Periodically, Geshe la mentions in his teachings both the philosophical schools and the philosophers who represent them. If you aren't familiar with the names, it's hard to tell the philosophers from the schools. In this essay I intend to introduce you to these schools and names so that you'll have a kind of reference sheet in the future as we delve more deeply into the philosophy.
First of all, and most obviously, it is important to remember that Buddhist philosophy is based on the original teachings of the Buddha. It seems a bit obvious to say this, but the philosophy can at times become so complex that we forget that it arises from a firm and clear set of conclusions articulated by the Buddha, and can we return them whenever we are confused. Second, it is equally important to remember that the Buddha had a very long teaching life (45 years), and so left behind an enormous corpus of teachings. And third, the Buddha is said to have been a consummate teacher in many ways, but particularly in his ability to tailor his lessons to the appropriate level of his audience. Like all good teachers, he simply met the needs of his students--he wouldn't teach the same thing to a Brahmin that he would teach to a sesame-seed grinder. Nor would he use the same methodologies. So the collected teachings reveal a wide range of subjects, techniques, and methods--so wide, in fact, that various lineages reject certain teachings as spurious while other lineages accept them.
Buddhist philosophers, soon after the Buddha passed into paranirvana, began to organize his vast body of teachings by extracting from them established conclusions called "tenets." What are tenets? Tenets are the end product of a process of reasoning that has eliminated all contingent possibilities, finally arriving at one authoritative conclusion. The study of this process of reasoning, of understanding how one conclusion
logically arises from this reasoning, is called "tenet study," and it is one of the vital components of Geshe la's education. We see evidence of this training every Sunday. Tenet study represents a sustained attempt to locate and explain the organizing principles, the fundamental coherence, of the Buddha's highly diversified teachings. It represents one of the most ambitious and intellectually demanding projects in the history of philosophy, and the tradition that comes down to us is one of unequalled brilliance and, as far as I can tell, accomplishment.
Exegesis, or scriptural interpretation, is found in any religious tradition that has a textual basis, and Buddhism is no exception. To ask, "What did the Buddha mean?" and then begin to answer and support your answers with logical arguments is to participate in tenet study and exegesis. As in all other religions, various schools of thought, various answers to this question, developed in northern India, and in the first millennium, the Tibetans began to organize these responses in a way that is still studied in the monasteries. The names of these schools, and the philosophers that developed them, are the names that Geshe la mentions in his classes. So, what are these schools and who are the philosophers associated with them? There are basically four schools, with the last one having two sub-schools (I've listed the names of the philosophers associated with them in parentheses):
1. Vaibhasika--(Vaibhasikas rely on an anonymous work entitled Mahavibhasa)
2. Sautrantika--(Dignaga [5th-6th century], Dharmakirti [7th century], and Vasubandhu [4th century], the last of which Geshe la mentions often)
3. Cittamatra--(Dignaga, Dharmakirti, Asanga [4th century, brother or twin of Asanga], Vasubandhu)
4. Madhyamika--(Nagarjuna [2nd-3rd century], Candrakirti [7th century], Bhavaviveka [6th century], Santaraksita [8th century])
- Svantantrika
- Prasangika
Geshe la considers himself to be a holder of the Prasangika tenets, but it's not as if these tenets are unrelated to the tenets of the others. In fact, it is just the opposite. The Gelugpas have organized these philosophers in such a way that if you begin with the Vaibhasikas and understand their arguments fully, you can then move through the remaining schools as a series of refinements and clarifications, of responses and progressions, until you ultimately arrive at a full understanding of what is, to the Gelugpas, the final position, the position of the Prasangikas. The most important of these ideas were developed in India by Nagarjuna in the 2nd to 3rd centuries, further refined from the 4th to the 7th centuries, and so were fully formed by the time Buddhism arrived in Tibet. But they were not arranged in this manner; this was done by the Tibetans, and it is one of the major accomplishments of Eastern philosophy, rivaled only, in my opinion, by Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages, where disputation, debate, and logical argument were also part of the daily monastic curriculum.
To belong to a "school" meant simply to have an intellectual commitment to a series of arguments. To claim allegiance to different sets of tenets did not imply antagonism or isolation or hostility between the different camps. At Nalanda University in northern India, for example, scholars from all of the various traditions lived, worked, and debated together. There is not a good contemporary analogy for this phenomenon, even though you occasionally see the various political parties mentioned as a rough equivalent--groups of people holding different ideas about a just society, for example, but still working and living together amicably. Perhaps a better analogy would be the Philosophy or Religion Departments of the modern university.
I will leave it to Geshe la to develop the various positions held by the various schools as we progress in our class. But to orient you generally, to give you a sense of the forest we're confronting, let me offer up a one-sentence summary of the each of the four schools:
1) The Vaibhasikas are often considered to be the most recognizably "realist" of the four as they regard as real and eternal the tiny atoms out of which matter is made.
2) The Sautrantikas most likely began as dissenters from the Vaibhasika school, and represented a conservative scriptural tradition that rejected much Mahayana philosophy as an unfounded elaboration on the Buddha's teachings, although like the Vaibhasikas, they also accepted certain phenomena as having substantial or permanent existence.
3) The Cittamatrins are well known as the "mind-only" school, meaning that they reject entirely the substantial existence of external objects.
4) The Madhyamika school, or the Middle Way, finds the middle course, as the name implies, between the extreme positions that things do exist eternally (Vaibhasikas, and their atoms) or nothing exists beyond the mind's projections (Cittamatrins, or the "mind-only school").
It is often said that as you move through the four schools, from the Vaibhasikas to the Prasangikas of
the Madhyamika school, you are moving from "more" acceptance of permance to "less" acceptance of permanence, until you finally arrive at the grand synthesis of the Prasangikas. Therefore, most scholars, and particularly the Gelugpa scholars, argue that is helpful to take up the study of these schools sequentially, as we move from what is most comfortable and conventional through a gradual understanding of the logical fallacies of these positions, until the Prasangika views become the final, only, and irrefutable position.
That, of course, is that task of a lifetime, if you have a lifetime to give to it. So we are fortunate to have in our presence someone who has accomplished this task and is willing to start us out on this long and demanding path of understanding.
Sidney Burris, Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas
