Tsongkhapa, Founder of the Gelug School
Tsongkhapa Lobsang Dragpa (1357 to 1419) was a Tibetan scholar, monastic reformer and founder of the Gelug tradition (“School of the Virtuous”), which since the 17th century has been the religiously and politically dominant movement in Tibetan Buddhism.
From this school emerged the lineage of the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas. Tsongkhapa is regarded as one of the most important systematizers in the history of Tibetan Buddhism and shaped the scholastic tradition through his extensive body of work and through the founding of Ganden Monastery.
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Life and biography
Tsongkhapa was born in the eastern Tibetan region of Amdo, in present-day Qinghai. His birthplace is identified with Tsongkha, which gave him the byname “the man from Tsongkha”. He completed his first religious studies at a nearby monastery of the nyingma and kadampa lineages.
At the age of 16 he travelled to Central Tibet to study at the great monasteries of Sangphu and Nethang. Over the following three decades he moved between several monasteries and learned from teachers of all the traditions of importance at the time.
In “Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa” (1982) Robert Thurman traced Tsongkhapa’s life in detail and showed that his educational policy deliberately aimed at integrating all the study traditions of his day.
His most important teacher for Sutra studies was Drakpa Gyaltsen, while for tantric studies it was above all Khedrup Je and Gyaltsab Je. Another important teacher was the Sakya master Rendawa Shyönnu Lodrö, who trained him in particular in Madhyamaka philosophy. This broad educational foundation shaped the later profile of the Gelug school.
Religious and philosophical programme
Tsongkhapa’s philosophical programme aimed at a rigorous union of scholarly Sutra tradition and tantric practice. He insisted that both paths be completed in an ordered sequence: first the foundations of the monastic rule (Vinaya), then systematic Sutra philosophy according to Madhyamaka and Pramana standards, and finally the tantric initiations and practices.
This gradation became the basis of the Gelug study reform and the norm for later Tibetan monastic education.
His most significant work is the “Lam Rim Chenmo”, the “Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment”, completed in 1402, which sets out the spiritual path of a bodhisattva in three stages (lesser, intermediate and higher motivation).
Donald Lopez and Joshua Cutler translated the work into English in several volumes and explained its philosophical premises. It is regarded as the central textbook of the Gelug tradition and is memorized and commented upon in the monasteries to this day.
Interpretation of Madhyamaka
In the philosophical field, Tsongkhapa is known above all for his interpretation of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka school. He held a so-called “prasangika-madhyamaka” position, which rejected all substantive statements about ultimate reality and consistently developed the doctrine of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) in dialectical terms.
His main work in this field is the “Clarity of Thought” (“dgongs pa rab gsal”), in which he drew on the commentarial tradition of the Indian Madhyamika Candrakirti and defended it against divergent interpretations.
In “A Dose of Emptiness” (1992) José Cabezón showed that Tsongkhapa’s understanding of Madhyamaka differed in decisive points from earlier Tibetan readings. In particular, he rejected the notion that emptiness could be understood as an independent, positively definable absolute.
This position provoked opposition from within the Nyingma and Sakya schools, whose representatives accused him of an overly strict negativity. The resulting “emptiness controversy” shaped Tibetan philosophy for several centuries.
Tantric works
Alongside his Sutra studies, Tsongkhapa was a significant scholar and practitioner of the highest tantric yogas. His work “sngags rim chen mo” (“Great Treatise on the Mantras”, 1405) is the tantric counterpart to the “Lam Rim Chenmo”.
It arranges tantric practices into four classes (Kriya, Carya, Yoga and Anuttarayoga Tantra) and gives for each the prerequisites, methods and results. This systematic ordering became the basis of Gelug tantra education.
Tsongkhapa was moreover an important commentator on the Guhyasamaja Tantra, which he regarded as the most central Anuttarayoga Tantra. The Chakrasamvara and Yamantaka Tantras were also fields of his intensive commentarial work.
In his studies on Aryadeva and Candrakirti, Christian Wedemeyer showed how Tsongkhapa joined the tantra tradition with Madhyamaka philosophy into a unified overall conception.
Founding of Ganden Monastery and the Great Prayer
In 1409 Tsongkhapa initiated the “Monlam Chenmo”, the “Great Prayer of Lhasa”, a 21-day monastic festival held each year at the Tibetan New Year that brought together thousands of monks and lay people.
This festival established Tsongkhapa’s reform movement as a visible presence in the religious life of Tibet. In the same year he founded Ganden Monastery on a mountain east of Lhasa, which became the mother monastery of the Gelug tradition.
A few years later came the foundings of Drepung (1416 by Jamyang Choje, a student of Tsongkhapa) and Sera (1419 by Sakya Yeshe, likewise a student). These three monasteries, the “three seats of learning”, grew into the largest monastic establishments of Tibetan Buddhism and at their height each housed several thousand monks.
In his works on Tibetan monastic history, Per Sørensen showed that the wave of Gelug foundings in the early 15th century brought with it an economic and political reshaping of Central Tibet.
Reform of the monastic order
Tsongkhapa placed particular emphasis on the strict observance of the Vinaya, the monastic rule. He criticized the mixing of monastic discipline and tantric practice that was widespread in his time and insisted that monks live celibately and adhere to the traditional dietary rules.
This strictness earned him the byname “the second Buddha” (“sangs rgyas gnyis pa”), which is still used in the Gelug tradition today.
The reform also concerned the curriculum. Tsongkhapa introduced a fixed cycle of principal studies: Vinaya, Abhidharma, Pramana, Madhyamaka and Prajnaparamita. Each course lasted several years and concluded with debates and examinations.
The system of “Geshe examinations” he established ultimately led to the “Geshe Lharampa”, the highest academic degree of the Gelug school. In “The Madman’s Middle Way” (2006) Donald Lopez worked out the epistemic and institutional significance of this reform.
Death and afterlife
Tsongkhapa died in 1419 at Ganden Monastery. His embalmed body was preserved there in a stupa and, until the destruction of the monastery during the Cultural Revolution, was regarded as one of the most important places of pilgrimage in Tibetan Buddhism.
His work was collected in 18 volumes and published in the 17th century as a complete corpus in the famous Lhasa edition. Over the following centuries numerous scholars commented on his works; the “Lam Rim Chenmo” alone has produced more than 100 Tibetan commentaries.
Tsongkhapa’s day, the 25th day of the 10th Tibetan month, is still celebrated as “Ganden Ngamchö” with great butter-lamp festivals. In modern Tibetan Buddhism his figure is not confined to the Gelug school; he is esteemed as a major scholar in other traditions too, even where his philosophical positions are rejected.
Geoffrey Samuel has pointed out that, as an institutional key figure of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsongkhapa occupies a position as foundational as that of Thomas Aquinas in the Catholic tradition or Maimonides in rabbinic Judaism.
International reception
In Western Tibetology and religious studies, Tsongkhapa has been studied intensively since Giuseppe Tucci’s works in the first half of the 20th century.
David Snellgrove, Robert Thurman, Donald Lopez, José Cabezón and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch have examined his work in several fundamental studies. Tsongkhapa’s “Lam Rim Chenmo” is now fully available in English translation, and selected tantric texts are accessible in critical editions.
In the modern Tibetan exile, Tsongkhapa serves as a figure of identification for the Gelug tradition and as a guarantor of institutional continuity.
The 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso has, in numerous lectures and books, especially in his commentaries on the “Lam Rim Chenmo”, underscored Tsongkhapa’s relevance for present-day Buddhist practice. Beyond the specifically Buddhist reception, Tsongkhapa has been received in European and American academic philosophy as one of the most important non-Western systematizers.
Body of writings and history of editions
Tsongkhapa’s “gsung ‘bum” (“Collected Works”) comprises eighteen volumes in the traditional Tashilhunpo edition, containing some 210 independent works and letters.
Besides the “Lamrim Chenmo” (“Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment”, 1402) and the “Ngakrim Chenmo” (“Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra“, 1405), the most influential texts include the “Drang-nges legs-bshad snying-po” (“Essence of Distinguishing the Provisional and the Definitive”, 1408), the “Rigs pa’i rgya mtsho” (“Ocean of Reasoning”, a commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) and the “Lhag mthong chen mo” (the section on insight from the Lamrim Chenmo).
In “Tsongkhapa’s Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence” (Princeton 1984) Robert A. F. Thurman presented a complete English translation of the “Drang-nges legs-bshad snying-po” with an extensive apparatus on the history of religion; in “A Dose of Emptiness” (Albany 1992) José Ignacio Cabezón provided a translation of mKhas-grub-rje’s commentary on Tsongkhapa’s Madhyamaka teaching.
The text-critical study of Tsongkhapa’s works has advanced considerably in recent decades through the “Sera Jey Library” and the “Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center” (TBRC, a digitization project of E. Gene Smith since 1999).
In “The Madman’s Middle Way” (Chicago 2006) and in his essays on Gelug hermeneutics, Donald S. Lopez Jr. showed that Tsongkhapa’s commentarial technique was methodologically innovative: he combined the Indian Prasaṅgika style of Candrakīrti with a detailed epistemological analysis after Dharmakīrti, thereby creating a hybrid that shaped later Gelug scholasticism into the twentieth century.
The controversy over the "svatantra" dispute
One of the central doctrinal controversies that Tsongkhapa brought into Tibetan intellectual history concerns the question of whether independent logical proofs (svatantra-anumāna, Tib. “rang rgyud”) are admissible in Madhyamaka, or whether only consequence arguments (prasaṅga) may be used.
Tsongkhapa positioned himself strictly as a Prasaṅgika in the line of Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti, against the position of Bhāvaviveka, read as svatantrika.
This positioning is worked out in the “Lhag mthong chen mo” and in the “Rigs pa’i rgya mtsho”.
The subsequent schools reacted differently: the Sakya teachers Gorampa Sonam Senge (1429 to 1489) and Shakya Chogden (1428 to 1507) sharply contradicted Tsongkhapa, giving rise to the most important intra-Tibetan philosophical debate of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Cabezón and Geshe Lobsang Dargyay reconstructed the lines of argument in this debate in several essays, collected in “Scholasticism” (Albany 1998). In “Freedom from Extremes” (Somerville 2007) José Cabezón translated Gorampa’s main work “lTa ba’i shan ‘byed” (“Distinguishing the Views”) and compared it with Tsongkhapa’s position.
In the “Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies” (vol. 27, 2004), Janet Gyatso showed that the debate did not remain purely academic but was linked, well into the 17th century, with political consequences for the standing of the individual monastic centres.
Relationship to the Bön tradition and to older schools
Tsongkhapa’s reform programme was not a complete break with existing Tibetan religiosity, but a reordering within the framework of existing traditions.
He took over essential elements of the kadampa school, which in the 11th century went back to the Indian teacher Atisha, and integrated them into an expanded philosophical and tantric conception. Toward the Bön religion, the pre-Buddhist Tibetan tradition, he kept an explicit distance, without persecuting its adherents.
Toward the nyingma-pa and kagyü-pa as well, who preserved many tantric lineages of older Indian and Tibetan masters, he showed no political hostility.
The later polarization between the Gelug and the Nyingma-pa or Kagyü-pa traditions is rather a consequence of the political conflicts of the 17th century and not Tsongkhapa’s own legacy. Klaus-Dieter Mathes has repeatedly stressed this distinction in his studies on the history of Tibetan Buddhism.
