Tsongkhapa

The existence of the conventional

Tsongkhapa's view that a dependent and conventional reality is not negated by madhyamaka (and that it is just intrinsic nature that is negated) was a subject of much debate among Tibetan madhyamaka philosophers and became a subject of critique for Sakya school figures like Gorampa Sonam Senge (1429-1489). Sakya philosophers like Gorampa and his supporters held that madhyamaka analysis rejects all conventional phenomena (which he calls "false appearances" and sees as conceptually produced) and so, tables and persons are no more real than dreams or Santa Claus. Thus, for Gorampa (contra Tsongkhapa), conventional truth is "entirely false", "unreal", "a kind of nonexistence" and "truth only from the perspective of fools." But for Tsongkhapa, the two truths (conventional and ultimate) are two facts about the same reality, or "two aspects of one and the same world" according to Thupten Jinpa. Thus for Tsongkhapa, to totally negate conventional truth (at the level of ultimate truth) would be to negate dependent origination (and so, it is to negate emptiness, the ultimate truth itself). Tsongkhapa sees this as a kind of nihilism.