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Clarke Scott is a fully ordained Buddhist monk trained in the Tibetan tradition. A student of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Clarke has received personal instructions—direct one-to-one instructions—on Madhyamaka philosophy and meditation from His Holiness. Recently Clarke moved to Tasmania to pursue a Ph.D in Buddhist philosophy from the University of Tasmania.

Introduction to the Illumination of the Thought

Introduction

In the introduction of Illumination of the Thought, Tsong khapa pays homage to the Buddha and the Madhyamaka lineage gurus, that is, the Indian pandits who expounded the Middle Way philosophy of emptiness and dependent-arising.

May I always be protected by the King of subduers,
Sun of all teachers, treasure of all good explanations
Of the profound and vast, unusual friend of all the world,
Eye revealing the good path on the three levels.

May I always receive the blessed empowerment
From guru Manjughosha, source of profundity
In the retinue of countless Conquerors, unequaled
In proclaiming the lion’s roar of right discourse supreme.

Homage from my heart to the prophesied Nagarjuna,
Who explained as it is the middle way of dependent-arising,
Free from extremes, the mind essence of the Sugatas
In the past, present, and future. Hold me then with the hook of mercy.

Homage to the feet of the glorious Aryadeva,
Who ascended to high rank through that protector’s precepts,
Clarifying for migrators what he had realized,
Attaining dominion of discourse teaching the good path.

I bow down with my head to the feet of Buddhapalita,
Who accomplished the word of the revered Manjughosha,
Illuminated the final thought of the Superior,
And went to a place of knowledge Bearer adepts.

Homage to the honorable Candrakirti and Shantideva,
Who completely and perfectly revealed the path
Of the great sage, subtle and hard to realize,
The extraordinary essentials of Nagarjuna’s system.

I have seen well with the eye of stainless intelligence
All the meanings of the uncommon essentials
In the tenets of Nagarjuna and Aryadeva
And commentaries of the three great charioteers.

In order to remove the correction by the pollutions
Of interpretations by most who sought to teach this system
And because others have requested, I will explain at length
In full and correctly the Supplement to the Middle Way.

The first three lines describe the qualities of the Buddha. The word profound here refers to the teachings of emptiness, while vast refers to the teachings of compassion, generosity, patience and so on. Unusual friend of the world is an epithet of the Buddha. Sun of all teachers shows the Buddha is like the sun, illuminating all the teachings and eliminating ignorance as sun light eliminates darkness.

By praising the Buddha and the lineage lamas in this way, Tsong khapa is placing his work within the historical framework of those come before him. He is implicitly indicating that what will be said has been said before.

In the last two verses Tsong khapa is saying he has studied the treatise and commentaries by Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, and the three masters – Buddhapalita, Candrakirti and Shantideva. While the last verse is a promise to complete the composition of the text regardless of what difficulties may arise.

As a side note, the last verse typically called the promise to compose is a device used by many Tibetan authors. By promising to complete a text they are in effect creating the cause via motivation for this to actually occur.

Meaning of the Title

The title of Candrakirti’s treatise is Madhyamakavatara while his own commentary to this is Madhyamakavatara bhashyam nama. In English this is Explanation of the Supplement to the ‘Middle Way’, while in Tibetan transliteration it is dbu ma la ‘jug pa ‘i bshad pa zhes bya ba¹ and can be translated as either Supplement or Engaging in the Middle Way. The Tibetan word ‘jug pa literally means “engage”. However, an appropriate translation here is “supplement” as Candrakirti supplements Nagarjuna’s treatise by including the vast practices of compassion and so on. Tsong khapa, in turn, clarifies Candrakirti’s thought.

‘Middle Way’ in the title should be known to refer to Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Madhyamakashastra) because when citing Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom Candrakirti does so by giving it the name The Middle Way. Furthermore, Bhavaviveka in his text Lamp for Wisdom (Prajnapradipa) tells us that the verbal root, that is, the “ka” of Madhyamaka indicates a treatise of the middle way. For Tsong khapa, the word Madhyamaka in the title should be understood to refer to Nagarjuna’s treatise not a person who follows the Middle Way or the tenets of the Middle way. I have heard that Madhyamaka in sanskrit grammar is a noun, whereas Madhyamika is a pronoun. Tsong khapa does not mention this in his text.

Nagarjuna’s treatise extensively explains ultimate truth in Fundamental Wisdom, even more so than Candrakirti. However, his treatise covers mainly ultimate truth and not the conventional. Tsong khapa says that Candrakirti supplements Fundamental Wisdom in two equally important ways. Firstly, Candrakirti composed the Supplement in order to show it is not suitable to explain the meaning of the Fundamental Wisdom in accordance with the Svatantrika-Madhyamaka or the Cittamatra schools. The Cittamatra school holds that there are no external phenomena, that is, everything is mere mind. In the tsam is mere or only and sems means mind, hence the name Mind Only school. While the Svatantrika-Madhyamaka school hold that while things do not exist truly they nonetheless exist inherently or from their own side².

Secondly, it supplements the Fundamental Wisdom from the viewpoint of the practices of compassion, ethics, patience, generosity and so forth. The practices of developing these qualities within ones continuum are collectively known as the practices of the vast. While developing ones insight into the nature of reality or emptiness is known as the profound. Together they are known as the practices of method and wisdom.

Obeisance of the Translators

At the beginning of Candrakirti’s text there is a line “homage to youthful Manjushri”

Tsong khapa has the following to say about this:

“Since this book presents knowledge about the ultimate (pramartha-abhidharma), the training in wisdom is central. Therefore, the translators paid homage to Manjushri in accordance with the former partitioning of Buddha’s words.”³

In the next article we will begin to look at the actual meaning of the text, starting with Tsong khapa’s Homage to compassion

Footnotes:

1. For those of you who wish to see the Tibetan characters, copy and paste that text into the textbox at this website and click the translate button. [back]
2. if your confused at this point, don’t worry we will cover this in more detail in chapter six. For now, just be content with hearing the names of these schools, when you hear them again you wont seem so foreign [back]
3. The three scriptural collections of knowledge, sutras and discipline. [back]

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