Tsongkhapa

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Introduction: Tsongkhapa in Global Context

Donald S. Lopez Jr.

This is an edited transcript of a keynote address delivered to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and an audience of monks, nuns, and laypeople in the assembly hall at Ganden Shartsé Monastery in Mundgod, India, on December 20, 2019.

YOUR HOLINESS, VENERABLE members of the sangha, distinguished guests. Please forgive me if I begin with a personal reminiscence. Professor Jeffrey Hopkins, who is here today, founded the Buddhist studies program at the University of Virginia in 1976. In designing the program, he sought to incorporate several elements of the geshé curriculum into the graduate program. To that end, His Holiness kindly selected a series of geshés to teach at the University of Virginia over the next decade. The first of these was Lati Rinpoché (1922–2010), who arrived in 1976. Because his longtime attendant Ngawang Tsultrim could not accompany him, I served as Rinpoché’s assistant, bringing him his meals and his tea and asking him each afternoon, “Shall we go for a walk?” (cham cham la ’phebs kyi yin pas).

In October 1978, I came to India on a Fulbright Fellowship to work on my dissertation, a translation and study of the Svātantrika section of Lcang skya grub mtha’, or Beautiful Adornment of Mount Meru, the famous work on tenets by Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (1717–86), remembered by history as the preceptor and confidante of the Qianlong emperor. I had my first audience with His Holiness that fall. I remember that I asked him about such topics as “the imaginary lacks the entityness of nature” (kun btags la mtshan nyid ngo bo nyid med) and “being established from the side of the object without being posited by the power of appearing to a nondefective 2awareness” (blo gnod med la snang ba’i dbang gis bzhag pa ma yin par don gyi sdod lugs kyi ngos nas grub pa). In January 1979, forty years ago, my wife and I made our way south here to Ganden, where my teacher, Lati Rinpoché, was then abbot of Ganden Shartsé.

Back then, conditions in Mundgod were difficult, especially for an American visiting India for the first time. But here at Ganden were Lati Rinpoché, Song Rinpoché, and Dzemé Rinpoché, with Kyabjé Trijang Rinpoché visiting during Losar. At Drepung were Khensur Pema Gyaltsen, Ngawang Nyima, Gen Nyima, and the geshé who became my closest teacher, Loseling Khensur Yeshé Thupten. Tara Rinpoché also visited. After Losar, the monks from the School of Dialectics in Dharmsala came down, and I remember Gen Losang Gyatso debating with Ngawang Nyima one night in the debating courtyard at Gomang. Although the facilities at the monasteries back then were very primitive, and everything was hot and dusty, I realize in retrospect that these places called Lama Camp #1 (Ganden) and Lama Camp #2 (Drepung) were in fact a pure land and that I was in the presence of buddhas. These were the most important days of my life. Today, I return to Ganden, having just completed a translation of all of Lcang skya grub mtha’. I have brought the first copy with me to present to His Holiness.

These were the days when His Holiness was concerned that the monks were devoting too much of their studies to the monastic textbooks (yig cha) of their colleges and not to the writings of the master himself, and so he had printed hundreds of copies of a two-volume set of Tsongkhapa’s writings on emptiness, with the rather understated title, The Master’s Statements on the View (Rje gsung lta ba’i skor). I still have those dark-green books on the shelf in my study in America.

One afternoon in the spring of 1979, I was circumambulating a small stupa at Gomang College at Drepung, reciting the famous five-line prayer to Tsongkhapa known simply by its first three syllables: dmigs rtse ma. The Buryat geshé Ngawang Nyima (or Agvan Nyima, 1907–90), then abbot of Gomang, walked over and asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he said, “You’re an American, I’m a Mongolian. Here we are in India, speaking Tibetan, talking about someone from Amdo. There must be karma.” I think he was right. And now, forty years later, when all of these masters, except one, are gone, I am here at Ganden again, to talk about the “crown ornament of scholars of the Land of Snows.”

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What can we say about this man? We can say that more than ten thousand people here at Ganden, with tens of thousands more watching around the world, have gathered today, six hundred years after he passed into nirvāṇa, entirely because of him. Because of him, there are the monasteries known simply as “the three foundations” (Ganden, Sera, and Drepung); because of him, there is Tashi Lhunpo, Labrang, and Kumbum. Because of him, there is the Ganden Phodrang. Because of him, there is the Panchen Lama. Because of him, there is the Dalai Lama. Because of him, this man who was not a king, not an emperor, not a warlord, not a politician. Because of him, this man who was an itinerant yogin, traveling from one retreat site to another, accompanied by a few disciples and four dzo (a cross between a yak and a cow) loaded down with volumes of the Kangyur and Tengyur, a man who had visions of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, a man who wrote some of the most sophisticated philosophical works in history.

The title of my comments today is “Tsongkhapa in Global Context.” But this is a topic for an entire book. Therefore, let me limit my remarks to the realm of religion. When the term world religion was first coined in German in the nineteenth century, there were only two: Buddhism and Christianity. And indeed, the two religions have a long history of interaction. In early European descriptions, Buddhism is often compared to Roman Catholicism, and not always in a flattering way. Indeed, that comparison is most often made by Protestants, based on the presence of monks, monasteries, rosaries, incense, and chanting, as well as a pope, in the two religions. Today, we dismiss much of this. But perhaps we can return to the comparison in a different light.

In the history of the Roman Catholic Church, there is no thinker more important than St. Thomas Aquinas, who provided the philosophical foundation for Catholicism. Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path (Lam rim chen mo) is sometimes compared to the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, although they are very different works. Still, there is a comparison to be made: Just as Thomas went back to the works of Aristotle to reshape Christian theology, arguing that reason is a path to God, so Tsongkhapa went back to the works of Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti to provide the most influential exposition of Madhyamaka in the history of Buddhism, arguing that reason is essential even at the most exalted stages of the path to buddhahood.

Although Thomas Aquinas wrote five short hymns, including the 4famous “Adoro Te Devote,” he is remembered for his genius as a philosopher. For the devotional side of the religious life, the Catholic Church reveres above all The Imitation of Christ by St. Thomas à Kempis, a contemporary of Tsongkhapa. This work provides detailed instruction for daily practice, intended to return monastic life to its spiritual foundations, foundations from which Thomas à Kempis felt many monks had strayed. The Imitation of Christ was the inspiration for another important work, the Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, the Christian order most often compared to the Geluk and the order with the most extensive interaction with Buddhism. In the case of Tibet, we think especially of the Italian Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), who studied at Sera Monastery in Lhasa and wrote lengthy refutations of rebirth and emptiness, in Tibetan. Like Thomas à Kempis and Ignatius Loyola, Tsongkhapa wrote many important devotional works, hymns, and instructions on practice—especially in his many works on tantra, which comprise some two-thirds of his collected works (gsungs ’bum)—but also in works on Madhyamaka, such as his several “instructions on the Madhyamaka view” (dbu ma’i lta khrid).

A final figure to mention is St. Benedict, author of yet another seminal work of the Roman Catholic Church, the Rule of St. Benedict, which provided the foundation for the organization and governance of monastic life. Benedict himself did not seek to establish his own religious order. However, the Benedictine order would develop over the centuries, eventually building thousands of monasteries across Europe. Tsongkhapa has been referred to as a “reformer” in European-language books about Buddhism for more than a century. There are several problems with the use of this term. However, his commitment to monastic discipline is clear throughout his biography, from his Dharma festival on the Vinaya in 1397 at Sengé Dzong to his composition of rule books (bca’ yig) that would form the foundation for much of Tibetan monastic life, first at Ganden and later for hundreds of Geluk institutions across Inner Asia and today around the world.

With this brief comparison, I seek to make a simple point. One might argue that the Roman Catholic Church is built on the work of three saints, each towering in his importance: Thomas Aquinas, Thomas à Kempis, and Benedict of Nursia, who, respectively, provided the philosophical, spiritual, and institutional foundations of the church. For the Geluk, we find these three foundations provided by a single monk, Losang Drakpa from 5Tsongkha. And furthermore, for Tsongkhapa, these three foundations were not separate domains. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of his work is his call for the importance and the synergy of the three spheres, the ’khor lo gsum: lta ba, sgom pa, and spyod pa: philosophy, meditation, and action. To this remarkable achievement, accomplished in a life of only sixty-two years, we should add that these foundations were expressed in some of the most beautiful poetry and prose in the vast literature of the Tibetan language.

I mentioned at the outset that my translation of Lcang skya grub mtha’ has just been published. Along with Jamyang Shepa’s Great Exposition of Tenets (Grub mtha’ chen mo), Changkya’s is the most famous grub mtha’ text and certainly the more widely read. As I was working on the translation, I was continually struck by the presence of Tsongkhapa, or “the foremost great being” (rje bdag nyid chen po), as Changkya usually refers to him. Although there is no grub mtha’ text among the eighteen volumes of his collected works, nor in those of his two chief disciples, Gyaltsab and Khedrup, there is hardly a single topic on which Tsongkhapa does not offer essential insight, whether it is the refutation of Sāṃkhya in the chapter on non-Buddhist traditions; the question of whether the Pudgalavāda of the Saṃmitīya sect—the famous (and infamous) proponents of an “inexpressible person”—are really “proponents of Buddhist tenets” (nang pa’i grub mtha’ smra ba) in the Vaibhāṣika section; to the extensive discussion of substantial existence (rdzas yod) and exclusion of the other (gzhan sel) in the Sautrāntika chapter. The lengthy Cittamātra chapter, which Changkya seems to have written first, is based largely on Tsongkhapa’s Essence of Eloquence (Legs bshad snying po), and the two Madhyamaka chapters are based on many of his works, but especially his Great Commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Rtsa shes tiḳ chen) and his Illuminating the Intent (Dgongs pa rab gsal), his commentary on Candrakīrti’s Entering the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatāra).

If one were to characterize the writings of Tsongkhapa with a single term, it might be “integration” (zung ’jug). When we read his works, we notice immediately that he is not only a master of the “five books” (gzhung lnga) that form the basis of the Geluk curriculum—Maitreya’s Ornament for Realization (Abhisamayālaṃkāra), Candrakīrti’s Entering the Middle Way, Dharmakīrti’s Commentary on Reliable Cognition (Pramāṇavārttika), Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośa), and Guṇaprabha’s Discourse on Discipline (Vinayasūtra)—and their vast related 6literature, but that he is able to see deep connections among them. For example, in his Notes on Ornament for the Middle Way (Dbu ma rgyan gyi zin ’bris), he takes up the category of “reasoning about the unestablished” (gzhi ma grub pa’i gtan tshigs), the question of whether something that does not exist can be the subject of a syllogism. At first sight, this appears to be a technical question deriving from Indian Buddhist logic, and in many ways it is. However, Tsongkhapa understands that in Madhyamaka, it is essential to be able to reason about things that do not exist, most importantly the self of persons and the self of phenomena. This is just one of many examples of the ways in which he integrates Dharmakīrti’s logic into Madhyamaka ontology.

Yet another example of integration is Tsongkhapa’s weaving of Indian sources into his works. As a young monk, he spent four full years at Tsal Gungthang, essentially in a reading retreat, immersing himself in the Tsalpa edition of the Kangyur and Tengyur. The most immediate result of his study was his first major work, Golden Rosary of Good Explanation (Legs bshad gser phreng), his magnum opus on the Perfection of Wisdom, where he famously cites twenty-one Indian commentaries on Maitreya’s Ornament for Realization. As Thupten Jinpa notes in Tsongkhapa: A Buddha in the Land of Snows, from this point on, Tsongkhapa would rely almost exclusively on Indian sources in the many works that would follow; it was Indian works that he loaded on to the backs of the four dzo that accompanied him from one retreat to another. It was from this point that he styled himself “the Well-Read Losang Drakpai Pal from Tsongkha in the East” (mang du thos pa shar tsong kha pa blo bzang grags pa’i dpal).

The most famous, and perhaps the most consequential, integration that we find in the collected works of Tsongkhapa is his integration of sūtra and tantra. In some ways, this derives from Atiśa and his Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradīpa). However, Tsongkhapa’s engagement with the question is far more extensive and sophisticated, where, for example, in the first chapter of his Great Exposition of Secret Mantra (Sngags rim chen mo) he takes up the crucial question of the distinguishing feature of tantra. He concludes that it is not to be found in the realm of wisdom because there is no wisdom more profound than that set forth by Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti. All those who achieve liberation, whether by the path of the śrāvaka or the path of highest yoga tantra, must realize the subtle selflessness of persons and phenomena as set forth in Prāsaṅgika. 7Instead, Tsongkhapa argues, the difference must be found in the realm of method, in the practice of lha’i rnal ’byor, deity yoga. As always, he has an Indian source, the Vajra Canopy Tantra (Vajrapañjara Tantra), to support his argument: “The method is to bear the Teacher’s form” (thabs ni ston pa’i gzugs can no).

Each of these examples, however, are instances of the most important form of integration that we find in Tsongkhapa’s works: the integration of study and practice, the conviction that what might seem arcane, technical, even pedantic in the vast corpus of the Buddhist canon always offers an occasion for practice—in his words, an opportunity to see all teachings as man ngag, as personal instructions.

At the beginning of his grub mtha’, Changkya writes:

A state of degeneration beyond degeneration

has become full blown.

That the secrets of the teachings of the Sage

still have not declined is due to his kindness.¹

Changkya wrote those words almost three hundred years ago. If the degenerate age was full blown then, what is our fate today? There are surely many lessons that the works of Tsongkhapa have to offer to the modern world. But the one that occurs to me today is his commitment to reason, analysis, and evidence in all elements of the Buddhist path, from going for refuge to the most advanced stages of tantric practice, his conviction that it is only through the exercise of the highest powers of the intellect that we can attain direct perception of the real.

In 1979, I finished my study of the Svātantrika chapter of Changkya several weeks before I had to return to America. I asked Loling Khensur Yeshé Thupten what I should study next, and he said, without hesitation, the Essence of Eloquence. And so he began to teach me. We did not finish. On the day of my departure from Mundgod, I came to say goodbye, tears streaming down my face. As I began to do a prostration, he said, “Don’t bow down,” phyag ma tshal. He explained that if I did not bow down, it meant that the teaching was not concluded and that we would meet again to continue the study of this precious text, the text that was recited by 8the monks of Ganden six hundred years ago to honor the passing of this great master. And so I end with this prayer, that we will all meet again in the future, where our teacher will appear before us once again, to teach us how to understand the teachings of the “crown ornament of scholars of the Land of Snows, Tsongkhapa” (gangs can mkhas pa’i gtsug rgyan tsong kha pa).

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  1.   Changkya Rölpai Dorjé 2019, 71.