Part III, Chapter 3: Tsongkhapa's Own Account of Realization¶

The two preceding chapters restated the method this tradition wrote down for its successors. This chapter reads the material Tsongkhapa himself left about his own realization, to see how the man who fixed the method describes his own passage along it. The material is of three kinds: the autobiographical poem of his later years, Destiny Fulfilled (rTogs brjod mdun legs ma, also rendered Song of Realization); his correspondence with his teacher Rendawa; and the biographies written by his disciples, together with the Praise of Dependent Origination that he composed on the day of his realization. The first two kinds come from his own hand, the third from his disciples, and they are read separately.

1. Destiny Fulfilled: an account organized around study

The poem divides a life into three stages: first the search for extensive learning, then the dawning of all the teachings as practice, and finally practising day and night. The four opening lines are the frame of the whole: "First, I sought out often extensive learning, / Then all teachings dawned as trainings, / Finally, I practiced all day and all night, / Completely dedicated to spread the Teaching!"¹ The three stages are of very unequal length. The first lists the treatises studied one by one: the works of Maitreya, the Six Ornaments and Two Supreme Ones, the treatises on valid cognition, Nāgārjuna's treatises, the four classes of tantra. The second describes how these treatises became practice. The third has only two stanzas, saying that he combined the two Mahāyāna paths of sūtra and tantra into one and dedicated all his virtue to the teaching.

On the view of emptiness the poem has a single stanza, and it describes the resolution of doubts in the language of study: "Though I had worked hard on the treatises of Sutra and Tantra, / And I was practicing and teaching the impact of the profound, / I saw that my view had not advanced far beyond / The view that has learned nothing and nothing knows. / So then I studied thoroughly all the essential keys / That bring out the authentic view, which I found / On the path of subtle philosophy that examines the profound, / Especially in the scientific treatises of Nagarjuna; / And I resolved all my doubts completely!"² The stanza deserves quoting in full, because it is Tsongkhapa's only direct statement about his own attainment of the view. Its structure is: he found his view no better than that of the unlearned, so he studied Nāgārjuna's treatises again, and so his doubts were resolved. The attainment of the view is written as the result of reading; nowhere in the poem is it written as something that happened in the meditation session.

Every stanza closes with the same refrain: "how well my destiny was fulfilled! Thank you so very much, O Holy Wisdom Treasure!" The one thanked is Mañjuśrī. This agrees with the letters discussed below: in his own account, the one who verifies the view is Mañjuśrī.

2. The event of realization in the disciples' biographies

The event itself Tsongkhapa did not write down; his disciples did. The biographies agree in outline. Around 1397, when he was about forty and already famous in central Tibet as a scholar, he was still dissatisfied with his own realization of emptiness and withdrew for a year to a hermitage in the Wölkha valley, where he reread the parts of Candrakīrti's Clear Words, Buddhapālita's commentary on the Treatise on the Middle Way, and Bhāviveka's Lamp of Wisdom that concern the difference between the Prāsaṅgika and the Svātantrika. After many months he still could not produce "a complete certitude free of all anxiety." One night he dreamed that Nāgārjuna and his disciples were discussing the point; Buddhapālita rose and blessed him with his own commentary. The next morning he opened the eighteenth chapter of Buddhapālita's commentary, and while reading the passage "the self is not the same as the aggregates, nor is it anything other than the aggregates," he "effortlessly experienced the ultimate realization of absolute reality," together with a complete understanding of all the subtleties of the Prāsaṅgika view. That same morning he wrote the Praise of Dependent Origination.³ Khedrup's hymn records the moment as the instant when, blessed by Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Buddhapālita, and Candrakīrti, "you discarded all possible stains of error with respect to the profound ultimate truth."⁴ Pabongka, retelling the event, ties it to the great exertion in offering maṇḍalas and the like at Wölkha Chölung.⁵

Of Tsongkhapa's own words about this event, Jinpa's biography cites one sentence, said later to his attendants: "These days, with greater familiarity [with insight into emptiness], even in the postmeditation periods, I would have the perception of this entire world of diversity as being empty yet, in an illusion-like manner, maintaining its specific forms. And the perception of things as not 'sealed' or marked by awareness of their emptiness—as objective facts with intrinsic reality—rarely arises in me now."⁶ This is his description of the state after realization: in subsequent attainment all appearances are seen as illusion-like, and the perception of things as intrinsically real seldom arises. The content of the description matches the aim of the illusion-like practice after the session described in Chapter 2.

The event in the biographies has two features that can be read off directly. First, what triggered the realization was a passage of text, and a passage of argument at that: Buddhapālita's analysis of whether the self is one with or different from the aggregates, which is the core of the four essential points in Chapter 2. Second, the content of the realization is described as the disappearance of doubt: in Jinpa's retelling, the long-standing doubt about "the extremely fine line demarcating what is negated in emptiness and what is left untouched" vanished without a trace, while the world of cause and effect, right and wrong, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa "seemed even more clear and regulated."⁷ Both features agree with the account in Destiny Fulfilled, which also writes the attainment of the view as the ending of doubt.

3. The letters to Rendawa: who verifies

The letters are more concrete than the poem. Tsongkhapa writes to Rendawa that he had assumed he had gained "the Prāsaṅgika view that is devoid of all positions," and then questioned the deity carefully about his view: "But I was told, together with the reasons, that I still had not yet gained the understanding." He then entered into a prolonged debate with the deity about the view, in which the deity told him what the Prāsaṅgika view should be and what he actually had in mind was merely such and such; he checked what the deity had said against the treatises of Nāgārjuna and his disciples and realized that he had indeed not gained the understanding; he asked the deity for the means to gain it and pursued them; "Now I have had a major insight, due to having gained a new understanding of the meaning of dependent origination that I had not understood before."⁸ This passage writes the verification of the view in three steps: the deity's verdict, the deity's reasons, and comparison with the treatises. He describes the distinctive feature of the new view thus: all schools hold that emptiness dispels the extreme of existence and appearance the extreme of non-existence, whereas the unique point of the Prāsaṅgika is that appearance dispels the extreme of existence and emptiness the extreme of non-existence, and from this one understands how emptiness becomes the meaning of dependent origination.⁹

The same letter has a passage that shows how he treated his earlier understanding. Comparing the deity's instructions on this occasion with what he had heard before, he found that the deity had already given the same instruction in similar terms and that he had missed the point. He then asked the deity whether his teacher too had failed to understand, and the deity replied, "He has understood it, though to what extent I am not sure."¹⁰

Rendawa's reply survives. He first says that his student's new view is "indeed extremely good," and then: "However, since there still remains some cognizance of illusion-like reality, even if you were to gain ascertainment of this [final view of emptiness], it too could be dismantled. Therefore, you should continue to supplicate [Mañjuśrī] and engage in your own critical inquiry as well." He adds the warning: "meditation deities reveal what is suited to the mental stage of the person, so do not be content with gaining some realization just once."¹¹ Rendawa then sets out four stages that he himself had passed through: a nihilistic emptiness, the union of appearance and emptiness, dependent origination as illusion, and dependent origination as mere designation without ground; he takes the fourth to be the Prāsaṅgika view and judges that his student's account still retains a cognizance of illusion.¹²

4. The Praise of Dependent Origination and the Three Principal Aspects: the criterion he gave

The Praise of Dependent Origination, written on the day of the realization, narrates no event; it praises the Buddha for teaching dependent origination. What it gives is a criterion: "All this is objectively empty, / And this effect occurs from this cause; / These two certainties are mutually non-obstructive, / They actually complement each other. / What is there more marvellous than this?"¹³ The same criterion is stated more like an operational standard in the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, written for his attendant Tsakho Ngawang Drakpa: as long as the two understandings, of appearance as undeceiving dependent origination and of emptiness as the absence of all positions, remain separate, one has not realized the Sage's intent; when at some point, without alternation and at once, the mere sight of undeceiving dependent origination dismantles the whole object of grasping at certitude, at that point the analysis of the view is complete.¹⁴ This sentence was later taken by the tradition as its internal standard for whether insight has been accomplished; the "two aspects" and the "ascertainment" at the end of Chapter 2 are its form in the session.

5. What the material says when put together

Four points can be recorded from the three kinds of material, all given by the material itself; judgment is reserved for Chapter 6.

First, Tsongkhapa himself writes the attainment of the view as a matter of study and doubt. In Destiny Fulfilled the view is gained when doubts are resolved after rereading Nāgārjuna's treatises; in the biographies the event is triggered by reading a passage of argument in Buddhapālita's commentary; in the letters the "major insight" comes from "a new understanding of the meaning of dependent origination." All three use the language of cognition; none uses the language of pliancy or stability found in the sections on calm abiding and insight.

Second, the verifiers are the deity and the treatises. The letters write verification as three steps: the deity's verdict, the deity's reasons, and comparison with the treatises; every stanza of Destiny Fulfilled thanks Mañjuśrī. The teacher's reply treats the new view as a stage that could still be dismantled. In other words, in his own account the gaining or not gaining of the view is decided by two authorities, a deity and a body of texts, and his own judgment of both is submitted to a third party.

Third, the criterion he gives is that two certainties arise together without alternation. This is a description of a state of one's own mind, reported by the person concerned. Neither the Three Principal Aspects nor the Praise of Dependent Origination offers any test outside that state.

Fourth, there is one correspondence between the account and the method. The content of the realization he describes, the argument that the self is neither the aggregates nor other than them, the simultaneous arising of the two certainties of appearance and emptiness, the illusion-likeness of subsequent attainment, is exactly the content of the insight section of the Great Treatise and of the four essential points in the manuals. The manual of practice describes the path he records himself as having walked. This point will be needed when reading the criticisms in Chapter 5 and giving judgment in Chapter 6.