284 CHAPTER ELEVENmeditation, he was introduced to a text by Candrakirti, the founder of the
Prasangika Madhyamika school (see Section 4.2), and in 1398 this inspired a
vision in which he saw all Buddhist teachings as being mutually reinforcing
rather than contradictory. According to his vision, the· doctrine of emptiness,
if properly understood, did not invalidate ethical norms, logic, or the doctrine
of dependent co-arising. This realization formed the basis for the remainder
ofhis life's work.
Tsongkhapa's Sung-bum (gSung 'bum), or Collected VliOrks, total well over
two hundred titles. They cover the entire range of Buddhist philosophy and
Tantric practice under the rubric of Atisa's threefold analysis of the Buddhist
Path-renunciation, bodhicitta, and right view concerning emptiness-with a
special emphasis on the last category. According to Tsongkhapa, the emptiness
of the exoteric Mahayana treatises was in no way different from or inferior to
the emptiness induced by Tantric practices; one needed to have a proper un-
derstanding of emptiness, arrived at through the processes of logic and textual
study, for one's Tantric practice to succeed. Logic was needed because it made
clear the "object of negation," that is, precisely what was and was not negated
by the doctrine of emptiness. Textual study was needed for the same reason,
for as one worked through the various formulations of Buddhist doctrine pro-
duced over the centuries, one's understanding of emptiness would gradually
become more subtle and precise.
Tsongkhapa rated, in ascending order, the various schools of Buddhist
thought known to him as follows: Vaibha~ka, Sautrantika, Yogacara, Svatan-
trika Madhyamika, and Prasangika Madhyamika. The rating was based on the
thoroughness with which the school understood the doctrine of emptiness,
although Tsongkhapa viewed the higher schools as perfecting rather than
negating the lower ones. Sautrantika and Vaibha~ka he faulted as giving too
much reality to mental objects; Yogacara he faulted as giving too much reality
to mind. For him, Prasangika Madhyamika provided the middle way in that it
did not negate too little, as did the earlier Buddhist schools, nor did it negate
too much, as did some of Tsongkhapa's contemporaries, who saw emptiness
as negating moral norms and other conventional truths.
To' implement his proposed course of study, Tsongkhapa founded a monas-
tic university on Mount Ganden ( dGa'-I dan), near Lhasa, in 1409. Soon his
students founded two additional universities, also near Lhasa, at Dre-bung
('Bras spungs) in 1416, and Sera (Se-rwa) in 1419. In their heyday, the three
universities housed a total of more than twenty thousand monks. Their cur-
riculum started with basic study in logic and then proceeded through what
were termed the five great texts: six to seven years on Asanga/Maitreya's Abhi-
samayalmpkara, a text on the bodhisattva Path (see Section 4.3); two years on
Candrakirti's Madhyamakavatifra, a commentary on Nagarjuna's Stanzas on the
Middle Way, to introduce the proper understanding of emptiness (see Section
4.2); two years on Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa (see Section 4.4); and two
years on a Vinaya commentary by Gul).aprabha. Each year throughout the
course of study, time would be taken out to review the fifth great text, Dhar-
makirti's major work on logic and epistemology (see Section 6.2).