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Gorampa's text is polemical, and his targets are two of Tibet's greatest thinkers: Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school, and Dolpopa, a founding figure of the Jonang school. Distinguishing the Views argues that Dolpopa has fallen into an eternalistic extreme, whereas Tsongkhapa has fallen into nihilism, and that only the mainstream Sakya view—what Gorampa calls "freedom from extremes"—represents the true middle way, the correct view of emptiness. Suppressed for years in Tibet, this seminal work today is widely regarded and is studied in some of Tibet's greatest academic institutions.
Gorampa's treatise has been translated and annotated here by two leading scholars of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and a critical edition of the Tibetan text on facing pages gives students and scholars direct access to Gorampa's own words. José Cabezón's extended introduction provides a thorough overview of Tibetan polemical literature and contextualizes the life and work of Gorampa both historically and intellectually. Freedom from Extremes will be indispensable for serious students of Madhyamaka thought. (Source: Wisdom Publications)This question aside, seeing the canon as a predicament, i.e., as a tradition's self-imposed limitation, and viewing the exegetical enterprise as the means whereby a tradition extricates itself from this predicament, is indeed a provocative way of formulating the problematic of religious canons. In this essay I intend to employ Smith's notion as a springboard for discussing the Indo-Tibetan concept of siddhānta (Tibetan grub mtha', literally 'tenet'), a concept that represents on the level of philosophical ideas this same process of self-limitation. I will maintain that the adoption of such a schema serves functionally to "canonize" philosophy in much the same way as the collection of accepted scriptural texts creates a norm for what is textually canonical. I shall also examine some of the rhetorical strategies involved in utilizing and upholding the validity of the siddhānta schema. In particular, in the latter part of the essay I will turn my attention to the exegesis of the Tibetan dGe lugs pa school and shall examine how this brand of Buddhist scholasticism deals with the problems that arise out of the self-limitation that occurs in the course of canonizing its philosophical tradition. As might be expected, the examples that best illustrate the unique dGe lugs pa exposition of siddhānta have to do with points of controversy, and among these some of the most controversial have to do with the theory of Buddha Nature. Hence, much of the material that we shall consider will in one way or another have to do with the notion of tathāgatagarbha.
In what follows I shall urge, first of all, that in the scholastic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, especially in the literature of the dGe lugs pa sect, the siddhānta schematization served as a de facto canonization of Buddhist philosophy that came to defme what was philosophically normative.'"`UNIQ--ref-0000105A-QINU`"' Secondly, I shall maintain that, despite the fact that Tibetan exegetes have arrived at only a tentative consensus'"`UNIQ--ref-0000105B-QINU`"' as to the nature of the textual canons,'"`UNIQ--ref-0000105C-QINU`"' the determination of whether or not a doctrine was normatively Buddhist (and if so either provisionally or unequivocally true)'"`UNIQ--ref-0000105D-QINU`"' involved to a great extent a rhetoric that had as its basic presupposition the validity of the siddhānta schema. Put in another way, philosophical discourse (and particularly polemics) was based as much on the siddhānta classification scheme as it was on the physical canons, the collection of the "Buddha's word" and the commentarial literature whose creation it spurred. In many instances the siddhānta schema that formed the doctrinal or philosophical canon came to supersede the physical canon as the standard by comparison with which new ideas or texts came to achieve legitimacy.'"`UNIQ--ref-0000105E-QINU`"' (Cabezón, "The Canonization of Philosophy," 7–9)Affiliations & relations
- University of California, Santa Barbara · workplace affiliation
- Dalai Lama, the 14th · teacher
- UCSB Faculty Page · websites
