I’d like to take Bakmoon up on his suggestion of a thread to explore the critique of Tsongkhapa. I’m putting this in the Gelug forum because my purpose is to compose a question for my Gelug teachers, and I’d like some assistance.Bakmoon wrote:Jeff H wrote: Thank you both, Malcolm and Bakmoon! These direct responses are particularly good grist for my still churning mill. I'm struggling to formulate a coherent question about all this to put to a couple of my teachers.
Would you like to talk over some of these issues in a new thread? I know from experience that these subtle issues are really opaque if you haven't studied the subject fairly closely already, so I can definitely sympathize with the confusion.
[Moderation note: thread nevertheless moved to Sakya, because Sakya/Nyingma views are simply dominating this thread in it's course. It is no good style, if Gelugs have to defend Gelug view within their own subforum.]
[Edit 2, explanation: Because there is a domination of anti-Gelug bias in this thread and at DW in general, I took the liberty to move this thread with it's dominating opinions here. Like this, there is no need to restrict "free speech", even if the claims about Gelug view are false.
If I had moved this topic to the subforum Tibetan Buddhism instead, the very few Gelugs at DW would have been forced to defend their tradition endlessly without any scope for true exchange of informations, (IMO).
Here in the Sakya subforum, people can announce their Sakya view about Gelug view of emptiness as much as they like, without being disturbed.
_()_
On DW it seems like a foregone conclusion that Tsongkhapa’s teachings on the topic of inherency as the object of negation have been overturned. Tsongkhapafan always takes up the banner, but it appears that most of the rest of us who follow Gelug teachings aren’t really up to entering the debate.
How should I present this question to my teacher? Here’s my starting place:
“Some say Tsongkhapa’s qualification of ‘inherent existence’ is unnecessary. Worse than unnecessary, as one person put it, ‘The main criticism of Tsongkhapa's view is that it supposes that a nonexistence (the absence of inherent existence) is ultimate. This makes Tsongkhapa's point of view subtly nihilistic.’
“They point to references from Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti that indicate the object of negation is simply existence and, by extension, non-existence. They say there’s no reason to belabor conventional appearance as an instance of what might be called ‘false existence’, and that to do so leaves an impression of true existence in the student’s mind.
“I revere the Tsongkhapa-based teachings I have received, but I do not know how to respond to these criticisms.”