## 1. Ultimate Truth and the Middle Way



The Geluk interpretation of the Middle Way offers a unique
presentation of the Buddhist doctrine of two truths: the ultimate
truth and conventional (or relative) truth. Geluk philosophers are
concerned to avoid the reification of the ultimate truth and the
deprecation of conventional truth, arguing that conventional existence
and ultimate nonexistence are mutually implicative. In this tradition,
the two truths are said to be "extensionally identical but
intensionally distinct" (*ngo bo gcig la ldog pa tha
dad*). That is, the two truths are not different entities, but are
conceptually distinct aspects of all entities. Thus Geluk philosophers
argue that (1) to exist is to be empty and (2) to exist is to exist
conventionally (see Changkya in Cozort 1998, 429).



The ultimate truth is said to be emptiness because things are not
found to exist separate from their parts, causes, or designations;
this non-finding itself is the meaning of emptiness. Emptiness, too,
is not "found" when sought (emptiness is empty, too). To
be found (when an ultimate essence is sought) is to be intrinsically
or ultimately real, and nothing has this status for the Geluk
tradition, not even emptiness. Emptiness is interpreted in the Geluk
tradition as a non-implicative negation (*med dgag*). As
opposed to a negation that implies something else, a non-implicative
negation is simply an absence, such as a lack of true existence. This
mere lack or absence, as a negation of essence that does not implicate
any other essence, is the meaning of the ultimate truth in the Geluk
tradition. Nevertheless, the claim that there is nothing ultimately
real--or that the ultimate truth is emptiness--is itself a
(conventional) truth (Jinpa 2002, 46-48). It is expressed like
this: "The ultimate truth is posited as solely the negation of
truth [that is, inherent existence] upon a subject that is a basis of
negation..." (Tsongkhapa, 396). Thus, on this view, nothing
exists ultimately. This lack of essence in phenomena, or
"emptiness," does not annul their appearance or
conventional reality. Rather, emptiness is held to be the condition
for the possibility for any appearance. To be empty means to arise
dependently--to lack independent, real existence. Since nothing
can be found to be independent, everything is said to be empty. Thus,
in the Geluk tradition, emptiness is the nature of all phenomena (or
their *lack* of independent nature), and all phenomena are
necessarily empty.


## 2. Conventional Truth and the Consequence School



Geluk philosophers take the radically anti-foundationalist,
antirealist Consequence School (Prasangika Madhyamaka),
grounded in the texts of the Indian Buddhist philosophers
Buddhapalita and Candrakirti, to be the most sophisticated
school of Buddhist philosophy. The Consequence School gets its name
from the fact that it relies on *reductio* argument to
demonstrate emptiness, in contrast to independent formal arguments.
According to Tsongkhapa, no independent formal argument can prove the
emptiness of phenomena to those not already convinced of that fact
because these arguments presuppose a common understanding of the terms
used. That is, this kind of formal argument presumes that a subject
matter is objective or given and is understood in the same way by all
parties to the debate, and he follows Candrakirti in arguing that
this cannot be the case when an antirealist (who understands
emptiness) and a realist (who lacks an understanding of emptiness)
engage in dialogue (Changkya in Cozort 1998, 451). This is because a
proponent of the Consequence School consents to no such given,
objective facts.



By invoking consensus as the mark of (conventional) reality, the Geluk
school's coherence theory of truth anticipates some of the
insights of the later Wittgenstein (see Thurman 1980). There are no
foundations in the Geluk tradition, neither ultimate nor conventional;
there is only transactional usage--"what is renowned in the
world." Thus, unlike some other Middle Way philosophies, like
the Autonomy School (*svatantrika*), the distinction
between "correct" or "incorrect" relative
truth itself depends upon our epistemic conventions and practices, not
on a world of independent truthmakers. "What works" is the
criterion; that is, what conforms to the ways of the world is a
conventional truth in the way that a game works when you subscribe to
its rules. Any further notion of a "correct" relative
implicates a foundation, an essentialist presumption about the way
things are (Changkya 1998, 321; Botrul 2011, 141).
Therefore, the measure of what is correct is simply what conforms to
the world rather than based on any other warrant that would serve as a
deeper structure or more fundamental layer of reality beyond what is
simply conventional (Cozort 1998, 52).



Tsongkhapa identifies three criteria for conventional truth. A
conventional truth is what (1) is acknowledged by a conventional
epistemic instrument, (2) is not undermined by another conventional
epistemic instrument, and (3) is not undermined by an analysis of its
ultimate nature (Tsongkhapa 2000, 627). The third criterion
underscores an important point in Gelukpa philosophy: that an
object's emptiness of intrinsic existence (its ultimate status)
does not undermine its status as a conventional truth. Whether or not
this is successful, or if this is even possible, is a strongly debated
philosophical question. The first two criteria reflect the commitment
that what counts as true or real depends upon our epistemic resources,
which themselves are mutually supportive, and which both support and
are supported by the entities they reveal, as well as the fact that
there is a difference between being correct and incorrect regarding
conventional truth. Because of this commitment to a robust sense of
conventional truth, their rivals in Tibet have charged the Geluk
interpretation of the Middle Way with being realist (about the
conventional truth) and nihilist (about the ultimate truth), or even
an incoherent mixture--full of contradictions--of
Dharmakirti's foundationalist epistemology with
Candrakirti's antirealist ontology. The Geluk philosophy
continues to be engaged in the debate about the unique role that
epistemology plays within the antifoundationalist Consequence School
(The Yakherds, 2021).



Tsongkhapa and his Geluk followers insist is that nothing exists on
its own even conventionally; that interdependence is universal
(Tsongkhapa 1988, 585). Therefore, we cannot ground conventions in any
deeper foundation. The fact that there is nothing but groundless
conventions--all the way up and all the way down--is another
way of seeing why the ultimate and the conventional are not distinct
from one another; the two truths are none other than two aspects of
the same thing.



Geluk philosophers argue that this explains the crucial distinction
between the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) and the Mind-Only (Cittamatra
or Yogacara) schools of Buddhist philosophy which, on their
reading, assigns the mind a privileged ontological status as the truly
existent ground of an illusory external world. Rather than claim that
the mind is independently real in contrast to unreal external objects,
like a subjective idealist, Geluk theorists argue that a proponent of
the Middle Way explicitly affirms the interdependency of minds and
objects. Kunzang Sonam (1823-1905), explains
Tsongkhapa's position as the thesis that minds and external
objects are equally conventionally existent and equally ultimately
nonexistent, and so of exactly the same ontological and
epistemological status. He goes on to show how external objects are
accepted conventionally in the Consequence School because the
coextensive presence and absence of objects and cognitions undermines
the claim that even conventionally there are no external objects. That
is, when there are external objects, there are internal cognitions,
and when there are internal cognitions, there are external objects;
cognitions and objects are paired and thus rise and fall together. He
reiterates this point by saying that not only does no conventional
analysis negate external objects, but that conventional analysis
undermines the absence of externality (Kunzang 2007, 706-707).
One might think that since Geluk philosophers take the existence of
the external world to be affirmed in the Consequence School, that they
are committed to external realism, and indeed some of their critics
have accused them of this (The Yakherds 2021). But the affirmation of
the existence of the external world is simply an affirmation of its
conventional reality, and of its knowability using conventional
epistemic instruments. So, while Geluk philosophers are not idealists,
they are certainly not external realists, either.



Tsongkhapa outlined three types of "intrinsic
characteristic" (*rang mtshan*) that convey important
features of the different metaphysical systems of the Abhidharma,
Dharmakirtian epistemology, and the Consequence School,
respectively. Through this threefold distinction he sets up his
presentation of what uniquely defines the ultimate truth, and by
implication, the conventional truth, in the Consequence School, while
incorporating a range of metaphysical systems into his comprehensive
interpretative scheme. Firstly, Tsongkhapa says that an
"intrinsic characteristic" is distinguished from a
"general characteristic" in the Abhidharma context of
metaphysics, where an intrinsic characteristic distinguishes a
particular trope from a general type. That is to say, an intrinsic
characteristic marks a contrast that delineates, for instance, the
heat of fire (intrinsic characteristic) from its being a member of the
larger class of material form (general characteristic). Tsongkhapa
conveys another meaning of "intrinsic characteristic"
found in Dharmakirtian epistemology that distinguishes the
"intrinsic characteristic" that is the unique particular
from that which is an universal. In contrast to the second meaning of
"intrinsic characteristic"--which marks a contrast of
a more real kind of entity (a particular) from another, less
substantially real counterpart (an universal)--the third meaning
of "intrinsic characteristic" represents a subtle kind of
reification that is a problem. This third type of intrinsic
characteristic is presupposed by distorted cognitions that impute
things to have independent existence. This kind of intrinsic
characteristic, as the imputation of things existing on their own,
even conventionally, is what Tsongkhapa describes as the subtle
reification that is uniquely eliminated in the philosophical system of
the Consequence School (Tsongkhapa 2008, 425-426).



Geluk philosophers emphasize the interdependence -- the
relational nature of things (the internal and external, and the
ultimate and conventional). Indeed, the argument for universal
emptiness from the premise of interdependence is often called
"the king of arguments." Kunzang Sonam says that
it is "the king" because it can simultaneously induce
certainty in emptiness and appearance from the side of emptiness;
there are no other Middle Way arguments that do this. That is,
demonstrating that the objects we encounter are (mere) appearance
eliminates the reification of (intrinsic) existence, while showing
that emptiness is the emptiness of intrinsic existence--as
opposed to empirical existence--eliminates the misconception that
things are utterly nonexistent. The fact that the interdependent world
exists (dependently, without intrinsic existence) reveals how the
conventional and ultimate truths are paired in this philosophy. There
is no hierarchy of a transcendent, ultimate world contrasted with the
immanent world of conventions that lacks any value. Rather, the
ontological unity of the two truths in the Consequence School erases
this dichotomy, and arguably erases the dichotomy of the domains of
ontology and ethics, too. That is, the system of this antirealist
"ground" of emptiness and interdependence arguably
supports an ethical system in a more seamless way than an instrumental
notion of ethics can, with its associated notion of a means or
"path" that results in a qualitatively different,
transcendent goal. Indeed, the Geluk (lit. "way of
virtue") appeals to this ethical feature in its name.


## 3. Unique Assertions of the Consequence School



Tsongkhapa contends that the superiority of the Consequence School to
all other Buddhist philosophical schools is reflected in a series of
theses unique to this school, each of which reflects a deeper
understanding of the nature of reality and cognition. We now turn to
several of these. The Consequence School squarely rejects idealism:
neither objects nor minds have a privileged status in this tradition,
and so there is no privileged level of consciousness, and no
self-validating awareness. While the Mind-Only school asserts that all
thought and all appearances are grounded in a "foundational
consciousness" (*kun gzhi rnam shes*) and that each
moment of consciousness is reflexively aware (*rang rig*), the
Consequence School rejects these claims. The foundational
consciousness, he argues--posited as a ground for sensory
consciousness--represents a mistaken attempt by other Buddhists
to understand personal identity, one that ends up reifying the self.
Tsongkhapa dispenses with this notion of a substrate consciousness and
sees it as simply another reification.



The Mind-Only school is committed to the reality of a special kind of
reflexive awareness (*rang rig*), by means of which the mind
knows itself, a way that is different from the way a mind knows any
other object. Geluk scholars deny that there is any such distinctive
mode of reflexive awareness; the mind is simply a dependently arisen
phenomenon, just like any other, and is known in just the way that
other phenomena are known. Moreover, nothing appears the way it really
is to an ordinary being (Jamyang Zhepa in Hopkins 2003, 930). For this
reason, this philosophy does not partake in ordinary phenomenology.
Instead, it is primarily concerned with critical ontology, or what we
could call a form of "ontological deflationism," in that
it aims to undermine the foundations of the entire ontological project
(MacKenzie 2008, 197). Philosophers in the Geluk tradition also point
out that the posit of reflexive awareness attributes to the mind a
special status as an independently existent, self-knowing entity. Yet
a unique, first-personal access to self-awareness, being simply given
in experience, presumes immediate access to truth. Tsongkhapa and his
followers take this as a further reason to reject this view, since
according to those in the Geluk tradition, conventional truths are
interdependent, and knowledge is always mediated and contingent.
Moreover, they argue, reflexive awareness offers no explanatory power
in the realms of either the conventional or ultimate truth. Indeed,
Tsongkhapa argues that in the Consequence School, neither this kind of
foundational consciousness nor reflexive awareness are taken to exist
even conventionally--they are simply philosophical errors.



Tsongkhapa argues that another distinctive feature of the Consequence
school is its recognition of the existence of "disintegration as
an entity" (*zhig pa'i dngos po*) to account for
causality (Hopkins 2003, 934-35). The impetus for the theory
that disintegration is a distinct entity is to provide an account for
causality in the absence of substance. Tsongkhapa argues that an
entity's disintegration--which many other Buddhist
philosophical systems take to be a non-entity--is just as real as
any positive entity, and so itself is as causally efficacious as any
other entity or event. While attributing causal power to
disintegration is an attempt to preserve a non-substantialist theory
of causality, this theory invites other problems, such as the
reification of absence (i.e., treating emptiness as a
"thing"), which has been a frequent target for critics of
the Geluk tradition.



The Geluk tradition also sees the Consequence School as offering an
unapologetic affirmation of conventional reality, including the
reality of the person. The Geluk tradition holds that transformation
and liberation do not require us to deny the reality of the world, but
rather to cease the superimposition of essences onto the entities we
encounter and onto ourselves as subjects. This is another way of
saying that emptiness--the absence of essence--is a negation
not of existence *per se*, but rather of *intrinsic*
existence, or *essence*. That is, this analysis in terms of
emptiness in a significant way leaves conventional phenomena intact,
and merely refutes the claim that they exist ultimately.
Significantly, the denial of self, too, does not mean the denial of
the "mere I" (*bdag tsam*), or the conventionally
existent person (Jinpa 2002, 71). The mere I or the conventional
person is also accepted as conventional existent in the Geluk
tradition. Only its reification or true existence is denied.


## 4. Buddhist Context of Geluk Philosophy



It is important to recognize how Geluk philosophy is embedded within a
distinctively Buddhist soteriology. That is, the truth of no-self is
liberating because understanding this is held to free one from the
mistaken idea of a self that binds one to suffering. Knowledge of
emptiness is key to this emancipatory process, as Tsongkhapa claims,
for one must realize emptiness as it is articulated in the Consequence
School, the lack of true essence, to be free from the subtle sense of
self and achieve nirvana (Cozort 1998, 316). This view is
also maintained to be a prerequisite for the esoteric practices of
tantra. Tantra is an important part of the path to liberation in the
Geluk tradition. It is a path to liberation that is held to involve
distinct, esoteric methods, but without diverging from the
philosophical view of emptiness, which is indispensable. For this
reason, Geluk philosophy is located squarely within the immanent world
and the exoteric domain of discourse: the intersubjective spaces of
dialogue and debate.



Therefore, rather than overcoming mistaken concepts by circumventing
them in a mystical flash of insight or an ecstatic experience of
union, the Geluk tradition offers a more sober way to overcome
misconceptions, one based on clear, rational analysis and a direct
appeal to this world. That is, this tradition holds reasoned analysis
to be necessary to understand the nature of phenomena (or rather,
their *lack* of nature). This is because an ascertainment of
the lack of true existence is held to be necessary to counteract the
directly opposed notion--the apprehension of true
existence--which is the misinterpretation of reality (as more
than simply conventionally existing) that binds one to suffering. To
do this, it is not sufficient to simply "let be," stare
into space, or ignore the cause of misinterpretation in some tranquil
"nonconceptual" meditation; rather, one must have insight
induced by reason that counteracts the habit of holding onto true
existence.



Thus, in Geluk philosophy, we can say that insight into reality is not
held to be beyond thought, or attributed to some third category beyond
the world that is neither existent nor nonexistent, but is simply
insight into a world that is neither (ultimately) existent nor
(conventionally) nonexistent. Even though Geluk scholars consent to
the fact that emptiness can be perceived nonconceptually--in the
rarified case of a highly developed meditation--they maintain
that the emptiness that is known nonconceptually is no different from
the emptiness that is conceptually known. The sharp distinction
between conceptual and perceptual arguably falls away when there is
nothing beyond conceptual designation. It is not a surprise then that
it is the *conceptual* ascertainment of emptiness that is a
principal element of the Geluk school's philosophy. Moreover,
their emphasis on the practice of insight is not based on an appeal to
a direct, unmediated access to what is beyond concepts, but to reason.
Reason is also given priority over scriptural authority, which is
subjected to the scrutiny of analysis and is adjudicated by reason
(Tsongkhapa in Hopkins 1999, 71).


## 5. Geluk Education



Following Tsongkhapa's lead, the Geluk tradition came to
establish large monastic institutions that set the standard for
scholastic education in Tibet. The curriculum at Geluk monastic
institutions involves five primary topics: metaphysics
(*abhidharma*), epistemology (*pramana*),
negative dialectics (*madhyamaka*), path structure
(*Abhisamayalamkara*), and ethics
(*vinaya*). Buddhist metaphysics instills the contours of a
Buddhist view, including causality, impermanence, and an
event-metaphysics that ties these two together. The path structure
also plays a central role in traditional Buddhist philosophy: it
provides the philosophy with a *telos*, a narrative arch toward
liberation and complete enlightenment. Ethics, too, is integral to
this path and to Buddhist philosophy in general, yet some of the most
distinctive and interesting features of Geluk philosophy are found in
its epistemology, and in particular, negative dialectics.



Geluk monks who train in philosophy study epistemology early in their
careers, and debate is a primary means by which this tradition is
internalized and enacted. Buddhist epistemology, as codified in
Dharmakirti's *Commentary on Epistemology*
(*Pramanavarttika*), lays out a systematic
presentation of the means of knowledge and the rules for valid
inference. Dharmakirti's epistemology can be said to be
antirealist or conceptualist, in that he denies that language directly
relates to the contents of perception, which are ineffable
particulars. Yet to account for the relationship between real
particulars and unreal universals, the Geluk tradition develops what
has been dubbed a "semi-realist" position, whereby it
asserts that there are universals that are real entities in contrast
to the antirealism that denies that universals are entities (Dreyfus
1997, 173). Here again we see a collapse of duality; this time, the
concept-percept duality that underwrites Dharmakirtian
epistemology.



Straddling the delicate line between a realist view that affirms the
reality of universals and an antirealist one that denies the reality
of concepts, a Geluk account of epistemology holds that universals are
real, but that they do not exists separately from their particular
instances. For instance, the universal "cow" and the
particular instances of cow are held to be not utterly distinct, as
antirealists would have it, nor are they held to be the same, as a
strict realist would claim, but are rather said to be
"extensionally identical but intensionally distinct"
(Dreyfus 1997, 174-78). In the epistemological context,
articulating this relationship is an attempt to account for the
efficacy of concepts without giving universals an autonomous existence
apart from their instances. Given that the Geluk tradition claims that
Dharmakirti's epistemological project represents an
inferior philosophical position, it is arguably studied for didactic
purposes, whereas the nominalism of what Geluk thinkers consider their
own tradition--the view of the Consequence School of the Middle
Way--is the hallmark of their philosophy.