Overview
Lta ba’i shan ‘byed theg mchog gnad kyi zla zer (Distinguishing the Views: Moonlight to Illuminate the Main Points of the Supreme Path) is the principal Madhyamaka polemical treatise of Gorampa Sönam Senge (1429–1489) and one of the most influential Sakya Madhyamaka works of the fifteenth century. The text sets out Gorampa’s threefold taxonomy of Tibetan Madhyamaka — eternalism (Dolpopa), nihilism (Tsongkhapa), and freedom-from-extremes (the Sakya position) — then defends the third against the first two by close refutation grounded in the primary sources.
The treatise is the locus classicus for the Sakya critique of Tsongkhapa, on a par in influence and rigour with Mkhas grub rje’s Stong thun chen mo on the Geluk side and the Eighth Karmapa’s MA commentary on the Kagyü side.
Structure (per Gorampa’s own sa bcad)
The text divides into four chapters (skor ‘go bzhi):
- Chapter 1 (–1.3) — The Three Systems of Those Who Claim to Be Mādhyamikas. Programmatic chapter introducing the threefold taxonomy and laying out, in succession, what Tsongkhapa and Dolpopa each maintain.
- Chapter 2 () — Refutation of the System that Advocates that the Extreme of Eternalism Is the Madhyamaka (= Refutation of Dolpopa).
- Chapter 3 (–3.3.5) — Refutation of the System that Advocates that the Extreme of Nihilism Is the Madhyamaka (= Refutation of Tsongkhapa). Five sub-divisions: the ultimate; the conventional (with .1 karma, .2 the bowl-of-water example); ancillary points (.1 two obscurations, .2 two selflessnesses, .3 Mahāyāna/Hīnayāna abandon-and-realise distinction, .4 external objects without ālaya/svasaṃvedana, .5 no autonomous reasons or theses, with .5.1–3 on theses, adequate argumentation, and the basis on which the two-truths division is drawn).
- Chapter 4 (–4.3) — Establishing the System that Advocates that the Freedom from Extremes Is the Madhyamaka (Gorampa’s own system). Three subdivisions: identifying the vessel; the basis-path-result triple (with .1 the basis = union of the two truths, .2 the path = union of method and wisdom, .3 the result = union of the two bodies); trustworthy scriptural sources (with .1 the two ultimates by name and .2 the four-extremes scriptures).
The internal .1.2 is the locus classicus of Gorampa’s two-level ultimate (rnam grangs pa / mtshan nyid pa); of his anti-med dgag / “you have not negated enough” critique; .5 of his Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika position; of the two Sakya verdicts on zhentong he records — Red mda’ ba’s, which he endorses (outside the Dharma), and his teacher Rongtön’s (the most refined Cittamātra, just short of the Madhyamaka) — and of his rejection of the reading that confines VV 29 to meditative equipoise.
Tibetan editions
Per the Distinguishing the Views editor’s preface (Cabezón & Dargyay 2007 ), three editions of the Tibetan text are collated:
- K = the Sde dge xylograph carved in the first decade of the twentieth century, found in The Complete Works of Gorampa Sönam Senge, vol. 3, in Sa skya pa’i bka’ ‘bum: The Complete Works of the Great Masters of the Sa skya Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, vol. 13, ed. Bsod nams rgya mtsho (Tokyo: Tōyō Bunko, 1968), 47 folios.
- S = Lta ba’i shan ‘byed theg mchog gnad kyi zla zer, published with Khenchen Sönam Lhundrup’s Rtags kyi rnam bzhag (Sarnath: Sakya Students’ Union, 1988), pp. 1–154.
- B = an unidentified mechanical reproduction of a handwritten text in the library of the Institut für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets, Hamburg (access no. MIV 345/6, catalogued 1968?), most likely printed in Buxa Duar, India, in the early 1960s, 42 folios.
Transmission and reception
The text was, per Cabezón’s preface, banned by the Ganden Potrang (the Geluk-backed Tibetan government) before 1959. His introduction places this within the suppression of texts critical of the Geluk after the rise of the Ganden Potrang in the mid-seventeenth century: Gorampa’s works were banned and probably circulated only in secret in the areas it controlled, while in eastern Tibet manuscript copies circulated and reading transmissions survived; the Sde dge blocks were carved only in the first decade of the twentieth century. Cabezón attributes the banning to the Fifth Dalai Lama only with the caveat “if this in fact happened” (introduction n. 19). Since 1959 the text is no longer banned, in Tibet or in exile, and it is now widely read across the Tibetan schools, including the Geluk.
The most extensive Geluk-side reply is the Lta ba ngan pa’i mun sel, begun by Sera Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen (1469–1544/46) and completed by his student Paṇchen Delek Nyima (Cabezón, introduction n. 154), frequently cited in the endnotes of the Cabezón & Dargyay translation. Cabezón also names Jamyang Gawai Lodrö (1429–1503), Jamyang Shepa (1648–1721) and Changlung Paṇḍita (1770–1845) as Geluk respondents, and knows of no Sakya counter-reply to Jetsünpa or Jamyang Shepa. Mkhas grub rje’s earlier Stong thun chen mo (which inspired Cabezón’s interest in identifying its unnamed opponents and led to this translation project) is the Geluk-side polemical analogue, written before Gorampa but addressing many of the same issues from the opposite direction.
Modern reception
- Translated in full as Freedom from Extremes: Gorampa’s “Distinguishing the Views” and the Polemics of Emptiness by José Ignacio Cabezón and Geshe Lobsang Dargyay (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007); see gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469.
- Cabezón also translated Mkhas grub rje’s Stong thun chen mo as A Dose of Emptiness (SUNY 1992); the two translations together provide the symmetric Sakya-and-Geluk picture of fifteenth-century Tibetan Madhyamaka polemic.