Unique Tenets of the Middle Way Consequence School: The Systematization of the Philosophy of the Indian Buddhist Prasangika-madhyamika School by the Tibetan Ge-luk-ba Scholastic Tradition
Nagarjuna (1st century), the founder of the Buddhist Middle Way School (dbu ma, madhyamika), was apparently not concerned with building an elaborate philosophical edifice to explicate the ramifications of his radical teaching that all phenomena lack inherent existence (rang bzhin gyis grub pa, svabhavasiddhi). Chandrakirti, who most later scholars identify as the founder of the Consequence School (thal 'gyur pa, prasangika) branch of the Middle Way School, wrote a great deal to defend and extend Nagarjuna's thought, distinguishing it from that of other Buddhist philosophers. Tibetans of the Ge-luk-ba (dge lugs pa) monastic order have carefully mined these Indian riches, identifying ”unique tenets” (thun mong ma yin pa'i grub mtha') of the Consequence School that they enumerated and discussed at length.
This dissertation is a study of the ”unique tenets” as found in the most extensive and penetrating of Tibetan works on the philosophical tenets of the Indian schools, Jam-yang-shay-ba's ('jam dbyangs bzhad pa, 1648-1721) Great Exposition of Tenets (grub mtha' chen mo), and Jang-gya's (lcang skya, 1717-86) Presentation of Tenets (grub mtha'i rnam bzhag), along with Ngak-wang-bel-den's (ngag dbang dpal ldan, b. 1797) Annotations for the ”Great Exposition of Tenets”(grub mtha' chen mo'i mchan 'grel). Relevant portions of these works are translated and annotated.
The ”unique tenets” mainly comprise Consequentialist refutations of the positions of other principal Buddhist schools, particularly the Mind-Only School (sems tsam, cittamatra and Middle Way Autonomy School (dbu ma rang rgyud pa, svatantrika-madhyamika). It is argued that according to these Ge-luk-ba sources, (1) the Consequentialist strategy in these instances is to claim that their opponents engage in ultimate analysis, meaning that they either postulate metaphysical entities that could be found upon analysis or that they have used a Middle Way-type analysis themselves to refute the valid conventions of the world, and (2) the Consequentialists are not mere nay-sayers, but offer their own positive, albeit subtle, alternative to the positions they refute. In the first part of the dissertation, a few of the ”unique tenets” are discussed at length.
