Position summary
The Eighth Karmapa Mikyö Dorje (མི་བསྐྱོད་རྡོ་རྗེ་) is the most prolific author among the Karmapas and the principal architect of the Karma Kagyü Madhyamaka. He wrote his Chariot of the Takpo Kagyü Siddhas (c. 1545), a commentary on Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra, late in life, and the tradition treats it as his settled position on the Middle Way.
We know that position chiefly at second hand. The full Chariot survives in the abridgement made by the Ninth Karmapa in karmapa-feast-fortunate-1578. There the most heavily refuted master is Tsongkhapa; the Karmapa also takes aim at Dolpopa, Bodong Chokle Namgyal, Shākya Chokden, and Gorampa. What sets his approach apart is the way he folds Mahāmudrā pointing-out instructions into the philosophical analysis itself.
Hermeneutical approach
The Eighth Karmapa works wholly within the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework. He draws his authority from the early Tibetan Consequentialists — Atisha, Patsap Lotsawa, Rendawa, Lochen Kyapchok Palzang — and presents himself as continuing their lineage against what he regards as the innovations of Tsongkhapa’s tradition.
Key claims
On MA 1.8 (arhats and phenomenal selflessness), from tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes:
- Arhats realise phenomenal selflessness (selflessness of phenomena, ཆོས་ཀྱི་བདག་མེད་པ, dharmanairātmya), a claim the Karmapa defends with “three reasonings and seven scriptural quotations”
- The central reasoning runs by elimination: if arhats viewed their aggregates, constituents, and sources as real, they could not avoid viewing the self as real too — either as the possessor of those elements or as the whole of which they are parts
- Cites Āryadeva, Catuḥśataka: “Whatever is the viewer of one, that is the viewer of all. Whatever is the emptiness of one, that is the emptiness of all.”
- A qualification sets the Kagyü position apart from Tsongkhapa’s: the arhats’ realisation of phenomenal selflessness is complete in kind but limited in scope. It reaches only the phenomena of their own continua and “the uncontaminated truth of the path”, whereas bodhisattvas apply the same realisation across a far wider range of phenomena
- The “outshining” from the seventh bhūmi follows from this difference in scope, not from any difference in the content of the realisation itself
On MA 3.11 (exhaustion of defilements), from tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes:
- A brief treatment: by realising “unmoving interdependence and the nondisintegration [of interdependence]”, third-bhūmi bodhisattvas exhaust attachment, aggression, and bewilderment completely, as “qualities of relinquishment”
Related scholars
- Ninth Karmapa: Abridged the Eighth Karmapa’s commentary into Feast for the Fortunate
- Tsongkhapa: Most refuted opponent
- Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (1504–1566): “Moonlike” disciple; his Śāntideva commentary and the Chariot are the two main Kagyü Madhyamaka texts