After this summary of the idealist theses, it is appropriate to give a more precise outline of Dol po pa’s doctrine, which is so difficult to distinguish, at first sight, from that of our Klong chenpa. Indeed, if it were permissible, in an academic work, to pass judgment on an old Tibetan controversy, we would say with Go rams pa that this theory is, in the last analysis, a refined and curious version of Vijñānavāda that does not belong to the Madhyamaka at all – precisely for the reason just stated by Mi pham, namely, its inability to “overcome [the idea of a] basis of manifestation [of illusion, itself] established as real.”
Despite a relative similarity on the surface, a similar fondness for the Ratnagotravibhāga, a similar way of blending sūtra and tantra, and perhaps a certain commonality in fundamental intuition, the two systems of Dol po pa and Klong chen rab ’byams are distinctly different, indeed, by the fact that the former obstinately posits an irreducible residue at the end of the Madhyamaka’s reasonings, while the latter does not admit, paradoxical as it may be, that Intelligence (rig pa) is established as real (bden grub) and empty only of that which is foreign to it (gzhan stong). In this respect Klong chen rab ’byams is either completely inconsistent or infinitely more penetrating than Dol po pa.
We follow here the account that Go rams pa dam pa seng ge,[18] perhaps the greatest of the fifteenth-century sa skya pa philosophers, gives of Dol po pa’s doctrines of in his 1468 treatise,[19] The Distinction of Views (lTa ba’i shan ’byed).[20]
This author, if he is often very incisive and even violent in the controversy, has this quality, to give precise and honest presentations of the doctrines he intends to refute. As for Tsong kha pa, I have always found in his works the passages to which Go rams pa alludes, and I have never noticed, in their introductory presentation, the slightest suspicious distortion, the slightest addition or the smallest retrenchment that could be suspected of bad faith. I have not yet had the opportunity to carry out the same methodical work with regard to Dol po pa, but it must be said that what Go rams pa says about his thought condenses very faithfully, very precisely and very synthetically what can be read in the great treatise of this author, the Ri chos nges don rgya mtsho, or what Cyrus Stearns says about it in The Buddha from Dolpo.
[1] It is conventional in the Tibetan tradition to distinguish the “vast” Path, or “Way of the vast guidance,” from the “profound” Way, or “of the deep view,” in the context of the Mahāyāna. Originally, the problem is that of combining the doctrines of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, attributed to Maitreya by the Tibetans on the one hand, with the philosophy of the Madhyamaka on theother, especially in its Prāsaṅgika form.
I confess that I do not know the historical origin of this problematic both philosophical and exegetical; but there is no doubt that it has its roots quite high up in the Indian Mahāyāna, since the Tibetans distinguish, among the Indian commentaries on the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, those that incline in the idealist direction, on the one hand, and those that are compatible with the Madhyamaka, on the other, especially Haribhadra’s commentary, which is the most highly esteemed in Tibet. Haribhadra’s commentary work shows, in any case, that the Indian authors were already concerned to correct the eristic dryness of the Prāsaṅgika doctrines by a developed theory of the stages of the Path, borrowed from a literature a priori clearly connected with the Vijñānavāda, amending it in the direction of their intentions.
In a late author, particularly benevolent towards Idealism, such as ’Ju Mi pham, it is no longer the Abhisamayālaṅkāra alone, which is associated with the vast Way, but, finally, the whole doctrine of the Vijñānavādins, which, by means of the removal of its residual substantialism, becomes the adequate explanation of surface reality (kun rdzob kyi bden pa), enveloping to a certain extent the theory of the path to Awakening. Ultimately, his thinking on this issue, which he openly expounds at several points in his work, consists in positing that the phenomenal aspect (chos can, dharma or dharmin) is adequately presented by the Cittamātra, while the essential aspect (chos nyid, Dharmatā) must be understood from the Madhyamaka. Now, according to him, as we shall see later, only the view that overcomes the opposition of phenomenon and essence is ultimate.
The secret of this view is, according to Mi pham, to be found in the Madhyamaka, although the final truth of it is pronounced in the rDzogs chen alone. But it allows us to determine in return the right place of Idealism, as a bypassed, but nevertheless preserved, moment in the ultimate doctrine. It is there one of the capital moments of the construction of the device which places the rDzogs chen in its position of high point, geometrical of the perspectives, which alone gives an account of the economy of the system.