up the monastic life, maintaining superior
observance. All were known to possess eyes seeing extensively and with fine analysis. The
bodhisattva chose an excellent family and lineage on both sides for his rebirth.

When he was delivered from his mother’s body, the dome of his forehead was like an umbrella,
and broad; his eyebrows were level and his nose lofty, his earlobes long, and his limbs and
fingers, and so forth, were long and well-formed. His lips were broad, his faculties clear, and his
skin was white as the lily flower. From birth he was like nectar for the eye, beautified by signs
distinguishing him from others. His parents treasured him and held him up in admiration like a
diamond crown.

From the time of infancy he fully transcended youthful weaknesses, avoided careless play, and
turned away completely from bad conduct. He spoke sweetly to everyone and never showed any
anger. He was innately happy, generous to the poor, and kind to the helpless. From the very time
he learned to talk, he always spoke truthfully. His intelligence was unfathomable, and he was
naturally attracted to the Dharma, especially the great deeds of the bodhisattvas. He did not have
to be taught how to behave like other children, but did what was appropriate, from taking to the
breast to learning to walk and talk and so on.

The Buddha expressed that the best door to enter the precious teaching is the vow of individual
liberation, and that ethical conduct is the foundation of all good qualities. The youth soon saw
that monks and householders were different in the capacity to conform, even before he reached
the age appropriate to enter monastic life. He received perfectly and completely the laypersons’s
vow from the Dharma master Karmapa Rolwé Dorjé, who gave him the name Kunga Nyingpo.

When he reached the age of three more years (i.e., seven), his father invited the Dharma master,
Lama Dondrup Rinchen to their house, and that lama immediately recognized his unique nature.
He presented gifts of horses, sheep, and other things, and made a request to the father: “Offer me
this son of yours.” The father was delighted, and offered the boy to be the lama’s protege.

Thus, when he was seven years old, he left his family and entered into the service of Dondrub
Rinchen. Although he had not yet attained monkhood, the teacher began at once to mature him in
the preliminaries of the vajra vehicle. He introduced him to the mandalas of Cakrasaṁvara, of
the Ghaṇtapa system, Hevajra, Vajrapāṇi, and so forth. He conferred upon him the preliminary
consecrations, and gave him the secret name Donyö Dorje (Amoghavajra). He took up the
complete vows and pledges of the knowledge holder and guarded them as being as precious as
his own eyes.

Initially coming into the presence of the master, he saw many monks and students reading the
scriptures. After watching them, he himself began to read without the slightest hesitation.

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Everyone was astonished, and he did not need to be trained in how to read. In that same year, he
memorized the ritual texts used in the various mandalas of Sarvavid Vairocana, Hevajra,
Vajrabhairava, and so forth. He practiced the performance of the self-creation of Saṁvara in the
Ghantapa lineage. He applied himself single-mindedly to the methods of the divine yoga and the
techniques and stages of reciting mantras.

Once in a dream, the fierce form of Bhagavān Vajrapāṇi appeared before him and remained
clearly in his vision for a long time. More than once he was blessed with dreams of the glorious
Atiśa. Later when he came to Central Tibet, seeing that likeness he recognized the images. It is
certain this was a sign that he himself later would become the jewel in the crown of the holders
of victory banners against the decline of precious teaching, his deeds of maturing and liberating
students by perfectly completing the stages of sutra and tantra and thus bestowing for the sake of
reviving the deteriorated teachings of the Land of Snows again, just like that master.

His friends were faith and effort,

introspection and conscientiousness,
excellent discipline, and unfathomable intelligence.
They helped him penetrate deep questions.
And even the time of youth was not wasted.

Even on initially becoming the sprout of the body,

He possessed the essence of the fully blossomed scent
of incalculable excellent qualities.
The flower of infinite knowledge already blossomed.
Who is not caused to consider such marvels as these?

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CHAPTER TWO: Leaving Home for Homelessness – Taking Up Mendicancy

Thus, during the period of youth, due to the maturing of propensities of the good lineage
familiarized repeatedly in prior lives, he realized even as a child the connection between various
misdeeds and the bonds [of cyclic existence]. Recognizing the life of the householder as a firepit
of suffering that is difficult to endure because of the disturbances of needing to acquire food,
livelihood, wealth and so forth, he saw this as incompatible with true peace and that going forth
is the excellent means for avoiding such faults.

Therefore at age seven he properly took up the saffron victory banner [i.e., the monastic robe]
and took ordination, going forth from home to homelessness, thinking “All the buddhas of the
three times practiced perfectly the monastic life.” In the narration of the activities of the perfect
adherence and going forth by the precious master himself, I should discuss the life story of
Dondrub Rinchen, the spiritual friend assisting this process.

He also was born in Amdo and ordained in his youth, and he then went to U and Tsang. With
Tashi Senggé of Nyethang, the chief disciple of Chomden Rig Rel, he studied proficiently the
Maitreya texts and the Perfection of Wisdom. Then he went to Narthang in Tsang and from
Dongton Rikpé Senggé, the throne holder of the Chomden Rig Rel’s own seat (Narthang), he
heard and practiced the Pramāṇavinaścaya. In attempting to gain realization regarding the
process of proof and refutation in the epistemological tradition, he ran into a little difficulty.

Having gone to Zhalu, he made intensive appeals in front of the miraculously-arisen Buddha
statue there, and circumambulating day and night until his feet were bloody, a superior
intellectual capacity was born. Having become unhindered regarding the topic of reasoning, his
superior renown as a good debater emerged. Yet due to his great poverty at Narthang as a
precious condition, he became accustomed to maintaining pure practice. Having come to the seat
of the all-knowing Butön Rinpoché, the master remained there and embarked on the debate
rounds. He studied well by engaging in discussion in these assemblies and attained renown as a
scholar.

Later he returned to Amdo and became abbot of Shing-kun-de-sar Monastery. He then received
an invitation to take the abbatial seat of Dewachen and returned to U; however, the position did
not materialize. Having carried many provisions, he offered these respectfully to the monastic
assemblies of Dewachen, Narthang, and so on. He then went to further his progress with
Kyechog Tokden at Yab Chöding and offered to the teacher whatever he could raise, and by
dedicating his effort at one-pointedness, he produced a special experience of quiescence.

He returned to Amdo and established the two monasteries called Jakhyung and Shabrang
hermitages, where he gave instruction on Perfection of Wisdom and Validating Cognition as
linked topics and also explanations of the five Maitreya texts, Hevajra, and Guide to the
Bodhisattva Way of Life, and so forth. However, he became disappointed that he had not
provided great benefit in ways he had desired, and he appointed to the seat of Shabrang one
Shakya Zangpo while he himself worked at accomplishing one-pointedness at Jakhyung. He

454
reached expertise and accomplishment in this, and he became famed also for being taken under
the direct care of and being blessed by his special deity.

Nearing old age, he offered propitiation by means of groups of flowers and playing cymbals, and
in the northern direction from here there emerged the direct auditory perception from the sky
coming from the field of the tathāgata named “Drum Beat,” and he acquired immeasurable
qualities of clear understanding, unobstructed direct vision of hidden objects, and so forth.

During this period here refined his creative techniques (thabs), being especially blessed by his
tutelary deity. As old age was approaching, he purified himself in constant devotion. In
meditation he visited magically the nuddha-field of Tathāgata Dundubhīshvara, hearing heavenly
sounds resounding in the sky. He obtained many clairvoyances and could see things not visible
to ordinary people. Once he told the young Tsongkhapa: “A certain friend of ours is making
offerings on our behalf as Narthang at this very time. Remember this date and time.” After this
friend returned to Amdo, they asked about his journey, and Dondrub Rinchen had been precisely
accurate. Often he sent offerings to the monasteries where he had studied in Central Tibet. There
are many such stories like this one, but I do not include them due to lack of space.

The esteemed lama Dondrub Rinchen became abbot due to his collecting good qualities such as
those. This great spiritual friend who trained in numerous sūtras and tantras with many scholar-
adepts and pandits from Central Tibet and Nepal, and so forth, who had as his teacher Zhonnu
Jangchub, the accomplished student of Ta-wen Zhonnu Senggé, in that early period caused
Tsongkhapa to receive perfectly the novice monastic vow and conferred him the name Losang
Drakpa. This lama made him his own from childhood itself, knowing he would become a
Dharma king, a master of the precious teaching, cultivating him with great care and diligence to
mature into a great medicinal tree. He caused Tsongkhapa’s ripening in the paths of mantra and
monasticism by acting with very great care and so forth in sending him to go to Central Tibet.
These are a few activities of this lama’s great kindness—so it is said.

Because of the glory of his disciplined, serene sense faculties,

And pure conduct, that youth’s activities were untamed
Like the sages of the ancient gods, but now these
Have become the vital channels of the Land of Snows.

The moon of compassion, the young son of the Conqueror,

Became a holder of the good garb, the saffron robe.
At that time in the pleasure grove that is the home,
He abandoned the joy of high joys, the lily of desire.

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CHAPTER THREE: Education Focused on the Perfection Vehicle Literature

Having gone forth in that way, Tsongkhapa thoroughly analyzed by considering how the lord of
Dharma, the Buddha, the Conqueror himself, held the monastic discipline to be like the monk’s
body itself. He spoke of two stages of those gone forth into the discipline: the stage of learning,
with activities of hearing and studying, and the stage of accomplishment, with the activity of
concentration. Therefore, initially, by means of hearing and contemplating what was studied he
depended on the captain who is the expert, the spiritual friend who is the ocean of good speech,
the scriptures of the Conqueror. The meaning of this is: holding the oars of analysis, having
stirred the common wind, build the boat of effort.

The glorious snow mountains (of Tibet) were blessed by successive scholar-adepts, pandits,
translators, and bodhisattvas—prior masters of the Dharma who perfectly traveled them. They lit
the lamp of the precious teaching, and generations of spiritual friends extended its radiance. Even
now, it is a fortunate land to have some continuity of that light remaining, Central Tibet being
extremely blessed, and young Tsongkhapa was inspired to travel there to continue his studies.
With respect to seeking out the holy Dharma, this hero, with the capacity for discipline in the
manner of Bodhisattva Sadāprarudita, not concerned about the hardships of enduring the
suffering of the extensive path, swiftly sought out good explanations.

Thus, at the time of his sixteenth year, with his teacher exhorting him, he himself radiated a
strong energy to journey to the region of U and Tsang. Dondrub Rinchen, his master, said: “I will
explain some words of Dharma to you. What kind of teaching do you want?” “I request and want
you to assign some instruction to help my mind.” That lama, because of his power possessing the
clear realizations of knowledge of what would emerge in the future, explained what was
appropriate in a series of verses. “At first, you must listen and contemplate, and based on that in
stages you will gain experience in the meaning of those [teachings]. And subsequently you will
mature disciples.”

Tsongkhapa made notes on that advice, but upon departing for Central Tibet he lost them.
Although he did not find them, he retained a portion in his mind. Even if he forgot most of the
words later, even so the aim of those notes remained in his mind, and the words of advice later
emerged exactly in all the stages of activities such as studying and contemplating. He later
reconstructed a portion of the verses:

“You, young Losang Drakpa, tasted the nectar of the holy Dharma in previous lives and
possessed radiating virtuous karma purified previously. You are certain to have predispositions
to understand the three, the condensed, middling, and extensive Great Mothers. Initially you
should practice meticulously the Abhisamayālamkara.

“When you become an expert in those, engage with the understanding regarding all oral
transmissions. Moreover, you should place a corner of your mind there. From that, regarding the
five books of Maitreya, train in the branches of expertise in Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras,
which reveals the presentations of the bodhisattva path. The treatise Dharmadharmatavibhanga
demonstrates the basis of samsāra and nirvana, and Madhyāntavibhanga teaches the path to the
middle that abandons beginnings and endings, and the great vehicle Uttaratantra reveals

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buddha-nature, thatness, what exists in all minds. In Jambudvipa, the seven collections of logical
reasoning of Dharmakīrti, like the spreading rays [of the sun], clarify the teachings of the
Buddha. Three treatises are like the body of the teaching: the very brief Drop of Reasoning, the
middle length Ascertainment of Validating Cognition, and the extensive Commentary on
Validating Cognition—these are the armor of those becoming scholars; the remaining four are:
Drop of Logic, Inquiry into Relations, Proof of Other Minds, and Reasoning of Debate.

“These are famous as the sun and moon. You should learn these.” (From this point some is
forgotten.) “Learn those followers of that and the collection of Middle Way reasoning made by
Ārya Nāgārjuna. If you become resolute regarding the great view free from extremes, you will
possess intelligent activities.” The rest is said to be forgotten.

Tsongkhapa arrived in the forest of glorious Drigung in the time of Lang Lo-ton and went with
an associate with an invitation from the teacher Rinchen Pel and made an offering to Drigung
Thil. At that time Drigung Chennga Rinpoché, the Dharma king, resided there, and Tsongkhapa
met with him. From him Tsongkhapa studied the rite for the mahāyāna mind generation, the
fivefold mahāmudra, and so on. He desired to go to pursue [further] learning, but others put him
forward involuntarily for continued medical instructions, so he went to the Tshalpa doctor, a
scholar named Ponkon Chogkyab, and trained to learn medical treatment from him. And he held
the eight branches [of medical knowledge] in his mind. Having stayed there for a very long time,
he went to the Dharma institution Dewachen and learned interrelated Dharma teachings from the
both the virtuous one, the throne holder, the abbot Gé Khönpa, and the precious one of
Dewachen, Nyethangpa Tashi Senggé and also from Yonten Gyatso, the great teacher, the main
textual teachers along with the great teacher Urgyanpa.

He memorized the root commentary, Ornament for Clear Realizations (Abhisamayālamkara),

the treatise of personal advice regarding the Perfection of Wisdom, in eighteen days. He also
studied the commentary by Jamkya Namkha Pel and mastered all its meanings without having to
make great endeavor such as effort in counting, etc. Having become extremely expert in the
meaning of the words of the Perfection of Wisdom in a short time, his teachers and all the other
students understood through hearing the marvel of the unfathomable capacity of his extremely
great intelligence. And regarding Ornament for the Universal Vehicle Discourses, Tsongkhapa
while living in Amdo had memorized that and [now] continued to become expert in the Maitreya
teachings—studying and memorizing the Ornament and so on—by using a new commentary by
the great geshé, the Dewachen Lama Jamrinpa.

During the particular time when Tsongkhapa remained training his mind in Dewachen, he met
with an emanation of the reverend Mañjuśrī, the crown ornament of all rulers and emperors, the
glorious Lama Dampa Sonam Gyaltsen, at a remote Dharma citadel where previously he had
seen him. From him he received permission to practice Mañjuśrī Arapatsana and the protector
Gur as well as the empowerment of the body mandala of Cakrasaṁvara in the Ghantapa
tradition.

In that way, in only two years, having become extremely expert in the meaning of the words of
the Perfection of Wisdom, Tsongkhapa went to the debate rounds of Sangphu and Dewachen

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while nearing age 19. The praise of his intelligence and marvelous Dharma terminology spread
far, and he led with the iron hook of discrimination the mental power of skillful spiritual friends.

From there, he wished to travel to the area of Tsang. He desired to go to Sakya with a companion
from Jo Gonpa (Jonang?) and passed by some distant upper buildings of Rinpung and Kharkha
in Upper Nyang, and he arrived at Zhalu. There he met the throne holder possessing the
sovereignty of the king of the holy Dharma, the great Butön Rinpoché, the translator and great
abbot, Rinchen Namgyal. From him Tsongkhapa received the empowerment of Thirteen-Deity
Cakrasaṁvara in the Maitrīyogin tradition. From there he went to Narthang, and thereafter
arrived at the great seat of glorious Sakya, his good karma with respect to his time at Sakya made
firm. From Sazang Mati Panchen he heard whichever Dharma teaching was being given, and
then made the debate rounds of Perfection of Wisdom at Sakya, continuing deepen his
understanding of that topic. He went to Lato Jang. In the monasteries of Garong in Ngamring he
made the debate rounds and then arrived in Jo Mo Nang valley, [where at Jonang Monastery] he
received instruction in the six-limb practice [of Kālacakra] and so forth from Chöjé Choglé
Namgyal. From there he went to Bodong and arrived in Ma-ré Chi-bo-Lhé, where he obtained
from the great abbot of that place the oral transmission of the Kadam lam rim. Then, having
made the debate rounds at the great college of E, Tsongkhapa arrived at Narthang. Previously he
had studied the Jankya commentary on Perfection of Wisdom, and now he had the great desire in
his mind to remain there and study the Treasury [of Abhidharma] by means of many oral
transmissions.

Tsongkhapa heard at one time the explanation of the Treasury based on the Sam-Zang
commentary by a Narthang scholar, the lama and translator Don Zangpa. This great being was
not bloated with pride even in that great circle of intelligent ones. At that time, Tsongkhapa saw
in the hand of one Narthang geshé the Nyawon commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom, and
became delighted upon producing an understanding and extreme clarity from hearing the Jankya
commentary previously. He remained to listen to an explanation of the Perfection of Wisdom
from him, and along with the Nyawon commentary a clear explanation also of various texts of
the Treasury. From that he recognized a similarity between the Treasury and the Perfection of
Wisdom. He then went to Nyang-tö but there remained some slight obstruction with respect to
that ancient place.

Tsongkhapa made the debate rounds on Perfection of Wisdom and for that practiced its dharani.
Then, having gone to Tsechen for the summer Dharma sessions, he heard a careful explanation
of the Perfection of Wisdom before the eyes of precious Nyawon Kunga Pel, the first among
scholars. The marvelous explication of the topics of the explanation flowed into the disciple’s ear
and a thoroughly keen fine analysis was very clear in his mind, and the appearance of this
scholar caused him extreme happiness.

At that time, Tsongkhapa requested from him a teaching on the Treasury of Abhidharma. “I
cannot provide the good explanation for which you seek, for I am tasked with supervisory
activities. I cannot accomplish this explanation immediately, your requested explanation of
Validating Cognition and Perfection of Wisdom, and I am uneasy about my expertise. My
student Rendawa possess this intelligence and has great expertise in Abhidharma. It is suitable if
you hear this from him.”He repeated again and again the serious commitment of the pointing-out

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instruction if heard without elaboration. “He, my student, will connect these points if you remain
in his presence.”

Reverend Rendawa was arriving in Tsechen from Sakya during that summer, and Tsongkhapa
listened to his pointing-out instructions on top of his own commentary on the Treasury of
Abhidharma. Rendawa did not merely depend on the textual tradition of each, and by arranging
well in his mind the meaning of the thoroughly complete body of the treatises, and because of
Rendawa’s ability to bestow excellent understanding appropriate to the issues, great faith was
born in him. Having heard each answer regarding everything that was spoken, Tsongkhapa
comprehended, with nothing omitted, the meaning of the words, which caused him to contact the
essence (lit. perfume/scent) of the difficult points. The master told Tsongkhapa, “You must
concentrate well on these instructions.”

In prior lifetimes they possessed the complete essence, the thoroughly pure fragrance, of the
commitments of the unexcelled vehicle. By means of the very interdependence of phenomena
that are not completely annihilated, this pair was connected in a mutual relationship, linked as
masters in a chain of scholars, a long white garland of holy Dharma practitioners. They were
extremely devoted as master and disciple from the very beginning.

Regarding that, the great Reverend Rendawa,581 called “Kumara-mati,”[youthful mind] was a
very luminous banner renowned as supremely pure in the three worlds. In the measure of youth,
even from the period of immaturity, he was thoroughly mature in the capacity for good conduct.
In childhood itself, the flying insect of eight worldly dharmas, all attachment to amusement and
play, and the sunshine of conceptual proliferation, disappeared. The gloomy darkness of self-
grasping that spreads like a flock of birds from which emerge attachment and aversion he
purified. He thoroughly completed the exercises of the five faces of discernment that preserve
the snow valleys, the Buddha’s teaching. And seeing the triple world like a city of gandharvas,
by the sport of the bodhisattva magical illusion, he practiced.

In youth he practiced well the entire verbal Dharma of the Conqueror’s teaching, not just hearing
the oral transmissions and empowerments. Now, not needing to rely on other spiritual friends, by
merely seeing a portion in fine detail once or twice together he arranged in his mind the complete
body of meaning that connects well the root commentaries of those treatises together with the
commentaries on the intention of the sūtras and tantras. He led by the path of reasoning
contained in his mind, each system unmixed, and he did not possess any obstacles regarding the
counsel of others. From the waning of the paths combining the reasoning of the Middle Way and
Validating Cognition, the special approach, its becoming but a mere name, having distinguished
the tradition of the path of reasoning of the Middle Way and Validating Cognition by his own
strength, he became the pioneer who weaves together the links in the garland of the Buddha’s
words, thus being the most important of all scholars in this northern direction.

Regarding the qualities of realization of this holy one, he is manifestly superior—like Mt. Meru
in the middle of the mountain chain—among the holders of the monastic discipline, like an elder
monk, by possessing freedom from all stains of bad conduct in higher ethics. And he regarded as

581
Recall that Khedrup was Rendawa’s student for a number of years prior to becoming Tsongkhapa’s.

459
if his only child all transmigrators by possessing continually in his mind the uncontrived mind of
the bodhisattva regarding all others as dear as oneself.

If seeing benefit for others, having seen hell fires as if lotus gardens, he entered therein. Having
seen the fortunes of thoroughly pure fields as if dream festivals, he did not rely on them. He
possessed that marvelous strength, the essence of the Conqueror’s children in whose deeds of
hardship he rejoiced, this great bodhisattva among ordinary beings.

He attained extremely firm samadhi in the creation and perfection stages of Guhyasamāja and
Cakrasaṁvara. He lacked all rivals with respect to the collection of qualities of clear realizations,
both common and uncommon. He possessed the special protection derived from not neglecting
the commitments promised before the eyes of the Conqueror, and was directly served by the
gods that manifestly guard the side of virtue. With the words “Excellent” they praised him.

At times of appearing partisan his intention was to act conscientiously toward the activities of
others’ Dharma teachings. The great pioneers, such as Ārya Nāgārjuna and Ārya Asanga, from
the center of the sky in the west, with great sounds from manifestly striking the great drum of the
holy Dharma, in vividly perceived signs filling the world, exclaimed his superiority in terms of
his collection of good qualities, yet that praise was never complete.

This very precious master [Tsongkhapa] himself, however, by initially discovering from this
very master the door to the combined reasoning of the Middle Way and Validating Cognition,
the tradition of the great charioteers, distinguished the interpretive and definitive words of the
Conqueror. Therefore, the main deeds of this lama are unrivalled.

In that way, that lama made in doses a system of pointing-out instructions regarding the
Treasury. Having made the system of explaining and listening to the Dharma, in conformity with
the fame of the dialecticians now, which are not special regarding the unique meaning of that, he
spoke and listened. Having been released for the summer sessions in Tsechen, both the teacher,
the reverend lama, and the teacher-student, went to Samling in Nyang-tö. And regarding the
reverend one [Rendawa], he heard once and kept firm in mind the Middle Way. The reverend
one was the very earliest [to understand] the words of the Middle Way.

At that time [the two] went to U [to meet] the translator, the great abbot, the expert in awareness
of the five places, the great lord of yoga who attained success, Jangchub Tsemo. In the winter
teaching session in the Potala at Kyishö, having heard the words of the Manual of Abhidharma,
at that time Rendawa already was a master of Abhidharma, but still he desired to hear the
Manual once from that teacher.

Then having gone to Dewachen for the winter session, they remained there. That reverend one
(Rendawa) went to Kyormolung to meet the abbot, a master of the four texts, in order to become
further skilled in Vinaya and Abhidharma. He was a great discipline holder, famed like the sun
and moon from amidst an ocean of holders of discipline of prior times. He was like the great son
of Geshé Thagmapa, the throne holder who held the commentarial tradition of the arhats of Balti,
being very expert in the discipline. Tsongkhapa desired to practice a portion of that good
explanation. He studied completely, together with the ancillaries, the commentary on the root

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text of the discipline with him. He memorized this supreme exegetical tradition of the discipline
and thus acquired a special, superior understanding.

At that time, Tsongkhapa memorized uninterruptedly each day seventeen pages of the
commentary on the great root discourse.582 Once, during this time of going for community tea
and so on, those of the assembly around him became distant as he became immersed in the
meaning of the sūtra of the Mother. While engaged in recitation, he became immersed in
equipoise on the meaning of the ungraspability of the appearance of all phenomena. The
activities of the assembly and even the phrases that oppose demons [that is, the Perfection of
Wisdom treatise] became indeterminate. Then having returned to the movement of conceptuality,
there arose effortlessly, continuing from beginning to end, single-pointed hearing within a state
of luminosity and emptiness. When this was emerging in his mind, that limit of understanding of
the adepts of Tibet, this great being contained in his mind the difficult points, without exception,
of the scripture. And he had qualities of contentment difficult to fathom as well as expertise like
this, the overall taste that is not merely confusion, and not the common samadhi understanding
thatness, and not included in the special common samadhi born in the mind of good experience
of quiescence similar to that.

At that time, at the cusp of memorizing just the remaining forty bundles of the extensive
commentary, there emerged a fierce illness that diminished his torso—an appearance of an
obstruction. He found no relief for a long time. Having gone to an expert accomplished in
managing pain, in Tolung Phur, he took up his experiential advice but no relief emerged. Having
gone to Dewachen, he took whatever therapy was available, but it was no help. He became
disappointed, for there were many disputes and conflicts at Dewachen.

He went in the direction of Tsang for the winter session under a certain teacher. Wanting to go to
Sakya, he was becoming tired by the touch of the cold in his upper robes; the journey seeming
distant, he went to an old place and remained there through the winter. In reliance on persistent,
extensive supplication by a fellow traveler and striving in that old place, unable to consult and
examine the opening of the Manual of Abhidharma, nevertheless at that time the words and
meaning appeared clearly and simultaneously in his mind simultaneously. Initially it seemed as if
a hallucination but he had the capacity to explain the text to his companion, confirming his
vision.

In the springtime, he went to Sakya after having gone to Narthang. At that time in Sakya, the
reverend lama, the great Rendawa, was listening to a teaching on Lamdré, and having met with
him, Tsongkhapa remained for only a mere eleven months at Sakya in his presence. During that
period of the teaching sessions of Lamdré and so forth, Rendawa made a careful explanation of
the Manual of Abhidharma for Tsongkhapa.

At that time, moreover, he mainly listened to and studied the Pramāṇavārttika and the
explanation of the Entry to the Middle Way and so forth. He heard also oral transmissions of
many volumes of the Kangyur and Tengyur and Vinaya oral transmissions. At one time Lama
Dorjé Rinchen explained the Sakya system of Hevajra. Having made connection with the
reverend lama at Sakya, he became skilled in the advice of an old tantric geshé of Sharpa Tshang

582
That is, Ornament of Clear Realizations, the oblique commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom literature.

461
monastic house. He took up this advice and going to the back side of Richen Gang monastic
house expelled the sound “ha,” and by doing this the prior illness remaining in his upper body
departed.

From Sakya the teachers, having gone a portion of the way to Lato Jang, remained through both
spring and summer in Ngamring. There, the reverend lama wrote his great commentary on the
Manual of Abhidharma. Tsongkhapa memorized the threads of the composition in stages, and
having request a detailed commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika, the great treatise, he heard it at
one time.

That autumn from his birthplace some needed clothing arrived, and he sent in return a likeness
that could perform enlightened activities of drinking and so forth. Then he went to U, and having
arrived with companions in U, he was encouraged by many to teach. From Amdo his mother had
produced a persistent request for his return. The desire to go to Amdo once was born him, and he
went to Maldro Lhalung. On the cusp of leaving, he purified his mind regarding [the need to]
practice. He immediately resolved in his mind not to go to Amdo, having produced, together
with complete disenchantment [with familial bonds], the forceful thought “I have committed not
to depart to Amdo now. There is no need.”

Due to the birth of this lama, also, like the leaves and branches of a great tree of Tsa-nda-na,
transcending calculation, like a collection of qualities of clear realizations attained, fell from the
surface to the earth. 583

Just the dazzling flowers of this wondrous life story clarify the impaired reliance of the mind by
managing the quivering hairs on the head of the garden of the body spontaneously subdued by
the canopy of the water-lotus of the eyes of the wise who beautify the transmission this thread of
words to any ear whatsoever.

Moreover, the cause that manifestly produces in this way this thoughtless arrangement of words
that express and praise frantically due to the force of faith is difficult to imagine, but it is
appropriate with respect to whatever other marvels of cyclic existence, as well as fame and
honor, from the perspective of differentiating thinking regarding this great being.

The holy ones, even if the topic is difficult, will experience such [clarifying] activity from
relying on the effort that has held perfectly the iron hook of mindfulness and alertness—the
companions that transform the extremely great strength that exhausts craving—and, afterward,
by that very connection, the slightest tip of the marvel that sets aside the experience that does not
produce the manifest desire for the splendor of, at the least, Indra and Brahma.

Regarding this, without reliance on even a small amount of renunciation in one’s earlier minds,
then nevertheless, however much there are respectful service, pleasant speech, eloquent praise
and marvels such as manifest offerings due to very great, exceedingly excellent connections, as
well as perception of the impermanence of all conceptual formations, love that wishes to protect
all those lacking protectors, and development that matches the faithful who wish to honor all the

583
This refers to the legendary tree that grew from the area where Tsongkhapa’s afterbirth was buried. Much later,
Kumbum Monastery was built on the site.

462
Conquerors together with their children, even so, you otherwise will increase craving
accordingly, and there will be no possibility or opportunity for this.

Regarding this, there are good qualities innately acquired by this (human) birth, yet even so there
is no emergence, no connection, that produces anew the remedy for all this [absence of necessary
factors for inducing renunciation and so forth] in this lifetime itself.

Moreover, regarding myself, preparing for good teachings by others, respectfully honoring them,
and so forth, for the sake of merely doing however much of this, without taking time to consider
all this, it is not suitable to take these impermanent things to be reliable. “These are like illusory
deceptions,” I should think, and transforming from the depths of my heart I should let go of mist-
like appearance with the fierce force of disenchantment, for these each exist as part of a long
continuum.

Regarding this, I have seen clearly that my wishes are not suitable to halt the craving for
contaminated excellences, and my good qualities of clear realization cannot compete with even a
mere portion of many famed ones in Tibet who possess a distinctive understanding that is
extremely lofty.

The masters of the Dharma—the buddhas, the tathāgatas—however, posit the reply that there is
not among the once returners in the sūtra collection of the small vehicle the mental engagement,
the antidote to that, but when there arises the goal of being on the precious seats of the fully
ordained monks and so forth, then from the perspective of learning and so forth, one will
establish closely the perception of suffering due to impermanence and there will be activities to
accomplish that aim.

Therefore, in this manner, the wondrous marvels of this life narrative create delight for the wise.

Then, that autumn, Tsongkhapa—having left his retreat in the middle of it—listened to many
oral transmissions of the Dharma from Lama Sonam Drakpa of Maldro Lhalung, and had deep
spiritual experiences. He viewed and understood [Sakya Pandita’s] Treasury of Reasoning
explanation of the Commentary [Pramāṇavārttika], and due to past circumstances, because of
perceiving well during the teaching the presentation of the path during the second chapter, a
fierce force of unfathomable faith in the principles of reasoning and the textual tradition of
Dharmakīrti, was born uncontrollably in him. Merely seeing the text of the Commentary of that
teacher from a far distance, his hair would tremble out of faith, and a continuous, uncontrolled
continuum of tears would come forth, it is said.

For the winter teaching session Tsongkhapa remained at Dewachen; having in the prior spring
seen and understood the books for which he wanted to do the debate rounds, he went to Tsang
and arrived at Narthang. Having been commanded by the lama-translator Don-zang, “listen, by
all means make a commentary on logic,” he needed to listen. During the summer sessions at
Narthang, he made the debate rounds on the Abhidharma root text together with the higher and
lower commentaries [i.e., Abhidharmasamuccaya and Abhidarmakośa, respectively]. At
Narthang he discarded the text he initially intended to study. Hence for the autumn teaching
sessions, hearing of the arrival of the great reverend lama [Rendawa] in Bodong he went to E,

463
and there listened to the explanation of Dandin’s Mirror of Poetry from the lama-translator
Namkha Zangpo.

Mainly he heard from this reverend lama Middle Way, Validating Cognition, and Abhidharma
teachings, and with the hope of creating a special connection in hearing each in his presence,
having requested those for which he wished, he also heard Perfection of Wisdom and Vinaya
teachings.

Tsongkhapa took up from Narthang abbot Kunga Gyaltsen the oral transmission of all the
collections of Middle Way reasoning, but not included among these was an explanation of Entry
to the Middle Way and instead the other collections, Wisdom and so forth. He was among the
practitioners in a great position with respect to the Middle Way previously, it is said there is
continuity in that, having listened to Lama Jamrinpa in Dewachen. He had heard from the
Dharma master, the lama, the collections of Middle Way reasoning and practiced the oral
transmission of the throne holder of Drangmoché, Lama Chö Shepa. It is said he also heard the
oral transmission from the Narthang [scholar] Sher Seng.584

In brief, at that time he set aside the view explained in the collection of reasoning of the teacher
and took up the oral transmission, as the former were becoming difficult. Then both teacher and
student went to Sakya together. Jé Rinpoché at that time made at Sakya the debate rounds among
scholars claimed to be superior, and by making the rounds in more than ten books at the time,
became accepted. At that time, it is said, the system was not to use other books when making the
debate rounds at the college grounds, and it did not take hold.

Then having gone to U immediately thereafter, from the period of the tenth day, recovering at
Gungthang, he commenced. In the great college grounds of Sangphu and Tsethang, in stages,
completing his previous Perfection of Wisdom rounds, he made the debate rounds of the other
four remaining textual collections.

At the time, all of the ocean-like basket holders, the spiritual friends, of the great college grounds
of U-Tsang, due to experiencing the festival of the new explanation coming from the treasury of
intelligence of this holy one, had their minds satisfied. By the menace of the terrifying claws of
reasoning, the force of thought from the blazing house of the power the good limb, fine analysis,
they quivered. By pacifying the garland of waves of inflated pride, the great ocean of vast depth
and breadth, the most knowledgeable, by the glorious discipline, the standing hairs of their faith
trembled.

Worlds without exception, by reveling in the celebration of this wondrous tale, come to establish
the banner of fame in the three grounds.

The essence of the full moon, courage,

The desire for the glorious nectar of the Sugata’s teaching,
Walking with intelligence on the path of eloquent explanations,
You arrange these constantly without rest,

584
This name appears to be an abbreviation of shes rab pha rol tu phyin pa (Perfection of Wisdom) and seng ge
(lion).

464
The root of virtue and goodness, the spiritual friend, the sun
Yet you ingest without exception a thousand brilliant explanations.

Power, the victory banner of the honey of the holy Dharma,

The fortunate bees have all that is essential.
The summoning tongue of the snake, life’s marvels,
These are visions like song and dance that will cause trembling.

The fetters of craving, desire for objects,

Liberating impartially the seal of the unclean womb,
Possessing the countenance of the lotus, the joy of the breast,
By casting a corner of the eye of the subtle body, it is like possessing desire.
By the lump of honey, the eloquent explanations of the Sage,
You steal away the six-limbed basis, the pith, the heart.

In all directions, the claws of faulty reasoning;

Resting atop the elephant, the opponent;
By the full measure/extent of your extensive, fine analysis;
Few activities, yet measuring all objects of knowledge;
By the crystal necklace of your dazzling fame;
Making fortunate the lovely throats of (all) directions;
This busy world is suffering—you, the protector,
Such is your taking up of freedom from desire in all your activities.

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CHAPTER FOUR: Education Focused on the Vajra Vehicle Literature585

During the time of the debate rounds in the great colleges, making requests with strong force of
faith, having experienced Tsongkhapa’s declaration of the holy Dharma, many holders of the
textual collections volunteered to become his disciples. Those with good aspirations considered,
“Relying on such a holy protector we will reach our desired goals, not by relying on others.”
Thinking thus, they volunteered to tend to the feet of this great being.

The college of Tsethang being fully assembled, the abbot was of the lineage of the Third
Buddha, the Kaśmīri Pandit Śākya Śrībhadra. The abbot overseeing the great congregation was
Kazhipa Tshul Rinpa. Sher Gonpo was ritual master of the smaller assemblies. The chant master
was the tantric master Domtson Sonam Dorjé. At the complete gathering of monks comprising
the assembly of the faithful, Tsongkhapa received the vow of full ordination (bsnyen par rdzogs
pa’i sdom pa). From the divine stream of the perfect completion of the precept of excellent
discipline, his heart became a good vessel of that lineage and an object of benefit to the entire
world, including the gods.

Then Tsongkhapa went to Densathil, where he met the Chennga Rinpoché Dragpa Jangchub. He
offered his gift of eloquence by explaining the holy Dharma, and Chennga Rinpoché wept from
the force of his faith. When later Tsongkhapa was to depart, he told his disciples, “For a youth to
possess such a great treasure of good qualities—may my future rebirth be such as this.”
He proclaimed this again and again, this story became well known. During that time, from this
same spiritual lama he received the complete oral instructions of the path and fruit, along with
the six dharmas of Nāropa, and the complete work of Jé Phagmodrupa, Chojé Jigten Gonpo and
others. At that time the translator Namtsenpa was invited by Chenngapa, who came to assist with
Tsongkhapa’s interest in learning Sanskrit completely. However, there were unfavorable
circumstances that emerged to prevent this.

Tsongkhapa then visited the monastery of Keru, Ongyi Lhakhang. He gave many teachings on
Validating Cognition, Perfection of Wisdom, Madhyamaka, and so forth to many scholars,
including Tshago Ponpo.586 Then he went to Kyishö, where remaining at Tshal he refined his
realization and vision of the flavor of the teachings and commentaries existing in Tibet. He
produced in his mind many doors of examination with respect to the meaning of all the
scriptures. He composed his great explanation of the Ornament of Clear Realizations together
with its commentaries.587 At that time there were three famed for good memory, Ling Tshung
Mé, Jampal Tashi from Amdo, and Shakya Drub. Tsong Khapa distinguished the size
distinctions regarding these vessels and understood very accurately the four divisions with great
scope previously unexperienced, like the sun rising on the point of the roof of the Tsuglhakhang
of Lhasa. He said three and a half folio were recorded and the two others completed a little.

585
Notice how, like Tsongkhapa’s Excellent Presence, Khedrup structures Haven mainly around Tsongkhapa’s
education, specifically differentiating the sequence of sutra and tantra learning, and then around their coordination in
Tsongkhapa’s role as teacher.
586
Tsha go dpon po, identity unknown.
587
That is, Golden Garland of Eloquence (legs bshad ser phreng).

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On one occasion, with Tshago Ponpo serving as attendant, he went to the image of the Jowo, the
lord of great compassion, in Lhasa and fasted there for a time. At that time, one evening as the
two, teacher and disciple, prayed intensely, in a dream-vision Tshago ba saw two white conch
shells fall from the sky into his lap. Immediately the two merged into one. He took this into his
hand and blew on it. He dreamed that an immeasurable sound resounded. Afterward he
accomplished great deeds of expanding the teachings in his home country of Gyalmo Rong.
This was a sign of that great activity.

In that dream Tsong Khapa was climbing a rocky mountain like the Da Dro Drag, which
extended above the upper reaches of Nyethang. On the soft white stone was a blue utpala flower
of large size and pure color. The leaves did not fade, and seemed as if made of turquoise.
Tsongkhapa took it in his hands. This flower is the symbol of Jetsun Tārā, but this was not an
indication of her support, as would be thought. Instead it was a sign of his lifetime deity, it is
said.

From Tshal Tsongkhapa went to Dewachen for the winter and taught many scriptures. Then in
the springtime he went to U, to Tö Jayul and taught Perfection of Wisdom and Validating
Cognition, Entry to the Middle Way and the Manual of Abhidharma to seventy geshés. He
returned to Tshal and began an extensive explanation of the Perfection of Wisdom and then
finished that afterward at Dewachen. He practiced well many great teachings of sūtra and tantra.
He learned that the lama Tokden Yeshé Gyaltsen had great realization and skill in the methods of
Kālacakra. Tsongkhapa asked him to instruct him in this; the two having gone to Kyormolung,
he then heard the detailed explanation of the great commentary of the Kālacakra, the Stainless
Light. He became skilled in its practices and important principles. He also taught many scriptures
to the scholars from Kyormolung.

In the summer he went to Dewachen. He illuminated the teachings to an ocean of clear minded
ones assembled there. Then in the winter he disciplined his mind in the Kālacakra at Tolung
Tshe mé and Ngang kar. He taught many intelligent geshés. Then Dzong Chi Dragpa Rinchen,
having faith in Tsong Khapa unbroken previously, having made many supplications, arrived to
ask him to visit Yarlung. Hence Tsongkhapa went, stopping en route at the monastery of
Gongkar. The patron of Gongkar, from the faith in his heart toward Tsong Khapa, made
offerings and requested teachings. During that spring more than seventy scholars in the temple
were instructed in all five of the great scriptures. In Gongkar, he was given immeasurable service
and reverence. From there he went to Yarlung and settled at Monkhar. He taught many people.
At that time, due to Dzong Chi Ba’s having worshipped him with respect, offering to
Tsongkhapa all of his possessions due to his earlier lucid teachings on all the sūtra topics on that
occasion, he developed. For the sake of students possessing the appropriate fortune—the great
mandalas of the lower and higher tantra divisions—by maturing them with the illumination of
the individual deities and ripening innumerable students with the teachings of meditation suited
to each with secret precept and verbal teaching, he delivered them.

At that time in particular our lama was said to be blessed by Sarasvatī, the goddess of speech.
Having received her illumination, Tsongkhapa was personally blessed by her many times, it is
said.

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During that winter he resided at Tashi Dong. At that time one night when he was in front of the
fire, while discussing the life histories of the great scholars of Tibet, he remarked, “By Kazhipa
Sher Senggé, eleven books were taught in one session of Dharma teachings, and it is said that
was the most ever being taught.” Thus, Geshé Shatön and the others entreated Tsongkhapa to
teach the same amount at one time. He asked, “Why? These...” They pleaded with him, “Then
please do that.” That month from the tenth day until the new moon he taught, and in that he
roughly included the main collection of all books, for he hoped to include the entire Dharma at
one time. Since he needed to wait for many scholars coming from Sangphu and elsewhere, for
three days he spoke about Milarepa, Marpa, and so on. From the fifth day in one day he included
fifteen Indian treatises at one time. On each day from dawn until dusk he expounded without
interruption in fifteen teaching sessions. Among them he completed two small volumes. Within
these he determined beyond doubt the difficult questions with proof, his explanation based upon
the commentaries of seventeen teachings; these included Commentary on Validating Cognition,
Perfection of Wisdom, Abhidharma higher and lower, Vinaya, four of the Maitreya treatises, five
of the Madhyamaka treatises, Entry to the Middle Way, the Four Hundred, and Guide to the
Bodhisattva Way of Life. He also explained in detail other scriptures, each based upon its own
commentary. He completed this after three months. During that time, every night after finishing
his teachings, he himself practiced without interruption the yoga of two stages of the
concentration for the self-creation of Vajrabhairava. All there saw the tutelary deity; hence, all
agreed: he must be a great bodhisattva, or this would not have come to pass.

That summer, having gone to Olkha mountain near Yarlung, in strict meditation he practiced the
four-session yoga and the recitation of the mantras of Śrī Cakrasaṁvara and accomplished many
activities of self-creation. He practiced assiduously the six dharmas of Niguma along with their
visualizations to train his mind. And on a certain day, he practiced the breath application of inner
heat (gtummo, caṇḍalī) some eight hundred times. He produced many good experiences of
binding commitments related to inner heat and so forth.

Then he travelled to Tön Kyishö, and having met personally with Reverend Rendawa, the two,
teacher and student, went together to U. They settled in Potala and, having provided the gift of
many eloquent explanations of the Dharma to the students, Rendawa returned to Tsang. This
reverend lama (Tsongkhapa) spent the winter on the mountain of Kyormolung. He taught many
scholars the Kālacakra as well as Perfection of Wisdom, Validating Cognition, Abhidharma, and
so on.

Next, in the spring of the horse year (1390), to determine the meaning of the explanations of the
great tantra divisions, together with the powers, methods, and secret quintessential instructions,
Tsongkhapa returned to Tsang to hear the instructions of Rendawa. He settled at Rong gi Nub
Chölung, and heard various teachings from the abbot, Dragpa Shenyen.

At that time there were two attendants of Tsong Khapa named Sonam Dragpa and Sherab
Dragpa from Amdo. They went to have audience in a remote place, Demchok Teng, with a
teacher called Lama Umapa Tsondru Senggé. Lama Umapa told them “I must receive the vision
of Sarasvatī from your teacher.” Then he and Tsong Khapa met, and Tsongkhapa conferred the
vison of Sarasvatī upon him. The two had intense discussions, and Tsong Khapa heard of
Umapa’s clear visions of the body and speech of Reverend Mañjuśrī in Amdo as a boy herding

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cattle and how he learned methods of examining his visions prior to and following these. Umapa
told him, “Not yet having established utter certainty about this, I must apply profound
examination in my mind.” Mañjuśrī approved and told him, “you must receive the vision of
Sarasvatī.” “I have come,” he replied. Then Tsong Khapa was able to investigate this vision by
asking deep questions regarding the primary issues of Dharma, such as the Madhyamaka view.
Tsongkhapa then had no doubt in his mind regarding duality.

Having entreated him earnestly, Lama Umapa continued, “However, the body and speech of the
divine Mañjuśrī are not perceived by the senses. The deity is perceived directly by the mind-
sense directed toward the actual body of the archetypal deity.” Tsong Khapa replied, “Even
though I have a great desire to know the secret quintessential precept, the method of achieving
the vision of holy Mañjuśrī, even so Reverend Rendawa is now at Taktsang, and the time has
been determined for the teacher and disciple to meet. Hence at this time I cannot devote myself
to this attainment.” The lama’s last words were: “This has been established as a sign of future
achievement.”

Then Tsong Khapa proceeded to Taktsang. Rendawa, Lotsawa Don Zangba and Dragpa
Gyaltsenpa—attended by many highly developed spiritual teachers and a great collection of
monks concentrated in meditation—gathered there. The setting was excellent for focusing on the
enormous responsibility of perfecting the teaching and practice of the Dharma. All the devoted
bodhisattvas offered their great knowledge of the sublime scriptures. All of them had the peerless
discipline required to carry the twofold precious burden of the Dharma as one. The Dharma
master Lotsawa Kyabchog Pal Zangpo began by entering deep meditation, and from his throat
resounded the melody of a leader with innate skill. All were blessed by the buddha-teaching like
a lotus lake. Dragpa Gyaltsenpa taught Perfection of Wisdom and Chöjé Kyabchogpa taught
Hevajra. Rendawa taught his own commentary on the Commentary on Validating Cognition.
Tsongkhapa heard all these, and the two, master and disciple, engaged in extensive debate to
settle the difficult questions.

Both master and disciple went to seek teachings. Tsongkhapa heard directly from Rendawa at
one time the root tantra of the king of tantras, Śrī Guhyasamāja. One night in a dream
Tsongkhapa met the precious lama Chökyi Pal of Gong Sum Dechen from whom he long wished
to learn about the Kālacakra. In this dream he heard a voice saying, “Chökyi Pal heard from
Butön Rinpoché the great commentary of Kālacakra seventeen times.” Later when Tsongkhapa
met the lama, he asked if he heard the Kālacakra from Butön Rinpoché, and the lama replied that
he had heard it seventeen times. At that time Rendawa said, “Would it not be better to explain
the sūtras, since they are very helpful, and to delay investigation of the tantras?” But Tsongkhapa
responded with humility: “I have the fierce ambition to pursue investigation into the tantras, so
now I prefer to concentrate on investigating the tantras.”

During that period, regarding those who sought learning, once they learned a portion of the
metaphysical [perfection] teachings, they were not willing to enter the practice of the tantras, but
even if they heard some of these teachings, they discovered many ways to turn away from
these.588 Others, being small minded, who were more interested in the tantras made that a cause

588
Notice that Khedrup introduces this notion of not investigating the tantras, which Tsongkhapa discusses early in
Lam rim chen mo, at this juncture when Rendawa suggests Tsongkhapa focus on teaching exoteric topics. What

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to deprecate the vehicle of the perfections. Thus, by this inferior thinking, partisan feeling was
strong between those following these two branches of the teaching. The extremely bad karma of
abandoning the Dharma became widespread, the result leading to the hells. Even so, some with
good instincts did not engage either teaching exclusively, taking them to be of the same nature
without deprecating either. These ones, who had collected the excellent karmic fortune causing
them to aspire to hold the buddha teaching from many perspectives, were rare to locate. Indeed,
in former times also, the pure spiritual friends who approached the Dharma without partisan
thinking were rare.

Under such conditions, even from childhood our great being possessed the great aspiration to
carry the weight of the entire teaching of the Buddha. In his own words, “I never had to be urged
by anyone to pursue the direction of the tantras. From a young age, I had a fierce desire to know
them. I always had the thought of the need to learn all the varieties of the tantras.”

Rendawa went to Sakya, and Tsongkhapa went to Rong Chölung, where he had profound
communication with Lama Umapa, learning in particular the methods of Mañjuśrī. He also came
to the definite resolution for attaining of the goals of tantra, having heard the methods of
inspiration of tantra. He then desired to visit at Nyang-tö Rinpoché Dechenpa. He was told, “If
you attempt to travel through the great battle at Phagmodrupa there will be disaster.” Hence,
waiting until the fighting ended, he spent the autumn in the cave of Ring Lung of Rong.
In the winter he was able to go the Geng Sum Dechen of Nyang-tö, where he met the precious
Lama Chökyi Pal, master of the secret precepts of the meaning and practice of many tantras, who
was particularly expert in Kālacakra, as he was the foremost disciple of Butön Rinpoché. On the
evening of their initial meeting Tsongkhapa offered golden cloth, and the following fine tea and
a bolt of silk. Then he requested the instruction in the great commentary of the Kālacakra
together with its supplements.

The process of instruction, already underway, had reached a point just before the beginning of
the second chapter. Chökyi Pal explained, “The yellow cloth corresponds to the dissolution
sequence of the earth sphere; hence it is a sign of the accomplishment of the perfection stage.
The green silk corresponds to the space sphere and the creation stage, a sign that it will be
accomplished. The beginning of the second chapter is concerned with the maturing process of
the greatest beings.”

The occasion of Tsongkhapa’s arrival was filled with omens that indicated good fortune. "He
must receive the complete teaching," the teacher declared with great joy. He began at the second
chapter and then returned to read the first chapter again, and they continued to study from the
end of that autumn into early spring, when they completed the commentary. Tsongkhapa also
learned completely the outline of the methods for practice related to the commentary. Then,
having the desire to learn all the teachings of yoga, he wanted to put those methods to practice.
At that time, Butön’s best disciple in yoga, named Yogopa Tshewang, was in Zhalu. Tsongkhapa

might appear to be a pointed criticism of Rendawa is not, however, for Rendawa is referring to the needs and
capacities of those whom Tsongkhapa would teach, which is to agree Tsongkhapa’s assessment of the problem.
Rendawa himself had studied the tantras, as Khedrup has made clear above. Thus, Rendawa’s error is to have
underestimated Tsongkhapa’s capacity for clarifying the tantras and the concomitant capacity for a certain portion of
the populace to meet his challenge.

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and these two, including Yogopa Gönzang, went to the meditation house in Nyang-tö Mé called
Tri tsa khang, where they practiced constructing of the great mandalas of Vajradhatu (rdo rje
dbyings) and the Vajraśekhara (dpal mchog rtse mo) and others. He practiced perfectly the
mudras and the methods, such as tracing the lines, related to the maṇḍalas.

One night Tsongkhapa had a dream in which he saw an elderly lama, Lama Khyungpo Lhepa,
adorned with a diadem and sitting upon a great throne, holding a vajra and and a bell (ghaṇṭa,
dril bu), Tsongkhapa seated before him. The lama stood up with a vajra-like posture and then
circled Tsongkhapa thrice to the right while ringing his bell. Sounds resounded from his rosary,
such as EKA PATSIKA, and he placed both bell and vajra on Tsongkhapa's head, intoning,
“Karmavajra, he is called.” He returned to his throne, and Tsongkhapa awoke. Analyzing the
dream, Tsongkhapa explained afterward, his former name had been Amogha and Karmavajra the
name of the family of Amoghasiddhi—thus it seemed to him.

From that spring through autumn at Dechen while gaining skill in the three revolutions of the
rosary, learning the principles of tantric practices of dance, painting proportions, and song (gar
thig dbyangs)589 and receiving the explanations and powers of the Vajramāla from Chökyi Pal.
In addition he learned many profound and extensive teachings, such as that of the Bhagavān
Mahācakra Vajrapāṇi, with its power, oral instructions, and secret precepts.

He then thought to learn yoga from Khyungpo Lhepa at Zhalu. One night he had another dream.
On a great throne a lama of pleasant countenance said to be Khyungpo-pa, and Tsongkhapa sat
below. The lama held his two hands over the center of his heart, and Tsongkhapa watched as he
showed his open heart. Within the lama’s heart revolved a mantra rosary, and he saw that the
circle of letters did not include HRAM, but he could read all the letters in his dream.

When he met the lama later on, Tsongkhapa told him that he was the perfect likeness of his
dream. He then spent a whole year at Zhalu. He learned from Lama Khyungo Lhepa all the lower
tantra divisions and the great mandalas just as the pure uninterrupted continuity of consecration
has been maintained to the present in Tibet. He also learned the unexcelled yoga tantras, such as
the systems of Kanhapa and Luipa and so forth of the Bhagavān Cakrasaṁvara. The lama poured
into him as if a vessel all the instructions he possessed, and the disciple propitiated him with
service and offerings, his mind completely drawn with the iron hook (lcags kyu) of faith.

At that time the reverend Lama Khyungpo Lhepa, upon conferring consecration, explained the
circumstance of receiving this consecration by the grace of a certain lama each time. When he
completed his instructions, he said that he possessed no regret, for he had transmitted them to a
master of the Dharma. When he (Kyungpo Lhepa) and Butön Rinpoché initially received the
consecration of Śrī Guhyasamāja, the yoga and so on, in the assembly of the great mandalas from
Kunkhyen Phag Ö, the all-knowing (kun mkhyen) explained “Lord Marpa erected a pillar like a
rising sun,” and so on, and he sang various songs in praise of the lineage of teaching. “That great
pillar like a rising sun, is that not you, Khyungpo, teacher and meditator?” He told tales like this.

589
This refers to three elements of tantric performance, gar (costumed dance performance), thig (measuring the
proportions of the mandala to be created, whether physically or imaginatively as one’s ritual space in self-creation)
and dbyangs (melody, song). These typically are explained as the three (gsum) arts required of a ritual master.

471
From both Kunkhyen Phagpa and the all-knowing Butön Rinpoché, Khyungpo Lhepa received
the essence of blessings like an ocean of instruction, and then in turn he passed the perfect,
complete teachings of the tantric vehicle to the hands of this precious master possessing the clear
intention of his mission to benefit living beings. In the precious master’s own words: “As the
principal root of all attainments of tantra depends only on pleasing the lama, at all times of
conferring consecration must propitiate like that.” This gives much to ponder.

Upon having completely settled his mind due to hearing all the necessary teachings from
Khyungpo Lhepa, he returned to the presence of Chökyi Pal at Dechen. He learned many
commentaries of the Kālacakra, the Vajra Heart Commentary (rdo rje snying ’grel),590
Vajrapāṇi’s Commentary on the Upper Portion (phyag rdor stod ‘grel),591 and the Great
Commentary of Nāropa (Nāro ‘grel chen), and so on. He learned many other teachings from the
complete works of Butön Rinpoché and from the two systems of the Śrī Guhyasamāja.

Next Tsongkhapa sought out the presence of Gyaltsen Dragpa, the great scholar of Zhalu, on
Phagpa mountain. From him Tsongkhapa learned various instructions regarding the application
of yoga, particularly those composed by Butön Rinpoché; the root tantra of the yoga tantra class,
the Reality Compendium (Tattvasaṁgraha); the explanatory tantra, Vajra Pavillion
(Vajraśekhara); the Glorious Supreme (dpal mchog); the Tantra Eliminating All Lower Worlds
(Sarvadurgatipariśodhana/ngan song spyong rgyud); Illuminating Thatness (de nyid snang ba);
the Ornament of Kosala (ko sa la’i rgyan), the Great Commentary on the Glorious Supreme
(dpal mchog ’grel chen), and so on, along with uncountable tantras and their commentaries.

In the fall of the monkey year (1392), Tsongkhapa and Lama Umapa went to Gadong Monastery
in U. Having gone to pray before the great Jowo (Jo bo) Rinpoché in Lhasa, the two then
together went to meditate in Gadong.

At this point it is suitable to narrate the outline of the life history of Lama Umapa. From his
youth when he was a cowherd in Amdo, by the force of the karma accumulated in former lives,
without effort during this lifetime, from his own heart the sound of ARAPATSANA emerged,
and the vision of the appearance of Mañjuśrī appeared spontaneously to him. He then received
various teachings and visions and, upon undertaking specific commitments, attained many
similar visions of the body and speech of Mañjuśrī. Nevertheless, his heart was consumed with
questions, and so he went to study in Sangphu. There, attaining insight into the Perfection of
Wisdom, his learning grew more excellent. Wishing to become a scholar, Umapa was told by his
tutelary deity, “Give away all your possessions!” Umapa replied: “I don't think it is my destiny to
study.” The deity explained: “Treasures to be unearthed exist near here.” Once Umapa had given
his possessions to the Sangha, the deity said, “Now search for treasures to unearth.” The deity
then prompted him: “Be done with worldly concerns and apply yourself to virtue!”

Thus, having liberated himself from worldly ambitions, Umapa traveled to Kongpo. There he
learned the mahāmudra collection of teachings (chos skor) of Kam tshang [Kagyu tradition] and

590
This is a commentary on the Hevajra Tantra, written by one Vajrapāṇi.
591
This is a commentary on the Cakrasaṁvara Tantra.

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so on. He concentrated his mind. His visions of the body and speech of his tutelary deity had
been clear but now became steady. He learned the six-limbed practice (sbyor drug)592 from
Tokden Tshekar at Samyé. His vision of his tutelary deity increased in clarity and constancy.
Umapa inquired, “Should I study with Tokdenpa?” The reply came: “Do not study [with him].”
He asked, “Should I study with Lama Shen Gyalwa?” The reply came: “If you study with him, it
is all right.” This lama showed Umapa the signs of the four consecrations, the secret precept
explained in the Path and Fruit (lam ’bras teaching), these signs encountered according to the
explanation of the tantras. He learned the system of encountering these signs. “Your learning is
correct,” he was told. The deity spoke to him. “It is good to reflect in your mind the mudras
showing the signs, but is unnecessary to move your body. He does not know this.”

Umapa wanted to go to Tsang. Regarding the famed two, “burning and falling” (techniques of
inner heat [gtum mo] meditation), he inquired, “From whom should I learn this?” “Go there and
on the path of ’Bum Tsho Gadong you will meet a man. Heed what he says.” He went there and
met a poor man along that path. Umapa asked him what to do, and he was told to go to
Barawachan (’ba’ ra ba can). He went there and studied mahāmudra. Living as a beggar, his
mind of renunciation increased strongly. However, he had doubts regarding his view, and he
asked (his tutelary deity): “Is this the transcendent insight from the teachings?” The reply was:
“Not at all.” Upon the prediction of his tutelary deity, he travelled to Sakya and there studied
Madhyamaka and Vinaya with Reverend Rendawa. Then having gone to Rong Chölung, Umapa
heard from Tsongkhapa a commentary to Entry to the Middle Way.

In brief, Umapa’s actual spiritual teacher was Mañjuśrī himself. Each morning upon waking he
received one verse from his tutelary deity. Umapa was taught directly in the methods and
concentrations of meditation regarding renunciation, the spirit of enlightenment, and the view,
and taught the antidote to each mental addiction. In his ordinary actions of body, speech, and
mind, he never followed his own predilections, following instead the advice of the tutelary deity.
His immeasurable efforts regarding realization would be difficult for most to imagine. After he
passed into nirvana, all present observed his body dissolving into the sky, displaying tongues of
flames with shapes of swords and lotuses, like those created by skilled artists. His relics,
possessing the color of saffron and a crystalline quality, were uncountable. Some said the relics
were not many but rather a single wheel possessing eight spokes with the center appearing like a
pearl hub, a magical appearance.

While Tsongkhapa and Lama Umapa resided together at Gadong, Tsongkhapa listened to
instructions regarding attaining the vision of Mañjuśrī. Concentrating his mind on the non-
differentiation of lama and deity, Tsongkhapa made intense effort toward pleasing the deity.

In whatever effort Tsongkhapa undertook in hearing, contemplation, and meditation, due to the
effects of the maturing of the power of his excellent practice from beginningless time, he was
never tainted even slightly by worldly motivations, such as being superior to others, or gathering
possessions or followers, or achieving fame or respect. Instead his mind was immersed in the
sole concentration to attain enlightenment. His words were precise, and his explanations
regarding their meaning more insightful than those of others. In debate circles, others were
unable to counter his system of exposition, and his methods made him able of refuting other

592
Presumably this refers to the six-limbs of yoga in Kālacakra practice.

473
positions; nevertheless, he never made the slightest effort in this. In his work of composition,
debate, or explanation, he did not attempt to overwhelm or ridicule his opponents, and he did not
display pride in his own skill to achieve fame. From the beginning his main goal in hearing and
contemplation was enlightenment itself. His forthright attitude was clear, and for anyone with a
mind oriented even slightly toward the Dharma, the marvellous history of his forthright attitude
should inspire immense faith.

Therefore, when determining the meaning of the scriptures together with their commentaries,
Tsongkhapa thought analytically, with his mind concentrated on the Buddha’s intention to lead
beings to the path to liberation and enlightenment, and on the function of the systems created for
that same purpose by the great pioneers. Since he was extremely intelligent, his rationality
became foremost in accord with the Dharma. His analysis penetrated problems with only a few
words from another. His way of serving as a refuge for others merely through his expressions
was not simply spontaneous, but emerged through this understanding: “Having divided all the
teachings into those of definitive and interpretable meanings, these great pioneers, the
systematizers of the supreme verbal teaching, analyzed with fine reasoning the scriptures and
commentaries of the Buddha regarding the meaning of the scriptures of definitive meaning. They
provided the method to find the way to avoid extremes.” Hence, having a mind like a thirsty man
seeking to drink, he made great effort strictly to find the meaning of the teachings in this way.

As he himself said:
“These days people in Tibet who regard as ultimate the good understanding of wisdom, merely
by looking at the majority of teachings of scripture and commentary, think, the meaning is like
this, and they follow such a path without effort. They think that by showing others in this
manner, their minds easily go to certain objects of great understanding, for they possess this
ability naturally. However, such persons are not reliable. When examined with fine reasoning,
most of their understanding that it is just like this seems to be useless. Thus, if one talks too
much before accomplishing the most rigorous investigation with correct and excellent fine
reasoning, this is very unseemly.”

Thus, for sources Tsongkhapa determined to locate spiritual guides who taught without error
according to the teachings of Nāgārjuna and so on, aspiring to learn both the ultimate view and
the five stages of the Guhyasamāja path, and particularly of great importance the difficult
realization related to the magic body, since lacking these—the meditation of thatness and the
striving for buddhahood on the path of unexcelled yoga tantra and so on—one falls to a great
abyss. These were spiritual guides of India, Nepal, and Tibet, and from the last U, Tsang, and
Khams. To locate them he offered to suffer whatever difficulty without concern for his body or
life; he thought, with great resolve in his heart, “I must go immediately.”

With Lama Umapa translating, Tsongkhapa inquired with probing analysis of Holy Mañjuśrī
questions regarding the Madhyamaka view, distinctions between the tantra and perfections
(vehicle) , the most important elements of the path of unexcelled yoga, the sequence of the five
stages, and many other topics.

At that time Tsong Khapa asserted no position and posited no system of his own, but thought he
was applying the proper mode of the Madhyamaka theory to the positions of others. He asked

474
Mañjuśrī, “My Madhyamaka view, is it the correct view of the Prāsaṅgika?" The reply was: “Not
at all!.” He then taught Tsongkhapa innumerable keys and methods of analysis of teachings.
Then Mañjuśrī advised him: “Henceforth, concentrate on making the lama and the deity
inseparable. Make effort to purify yourself of all previously accumulated misconduct and
defilements, and accumulate completely the collections of merit and wisdom. Practice without
interruption your analysis of the meanings of both sūtra and tantra in dependence on the
reasoning of the great pioneers. Soon you will discover certainty regarding the ultimate key of
the view and the flawless meanings of sūtra and tantra. If you teach now, it is not useful.
Withdraw from activity, remain in solitude, and hold achievement to be the essence.”
Tsongkhapa determined to follow this advice fully, withdrawing from activity and into solitude
to practice.

The great ocean of textual teachings holding tantric knowledge,

Undulating from the waves of the four pure powers,
And playing in white foam in the middle of the two stages,
Becomes the treasure of a million jewels of attainments.

Desire for one’s own purpose, the slayer of pure virtue,

Unlike worldly gods, the food that is compassion,
You digested that with your seer's heart,
Having drawn it to your wide mouth of total analysis.

Holding to emptiness, leading with wide learning,

Your clear intelligence, the ornament of deathless enjoyment,
Having dominion over the glorious elixir of the supreme vehicle,
May you triumph, lord of the wish-fulfilling tree, the buddha-teaching!

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 CHAPTER FIVE: Summary of the Deeds Benefitting the Dharma and Living Beings Upon
Tsongkhapa Himself Achieving the State of King of the Dharma

Then that autumn Lama Umapa wished to go to Amdo. Together he and Tsong Khapa went to
Lhasa, where both, teacher and student, spent their time in concentrated prayer. In the Lhasa
Jokhang temple, Tsong Khapa gave to Lama Umapa the complete four consecrations of
Guhyasamāja Akshobhya. Next, Tsongkhapa went to Kyormolung, where he taught many
teachings.

In the tenth month of the Monkey year (1392), when he was thirty-six years old, Tsongkhapa left
Kyormolung with four from U: Jamkar, Palden Zangpo, Tokden Jangseng, the senior monk
Rinchen Gyaltsen, and the senior monk Zangkyong; and four from Amdo: Lama Jampal Gyatso,
Geshé Sherab Drag, Geshé Jampal Tashi, and Geshé Pal Kyong. At that time the upper estate of
Neu dzong served as the patron for the nine, and they withdrew into seclusion at Olkha to study
the teaching. They remained there through the winter (1392-93), and the people of the region
patronized them with immense faith. While staying at that place, their main emphasis was on the
practices of purification and accumulation, connected with the four antidote powers. Tsongkhapa
himself made incalculable intense efforts in the recitation of repentance, performing prostrations,
and mandala offerings until the tips of his fingers were raw.

In the words of the great Geshé Drolungba, “If it were not for these sūtras of the Buddha
Garland, how would the bodhisattvas of Tibet learn the correct activities?”593 Thus they
carefully examined all the sūtras that teach the great deeds of the bodhisattvas, such as the
Buddha Garland and so on. In these are taught the wondrous methods for generating the power
of the universal vehicle which by the immeasurable strong heart of bodhisattvas is learned, has
been learned in the past, and will be learned in the future.

This great being Tsongkhapa had no trepidation to undertake such a path. In order to proceed
with the strong force of inspiration, he concentrated on the clear instructions of the great deeds
and powerful hearts of the bodhisattvas described in the sūtras. While he met with some hardship
initially, upon becoming acclimated, he remained undaunted by the difficulties of those
marvellous deeds, with his own innately strong heart grew effortlessly. Later he explained that he
was driven naturally by the strong power of inspiration. This statement is an excellent precept for
those devotees of the universal vehicle, and is therefore recorded in this biography of this
immeasurably great being.

That summer (1393) Tsongkhapa visited the Jowo Maitreya of Dzing Ji, before whom he
performed extensive prayers and offerings. That winter (1393-94) he visited Dagpo Manlung
Gyasog Phur. He increased his concentration and attained inconceivable special qualities. Prior
to that time he was unable to perform perfectly the self-creation of Thirteen-Deity Vajrabhairava.

In the spring (1394) he returned to Olkha. The cathedral of Dzing Ji, constructed earlier by Gar
Mi Yontan Gyung Drung, contained the most excellent bronze image of Jowo Maitreya that
possessed a wonderful power of blessings. Recently, the wall paintings became faded and

593
That is, the Buddhāvataṁsaka, sangs rgyas phal po che. Drolungpa is the author of the lam rim treatise that
serves as the direct exemplar for Tsongkhapa’s own lam rim chen mo.

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obscured. When Tsonghkapa saw the dust on the images he felt miserable and could not control
his tears. Deciding to undertake repairs, he gave gifts to Olkha Tag Tsiba who mended the face
and crown and ornamentation of the statue.

At the time of making gifts to the artisans to persuade them to repair the images, the teachers and
students gathered all their resources, amounting to twelve cents (sho). Not knowing what else to
do, they considered making a propitiation ritual by offering a torma (gtor ma) cake. However,
they lacked butter (to mold the torma), but an elderly devotee offered them a skin of butter.
Hence, they performed the ceremony, and then on the next day itself various nomad families
came to the temple to offer the necessary resources. After this, people without attachment to their
material possessions provided extensive offerings. There are many such stories of the
spontaneous manifestation of wealth for the sake of spiritual activity due to the heartfelt
performance of the propitiation ceremony, along with the torma offering, directed to (the deity)
Kubera.

During that time many artisans who were proficient in making images of deities became
overwhelmed with faith and arrived there from the Yarlung area. Many took lay or monastic
vows, and many of the people assisting the renovation stopped speaking in ordinary ways and
only spoke in verses of prayer. In these wondrous ways, all seemed to be moved by inspiration to
accomplish these meritorious deeds. When one evening, in order to establish the field of
Mañjuśrī, they made prayers of dedication, a young boy offered a butter lamp, and all were
amazed to see the following day that lamp still burning. Henceforth, new dedications were
performed upon the creation of each image, and not a single butter lamp failed to remain afire
like that. Upon achieving all the designs of images, they then constructed the mandala of Secret
(guhya) Mañjuśrī (’jam dpal gsang ldan). Then Tsongkhapa performed an extensive dedication
at which time he conferred the power of Secret Mañjuśrī on more than ten fortunate devotees.
The resident monks received many offerings of food and clothing on this occasion, and their
conditions of study and meditation were improved significantly.

During the actual day of dedication, many people noticed an obvious increase in their capacity to
recall verses, to perform rituals, and to concentrate clearly. “How could this be so?” they
wondered. Deciphering the signs, they realized that the length of this particular day was
extremely long for that time of the year. Many people confirmed this. Moreover, in their dreams
many observed ḍākinīs drawing images in the sky. The abbot of Lhodrak Chagdor saw seven
buddhas in the northern area of the sky. Asked about this, he explained, “They have been invited
to the dedication at Dzing Ji.”594

594
There is no information to specify the significance of why seven unnamed buddhas would appear in this way.
The only explanation that comes to mind, and is purely conjectural, is that this may be an oblique reference to the
sutra The Extensive Details of the Aspirations of Seven Previous Tathāgatas (Āryasaptatathāgatapūrvapraṇidhāna-
viśeṣavistāra). These seven, in that context, are invoked with reference to their special benefits during the time of
the imminent disappearance of the Dharma. In the body of the dissertation, I have suggested that Tsongkhapa does
not make significant reference to that trope, but the trope is present nevertheless in the ambient culture, and of
course Khedrup makes use of it here to refer to analogous conditions within Tibet. If we take this trope as strictly
rhetorical and open to disproof, whereby Tsongkhapa is able to help reverse the negative karmic conditions that are
both individual and communal, then the appearance of these seven buddhas suggests, perhaps, that their having been
invited to the re-dedication of Dzing Ji reflects the re-dedication, led by Tsongkhapa and invoking Maitreya
symbolism, on a social level of Central Tibet to Buddhist practice in line with such a reversal.

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At that time the Lhodrag abbot Namkha Gyaltsen sent a letter inviting Tsongkhapa, informing
him that he wished to ask certain questions, to discuss signs regarding his lifespan, and to offer
him propitiation for the sake of his teachings. Thus Tsongkhapa travelled to Lhodrag Drawo
hermitage. To the large assembly of monks he gave many teaches, and to the abbot himself
Tsongkhapa conferred the illumination and power of Dra-nga (grwa lnga) and so on.595 From the
abbot Tsong Khapa learned the principles of the stages of the path to enlightenment. Tsongkhapa
remained there for seven months.

At this time, Tsongkhapa composed the marvellous praise entitled The Crown Ornament of
Brahmā. Reflecting on specific signs related to the great importance regarding the teaching of
the pure morality of the Vinaya, and upon receiving extensive offerings of food and gold, the
three robes, begging bowls, and the monk’s walking staff, he sent these offerings to the Jowo
Maitreya at Dzing Ji.

During this time Tsongkhapa wished fervently to visit the Mountain of Wood [uncertain,
mountains and woods? shing gi ri] in India, but his tutelary deity, acknowledging the wonder of
meeting with the great adept Maitrépa, foretold that many followers would die from contracting
fever there. Thus Tsongkhapa instead went to Nyal and remained for five months at Loro Tö
Tag.(1394-1395) There he discovered the original text of the Great Stages of the Teaching,
composed by the great Geshé Trinlé. Revering and making offerings to the text, Tsongkhapa
carefully examined it and attained great insight into it, and taught its profound meaning to the
people there.

Then, having seen that the meaning of all the scriptures of the Buddha, and that all their words in
general provide the structure of methods to be undertaken for the sake of personal spiritual
development—from the beginner stage forward, the actual path, with its classifications and
stages, must harmonize with the system of the great pioneers, he withdrew from activity again
and made rigorous supplication to lama and deity. He examined with care all the scriptures with
their commentaries.

In this way he gained realization regarding the practical application of all the teachings, from
depending on the spiritual teacher to the method of combining serenity and transcendent insight,
the ordinary path of individual and universal vehicles, the general extraordinary path of the
universal vehicle—and also beyond that the extraordinary techniques of the tantras, with their
actual path of practice, including their stages and standards. With certainty he saw these were not
pointless and separate features, but rather they functioned as parts of the whole method for any
one person, whatever their spiritual level, to attain buddhahood. They were not just scholarly
explanations, but should be applied to mature the capacity of any practitioner concentrating
carefully, whatever level of low, middling, or exceeding intelligence. Tsongkhapa became
master of the stages for leading students of whatever capacity, through effort in the stages of
discipline for the mind.

595
This appears to be an abbreviation for gzungs chen grwa lnga – the “five great Dhāraṇi” related to five important
protectors.

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Tsongkhapa became certain that, here in the Land of Snows, this structure depended fully upon
the system of the great bodhisattva Atiśa, Dīpaṁkara Śrījñāna, who taught the significance of the
path to enlightenment, the stages of the path of tantra, and the wonderful system of the great
pioneers in order to obtain elucidation with respect to all questions. He saw that from this
glorious Atiśa the great Geshé Potowa gained his expansive realization of the marvellous
teaching, which had been thoroughly recorded in the Stages of Teaching (bstan rim) composed
by the great lama and translator Ngog Loden Sherab and his foremost disciple, glorious
Drolungpa (i.e., Lodrö Jungné). From this, Tsongkhapa began to consider his own formulation of
the great stages of the path while depending on complete fidelity to this tradition.

The teaching of the glorious Atiśa combined in the stages of the path all the precepts of the
scriptures and their commentaries, and the practice of these stages was understood to result in the
authentic realizations documented in these scriptures, not just in superficial knowledge. In fact
Atiśa said that those disciples who required instruction in the ordinary path of mental
transformation should not be taught many different yet related teachings, but should be instructed
in this unified principle of practice.

He spent the summer (1395) in Nyal Mé Sal Dzi Gang kyi Yar ’Dren Monastery, and there
conditions for him and his disciples were quite poor. Once again he offered the torma of Kubera,
and before long conditions improved. He then went to great mountain Tsari with more than thirty
disciples. They spent several days providing offerings of tea and food to the monks there, and at
a hermitage there, Tsongkhapa performed the self-creation of Cakrasaṁvara and other deities.
Certain miraculous signs occurred. Then while traveling through Khanamar on the way to Tsari,
he considered that an appropriate place to perform the inner worship and to construct the
mandalas. Immediately his feet became covered with wounds and sores as if having been
punctured by thorns, and soon they were disfigured and black. Later when he constructed the
mandalas at Tsari, even prior to completing the ceremonies, the pains were gone and his feet
healed.

Next he went to Nyal where he stayed at Nyal Mé Sengé Dzong. He made extensive offerings to
the golden stūpa (gser phye ’bum pa) and taught many teachings of the Vinaya. From the outset,
he performed his practices as a humble person, explaining, “The foundation of all knowledge is
pure morality. I have not experienced any major transgression of my vow of individual
liberation. Whatever minor infractions of the disciplinary code may have transpired, I have
repented and then renewed my vow.” Because he practiced in this manner, all his attendants
practiced likewise.

From the depths of his heart, Tsongkhapa could not tolerate the degenerate conditions of the
teaching of Buddha in the Land of Snows, and with great energy devoted himself to rejuvenating
from the foundations the precious teaching. Hence, just like the Buddha, Tsongkhapa was
extremely kind to the subsequent generations of people in this Land of Snows.

Then Tsongkhapa settled in Nyal Gang Chung for the spring (1396). He taught the monks
various teachings, and due the great energy of his compassion an enormous crowd of villagers
were inspired with faith. Having become their teacher and engaging them in virtuous activity, he

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conferred on them vows, such as upāsaka, and accepting the three refuges.596 He exhorted them
all, and many symbolic offerings were made; henceforth, all in that area devoted themselves to
spiritual attainments.

Then Tsongkhapa proceeded to Nyal Tö Sadrong to spend that summer (1396). He went to meet
the teacher Darma Rinchen, who had just completed the scholarly degree of “master of ten texts”
(bka’ chu). He made offerings to the abbot of Sadrong and became patron of the others there. In
dependence on offerings from the faithful, Tsongkhapa held an assembly of all the learned
monks of the area and for many days turned the wheel of the Dharma. That place had the aura of
a festival, for this assembly was foremost in religious devotion, ritual expertise, and scholarship.
However, prior to that time the communities of Nyal, due to various disputes, were at odds, so
for some time they did not assemble together. Due to the energy of the compassion and the
influence of the expertise of Tsongkhapa, all participated without contention in a feast of holy
Dharma. All were overjoyed as Tsongkhapa gave them offerings and reverence along with
encouragement to commitments of faith. This tradition of holding such assemblies remains to the
present in that area, and no dissension or contention as in the past is reported. Therefore,
Tsongkhapa accomplished an incredible feat for the sake of the teaching and the people of that
area.

Tsongkhapa next went to Olkha and spent the year at Odé Gunggyal and taught many
instructional categories. Although he had been analysing intensely the keys points of the
Prāsaṅgika view and avoided excess activity since the occasion of Mañjuśrī’s advice to this
effect, he was unable to discover certainty free of any doubt regarding the ultimate key. Hence,
he concentrated fiercely on the inseparability of the lama and Mañjuśrī. Having intensified the
subtlety of his reasoned analysis, a special sign of great blessing emerged. He was studying
thoroughly the great commentary by Buddhapālita [on Nāgārjuna’s Wisdom]. He dreamed a
vision of Nāgārjuna seated among his foremost disciples in a radiant assembly in the sky.
Tsongkhapa was overjoyed to observe the exchange of these illustrious beings when
Buddhapālita himself, holding his commentary written in gold and smiling, turned from the
assembly and touched Tsongkhapa’s crown with the volume. Awakening from his dream,
Tsongkhapa experienced extreme delight, and henceforth his perception of reality seemed to be
the complete opposite of what he had understood previously. Within his heart he generated
complete certitude, holding the distinctions of refutation and the ultimate key of the view of
Nāgārjuna and his followers. All orientations of grasping at signs were destroyed, and all
exaggerations that distorted the true meaning of thatness to the extremes were destroyed.

Moved by the intensity of even deeper faith gained by recognition of the great teacher,
Tsongkhapa spontaneously composed the elegy In Praise of Relativity (the shorter Essence of
Eloquence, bstod pa legs bshad snying po), praising the Buddha from the point of view of [his
teaching of] the profound relativity. Thus, he eliminated without remainder by the force of
reasoning all exaggerations with respect to the function of uniqueness. He was naturally
absorbed in the samādhi of one-pointed mental concentration toward emptiness and was
established in the strength of the ultimate accomplishment through the pattern of careful practice
with mindfulness and awareness. In his own words, “Now, having become accustomed even

596
The upāsaka vows are a set of five that mark their holder as devoted lay followers who refrain from killing,
stealing, sexual misconduct, taking intoxicants, and using false speech.

480
after attainment, all these various perceptions arise like illusions, perception [itself] being empty;
and such perception does not arise according to one’s own wish without being pervaded by
emptiness.”

Thus, since this biography, deserving of veneration by the wise, is the unfathomable object of the
praise of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas, it demands our reverence as well.

By concentrating on the indivisibility of lama and deity (yidam), our lama made appeals. He
made one-pointed effort in purification and accumulation and exerted himself uninterruptedly
toward attainment and propitiation in ways too arduous for the ordinary. He was blessed
immeasurably by his patron deities; in particular, the holy Mañjuśrī—the father of all the
victors—frequently revealed his appearance and acted as his spiritual teacher. In this way he
came to master the meaning of all scriptures without error. On the initial application of his fine
powers of analysis to almost any topic, however challenging to penetrate, he obtained insight.
And on those issues which he was unable to determine initially, upon offering mandalas and
praying to the lama and Mañjuśrī, he soon would gain effortless and flawless insight into their
deepest essence.

Moreover, although we are unable to report all the details of the physical and verbal revelations
from Mañjuśrī to Tsongkhapa, let it be enough to acknowledge that he did not determine
independently the methods of investigation of the meaning of the scriptures, the criteria for
thorough analysis, the keys for practice, the methods of instructing disciples, or even the
dwelling places.

Tsongkhapa remained through autumn in Olkha (1397), and spent the winter and spring in the
cave of Gar, teaching many disciples of Olkha. He then travelled to É Tö Ra to spend summer
(1398) teaching the mendicants of Chewa and establishing many beings on the path of virtue.
Next, for the winter season, he went to Olkha Dragdong; there, in the presence of the Dzing Ji
Maitreya, he performed uninterrupted worship and offerings during the holidays of New Year
miracle festival. (1399). Concerned only for the teaching and all living beings, he made
extensive prayers for their immediate and long-term welfare.

During that spring Tsongkhapa taught various subjects to over two hundred mendicants under
the teacher Kachupa. Then for the summer he went to Nyangpo Dangdo Monastery upon the
sincere invitation of the monks there. At that time the teacher Namkha Zangpo brought a
message from the Ngog Lotsawa representative, the great teacher Konchog Tshultrim, regarding
a standing invitation from Kyishö; hence, having wished to visit the great Jowo Rinpoché,
Tsongkhapa proceeded to Kyishö and stayed at the Potala. He taught (Kamalaśīla’s) Illuminating
the Middle Way (dbu ma snang ba), Vinaya, and lam rim to several hundred monks from Sangdé
Gungsum and from Gakyor Zulsum.

After that he went to Gadong in the early spring (1400). At this time he was concerned that those
who affirm a commitment to the universal vehicle without learning correctly the methodology
would possess a purely verbal commitment. Moreover, the instructions of how to depend on the
lama as explained in the initial stages of the common path becomes crucially important in the
practice preliminary to entering the vajra vehicle, and the initiation into the tantra system must be

481
received from a lama with the appropriate qualifications. At that time, one must treasure the
vows and commitments like their very eyes, especially holding more dearly the thought to avoid
committing root infractions than their life; otherwise the vows to which they committed to would
be lost, and though they might claim to practice the vajra vehicle, they would be bound to
experience the misery of lower migrations.

Thinking thus, he was inspired with the thought: “How nice if those committed in this way and
all followers of the universal vehicle were to learn this method!” So he exhorted disciples in this
method and explained in detail the Morality Chapter of the Bodhisattva Levels (byang sa’i tshul
khrims l’eu), Fifty Verses on the Spiritual Guide (bla ma lnga bcu pa), and the fourteen root
downfalls [of tantra] (rtsa ltung bcu bzhi pa). After that, he left Ngari in the company of
Rendawa and spent the summer [1400] retreat at Taktsang, and then went to Gadong in U.
Everywhere they two were treated with reverence and propitiation, and both teacher and disciple
taught various teachings.

Then both father and son wished for solitude, so they withdrew to a hermitage in Radreng.
However, soon they were distracted from their activities by the desire to visit the place
prophesied by Atiśa, the seat of the precious Dromtönpa and his disciples, the wellspring of the
holy Dharma stream of the Kadampa. Hence, they proceeded with their company of followers to
spend the winter (1400-1) at Radreng Monastery. Rendawa taught the six treatises of reasoning
(of Nāgārjuna) and the five stages of Guhyasamāja. Tsongkhapa taught the Ornament of the
Mahāyāna Sūtras (Mahāyānasūtrālamkara), the U Mtha’ [uncertain] the Manual of Abhidharma
(kun las btus pa), and the Hearer Levels (abbrev. nyan sa, Śrāvakabhūmi). He explained all the
methods of serenity (shi gnas) and urged the devotees to meditate. In the minds of some
devotees, actual serenity, as explained in the scriptures, was generated. Both father and son gave
extremely detailed explanations of many keys to the paths of mantra and philosophy (sngags
mtshan nyid kyi lam).

Then, at the invitation of Chöjé Lotsawa and Drigung Chöjé, Tsongkhapa went to Drigung to
teach during the spring (1401). And from the king of Dharma, Chennga Rinpoché, he himself
heard the six dharmas of Nāropa (naro chos drug), and the Great Seal Innate Yoga (phyag chen
lhan cig skyes sbyor).

After this, there was a great conference at the cathedral of Ar Chenpo Jangchub Yeshé at Namsé
Deng, involving Rinpoché Lotsawa Kyabchog Palzangpo, the two Dharma masters (i.e.,
Chennga Rinpoché and Drigung Rinpoché), and Rendawa and Tsongkhapa. An ocean of more
than six hundred monks joined them in a great summer assembly (1401). Together they shared
the thought that as long as the Vinaya—the Buddha’s inner treasury—was not damaged, then the
Dharma could exist. Without it, it could not. Thus, their minds, being concerned only for the
teaching, were filled with the importance of this. Hence, they determined to establish the
extensive explanation of the root sutra of the Vinaya (’dul ba’i mdo rtsa ba, composed by
Guṇaprabha). From the fine details explained in the Forty Seven (bzhi bcu bdun), including what
could be practiced by their contemporaries, up until all those included in the exposition (rnam
’byed)—they established the proper, procedures of practice according to the explanations in the
scriptures, from which they amended the classifications of infractions. At that time all who
learned the Vinaya practiced intense introspection and engaged in confession and penance for

482
minor or gross infractions in order to amend their faults in the practice of the instructed methods,
of which adhering to the prerequisite renunciation of material things was foremost. Henceforth,
those training rigorously made intense effort in the correct practices, such as self-examination,
self-purifying in order not to remain long associated with infractions, consecration of belongings,
fasting after noon, and cutting ties from the household,597 sleeping in an aware manner, and so
on. Holding to all these arduous practices, they were perfectly correct in minor matters as well.
Mending completely the marvellous individual liberation (pratimokṣa) [vows], the very root of
the Buddha’s teaching—this must be an accomplishment of an accomplished one! Additionally,
this assembly was honored to receive from these eminent teachers many teachings on
Madhyamaka and Validating Cognition.

With this assembly having dispersed, Rendawa went to Tsang, the two Dharma masters returned
to Radreng, and Tsongkhapa went into retreat at the mountain Sengé Shol. There, at the
insistence of Chöjé Lotsawa (Kyabchog Palzangpo), and at the behest of pleas from many others,
he composed the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (lam rim chen mo),
showing how to lead the fortunate to the place of the Buddha through the door of the path go
enlightenment—the system of the two great pioneers, Nāgārjuna and Asanga, the concise key of
all the scriptures of the Victor.

Afterwards, wishing to clarify various tantras, Tsongkhapa gave the tantric vows and conferred
the power of Akṣobhya Guhyasamāja upon Chöjé Lotsawa, regarding him as capable. Then he
conferred the power on an assembly of twenty-five devotees headed by the precious teachers Jam
karpa and Dulwa Dzinpa. After this he conferred the bodhisattva vows of prayer and its entry on
all who had not been previously ordained in this by him, including Chöjé Lotsawa. Moreover,
remaining there and prompted by his former desire to confer this vow on the devotees at other
monasteries where he taught, he composed the extensive commentary on the Morality Chapter of
the Bodhisattva Levels. Finally, at the request of all present, he composed his works on the root
infractions (rtsa ltung, entitled Fruit Clusters), and the Fifty Stanzas on the Spiritual Guide (bla
ma lnga bcu pa, entitled Fulfillment of All Hopes). Chöjé Lotsawa took the lam rim volume with
him, and soon this became famed as the production of the precious teacher.

Then Tsongkhapa went to Tsang, spending the year teaching lam rim and so forth. At the New
Year’s miracle festival (1404), he performed wondrous great waves of prayer and offerings. Next
he returned to Phugon in Lhasa and led many intelligent mendicants on the path of reasoning
through all the main topics of the Commentary on Validating Cognition (Pramāṇavārttika). He
caused them to exert themselves in practice according to the authority of the lam rim, and their
minds were captivated inextricably by the supreme taste of the nectar of good teaching they had
not known previously.

Thereafter, often it was proclaimed, “Formerly, here in this Land of Snows, as for the hearing or
the understanding of the words of logic, such instructions were considered necessary factors just
to strengthen the mind slightly toward the view. The necessity of such a practice was not raised
even as a doubt, and hence many conformed their minds to teachings that were not truly
accurate. Now, those intelligent ones who are honest and impartial acknowledge that the

597
The phrase rung khang gcod pa is unclear in meaning, but perhaps refers to cutting ties from the household, in
general, where rung khang seems to refer to the kitchen—unless it is an error in the writing or printing.

483
wonderful teaching showing the stages of practice is totally dependent of the kindness of
Tsongkhapa. The people of the Land of Snows find this type of kindness difficult to repay.”

Then at the fervent request of the lord of the land, [Miwang] Dragpa Gyaltsen, Tsongkhapa went
to On Dechen, where many hundreds of mendicants assembled and requested to spend the
summer retreat [with him]. The good king Monkhar was their patron, and Tsongkhapa taught
many liberating teachings, such as the principle of the stages of the path of enlightenment and
the difficult points of Madhyamaka and Validating Cognition.

Next, at the invitation of Odé Gunggyal, Tsongkhapa went to the temple of Maitreya at Olkha
and taught lam rim and the two stages of tantra to the devotees. On that occasion, both teacher
and pupils, being in a heightened state of concentration, Tsongkhapa composed a commentary to
the Stages of Arrangement (Vyāvasthāli) of Nāgabodhi and explained it in detail to those
devotees. Then, although he understood the extraordinary meaning from the scripture of the five,
the noble father and sons (Nāgārjuna, etc.), as well as the fundamental and explanatory tantras of
Guhyasamāja—including the method of achieving of the magic body at the third stage, and the
general meaning of the five stages—for over ten years he had no opportunity to teach these,
except in pieces. Now, however, at the supplication of many highly developed and excellent
devotees, he composed the teaching of the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path of Mantra
(gsang chen lam gyi rim ba), which showed a complete body of the path of the four tantra
divisions. Simultaneously he taught the stages of the tantric path to many devotees. At that time
several violent signs of obstacles occurred—with several geshés having died and so on—causing
teacher and devotees to enter pure meditation. They made intense effort in concentration and the
reversal of evil, and finally all bad omens were turned back without harm. At that time,
Tsongkhapa composed the Conquest of all Demons, the means of achievement of Bhagavān
Yamāntaka Vajrabhairava, and the Extensive Methodology of Ritual Fire Offerings. Their state
of mental concentration was extremely intensified due to these practices.

During the practice of these methods, those in Tsongkhapa’s direct presence, even though they
devoted themselves and focused their minds, and regardless of their actions of body, speech, and
mind, their minds were still prone to uncertainty regarding their objectives. They asked “How is
it at this time?” Tsongkhapa replied “At this time of religious exertion, its occurrence like that is
from the Maitreya temple. At the occasion of imagination of the deity and its fine examination,
its occurrence like that is prior. It is like that.”

He spent the winter (1405-1406) at Jangchub Ling and taught his Great Treatise on the Stages of
the Mantra Path to hundreds of learned monks. He went on to Shé, where the Neu family were
his generous patrons. He spent the summer (1406) at the Sera Chöding, where he entered
extremely entranced meditations. There, he taught the Five Stages of Guhyasamāja and the
perfection stage of mother tantra. Also, upon receiving the request from many there, he [began
to] compose the extensive Madhyamaka commentary (Ocean of Reasoning, rigs pa’i rgya
mtsho) on (Nāgārjuna’s) Wisdom. He engaged in fine examination of the subtle keys to the
reasonings of the scriptures while composing this, and due to encountering particular hardship in
certain of these subtle reasonings, he made intense supplication to the lama and holy Mañjuśrī.
Then he experienced within a dream a vision of the commentary on the twenty emptinesses of
the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra with letters written in gold all arranged in the sky. Afterward, he

484
was able to resolve all his doubts about the subtlest questions of the verse critiques (of
Nāgārjuna). Immediately after, he composed the Essence of Eloquence Regarding the
Interpretable and Definitive Meanings of the Sūtras and also completed his extensive elucidation
of Wisdom (1408).

At that time (1408) the Chinese Emperor Ta Ming sent many offerings and letters, with forceful
petition, inviting Tsongkhapa to spread his altruistic grace of holy Dharma to all the living
beings in the field of merit of China. The emperor sent an embassy of several hundred led by
four chief ambassadors, but Tsongkhapa was in solitude at that time and did not emerge to meet
the envoys. Then, the king Dragpa Gyaltsen assisted their efforts and, together with the teacher
Namkha Zangpo sent a messenger to Tsongkhapa. Hence, in response to their insistent petition,
in order not to offend the ambassadors, he went to Sera [hermitage] and had an audience with
them. He accepted their offerings and gave them strong instructions but explained his objections
to a visiting China and the meager benefit that would accrue to the beings there. He then sent
back the ambassadors without added delay.

After this he explained in detail (Nāgārjuna’s) Wisdom and his own Essence of Eloquence,
(Āryadeva’s) Four Hundred, his own Great Treatise on the Stages of the Mantra Path, the Root
Downfalls, and Fifty Stanzas on the Spiritual Guide. He further taught the principle of his Great
Treatise on the Stages of the Path. Six hundred geshés gathered together from Sangde and
Gakyer Zulsum and Tang Sagpa’i Tanzur, and so on. The people of Neu provided excellent
service for teacher and students for a suitable summer retreat. In this way Tsongkhapa spent two
years at Sera (1406-1408) and then dispersed the gathering.

Having accepted the invitation of Miwang (Dragpa) Gyaltsen, Tsongkhapa then went to Kyimé
Drumbu. Five hundred geshés attended him excellently, and more than four hundred more
mendicants came from all over the region to taste the nectar of his speech of the holy Dharma.
He spent the winter (1408-1409) teaching to this gathering of more than a thousand the lam rim
and the Luipa tradition’s performance script (sādhana) of Cakrasaṁvara and the perfection
stages of the mother tantras. Before he left Sera, since he wished to participate in the great
miracle prayer festival at Lhasa, he left instructions with Namkha Zangpo, who excellently had
created the mandalas and golden ornaments for the festival and completed all the preparations of
regalia for the offerings of prayers. Tsongkhapa then sent messengers in all directions to all the
patrons of the Dharma as far as Drigung and Radreng and Olkha to accumulated extensive
offerings of faith and instructed Dragpa Gyaltsen to make great effort in this undertaking, and
therefore immeasurable offerings were collected. Tsongkhapa dedicated all that he collected to
the prayer festival in Lhasa.

Next Tsongkhapa gathered many artisans and collected many jewelled colors and gold. As all the
sacred images and temple ornaments in Lhasa were obscured with smoke, and as their color and
form were difficult to discern, Tsongkhapa had them washed with scented water and purified
with impeccably pure substances. Then he had them renewed with splendid colors and decorated
with gold. When this was completed, they appeared as if newly created. Additionally, he had the
artisans make for the images silk and gold vestments and sew many banners.

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Having completed all these preparations Tsongkhapa proceeded to Lhasa at the end of the
twelfth month of the Mouse Year (i.e., up to February 1409). On New Year’s Day he performed
the worship with music and chanting together with an assembly of over eight thousand monks.
He himself was the patron of teachers and students, giving to each four full srang of butter and
some sixty sho of Indian tea and also feeding the great assembly. He participated in the worship
of the holiday of the Great Miracles from the first to the fifteenth of the first month of the Ox
year (1409). He offered to the Jowo Rinpoché in the great cathedral of Lhasa (i.e., the Jokhang)
offerings that symbolize the five families of tathāgatas while singing a hymn, and offered to the
Jowo a crown ornament made of pure gold and decorated with precious stones, such as pearls,
turquoise and so on. He also offered a crown ornament made of pure silver to the image of the
Lord Akṣobhya with Eleven Faces. In front of the Jowo Rinpoché, Tsongkhapa placed a silver
begging bowl and in front of that a silver mandala.

Further, on the New Year’s Day itself and every day for fifteen days of the Miracle Festival, to
the images of Jo-shak of Two Faces and of Eleven Faces Tsongkhapa offered golden scarves,
while on the eighth and fifteenth days he offered a complete set of golden vestments. To all the
images of the emanation bodies—principally the Jo Shak of Two Faces and the Sages of the
Infinite Ocean (Muni Gang Chen Tsho [this appears to refer to the heads of the five buddha
families])—he offered vestments and embroideries with the sixteen heroes and heroines and the
fierce manifestations and lower robes and upper robes. With banners and golden cords and
drums and bells he embellished every spire, corner, and roofbeam of every temple and cathedral
in Lhasa. He decorated circumambulation paths with tall poles bearing pennants and banners
with the fierce forms of protectors embroidered on them and with the fifteen world protectors
with their mantras and with their respective colors, each located in the appropriate direction.
Each one of these was honored with a white umbrella and a victory standards, and on every night
they were offered torma cakes.

The sky was filled with a rainbow of bells, drums, and pennants above the banners and victory
standards. Moreover, following the circumambulation and holy dances (during the daytime), four
hundred offering lamps were lit, with over a hundred placed inside the temples, while outside
along the paths a lamp was placed on every stone. In front of the Jowo Rinpoché was placed a
huge vessel filled with butter from which rose a flame like a great tree of golden offering
billowing into the sky. A huge brass vessel filled with butter emitted a flame with the girth of a
strong man's arm, and this illuminated the space on every side the distance of an arrow’s flight.

At Ramoché, the Potala, and Tsal Gungthang, many lights were placed atop the walls and along
the walkways, their illumination so bright even at night it would astonish the eyes. The light was
so radiant even the stars were dimmed, and all of Lhasa—from the Potala on one side to
Ramoché on the other—was illuminated bright as day. The night sky was deep red, and not one
star could be seen.

Every day huge vessels of saffron water were offered anew, and the whole area was perfumed
with the scent of saffron. Through day and night, victory standards created of incense and so on
were burned, various fragrances and smoke pervading the air like a fringed canopy, and all the
pathways were sprinkled with scented water. In brief, these wonders defy description.

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Every day the seven precious objects of a kingdom were freshly formed from butter and offered
while ornaments were fashioned from barley flour and butter. The food remnants were given to
the poor, who for the first time in their lives, with the very thought of hunger thoroughly
removed, could turn their minds to other thoughts. Continual and incalculable offerings of
devotion filled the area, and Tsongkhapa himself—by way of mantra, mudra, and meditation,
performing the ceremonies of worship according to the appropriate techniques from the sūtra and
tantra texts—blessed the whole assembly. Each day he made pure prayers with the great force of
his mind focused solely on the continuation of the teaching and the benefit for living beings.
Together with the great congregation of mendicants, Tsongkhapa recited daily the elegies
composed by Master Āryaśura.

During this period of sixteen days—due to the great compassion of Tsongkhapa, the devotion
and charity of Namkha Zangpo, and the energy of Miwang Dragpa Gyaltsen—among all the
lamas and geshés focused upon human and divine worship, among all the secular lords, among
all the common holders of offerings, all who assembled in huge throngs morning and evening in
crowds counted in the thousands, and whose total must have been ten thousand or more: among
all these people, there was not even one quarrel or fight, nor were there any instances of dancing,
singing, or drinking, which was typical in great gatherings at that time; instead, turning away
from such pleasures, all were naturally genuinely gentle, being motivated both day and night to
faith and virtue. All used their time hearing the teachings, performing prostrations and
circumambulations, or devoting prayers and reciting mantras and dhāraṇis. While the number
who circumambulated the holy places was somewhat smaller at night compared to the day, even
so there was continuous circumambulation during this entire period.

On one occasion, during the meditations of one Nyamnang Zangpo, he dreamed of an enormous
female embracing the great cathedral (Jokhang) with her two hands. When he asked the reason, a
voice replied that she was preventing fire from damaging it. Then the following night, when one
of the great vessels was nearly out of butter but before it was refilled, the remnants in the vessel
saturated the desiccated cotton of the many wicks used therein, causing it to burst into a massive
blaze. All were frightened, but Tsongkhapa immediately went to that place and entered into
intense concentration; suddenly, there was utter calming of the wind in the area. Lacking air to
fan the flames, the conflagration was doused by the typical methods, and there was no harm to
the cathedral itself or anyone in it.

There is a list of the complete offerings made for this assembly to which one can refer, but to
provide an estimate, there were 921 sho of gold, 550 sho of silver, 37,060 loads (appr. 30 lbs.) of
butter, 18,211 loads of barley flour, 416 sho of white tea, 163 measures of black tea, 18 barrels
of molasses, 2,172 bales of dried meat, 33 great standards and banners, robes and belts of wool,
cotton and silk, turquoises, yaks, horses, loads of different kinds of incense, and soon, along
many other items not included in this enumeration.

On the sixteenth day extensive prayers were held for the rejuvenation of the teaching and of all
living beings. At that time one of the inspired devotees had a dream in which all the innumerable
people who had gathered there in the Lhasa area for the Great Prayer Festival together rose in
one body into the sky. When he asked the reason, they replied, “Having worshipped the Jowo
Rinpoché in this way, we are going to the world-realm of Brahmā.”

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It has been said regarding this that in former times, King Songtsen Gampo placed scrolls in the
Vase Pillar (one of the four great pillars of Lhasa Jokhang), with three scrolls making reference
to the prophecy made to Atiśa by the ḍākinis. The three, together called the Fascinating Radiant
Moon (zla ba ’od ’jo), were recorded by the great ministers of the period, the Bright White Silk
(dar dkar gsal ba), made by the queens of Songtsen, and the third, called “Ka Khol Ma” were
prophecies concerning what would be done for the teaching.598 The third proclaimed clearly that
there would come to be a certain holy person who would perform extensive worship to the Jowo
Rinpoché. Songtsen Gampo prophecied his own succession of kings, the career of the great
translator Rinchen Zangpo, and following him the translator Ngog. He further prophecied that
after the good teachings of these people were lost to a certain extent, the bad theory that the best
path was doing nothing, would gain favor. He prophecied that one Dagpo Lhajé would make
great renovations and offerings at the Lhasa temples. Finally, was the prophecy that one very
proficent in reasoning, a bodhisattva Vajradhara, having reformed the proliferation of false
doctrines, would transform the countenance of the Jowo and make offerings of superlative
worship. This final prophecy pertains to our own Tsongkhapa.

From the Bka’ Chems (Ka Khol Ma) itself:

A bodhisattva-monk, born in the east,

Will make great offerings of excellence.
A great yogin, holder of tantras,
A holy being founder of the essential ideology,
Will make holy worship, transforming the face (of the Jowo),
And those who participate in this great worship,
Will only be noble devotees of virtue.599

At this time, Tsongkhapa was rather fatigued by all the invitations from those in the assembly to
visit their monasteries following the festival. Previously, he had been asked to establish a new
monastery to which to withdraw in order to continue his practice and teaching in relative
tranquillity. Many monks and patrons clamored to offer their own existent monasteries, but he
thought that the time would be opportune to establish a new one, the question being what
location to consider. Tsongkhapa made great prayers before Jowo Rinpoché and observed in his
dreams and in flames of votary lamps many omens, determining finally that the best location to
be the great mountain of Drog (’Brog).600 He himself, upon completing these prayers, travelled
to inspect the site.

598
The title refers to the chapters of the testament (bka’ chems) itself, beginning with ka ba and concluding with
khol bton.
599
See Jinpa 2019 338-348 for this and associated prophecies from imperial times and late that became associated
with Tsongkhapa.
600
The word ’brog is often translated as “nomad,” but has a broader connotation of a solitary or desolate place
where nomads would herd or graze their livestock. Given Tsongkhapa’s propensity for solitude, especially with the
increasing demands of his fame, as well as the nomadic area from which he hailed in Amdo, the resonance of the
term is interesting. That this place becomes transformed, by means of designation at least, into Maitreya’s buddha-
scape also is provocative.

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Initially Tsongkhapa spent the spring (1409) at Sera, teaching some six hundred monks
(Nāgārjuna’s) Wisdom, the Morality Chapter (from Asanga’s Bodhisattva Levels), the method of
attainment of Samantabhadra, lam rim, and many other teachings. Then, later that spring, he
accepted the invitations of Chennga Rinpoché Sonam Zangpo and visited Zabri Phuchin with
only some two hundred students. He taught the lam rim to a large assembly headed by Chennga
Khenchen Gyalzang.

Then Tsongkhapa returned to Drog Mountain with a great body of monks under the teacher
Kachupa (Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen) and the teacher Dul Dzinpa. There he founded the
monastery called Ganden, Choglé Namgyal (dga ldan phyogs las rnam rgyal, Joyous, Victorious
in All Directions). Boundless faith motivated patrons from all directions and monks from nearby
institutions, and working with joy and inspiration, over seventy residential buildings were
completed that same year, together the foundations another hundred. In most of the individual
buildings, everything was completed with reference to the Vinaya: first determining the
foundations; then performing a dedication ceremony by the monks; next placing holy or
propitious objects; then digging with the upper part of the hand; then separating the kitchen from
the stone buildings and constructing those with the cuttings from other stone; making the walls
and other parts of the building precisely according to the prescribed measurements; and so on.
All this was performed as a demonstration of the precious teaching.

Tsongkhapa himself was invited by the Samten Ling monks in Olkha to reside that summer
(1409), and he taught many people from Olkha, Dagpo, and elsewhere. During that period, a
geshé of Nyal died, and those managing his affairs offered respectfully, according to his
instructions, Tsongkhapa one thousand sho of gold-dust, and others added a large amount of
silver toward the construction of the new monastery. Having accomplished the aims of self and
others throughout that autumn, he then returned to Ganden Monastery on the fifth day of the
second month of the Tiger year (1410).

He taught lam rim, Brilliantly Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages of Guhyasamāja, the outline
of the Compendium of Abhidharma, the Hearer Levels, and so on along with many difficult
points of Validating Cognition.601 He composed the Commentary on the Four Goddess Dialogue
Explanatory Tantra of Guhyasamāja and the commentary on the Intuition Vajra Compendium.
The following year (1411) he composed the great treasure of explanation, Brilliantly
Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages, and Five Stages in One Sitting, with its primary precept of
providing innumerable instructions on the method of applying oneself to the universal vehicle.

Some fourteen years earlier, Tsongkhapa informed his earlier followers that in his fifty seventh
year, a significant danger to his life would occur. Hence, in the early winter of the Hare year
(1411), Tsongkhapa’s fifty-fifth year, some thirty teachers and devotees under Tsongkhapa
created many mandalas of Śrī Vajrabhairava, the method of dispelling danger and increasing
lifespan. Together the group entered uninterrupted meditations, with recitation of mantras
601
As Tsongkhapa would compose Brilliantly Illuminating Lamp of the Five Stages of Guhyasamāja the following
year, as Khedrup makes plain, this must refer to an informal, draft version. Of course, certain of Tsongkhapa’s
compositions in his collected works are the notes taken by disciples during his teachings rather than formal
compositions, which would muddle contemporary concerns of authorship and copyright. This phenomenon
continued into the twentieth-century, with the famous example of Trijiang Rinpoché’s extensive notes on
Pabongkha’s lam rim that became published as Liberation in the Palm of Our Hands.

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throughout the morning and concentration on dispelling the danger throughout the evening. For a
long time they persisted in this manner until Tsongkhapa himself dismissed them, saying,
“Perhaps there is not much joy in doing this very long.”

During his fifty-sixth year (1412), over forty teachers gathered and engaged unwaveringly in that
same practice; however, he expressed to them that there had emerged no clear signs of the
potential for dispelling the danger again. In the fall of that dragon year, he said that it might be
useless to repeat those same rites and instead to concentrate on practices related to prayers of
primary significant for each of the four tantra divisions. However, since the actual year in which
the negative portents were due to manifest was looming, those devotees heightened the intensity
of their practice, appealing to the great compassion of Tsongkhapa to extend his life for the sake
of all living beings and vowing to cause the dispelling of that danger by their intense resolve
through prayer.602

From the eighth month of that year (1413), the most powerful of his early thirty-plus devotees
entered advanced meditative states and concentrated all their efforts on the lama's well-being.
During the eleventh month, Tsongkhapa began to feel slightly unwell. Then he began to feel
increasingly worse and was unable to sleep completely for over twenty days. He explained that
the lower part of his body was overcome with pain but—from the power of his unshaken
immersion in samadhi—otherwise no disturbance due to the unendurable pain could disrupt his
concentration. There were no clear external signs that he not well. During this time the other
monks, under the teacher Kachupa (Gyaltsab Jé), spent all their time in constant devotional
practice to achieve all the invocational rites to extend their lama's life.

Their efforts were inconceivably intense, and it was accepted that never had there existed, in the
history of the Land of Snows, such fervor in praying for a great lama to remain. All the people of
the area were concentrated only on the wish for Tsongkhapa to continue living, and they arrived
in a stream to offer tea and food for the monks to be able to continue their prayers and
meditations. Considering “If he does not remain, we will have no savior,” their devotion, with
this deep anxiety, was tremendous. More than six thousand sho of Indian tea were offered during
this time, it is said. Finally, by the power of their concentration and life-extending devotional
ceremonies, all the portents of the immense danger, so difficult to dispel, were turned back, and
Tsongkhapa’s health improved quickly. At last, all the beings, including the deities, were able to
breathe (again).

By summer of the following year (1414), Tsongkhapa was able to accept the invitation of Dragpa
Gyaltsen to visit the monastery of Tashi Dokhar in On. There, with Chennga Rinpoché leading
then, he taught lam rim, Validating Cognition, and Madhyamaka to several hundred monks. All
those glorious, extremely superior ones situated near the crest of his lotus feet could not become
content due to the fluttering of the breeze of their supreme faith.
602
The idea that spiritually advanced beings can extend their own lifespan at will, but in dependence on the needs
and aspirations of disciples, dates to the Buddha himself. His faithful attendant Ānanda, as recorded in the Great
Nirvana Sūtra failed repeatedly to take the master’s hint that, if requested with faith, to remain in the world for the
benefit of living beings, then he could do so. This of course implies that the one of whom the request is made had
transcended the bonds of karma, which determines lifespan issues for others. This concept is well known from its
place in the “seven-limb prayer” from the so-called “King of Prayers” recited by the bodhisattva Samantabhadra in
the Flower Garland Sūtra.

490
Thereupon, Tsongkhapa returned to Ganden Nampar Gyalwa Monastery and dedicated himself
to composing critical versions of the great Commentary of Cakrasaṁvara, system of Luipa; the
great and small Perfection Stage with Four Yogas; and Method of Attainment, the Commentary
on the Brilliant Lamp of the Root Tantra of Śrī Guhyasamāja. His textual commentaries
explained in extensive detail the verbal meanings; he wrote critiques to settle doubts about the
difficult passages in general and in each particular chapter; and he made synopses to clarify the
orientation essential to each type of meaning. Throughout this, he lectured uninterruptedly on the
four classes of tantras and their commentaries. His fundamental aim was to move past the verbal
approach in order to bring about authentic practice of all the essences of the precious teaching.
He was kinder to the living beings of his era, through this great work of clarification, than even
Buddha himself.

At this time, Tsongkhapa observed that there were important prohibitions toward those who had
not received the powers allowing access to the mandalas, preventing others from enacting
worship or performing the methods of attainment within the general assembly, and it appeared to
him necessary to construct a special hall for the practice of the tantras. During that summer of the
Sheep year (1415), he expressed the desire to create the suitable conditions for this, and offerings
arrived from all direction. From Nyal and other places, 108 weights of brass, of both superior
and inferior types, were obtained, even though brass was rare then; later, extensive offerings of
brass were made. Then, in the third month of the Bird year (1417), many skilled artisans
convened to begin construction of images.

Seventy-two large pillars were raised for the new building, and in the middle a large figure, just
smaller than the Jowo Rinpoché of Lhasa, was created. Next they constructed the “Measureless
Crystal Palace,” made out of precious substances, and within that they built the facilities for the
great mandalas of Śrī Guhyasamāja of Thirty-Two Deities, of Luipa’s Śrī Cakrasaṁvara of
Sixty-Two Deities, and of the Śrī Vajradhatu. The Measureless Palaces and the images of the
deities were created with brass and burnished with gold. The principal tathāgatas and those of the
quarters as well as the essence-yoginīs were constructed with silver, and each yab-yum figure
possessed some two pounds of pure silver. The main figure of the Vajradhatu mandala had even
more silver, and the twelve secondary deities each had over two and a half pounds. Each was
ornamented with precious stones, such as turquoise and so on. Moreover images of Mañjuśrī,
Amitābha, Maitreyanātha, Bhagavān Uṣnīṣavijayā, and Uṣnīṣa Sitāpatrā were created with pure
gold Over seventeen yards of the best silk, which was adorned with precious metals, were used
in offering vestments to the image of Vajrabhairava. The proportions for all these images were
not merely invented; instead, treatises from Shariputra and Odaputra, and so on [uncertain], in
which the canon of forms was specifically laid down, were employed. In particular they followed
precisely the instructions laid down in the first chapter of the Śrī Cakrasaṁvara Mahāsukha
Tantra as explicated by the commentary by Ratnarakṣita. They referred to the correct forms of
red and black Yamāntakas from the appropriate chapters of the two tantras and the deities hand
measurements, from the interior lines and so on, were well arranged. All the substances were
blessed in special ceremonies, and the artisans were said to be amazed at the clarity and
brilliance of the methods used in this construction.

A certain Ja Tshon arrived there, and cast an idol of Vīra Khaṇḍakapāla (a mind maṇḍala deity of
the Chakrasaṁvara ). Since the primary substance was brass, before he came the color of the

491
brass was dull like a mustard seed. Then even before applying any good colors, such as Chinese
blue and so on, the images naturally radiated light of the five colors. The red was excellent, as if
prepared according to prescription, the orange the color of vermilion, the gold the same vivid
color as any golden ornaments; moreover, from the white, green, and violet, as if mixing these
colors, there was a great mass of color emanating from the images, as if a rainbow were wrapped
around them. Without having polished them even slightly, they were pure and exquisite and
marvelous. They were brought before Tsongkhapa for inspection. They were polished with
precious and soft substances and became even more vivid than previous. The basic color was
polished brass, but where color had been applied was the reflection of the five colors.
Tsongkhapa advised to offer the images ornaments and vestments but not to polish them further
[i.e., that it was a good sign that the idols were polishing themselves].

That same year (1417), these images and the main components of temple were completed. All
the monks from the area and all the people from Lhasa assembled, and a wondrous dedication
ceremony was performed. Within the temple all initiates gathered to perform the esoteric
dedication following the authorized methods from the tantric literature. Following this,
throughout the area of U, harvests were good and seasonal rains were plentiful, and all were
inspired to study toward attainment in accord with their respective capacity for practice.

During the Dog year (1418), at Ganden Tsongkhapa turned the wheel of Dharma continuously
for a huge congregation assembled from all over Tibet, including a large number of monks who
remained absorbed in meditation. He taught the profound and extensive teaching, including the
lam rim, Cakrasaṁvara, the detailed extensive commentary on Kālacakra, the Stainless Light, the
Illuminating Lamp commentary of Guhyasamāja, the principle of the Five Stages, the principle
of the Six-fold Application, and so forth. That summer and fall the final construction, including
walkways and surrounding walls, was completed on the new temple. Tsongkhapa completed the
composition of his great commentary to Candrakīrt’'s Madhyamakāvatāra. And at the end of the
year, he made final preparations for the printed edition of his Annotational Commentary on the
Illuminating Lamp Commentary on the Root Tantra of Guhyasamāja, the printing for which was
completed in the Pig year. In the spring and summer of the Pig Year, (1419), he taught to many
monks the Root Tantra of Śrī Cakrasaṁvara and also wondrously completed composing his own
commentary on it.

In brief, our leader—the sole eye of the world, who was well and openly cared for by his patron
deity, peerless in his manner of holding steadfast to the universal vehicle, which is the root of all
fortune, holding his three vows as dear as his eyeball, the crown ornament of all who hold the
ethical code of the Buddha, powerlessly committed to the tireless, strong heart of the bodhisattva
possessing the pure, overflowing mind of the universal vehicle, devoted only to the teaching and
living beings, unaffected by any trifling thing in all his deeds of body, speech, and mind, with his
supreme intellect thoroughly disciplined by many strenuous efforts in the hundreds of difficulties
involved on the path of reason, with intellect perfectly accomplished, knowing no obstruction in
its vision at any depth, whose holy inspiration was thoroughly versed on the path of immaculate
reason, having practiced all the associated methods of accumulation and purification, holding the
innate condition of having amassed immense learning—he was like a second buddha among all
those who upheld the victory standard of the non-degeneration of the precious teaching,
possessing no single error in distinguishing the essential meaning, as indicated by the great

492
pioneers prophesied by the Buddha himself as the authoritative elucidators of his holy Dharma.
His example cannot be expressed by the very voice of Brahmā nor by the power of poetry. It can
only be understood by our own penetrating and unerring reason.

In whatever way the most powerful minds examine the teachings of the great pioneers, they
cannot find a single blemish of contradiction among their assertions. In the same way, our Great
Being, among all the great systematizations of commentaries of sūtra and tantra literatures, we
can abandon the exaggeration of the concept that it is correct [only] since it was written by our
own spiritual teacher as well as the depreciation engaged by minds intoxicated by the poison
water of obsession with fault-finding. Abandoning these extremisms, and examining carefully
with intellects firmly disciplined in the immaculate path of reason, we can see that any deviation
from these authoritative teachings regarding the various theories, and the greater and lesser
vehicle, and the higher and lower tantra divisions, can be rejected by a certain reason and a
certain reference. His reasoning can be verified through our careful thought, and on no occasion
can we say that any particular statement is contradictory to any particular original system. And I
myself possess the faith confirmed by reason that never before in the history of the Land of
Snows was there any spiritual teacher whose grasp of the original teachings was so profound,
and awareness of the interpretations of all his predecessors so broad, as to furnish his
extraordinary intellect with the capacity for truly authoritative explanations of all subjects. Such
was his immeasurable mass of excellence, having accumulated such a vast body of learning and
having made the most intense effort to put into practice what he had learned in order to fulfill
every requirement contained in the Three Excellence Precepts. Therefore, His Precious Holiness
established the marvellous system correct from all points of view of the precious teaching of
Buddha Bhagavān and, furthermore, extended it considerably in application.

Formerly, the way of practice of the monks in Tibet had been as follows: first they would read
the great scriptures, reciting them daily, and then memorize them. They would listen to the
interpretations of teachers and then contemplate their meaning. They decided about them through
debate and popular opinion. However, during whatever teaching, debate, and composition there
was, they practiced every sort of enjoyment, shamefully following the example of laymen in
singing, dancing, playing various careless games, eating at the wrong hours, and drinking
intoxicants, because—they rationalized—there was no fault in this as it improved their health
and made them strong for effort in learning and thinking. This was the common idea of all from
the youths newly having donned the orange robe up to those who claimed themselves to be
spiritual teachers. Therefore, everyone practiced in the midst of quarrels and fights and even in
preparations for wars, and there was no one to raise their voice in saying, “This is not to be
done!” or “This is not the Dharma!” or “This is not the way of the monks!” Furthermore, among
all those who entered the schools of learning, there was no one to raise the slightest doubt as to
whether such practices were not to be done, but everyone naturally accepted them. When people
saw those who were interested in the methods of the mandalas and the two stages of the vajra
vehicle, the ultimate path taught by the Buddha, their teachers, friends, and all those dear to them
told them they should not practice such things, for “it was not the time for it, there was no need
for it, there was no essence to it,” and instead of making effort in learning and teaching, they
would go to a monastery near a town and practice the means of gaining a comfortable living by
performing the popular rites of offering torma cakes, baptisms, and funerals, all of which are
great obstacles to true learning a way to make effort to attain the exaltation of Vajradhara. There

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was no single person who knew how the vajra vehicle and the philosophical teachings were
branches of learning and practice originating from the same foundation.

Furthermore, if by chance there happened to be one who avowed the practice of the vajra
vehicle, he broke all vows by eating gluttonously at the wrong time, getting drunk, and enjoying
everything forbidden. All manner of false opinions prevailed in this way, and by power of the
fact that everyone was following his own desire in seeking the objects of desire, all were
dissipated, and no sooner had anyone entered into the tantric way than their vows of monkhood
were totally forsaken. They would proclaim themselves to teach many disciples and form great
assemblies with children and girls and wives, with no one to criticize them, and even those who
were monks and mendicants would have no hesitation in the most degenerate practices, which
lead to the degeneration of the Buddha’s teaching. There was no one who used logical
discrimination in approaching the vajra vehicle, as such was said to be destructive by foolish
people. “Those who approach the vajra vehicle have nothing to do with the Tripitaka; they are no
more than fools!” This weird saying was common. Or: “There is no place for logic in regard to
the vajra vehicle!” Depending on such sayings, even non-Buddhists justifiably despised them.
Another saying was “Even those stupid people who have no sense of real meaning through
reference and reason can obtain the ultimate meaning of the tantra vehicle through the personal
precept of the lama.” So, almost no one used discrimination, and depending on such methods,
and all the ultimate keys of the path as elucidated in the commentaries of the great yogi/nis were
reduced to verbal assertions.

In regard to those who retired to hermitages and who wanted to devote themselves intensely to
meditation, it was said, “The Vinaya rules against drinking intoxicants and eating in the
afternoon are only for the individual vehicle practitioners, those who aspire only to the lesser
vehicles, and there is no need for these aspiring to the higher vehicles wishing to realize the self-
nature of the mind to be bound by them.” Hence, not only did they lose their code of monkhood,
but some even abandoned the vestments of sanctity, the upper and lower yellow robe. Similarly,
those who concentrated themselves internally in meditation were told thus: “One should give up
learning and looking at all teachings of scripture and commentary, for those give merely
superficial understanding. They cause distraction at the time of concentrating on the inner
condition of the mind. Even without them one can understand reality from the personal secret
precept of the lama. Likewise all the virtuous endeavors—such as meditation on the wheel of
mandalas, the recitation-meditations with mantras and dharanis, bowing down, and offering
worship—are to be given up. And you do not need to ascertain the ramifications of reason to
meditate on the meaning of reality, but everything will fall into its natural place by keeping
nothing at all in your mind.” This was the popular opinion about meditation.

Therefore all effort in the correct implementation of the three precepts was inhibited—that is,
following the ethical code of the buddhas, deciding about reality through learning and thought,
and then applying the meaning derived from intense meditation on that decision to the mind.
Tantra and Perfection (vehicle) practices, meditation and learning, were thought to be as opposed
as hot and cold, and their validity undermined, and everyone dispensed with the valid ethic of the
Buddha. In this Land of Snows there only remained the shadow of Buddha’s teaching.

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In these conditions our Precious Holiness, pursuing the achievement of his energetic prayers to
uphold the holy Dharma, visited (i.e., reincarnated in) this northern country in order to reform
the precious teaching. In the manner described above, by his great effort marvellously dedicated
to the purpose of others, now every learned person cherishes the basic precept in making effort in
learning and thought, and the actions of those who claim themselves superior monks and drink
intoxicants and eat after noon are regarded as shameless. Formerly, most of the monks in the
great colleges found it difficult even to recognize the mat or begging bowl—the utensils of the
spiritual seeker—and they had never heard of the proper sort of lower robe and upper robe
prescribed for mendicants. These days, from Kashmir to China everyone has the proper signs and
utensils of monkhood, they have given up intoxicants and eating after noon, and the way of
proper virtuous existence of a devotee has become widely spread for observance of the most
minute precept of the basic ethic—through sleeping with awareness and eating only alms, and
washing the mouth before and after meals, up to the most important observances. If this is not
the result of the great kindness of our glorious holy lama, think of whatever or whoever else
could be its origin!

For those who were deceitful in their aspiration to learning and reflection alone, and who were
attracted by the banner of fame, saying that at the time of practice the way of controlling one’s
own mind, though not clearly stated, was like such and such, (their own idea), such a thing is
unheard of nowadays. There is no doubt of the presence of the keys of practice within the great
scriptures. When one is visited by portents of one's approaching death, and a little fear of Yama
(the lord of death) has begun to take hold, a foolish person who has learned almost nothing
withdraws to a cave to pass away from human life. They do not deviate even a little from what
they have been given as personal instruction. Whatever they had formerly learned and reflected
upon comes to be the object of their intense concentration, as they repent of other worldly things.
They understand that to think nothing in the mind is the method to attain only a lower form of
life, as in the system of the Hva-shang Mohoyen, filled with the great defilement of abandoning
the Dharma by holding the great scriptures as unnecessary at the time of death. But they have the
clear confidence in the teachings of the scriptures as showing the ultimate keys (and hence they
can face death in a positive frame of mind).

Now, however, everyone who even begins to practice holds to the basis of the cherishing of the
cooling ethic. They make effort in accumulation and purification. They feel the necessity of
practice according to the systematization of the great scriptures by the great pioneers. Otherwise,
they think that no matter how much hardship one overcomes and how strenuous one’s effort, it
will be fruitless. They have this clear insight. And now all Tibet is full of spiritual teachers who
practice according to correct method. This great reformation of the degeneration of the Dharma
in Tibet was the direct result of the kindness of Tsongkhapa—or else, who do you think could
have caused it?

Now the geshés who have earnestly undertaken learning and concentration in the philosophical
teachings do not remain complacent but strive to enter the secret vajra vehicle with great
inspiration. And whereas formerly they ignored the ultimate keys of tantra contained in the
tantric literature and contented themselves with the personal instruction of a lama, now they
realize that the ultimate profound meaning of the tantra precept is contained only within the
precious tantric literature. Therefore, they strive to fathom the tantric texts. And whereas

495
formerly they were not even aware of the verbal expression of the essential keys as elucidated by
the great yogis’ commentaries on the tantric literature, now they depend on the taste of the nectar
of speech of Tsongkhapa, understanding according to the idea of the great adepts, the keys of the
precept contain the possibility of attainment of the exaltation of Vajradhara through their own
intense effort in meditative realization. Therefore, they ascertain through examining the creation
and perfection paths, and they attain accordingly. They abide in the divine yoga, cherishing their
vows and commitments. They find fearlessness in the meaning of the tantric literature, and
according to their destiny they attain the exaltation of the great Vajra Master. Finally, they create
the consummate experience according to the tantric literature by practicing the creation and
perfection stages. Thus, in Tibet many renowned adepts attained firm incomparable samadhi,
practiced marvellous mantras, and worshipped power to destroy interferers and devils of self and
others. In short, many vajra-holders in accord with the vajra literature, cherishers of the universal
vehicle bodhisattva vow and the individual liberation vow according to the correct code of the
Vinaya, many thousand scripture holders known to be unconfused in the excellent stream of the
three vows, came to pervade the country, from Jalandhara in the west to the great ocean of the
east on the shores of the Chinese empire.

Thus, the marvelous deeds of the Jé Lama are difficult to measure. Tsongkhapa was so
empowered by the force of his good deeds in former lifetimes that in this lifetime he attracted
tremendous wealth from Kahmir to China, including the three provinces of Tibet, although he
was never concerned with such things and sought solitude and concentration of mind in
monasteries at Lhashog gi Gang, Ri Sul, and Bé-tha and so forth, and all the objects offered by
the faithful from among the great, normal, and even the lower classes of men were offered
through their wish to plant a shoot in his powerful field of merit. No one can measure these
offerings and worship, no one can count it, and there is no record of even the greatest geshés in
Tibet of having been so acclaimed with such a banner of fame. Jé Lama himself had no trace of
avarice, and with all the odds and ends he received from the faithful in meeting with kings and
lords and officials and men and women, he gave immeasurable gifts to disciples in order to
mature and liberate them according to the four social graces. He also gave everything countless
times for thousands of readings and meditations, for the celebrations of the four great holidays of
worship to the Tathāgata, to the funeral ceremonies of great lamas, for the worship of the three
jewels, for images of the body, speech, and mind of the Sugata, and for the construction of
cathedrals and temples. Therefore, there has never been found in the pure deeds of our Jé Lama
any trace of possessiveness with any kind of valuable thing or with even so much as a fistful of
grain, and he naturally avoided from the beginning any sort of activity that was not in accord
with the realistic livelihood set down in the noble eightfold path. Although there are histories of
many great beings in this Land of Snow Peaks, none bears comparison to him.

In India, several hundred years after the Buddha showed the appearance of passing into
parinirvana, when, [after some time], the noble ones gathered together to attain the cool
experience of the peaceful spheres, they said “The universal vehicle is not the teaching of the
Buddha.” Thus, they deprecated the Dharma everywhere. After a while, when even the name of
the universal vehicle seemed to have entirely disappeared from India, Noble Nāgārjuna arrived,
and squelched all false teachers. He made the universal vehicle teaching as bright as sun. All the
great pioneers and all the great adepts agree that thereby Noble Nāgārjuna was more kind to
India than even Buddha himself. Likewise, in our later epoch, Jé Rinpoché showed such

496
kindness to this Land of Snowy Mountains, resurrecting the essence of the Buddha teaching
according to the real intention of the Jina. He made it brilliant like the sun, just as did Nāgārjuna.

Seeing or hearing about the wonderful deeds of this holy being, like a poisonous snake smelling
the perfume of musk, not like the mind sleeping on a bed of thorns, look at his example:

Your eye regarding all the glorious scriptures,

With emptiness leading immaculate reason,
By the signature of your powerful reason,
Make superfluous the name of extremism!

You upraised with your banner of fame,

Victory standards of the pervasive three precepts
Over the cosmic mountain chains
Making the time of strife into an era of perfection.

There is no other supreme of beings

Who lights up the world with the buddha-sun
And fills it for all time
With the sweet medicine of your teaching!

The all-pervasive powerful mind

Scented with perfume of irresistible reason
Clears away the clouds of false teachings,
Makes beautiful the sky with honey medicine.

Holding the weapon of immaculate logic

You merely lift a finger,
And all the swords of the proud lions of expression
Fall to the ground in a moment.

The great pillar of your explanation

Shores up the great house of the Buddha teaching;
Your edicts rule indisputably the universal vehicle—
All the glorious wise hold you on their crowns.

In the mercy realm, the seed of buddhas,

Well matured by the teaching of the bliss warmth
Of meditation in the navel of the Wisdom Mother
Gives birth to this prince, champion of the three times’ buddhas.

Perfect youth, moon of mercy,

Mounting the vehicle of wondrous effort
From the horizon of crystal effulgent thought
Rises over the eastern peak of altruism.

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Delighted buddhas rest content,
Viewing the white-robed body of Buddha teaching,
Pure as lotus petals, and determine:
“May all beings of the three realms be free of ignorance.”

498
 Appendix Three

Realization Narrative: Excellent Presence by Tsongkhapa

OṂ May all be happy and well!

The eyes for the world to see higher realms of life and the liberation of enlightenment,
The resting place for those weary from wandering on the paths of cyclic existence,
The root of happiness and excellence—the kind spiritual guide
And the Holy Wisdom Treasure (Mañjuśrī), I bow at your feet!

To gather a great store [of merit and wisdom] with little effort,
Rejoicing in the virtues of others is praised as best.
In particular, regarding one’s own past virtues,
Developing, without pride, greater joy in one’s own virtues of the past,
Think “these past virtues will increase ever more.”
To accomplish the purpose of the teachings of the Victor,
And also when seeing many other necessities,
It is excellent, O mind, to feel such joy!

At first, I sought much learning.

Then, all teachings dawned on me as spiritual instructions.
Finally, I practiced day and night.
Dedicated to spreading the teachings.603

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Quest for Extensive Learning

If the darkness of confusion concealing what to adopt or to reject

Is not illuminated by the lamp of perfect learning,
Then you cannot know even the path, so what need to speak
Of entering the supreme city of liberation?

603
In the body of the dissertation, some emphasis is placed on Tsongkhapa’s using Atiśa’s so-called four-square
path to structure this brief autobiography. Again, the four are enumerated as the understanding (1) that all the
teachings are free of contradiction, (2) that all the scriptures are instructions for practice, (3) the intended meaning of
the Buddha’s instructions, and (4) how to refrain from the great fault of abandoning the Buddha’s teaching, which
comes from such exclusivism. The first two points are the main ones illustrated herein, especially in the sense that
the tantras should not forsaken and that the treatises on validating cognition are indeed practical instructions. In a
broader sense, as the dissertation emphasizes, the exoteric and esoteric universal vehicle methods, and the monastic
discipline especially, are non-contradictory—hence, the reference to Gunaprabha and Śākyaprabha below. Seeing all
as non-contradictory instructions for practice (even if one is incapable of practicing them in one’s present
circumstance, as elaborated in the stages of the path literature), one does not abandon any of them as irrelevant or
for inferior persons. Causality, particularly with reference to karmic causality, would be most important in this
respect.

499
Therefore, not content with partial or superficial understanding
I studied in great detail the treatises of the Invincible Lord of Dharma (Maitreya)
And of those famed in India as the Six Ornaments and the Two Supreme Ones.604

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Especially for an ordinary person, the sole way

To determine the precise reality of things
Are the treatises on valid reasoning.
So with much effort I studied their difficult points again and
again.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Though I toiled in the treatises of sūtra and tantra,

And I practiced and expounded the meaning of the profound,
I realized that my view had not advanced far beyond
The view that learned nothing and knows nothing.
So then I studied thoroughly all the essential keys to induce
The accurate view by the subtle reasoning that probes the profound,
especially the treatises of Nāgārjuna,
And resolved my confusion completely.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

It is said that there are two vehicles to travel to perfect enlightenment,

The profound vajra vehicle and perfection vehicle, and that
Secret Mantra is very much superior to the perfection vehicle
This is as well-known as the sun and moon.
There are some who, with the pretense of wisdom,
Assert this saying to be true,
But do not inquire into that profound vehicle.
If such persons are supposed to be intelligent,
Then who could be thought dull-witted?
How amazing that anyone should forsake
An unexcelled path so difficult to meet!
Therefore, I entered the supreme vehicle of the Victors,
The vajra vehicle, even rarer than the buddhas,
604
The six are Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti, and the two are Gunaprabha
and Śākyaprabha. These, then, are the early systematizers of the Centrist (1-2), Yogic Practice (3-4), Validating
Cognition (5-6), and Monastic Discipline scholastic works. Note that both Validating Cognition and Monastic
Discipline are key to the Universalist teaching that late Indian and Tibetan Buddhism consider supreme, a point that
Tsongkhapa emphasizes here and elsewhere. Maitreya, of course, is the transcendent source of the Yogic
Practice/bodhisattva deeds tradition, and Mañjuśrī is the transcendent source of Centrism/profound reality tradition.

500
A profound treasury of the two accomplishments,
And I studied it a long time with much effort.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Not knowing the methods of paths of the three lower tantras,

Yet deciding that unexcelled yoga tantra
Is the supreme of all classes of tantras,
Would be making merely an assertion.
Realizing this, I inquired into the general and specific three types of
Action tantra, such as the General Ritual Secret Tantra,605 the Well-Attained,606
The Tantra Requested by Subahu,607 and Ultimate Concentration.608

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Within the second class, the performance tantras,

I studied the main tantra, the Manifest Enlightenment of Vairocana,609
And ascertained thoroughly the precise orientation
Of all the performance tantras.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Among the third class, the yoga tantras,

I studied the main tantras, the glorious Compendium of Reality,610
And its explanatory tantras such as the Vajra Summit,611
And enjoyed the feast of the yoga tantras.
Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!
Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Among the fourth class, the unexcelled yoga tantras,

605
(Sarvamaṇḍala-) sāmānyavidhīnāmguhyatantra, Tohoku 806.
606
Susiddhikaramahātantrasādhanopāyikapaṭala, Tohoku 807.
607
Subahuparipṛcchātantra, Tohoku 805.
608
Dhyānottarapaṭalakrama, Tohoku 808.
609
Vairocanābhisambodhi, Tohoku 494.
610
Tattvasaṃgraha, Tohoku 479.
611
Vajraśekhara-mahāguhyayogatantra, Tohoku 480.

501
I studied the root and explanatory tantras of the Esoteric Community,612
Famed among the Indian sages as the sun and moon of the father tantras,
And of the mother tantras such as Hevajra613 and Supreme Bliss.614

I also studied the Wheel of Time,615 the tradition of pioneers,

Whose method of differs from other sūtras and tantras,
Along with its commentary, the Stainless Light.616

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

This is the first chapter telling how I first sought extensive learning.

All Teachings Dawn As Spiritual Instruction

With a firm, intense, and enduring faith in Mañjuśrī,

Supreme in banishing darkness from the disciple’s minds,
I prayed that all scriptures might dawn as spiritual instruction
And applied myself to fulfill all the necessary conditions.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Striving thus, I found a special certainty

In the stages of the path to enlightenment tradition
Transmitted from Nāgārjuna and Asanga,
And the Perfection of Wisdom, the best scripture on the profound,
Dawned upon me as a spiritual instruction.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

In this northern land, there are many who claim,

Regardless of whether or not they have studied the texts on logic,

612
Guhyasamāja, Tohoku 442 (and 443–447, its explanatory tantras).
613
Tohoku 417.
614
Cakrasaṃvaralaghutantra, Tohoku 368.
615
Kālacakratantra, Tohoku 362.
616
Vimalaprabhā, Tohoku 845 and 1347.

502
That there is no stage of practice of the path to enlightenment
In the Compendium of Validating Cognition and the collection of seven treatises.617
But they also take as authoritative the revelation
Granted by Mañjuśrī to Dignāga, when he explicitly said,
“This book in the future will become the eye for all beings.”

Seeing this view to be completely mistaken,

I especially investigated the methods there and found deep conviction
In the meaning established by the opening dedication proving the fortunate
Buddha to be reason personified for those seeking liberation.
From this I found a deep conviction that his teaching alone is
The sole haven for those seeking total freedom.
Hence, all the essential points I gathered as one and found a special joy
In studying the paths of the two vehicles through the path of reasoning.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Then I connected together the Bodhisattva Levels

And the Ornament of the Universal Vehicle Discourses
With much hard and methodical effort.618
All the treatises of the Invincible Dharma Lord,
And those following him, arose as spiritual instruction.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Relying especially on the Compendium of Practices,619

Which grants certainty on all the points of the path
With its graded arrangement of the vast and profound teaching,
I saw clearly the many points of the supreme treatises of Nāgārjuna,
Such as the Compendium of Discourse as stages of practice.620

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

617
These are Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya (Tohoku 4203) and Dharmakīrti’s seven treatises, foremost in
importance being the Pramāṇvarttika (Tohoku 4210), a commentary on Dignāga’s seminal work, to which
Tsongkhapa refers next.
618
These are Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi (Tohoku 4037) and Maitreya’s Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkara (Tohoku 4020),
for which Asanga served as scribe, according to Tibetan tradition. This section refers to the vast tradition of
bodhisattva deeds.
619
This is Śāntideva’s Śikṣasamuccaya (Tohoku 3940).
620
This is Sūtrasamuccaya (Tohoku 3934).

503
Then relying on Buddhaguhya’s clear practical instructions
On Meditation Ultimate621 and Manifest Enlightenment of Vairocana,622
All the points of the path dawned well as spiritual instructions.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Seeing how the essentials of the path of the glorious Compendium of Reality623
Are incorporated in the three samādhis and how difficult it is
To fathom how meditate on the profound meaning in that path,
I relied on the great pandit Buddhaguhya’s correct explanation
That combines the root, explanatory, and combined yoga tantras,
And on the Stages of Meditation’s proper explanations
Of the profound practices of the three tantra classes,
And the darkness in my mind was dispelled.624

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

The ultimate of all eloquent teachings of the Mighty Sage

Is the glorious unexcelled yoga tantra,
Of which the greatest and most profound
Is the king of tantras, the glorious Guhyasamāja root tantra.
Regarding this the supreme philosopher Nagarjuna said:
“The essentials of the path are sealed in the root tantra by the
six limits and four procedures.
And thus they must be understood through a master’s instruction
And in accordance with the explanatory tantras.”
Taking this to be critical, I investigated for a long time
Into the subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s noble tradition of the Guhyasamāja,
The ultimate core instructions contained in the Five Stages,625
The Lamp That Integrates the Practices,626 and the Stages of Arrangement,627 and so on.

621
Tohoku 808.
622
Tohoku 494.
623
Tohoku 479.
624
This may be a reference to Kamalaśīla’s three volumes of this title, though it is not clear how any of the three
directly pertain to yoga tantra, especially insofar as exoteric and esoteric are typically distinct topics. Tsongkhapa
has a special fondness for these treatises, so it may be that he discovered ways to make their insights relevant to this
class of tantra. This requires further research.
625
Nāgārjuna’s Pañcakrama (Tohoku 1802).
626
Āryadeva’s Caryāmelapakapradīpa, (Tohoku 1803).
627
Nāgabodhi’s Vyavasthāli (Tohoku 1809).

504
Also, relying on their lamp-like illumination628 of the root tantra
And combining them with the five great explanatory tantras,
I studied with enormous effort and discovered in general the two stages of Guhyasamāja
And in particular all the essentials of the perfection stage.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

Through the power of that, the essential point of many tantras,

Such as Saṃvara, Hevajra, and Kālacakra,
Dawned upon me as spiritual instructions.
I have explained these elsewhere—here, I merely show a door for the discerning.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

This is the second chapter, on the middle period when all scriptural traditions arose as spiritual
instructions.

Constant Practice and Total Dedication

Having thus become filled with a treasure of instructions,

I practiced by combining into a complete path of concentrated essentials
A path comprising the two universal vehicle paths,
The common path and the uncommon path with its two stages.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

It is said that the Ganges-like prayers of the bodhisattvas

Are all contained within the prayers to uphold the holy teachings.
Thus whatever virtue I accumulated
I dedicated all to the spread of the Sage’s teaching.

Thinking this over, how well my destiny is fulfilled!

Thank you very much, Holy Wisdom Treasure!

This is the third chapter: how finally I practiced day and night and dedicated all virtues to the
spread of the teaching.

In order to extend my own virtue enormously

And to show properly the correct way
To the many fortunate beings possessing a discerning mind,

628
This may be a reference to Candrakīrti’s Illuminating Lamp (Pradīpoddyotana), which Tsongkhapa held in such
great esteem that, as the dissertation notes, he chose this text to be the first to be xylographed in Tibet.

505
I have written this account of my education.
By the mass of virtue attained through this process
May all beings, through this same procedure,
Maintain the unexcelled discipline of the Buddha,
And enter the path that pleases the victors.

Colophon:
Written by the Eastern Monk Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa at the Triumph of Virtue Monastery
on the great Nomad Mountain, with Kazhipa Rinchen Pal as scribe.

506