Position summary
The Ninth Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje (དབང་ཕྱུག་རྡོ་རྗེ་) compiled Feast for the Fortunate (c. 1578), an abridgement of the Eighth Karmapa’s Chariot of the Takpo Kagyü Siddhas (c. 1545), the definitive Karma Kagyü commentary on Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra. His core position is this: genuine Followers of the Middle Way dismantle others’ views while holding no thesis of their own, and all phenomena, emptiness included, are free from conceptual elaboration. Three stages of analysis structure the path. At no analysis, worldly conventions are accepted. At slight analysis, phenomena are seen as empty of inherent nature. At thorough analysis, the genuine Middle Way, even emptiness is transcended, leaving freedom from all elaborations (niṣprapañca, སྤྲོས་བྲལ་).
The Karmapa is a genuinely independent voice. He agrees with Tsongkhapa on some points (that self-awareness does not exist conventionally, and that clinging to true existence is an afflictive obscuration) while criticising his object of negation sharply as “partial emptiness.” He shares Gorampa’s impulse to critique Tsongkhapa, yet rejects Gorampa’s positions on self-awareness and conventional existence, and he refutes Dolpopa’s zhentong as untenable. What makes him philosophically distinctive is this point-by-point engagement, weighed claim by claim rather than by factional allegiance.
Hermeneutical approach
The Karmapa works fully within the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework: Two Truths, provisional/definitive, and the graduated stages of the Buddha’s teaching. He treats buddha nature and zhentong as provisional meaning. His method is strictly Prāsaṅgika — consequentialist reasoning that draws out the absurd implications of opponents’ positions without advancing a counter-thesis. The text integrates scholarly analysis with Mahāmudrā pointing-out instructions and siddha realisation songs, reflecting the Kagyü tradition’s emphasis on the unity of study and practice.
Key claims
- Genuine Followers of the Middle Way hold no thesis of their own — from karmapa-feast-fortunate-1578
- Phenomena themselves must be refuted, not just “the true existence of phenomena” (contra Tsongkhapa) — the Karmapa’s “partial emptiness” critique
- The Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika distinction is primarily methodological; the Autonomists’ “intentions are the same” as the Consequentialists’
- The two truths are neither the same nor different; the distinction is drawn from the perceiving subject’s side, not the object’s side
- All instances of clinging to true existence are afflictive obscurations (agreeing with Tsongkhapa, contra Gorampa)
- Self-awareness does not exist even conventionally (agreeing with Tsongkhapa, contra Gorampa and Shākya Chokden)
- Hearers and solitary realisers realise phenomenal selflessness (contra Mipham)
- Buddha nature is provisional meaning and conventional, not ultimate (contra Dolpopa)
- No common object of perception exists between the six classes of beings
Related scholars
- Eighth Karmapa (Mikyö Dorje, 1507–1554): The Ninth Karmapa’s source; author of the Chariot of the Takpo Kagyü Siddhas, the most extensive Kagyü Madhyamaka commentary. The Ninth Karmapa preserves and abridges the Eighth’s positions.
- Tsongkhapa: The most refuted master. Agreement on self-awareness and afflictive obscurations; sharp disagreement on the object of negation and postdisintegration.
- Gorampa: Shares the impulse to critique Tsongkhapa but diverges on self-awareness, conventional existence, and the precise grounds for a wider object of negation.
- Dolpopa: Zhentong explicitly refuted as untenable; buddha nature classified as provisional meaning.
- Mipham: Shares the sympathetic reading of Autonomists as genuine Followers of the Middle Way but disagrees on whether hearers/solitary realisers realise phenomenal selflessness.
- Gendun Chöpel (1903–1951): His critique of Tsongkhapa’s object of negation parallels the Karmapa’s.
- Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (1504–1566): The Eighth Karmapa’s “moonlike” disciple; his commentary on Śāntideva is the other main Kagyü Madhyamaka text.