Thuken

Position summary

Thuken is the third Thuken hutuqtu, a Mongolian-heritage incarnate lama from Amdo (born Phüntsok Lungpa valley, now Gansu), educated at Gönlung Monastery and Drepung Gomang, and active across Amdo, central Tibet, Mongolia, and the Qing court at Beijing. His root teacher was Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (1717–86); other principal teachers include the Second Jamyang Shepa, the Third Panchen Lama, and Sumpa Khenpo. He served as abbot of Shalu, Gönlung, Jakhyung, and Kumbum at various points, and died at Gönlung in 1802 having completed the Crystal Mirror in early January of that year.

His one philosophically significant work is the Grub mtha’ shel gyi me long, the Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems (completed 1802; see thuken-crystal-mirror-1802). It is a hybrid of three genres at once — grub mtha’, chos ‘byung, and lo rgyus — and covers Indian Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, all the major Tibetan traditions including Bön, the Chinese Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist systems, and the Mongolian, Khotanese, and Shambhalan. His other 250-odd texts are largely tantric ritual works (Hayagrīva, Vajrayoginī, etc.), monastic chronicles, biographies, and panegyric verse — not philosophically primary.

His doxographical position is canonically Geluk: Tsongkhapa as the definitive commentator on Nāgārjuna; Prāsaṅgika as the highest tenet system; the framework of the Two Truths (བདེན་གཉིས་), the three turnings, and the provisional/definitive distinction as the structural basis for Mahāyāna interpretation. What is distinctive is the form of the inclusivism. As Roger Jackson reconstructs in his Editor’s Introduction (in thuken-crystal-mirror-1802), Thuken takes the Geluk to be supreme but explicitly rejects the harder claim that other Tibetan traditions cannot lead to liberation. Apart from a hard exclusion list (Jonang, Taktsang Lotsāwa, Shakya Chokden), every other Tibetan system is “pervaded by pure appearance” and capable of bringing about the soteriological aim.

Hermeneutical approach

Fully within the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework. The framework is unmarked-default for Thuken — he does not argue for it, he operates from it. The interesting hermeneutical move is the form of his refutations: he refutes the Jonang at length on doxographical grounds (chapter 9), but refutes the misreadings of Madhyamaka view, meditation, and tantra in the Geluk chapter (chapter 12) without naming individual opponents — they are simply “some” or “others.” This is the late-Geluk synoptic style: doxographical positions are catalogued and refuted; specific opponents are named only when their positions are taken as the founding exemplar of an excluded view (Dölpopa for gzhan stong; Heshang for “thinking nothing”).

A telling hermeneutical fact about the Crystal Mirror is its treatment of Gorampa by reference. Besides two biographical mentions (English pp. 178–179), Thuken names Gorampa five times as an opponent of Tsongkhapa whom others have already answered — Khedrup and Sera Jetsünpa, Jamyang Gawai Lodrö’s Meteor Wheel — and declines to restate proofs already made (pp. 124, 255, 277, 279, 280). His Lta ba’i shan ‘byed (1469), the most sophisticated Sakya-side attack on the Geluk Madhyamaka, is neither summarised nor engaged. The work had been banned by the Ganden Potrang in the territory it controlled, though it probably circulated in manuscript in eastern Tibet (gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469, introduction). Set beside Thuken’s long Jonang refutation, the asymmetry is between engaging an opponent and pointing to replies made elsewhere; Gorampa is also absent from the systems Thuken excepts from his closing inclusivism (the Jonang, Taktsang, Shakya Chokden; English p. 318, Tib. [262]). See geluk-erasure-of-gorampa.

Key claims

On the Indian Madhyamaka schools (chapter 2):

• Standard Geluk-doxographical four-school hierarchy with the Prāsaṅgika at the apex; Āryadeva and Nāgārjuna as “general Madhyamaka” whose ultimate meaning is Prāsaṅgika.
• Buddhapālita–Bhāviveka–Candrakīrti narrative for the founding of the Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika distinction.
• Six terms for what the Prāsaṅgika negates that the Svātantrika accepts conventionally: “established by their own characteristics,” “inherently established,” “essentially established,” + the three the Svātantrika also negates (“truly established,” “perfectly established,” “ultimately established,” “established in reality,” “established by their own entity”) — almost identical to Tsongkhapa’s six-fold list in Illuminating the Intent Ch 9.

On the Jonang (chapter 9):

• Other-emptiness (གཞན་སྟོང་, gzhan stong) is structurally Hindu, paralleled with four non-Buddhist positions: Brahman as sound (Śabda-Brahman), Sāṃkhya, Mīmāṃsaka and Vedānta (English pp. 202–204). The decisive move, though, is the test of provisional meaning — “the three fulfillments — of intended meaning, purpose, and conflict with actuality” (English p. 204) — applied to the Laṅkāvatāra (pp. 205–207). This is Thuken’s distinctive contribution to the anti-zhentong literature: an external structural reduction that goes beyond the two Sakya verdicts recorded in gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469 , Red mda’ ba’s (outside the Dharma) and Rongtön’s (the most refined Cittamātra, just short of the Madhyamaka).
• The Laṅkāvatāra passage on tathāgatagarbha is read as the Buddha’s own explicit neyārtha statement: tathāgatagarbha is taught for the meaning of “emptiness; the absolute limit; nirvana; the unarisen; the signless; the wishless; and the empty,” to attract those who fear selflessness.
• Catalogue of pre-Tsongkhapa Tibetan critics of the Jonang: Butön, his disciple Lotsāwa Rinchen Namgyal, Tsöndrü Pal, Yardrokpa Rinchen Tok, Nedrukpa Gendün Pal, Rinchen Shönu, Kashipa Rinchen Dorjé. Complements the Sakya critique of the Jonang that gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469 records from Red mda’ ba.

On the Geluk’s distinctiveness in view (chapter 12):

• Catalogues three excluded positions: (i) deflationism (emptiness = nothingness, Lokāyata); (ii) eternalism (zhentong, “extrinsic emptiness as the final ultimate nature”); (iii) Heshang-quietism (“thinking nothing”). All three are refuted on the same ground: Madhyamaka requires both thoroughly refuting the object of refutation (inherent existence) and knowing how to determine, non-nihilistically, the residue of dependent-origination conventional truth. Direct restatement of framework-absence-yields-nihilism in late-Geluk doxographical form.

On Atiśa (chapter 5):

• Reads Atiśa as straightforwardly Prāsaṅgika-via-Candrakīrti — a reading that conflicts with apple-jewels-middle-way-2018’s manuscript-based reconstruction of Atiśa’s pre-distinction “Great Madhyamaka.”

On Shakya Chokden:

• Hostile deathbed-recantation hagiography, sharply contradicted by komarovski-visions-unity-2011’s reconstruction of Shakya Chokden’s mature corpus.

Related scholars

• Root teacher: Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (1717–86), author of the Great Treatise on the Establishment of Philosophical Systems (1747), the principal grub mtha’ model that Thuken draws on.
• Disciple-editor: Gungthang Könchok Tenpai Drönmé (1762–1823), edited Thuken’s collected works.
• Continues the Tsongkhapa lineage; canonical late-Geluk reception of Tsongkhapa’s Madhyamaka and the systematic refutations of Dolpopa in Tsongkhapa’s Drang nges legs bshad snying po and Khedrup Jé’s Stong thun chen mo.
• In hostile relation to Shakya Chokden (deathbed-recantation polemic).
• Dismisses Gorampa by reference: names him as an opponent of Tsongkhapa already answered by Khedrup, Jamyang Gawai Lodrö and Sera Jetsünpa, without engaging his arguments.
• In assimilative relation to Atiśa (reads as Prāsaṅgika; cf. Apple).
• Edited and introduced for the Library of Tibetan Classics (Wisdom 2009) by Roger Jackson with translation by Geshé Lhundub Sopa, Ann Chavez, Michael Sweet, and Leonard Zwilling.