Position summary
Tāranātha is one of the two leading expositors of the Jonang school, alongside Dolpopa. His Essence of Other-Emptiness gives a concise synthesis of the other-emptiness (གཞན་སྟོང, zhentong) position within the grub mtha’ (tenet system) genre. The “Great Middle Way”, he argues, surpasses the “Ordinary Middle Way” (self-emptiness, རང་སྟོང, rangtong) by correctly identifying the ultimate — the thoroughly established nature (ཡོངས་སུ་གྲུབ་པ), the matrix-of-One-Gone-Thus, self-arisen pristine wisdom (རང་བྱུང་ཡེ་ཤེས་) — as truly existent and empty only of adventitious defilements, not of its own entity.
His contribution is mainly synthetic and systematic. Where Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine authenticates zhentong through massive scriptural citation, Tāranātha gives 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 he applies it with a distinctive ordering. The Third Turning (tathāgatagarbha sūtras, Kālacakra) is definitive; the Second Turning (Prajñāpāramitā, MMK) is provisional, requiring interpretation through the lens of other-emptiness. His primary authorities are Maitreya’s Five Doctrines, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, and Nāgārjuna’s Dharmadhātustotra.
He also makes a striking revisionist claim: Indian masters “renowned as” rangtong (Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka) are actually proponents of the Great Middle Way. This is hermeneutical absorption in an extreme form.
Key claims
- The Great Middle Way surpasses the Ordinary Middle Way by affirming the true existence of the ultimate (taranatha-essence-other-emptiness-2007).
- The three-natures framework (imputational, other-powered (གཞན་དབང), 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, yet 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 turns on whether non-dual pristine wisdom is permanent or impermanent.
Relation to Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine
Read against Dolpopa’s Mountain Doctrine (see dolpopa-mountain-doctrine-1333), Tāranātha’s Essence of Other-Emptiness shows itself for what it is: a concise grub mtha’-genre synthesis downstream of the Mountain Doctrine, not an independent witness. Three relationships stand out.
- Compression. The Mountain Doctrine is a sprawling scriptural anthology (267 folios, sixty-six objections-and-answers). Tāranātha distils the same position into a tenet-ladder. The doctrinal claims trace back to Dolpopa’s own text: the thoroughly established nature truly exists (Mountain Doctrine 233), the ultimate as affirming negative (470).
- 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. The Mountain Doctrine keeps the imputational/other-powered two-tier conventional structurally prominent (the basis of Red mda’ ba’s “refined Cittamātra” reduction), whereas Tāranātha’s presentation is comparatively flattened. On the question raised at conventional-truth — does Tāranātha soften Dolpopa’s three-natures conventional? — the primary text says yes.
- Extension. Tāranātha’s revisionist claim that Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka, and Candrakīrti are “actually” zhentong proponents is sharper than anything in Dolpopa. Dolpopa makes the milder claim that Nāgārjuna asserts the matrix in the Collections of Praises, 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.
Related scholars
- 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)