Post-41
Tāranātha and Yeshe Gyatso's Presentation of the Middle Way[edit]
[[ |300px|thumb| ]] The Middle Way promoted by the Buddha has been a subject of much interpretation and debate. From a simple understanding of it as a way of seeking moderation in lifestyle to a highly sophisticated notion of going beyond all concepts and cognitive fixations, the Middle Way (Madhyamaka, དབུ་མ།) has come to mean different things to different people in different contexts. It is one of the most popular Buddhist terms with a wide range of varying and even contradictory meanings. Different masters and schools of thought use the term to delineate their distinct philosophical and moral theories and approaches.
In his major work on the philosophy of other-emptiness entitled Thoroughly Ascertaining the Great Middle Way of the Expansive Supreme Vehicle (ཐེག་མཆོག་ཤིན་ཏུ་རྒྱས་པ་དབུ་མ་ཆེན་པོ་རྣམ་པར་ངེས་པ་), Tāranātha, the famous Jonang scholar and acclaimed historian, lists some fourteen different ways of understanding the Middle Way. His treatise features as one of the three most important works on the Jonang philosophy of other-emptiness, alongside Dolpopa's Mountain Doctrine and Ngawang Lodrö Drakpa's Fearless Lion's Roar. It is an extensive work in verse that includes verbatim citations of many critical and controversial verses from authoritative Indian works.
His student Yeshe Gyatso compiled the Commentarial Notes (རྣམ་བཤད་ཟིན་བྲིས་) on Tāranātha's treatise after receiving the teachings from Tāranātha. The Commentarial Notes, now available in Volume 10 of the Jo nang dPe tshogs series published by Pe cin mi rigs dpe skrun khang in 2007, and in Volume 43 of the Jo nang rje btsun tā ra nā tha'i gsung 'bum dpe bsdur ma, from the Mes po’i shul bzhag series of dPal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib ’jug khang in 2008, is a long prose commentary on Tāranātha's treatise, which is a verse composition. The colophon of this commentary reports that the commentary on the last two chapters were either never written or were lost in the transmission process. Thus, Lobzang Chogdrub Gyatso composed the commentary on the last two chapters in Wood Horse year, 1894, at a hermitage in upper Tsakho.
Tāranātha and Yeshe Gyatso explain that there are two main categories of the Middle: the Middle which is the topic to be understood/realized and the Middle which is the path that understands/realizes the topic. The first also subsumes what are commonly presented as Middle of the ground and the Middle of the result. If the Middle is about avoiding the extremes of thought and practice such as eternalism and nihilism, singularity and plurality, arising and ceasing, etc., then the ultimate Middle is the state of absolute reality which transcends all these and is the sphere of pristine wisdom. Only someone who fathoms such reality can understand the true Middle, avoid the pitfalls of extremes, and grasp also the entire Mahāyāna system. Then, Tāranātha goes on to list the different notions of the Middle starting from the Middle of practical application.
- 1. The Middle of the right lifestyle, which avoids the extremes of self-indulgent decadence and self-mortifying austerity.
2. The Middle of the right conduct, which adopts what has to be adopted and avoids what is to be relinquished. 3. The Middle of the right practice, which combines both calm abiding and insight meditation and avoids the extreme of relying only on either one of them.
Weekly quote[edit]
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