MP Talks: Consequence and Commonly Appearing Subjects

This talk is part of the free "MP Talks" series, designed to delve into the depths of Buddhist teachings and provide insights into the FPMT Masters Program. The FPMT Masters Program is a full-time study program in the Tibetan Mahayana tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa, emphasizing the integration of academic study, practice, behavior, service, and training components.

About the Talk:
Nagarjuna’s seminal text Root Wisdom begins:

Not from self, nor other, nor
from both, and yet not causelessly:
no thing has ever been produced
from causes, not in any way.

In elucidating the meaning of this terse stanza, Buddhapalita employed the following
consequence to negate production from self:

The subject, a sprout:
It follows that there is no purpose in its being produced again;
because it is already established in its own nature.

Bhavaviveka, a contemporary of Buddhapalita’s at Nalanda, attacked this explanation,
claiming it was ineffective for generating valid cognition in the mind of an opponent. He
instead employed a syllogism to clarify Nagarjuna’s thought:

Ultimately, the inner sense-sources
Are not produced from themselves;
because they exist, just as a knower exists.

Buddhapalita did not respond to Bhavaviveka’s criticisms during his lifetime; tradition
holds that Bhavaviveka belonged to a higher caste and had an impeccable reputation,
so Buddhapalita recognized that he might not be taken seriously. However, in a later
generation, Chandrakirti—who some consider to be Buddhapalita’s
reincarnation—launched an assault on Bhavaviveka’s criticism. Many Tibetan
Buddhists, including Tsongkhapa, consider Chandrakirti’s argument to be the most
important development in the history of Indian philosophy. His two-pronged attack
focused first on upholding Buddhapalita’s position and then on taking the offensive and
asserting that Bhavaviveka’s argument reveals a subtle grasping at true existence and
undermines his claim to be a Madhyamaka philosopher.

This talk is intended as a general introduction to this argument, so that we can
get a foothold to examine why these contrary positions were considered so critical to the
spiritual path. As much as possible we will try to keep the discussion within language
accessible to non-experts.
This argument is not touched on in Tsongkhapa’s text Illuminating the Intent, but
he discusses it at length in three of his other major works on emptiness: Ocean of
Reasoning, Essence of Eloquence, and the special insight section of Great Stages of
the Path. This topic was chosen for the second Madhyamaka talk because it is where
the distinction between the Svatantrika and Prasangika schools becomes clearest, and
is the most direct way to understand how a faulty mind can still establish valid
conventions according to Chandrakirti’s thought. With this understanding, other topics
within Madhyamaka can start to fall into place.

About the Speaker
Ven. Tenzin Gache
17th year student of Sera Je
Venerable Tenzin Gache grew up in Boston in the USA, graduating from Tufts University in 2005. In 2006 he was ordained in Dharamsala by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and since that time has been studying at Sera Je Monastery in South India. Currently he is entering in the 17th year of the standard 19 year geshe study program.
His translation of his teacher, Kyabje Choden Rinpoche’s book, Mastering Meditation: Instructions on Calm Abiding and Mahamudra was released in 2020, and he has recently completed a translation of Rinpoche’s teachings on the Six-Session Guru Yoga and the bodhisattva and tantric vows.