r0b’s Reviews > Meditation on Emptiness > Status Update

‘It would be a mistake to assume that Gelukpas are somehow satisfied with a mere verbal layout of intricate philosophy. There is a basic recognition that we are controlled by our ideas, and thus reformation of ideas in a harrowing process of analytical meditation - involving one’s feelings in the most intimate sense - is of central importance.’

...self-contradictions that are entailed without it, one is considered to be beyond the pale of sensible discourse; as Tsongkhapa says, "We do not debate with the insane."
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'The four alternatives [as previously outlined], therefore, are all - inclusive only in the sense of including all possibilities of inherently existent phenomena-when these are refuted, it can be decided that phenomena do not inherently exist. They do not include all possibilities whatsoever. If one does not agree that such qualification is needed upon being shown the self-contradictions...

‘Ridiculing the instruction manuals on the view of emptiness, even one of our own logicians propounds that there is no innate conception of the self and aggregates as different. These assertions are the bad talk of those with partial vision much like the way a one-eyed yak eats grass.’

From Jamyang Shêpa Ngawang Tsöndrü's text

'Therefore, asserting that the ultimate
Is able to set itself up is like wanting
To eat up space; no one takes 'validly established'
And 'able to set itself up' as synonyms.'

...This view contrasts sharply with the Gelukpa interpretation. That Prasangikas have no system is refuted by Tsongkhapa in his Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path.’

‘Many, both in the East and in the West, have interpreted Prasangika-Madhyamika to be a systemless system that, based on the realization that words are incapable of generating an experience of objects like that of direct perception, uses reasoning merely to refute other views while propounding a meditation that is solely a withdrawal from conceptuality. This view contrasts sharply with the Gelukpa interpretation....

‘The Gelugpa view is indeed subtle. It attempts to describe what nominal existence is: the non-identification of the imputed object as its basis of imputation and yet the coordination of these two as determined by whether the object so designated can perform its functions.’

‘Gendun chöpel often refers to scholars who pressed him with their debates, and it appears that his objections are not to a philosophical incorrectness in Tsongkhapa’s teaching but to a pedagogical fault...Gendun chöpel essentially is accusing the Gelugpas of being too subtle for their own good.’

‘...it is necessary [according to the Gelugpas in particular] first to realize the existence of phenomena before meditating on their emptiness...The cognition of emptiness is not the eradication of phenomena but a thorough understanding of their mode of existence.’