Path to the Middle: Oral Madhyamika Philosophy in Tibet : The Spoken Scholarship of Kensur Yeshey Tupden (S U N Y Series in Buddhist Studies)

Rating:
Summary: awesome tour-de-force
Review: Path to the Middle is a presentation of the teachings of a great Tibetan scholar and monk, Kensur Yeshe Tubden. Formerly abbot of the Drepung Loseling monastery, Kensur-la displays amazing erudition in his explication of the most complicated philosophical topics in Tibetan Buddhism. His wisdom is clearly marked with a penetrating feeling of compassion, and this is mirrored by the gentle and moving account of his life Professor Klein provides in her introduction.

This book is ostensibly a commentary on a few stanzas from the Perfection of Wisdom chapter from Je-Dzong-ka-ba's commentary of Chandrakirti's Madhyamakavatara. The book does not limit itself to the specific passages under analysis, however, but instead ranges freely and gracefully through numerous difficult questions that arise when closely analyzing the Prasangika-Madhyamika interpretation of emptiness.

Kensur Yeshe Tubden's analysis is unique among Western works on emptiness in at least two counts. Firstly, this is a close and careful analysis of this material at an extremely high level. For those who have already looked into the basics of Prasangika-Madhyamaka, this book will raise many questions about the real meaning of numerous stock phrases, like dependent-arising and valid cognition. Most valuable to me was a rare, in-depth discussion attempting to pin down what is meant by nominal designation or valid imputation.

The second unique point about this book is that Kensur-la is willing to freely discuss points of doctrinal contradiction and conflict and to report different positions that have been held be different scholars. He is also willing to frankly state his own opinions, and admit when he feels his understanding is not clear. Many presentations of Madhyamaka give the impression that its interpretation in Tibet is monolithic and unproblematic, but this book clearly shows this is not the case. It is an exciting foray in into the jungle of reasoning and argument that brings these ideas to life.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Anne Klein who, as editor, clearly spent hundreds of hours sifting through material in order to make this book what it is, a precious, unique, fluid narrative revealing the dazzling inner life of one of the great Tibetan teachers of this century.