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Tāranātha

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Position summary

Tāranātha is one of the two leading expositors of the Jonang school, alongside Dolpopa. His Essence of Other-Emptiness presents a concise synthesis of the zhentong position within the grub mtha’ (tenet system) genre, arguing that the “Great Middle Way” surpasses the “Ordinary Middle Way” (rangtong) by correctly identifying the ultimate — the thoroughly established nature, the matrix-of-One-Gone-Thus, self-arisen pristine wisdom — as truly existent and empty only of adventitious defilements, not of its own entity.

Tāranātha’s contribution is primarily synthetic and systematic: where Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine authenticates zhentong through massive scriptural citation, Tāranātha provides a compact overview that places the doctrine within the ascending hierarchy of Buddhist tenet systems. He also composed the Twenty-one Differences Regarding the Profound Meaning, which clarifies the zhentong position by contrasting Dolpopa’s views with those of the Sakya scholar Shākya Chokden.

Hermeneutical approach

Tāranātha works within the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework but applies it with a distinctive ordering: the Third Turning (tathāgatagarbha sūtras, Kālacakra) is definitive, while the Second Turning (Prajñāpāramitā, MMK) is provisional — requiring interpretation through the lens of other-emptiness. He draws on Maitreya’s Five Doctrines, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, and Nāgārjuna’s Dharmadhātustotra as his primary authorities.

Notably, Tāranātha makes the revisionist claim that Indian masters “renowned as” rangtong (Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka) are actually proponents of the Great Middle Way — an extreme form of hermeneutical absorption.

Key claims

  • The Great Middle Way surpasses the Ordinary Middle Way by affirming the true existence of the ultimate (from taranatha-essence-other-emptiness-2007)
  • The three-natures framework (imputational, other-powered, thoroughly established) is the key to understanding emptiness — the thoroughly established nature is never empty of itself
  • Self-arisen pristine wisdom is permanent in a genuine sense (not mere continuity), uncompounded, and immutable — but not equivalent to the non-Buddhist self
  • Confusion of zhentong with Mind-Only is a later misunderstanding
  • The central disagreement between Dolpopa and Shākya Chokden stems from whether non-dual pristine wisdom is permanent or impermanent

Relation to Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine

With Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine now added directly (dolpopa-mountain-doctrine-1333), Tāranātha’s Essence of Other-Emptiness can be read as what it is — a concise grub mtha’-genre synthesis downstream of the Mountain Doctrine, not an independent witness. Three relationships are worth tracking:

  • Compression. Where the Mountain Doctrine is a sprawling scriptural anthology (267 folios, sixty-six objections-and-answers), Tāranātha distils the position into a tenet-ladder. Claims the wiki previously attributed to Dolpopa “via Tāranātha” (e.g. the thoroughly established nature truly exists, Mountain Doctrine 233; the ultimate as affirming negative, 470) are now checkable against Dolpopa’s own text.
  • Softening. Tāranātha foregrounds the rangtong/zhentong duality at the level of view-of-the-ultimate and leans less on the three-natures graded conventional than Dolpopa does. Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine keeps the imputational/other-powered two-tier conventional structurally prominent (the basis of Red mda’ ba’s “refined Cittamātra” reduction); Tāranātha’s presentation is comparatively flattened. This is the primary-text answer to the open question flagged on conventional-truth (does Tāranātha soften Dolpopa’s three-natures conventional? — yes).
  • Extension. Tāranātha’s revisionist claim that Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka, and Candrakīrti are “actually” zhentong proponents is a sharper move than Dolpopa’s own. Dolpopa makes the milder claim that Nāgārjuna in the Collections of Praises asserts the matrix, and that Āryadeva/Bhāvaviveka/Candrakīrti and even the “Mind-Only” masters are in their final thought Great-Middle proponents (MD 102–106, 221, 235, 245). Tāranātha’s blanket “renowned as rangtong but actually zhentong” generalises this into the strongest form of hermeneutical absorption — recorded as a flag, not endorsed.
  • Follows and expounds Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine as foundational authority
  • Contrasts Dolpopa with Shākya Chokden (Sakya) in the Twenty-one Differences
  • Critiques Tsongkhapa and Geluk positions as “Ordinary Middle Way”
  • Critiqued by Gorampa (by proxy — Gorampa critiques the zhentong position Tāranātha defends)

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