[1] Chandrakirti's work was especially promoted by Tibetans like Rendawa Zhönnu Lodrö and his student Tsongkhapa as a way to counter the widespread influence of the Uttaratantra, and the shentong views associated with it.
[3] As noted by Kevin A. Vose, Chandrakirti is seen by many Tibetan Buddhists as offering "the most thorough and accurate vision of Nāgārjuna's emptiness, which, in turn, most fully represents the final truth of the Buddha's teaching.
According to Karen Lang:According to Bus ton and Taranatha, Candrakirti was born in south India and entered a monastery, where he mastered all the Buddhist scriptures.
He preferred Buddhapalita's interpretations of Madhyamaka teachings and defended them in a famous debate with the grammarian Candragomin, who supported the idealist position of the Vijñanavada (Doctrine of Consciousness) school.
[7]Tibetan sources further add that during the latter period of his life, he returned to the South of India, where he stayed in the region of Koṅkuna.
[8] Bu ston and Taranatha both reference a debate that took place at Nalanda between Chandrakirti and the poet-lay scholar, Chandragomin.
[5] The debate started after Chandrakirti noticed Chandragomin delivering a lecture to a large crowd on the topics of Pāṇinian grammar, sūtra, and tantra.
However, due to a disagreement, a debate ensued between the two, with Chandrakirti arguing for the Madhyamaka position and Chandragomin taking on the Yogacara view.
According to Chandrakirti, the apophatic method of madhyamaka is a thoroughgoing negation of all concepts, propositions (pratijñā) and views (dṛṣṭi) which affirms neither existence nor non-existence.
Ultimately, all phenomena are merely conceptual constructs (prajñaptimatra) which do not exist in themselves but are mentally imputed dependent designations (prajñāptirupādāya).
[6] Thubten Jinpa outlines what has been seen by commentators as the main philosophical ideas put forth by Chandrakirti as follows:(1) rejection of formal inference based on criteria grounded in objects facts of the world, relying instead on consequential reasoning that reveals logical contradictions and absurd consequences entailed by an opponent's positions, (2) rejection of the key tenets of the Buddhist epistemology initiated by Dignaga and developed further by Dharmakirti, (3) a radical understanding of the inaccessibility of ultimate truth through language and thought, (4) an understanding of conventional truth that appeals for its validity to everyday intuitions of the world instead of philosophical grounding, (5) a unique interpretation of Nagarjuna's statement about his having no thesis, and (6) the possible cessation of mind and mental factors in buddhahood.
[11][10] The conventional truth (saṁvṛti satya) is the fact that, provisionally speaking, phenomena have a nature or existence (bhāva).
[6][10] It is this very lack of inherent nature in conventional truth that allows it to change and have causal efficacy (arthakriya) and thus, to be a dependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda).
[10] The conventional is the "domain of mundane cognitive process, and is readily accessible for ordinary beings" according to Sonam Thakchoe.
The only difference is that conventional phenomena have some causal efficacy from the mundane point of view (for example, water can help a thirsty person, a mirage cannot).
But it does not exist by virtue of its intrinsic objective reality (svarūpatā / bdag gi ngo bo nyid).
[16][17] Bhāviveka had argued that to be able to accurately and effectively defend the madhyamaka view against its opponents, one needed to positively prove one's thesis by means of independent inferences (svatantrānumāna) in formal syllogisms (prayoga) which proved the madhyamika thesis in a self-contained manner independent of the views of non-madhyamika interlocutors.
Chandrakirti states:Whoever speaks in terms of independently valid logical arguments (inferences) reaps some fault.
[21] Chandrakirti argues that the idea that one must use the syllogistic arguments commits one to the acceptance of inherent natures or some other form of foundationalism or essentialism.
According to Chandrakirti, the philosophical practices of these logicians, motivated as they are by a desire for certainty and logic, becomes "an enormous reservoir where faults pile up one after another.
[6][13] Indeed, according to Chandrakirti, madhyamaka presents no positive view at all and he cites Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī in which he states "I have no thesis" in this regard.
Reason can thus indirectly point to the ineffable ultimate truth (which can only be realized by another means, i.e. through wisdom, jñana) by revealing what it is not.
[15] Yet, as Dunne notes, Chandrakirti thereby faces serious difficulties in explaining "the improbable state of affairs" by which a Buddha could teach and benefit sentient beings without any cognitive relation to the world.
[28] In his Madhyamakāvatāra, Chandrakirti also offered refutations of a number of Buddhist views such as those of the vijñānavāda ("consciousness doctrine") or yogācāra school.
[11] Chandrakirti cites the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra in order to argue that the storehouse consciousness is a provisional teaching of indirect meaning (neyartha).
According to Chandrakirti, sutra teachings which state that "all is mind" and the like were taught by the Buddha as a way to counter the idea that our sufferings are caused by external forces and actors.
[39] The first Tibetan translation of Chandrakirti's Madhyamakāvatāra and its auto-commentary was completed by Naktso Lotsawa, a student of Atisha.
[41][42] The logician Chapa Chökyi Sengé (12th century) is known for discussing the views of Chandrakirti and composing refutations of them in his defense of the epistemological tradition of Dharmakirti.
[42] Chapa's student, Mabja Changchub Tsöndrü (1109–1169) is also another important early figure who wrote on Chandrakirti.
Later important Tibetan Buddhist figures like Tsongkhapa, Wangchuk Dorje (the 9th Karmapa) and Jamgon Mipham also wrote commentaries on the Madhyamakāvatāra.