Gorampa
Gorampa defended the mainly anti-realist interpretation of madhyamaka held by the Sakya school (which sees conventional truth as a false illusion).
[2] Gorampa was the student of Rongtön (Rongtön Shéja Künrig, Wylie: rong ston shes bya kun rig), Byams chen rab ’byams pa Sangs rgyas ’phel (1411–85), Ngor chen Kun dga’ bzang po (1382–1456), Gung ru Shes rab bzang po (1411–75).
[1][3] He founded the Thuptén Namgyél Monastery in Tanag (Wylie: rta nag thub bstan rnam rgyal gling), which is just north of Shigatse.
"[14] As such, according to Cabezón, Gorampa holds that "the fourfold negation found in the tetralemma or catuskoti—not x, not non-x, not both, and not neither—is to be taken literally as a repudiation of, for example, existence, nonexistence, both, and neither without the need for qualification.
This is the "ultimate freedom from conceptual fabrication" (don dam spros bral) which requires the negation of "the reality of appearances.
[16] As Gorampa states, the first priority of madhyamikas should be “the negation of the reality of appearances; thus the unreality of appearances is the principal thing to be established.”[17] Furthermore, the object of negation consists of an objective aspect (yul), comprising all conventional truths and a subjective aspect (yul can), comprising all cognitions (with the exception of ārya's meditative equipoise).
[18] Therefore, for Gorampa, madhyamaka analyzes all supposedly real phenomena and concludes through that analysis "that those things do not exist and so that so-called conventional reality is entirely nonexistent.
Gorampa writes:Suppose someone replied: If that were the case, even conventional truths would have to be the object of negation from the perspective of the ultimate rational analysis.
Gorampa's works contain an extensive and detailed refutations of the madhyamaka view of Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa (c. 1357–1419), the founder of the Gelug school.
As Cabezón explains:For Tsong kha pa, the problem of ignorance lies in the fact that the mind improperly reifies objects, imputing real or inherent existence to things that lack it.
For Go rams pa, the chief problem lies in the fact that the mind operates through a dichotomizing filter that continuously splits the world into dualities (existent/nonexistent, permanent/impermanent, and so forth).
Put another way, for Tsong kha pa the problem lies with the false quality that the mind attributes to objects, whereas for Go rams pa it lies with the very proliferative character of the conceptual mind itself, an aspect of mental functioning that cannot be entirely eliminated through the selective negation of a specific quality (true existence), requiring instead the use of a method (the complete negation of all extremes) that brings dualistic thinking to a halt.
[27]Gorampa also criticizes Tsongkhapa's view of conventional truth on numerous points (including those related to Tsongkhapa's "Eight Difficult Points") such as:[28] Gorampa also does not agree with Tsonghkapa that the prasangika and svatantrika methods produce different results nor that the prasangika is a "higher" view.
[29] In his polemical passages against Tsongkhapa, Gorampa states that Tsongkhapa's supposed conversations with Manjusri bodhisattva were actually encounters with a demon:[note 1] "Gorampa, in the Lta ba ngan sel (Eliminating the Erroneous View), accuses Tsongkhapa of being "seized by demons" (bdud kyis zin pa) and in the Lta ba'i shan 'byed (Distinguishing Views) decries him as a "nihilistic Madhyamika" (dbu ma chad lta ba) who is spreading "demonic words" (bdud kyi tshig).
Gorampa's critiques were addressed by some of the Gelug school's most important thinkers such as Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen (Rje btsun Chos kyi rgyal mtshan c. 1469– 1544/46) and Jamyang Shepe Dorje Ngawang Tsondrü (’Jam dbyangs bzhad pa Ngag dbang brtson ’grus c.
