Jetsun Tāranātha - The Essence of Zhentong (Extrinsic Emptiness)

Описание: The Essence of Zhentong by Jetsun Tāranātha is a concise yet architecturally rigorous statement of Jonang Shentong Madhyamaka at a moment when that view required clarification and defence. Written in conscious continuity with Dölpopa Shérab Gyeltsen, the text is not a repetition of the Mountain Doctrine but a second-order synthesis: a doxographical, conceptual, and polemical distillation of what Tāranātha takes to be the Mahāyāna’s definitive meaning (nītārtha). Its purpose is to demonstrate that “other-emptiness” (gzhan stong) is neither a sectarian eccentricity nor a metaphysical excess, but the culmination of Madhyamaka when its object is correctly identified.

The treatise unfolds in three movements. First, Tāranātha surveys non-Buddhist and Buddhist philosophical systems, ranking them according to their capacity to undermine fixation on selfhood and to lead beyond saṃsāra. This prepares the ground for his central distinction within Madhyamaka itself: between an “ordinary” Madhyamaka that negates intrinsic existence in conditioned phenomena (rang stong), and an “extraordinary” or Great Madhyamaka that addresses ultimate reality directly. In this latter register, emptiness does not signify sheer negation but the fact that the ultimate—dharmadhātu, tathāgatagarbha, primordial wisdom—is empty only of what is other than itself, while remaining replete with inseparable enlightened qualities.

The final section responds to objections, especially the charge that Shentong collapses into eternalism or reifies an absolute. Tāranātha counters that such criticisms arise from a failure to distinguish what is negated from what is revealed: Shentong denies all adventitious, conditioned phenomena while affirming the non-composite, self-arisen nature disclosed by that negation. As a result, The Essence of Zhentong functions both as a doctrinal compass for the Jonang lineage and as a bridge between Indian tathāgatagarbha sources, Dölpopa’s metaphysical vision, and later Tibetan debates. Its lasting significance lies in presenting Shentong not as a rhetorical stance but as a coherent Madhyamaka philosophy ordered toward realization, confidence in the path, and the full affirmation of buddha-nature.