This book explores a number of themes in connection with the concept of Emptiness, a highly technical but very central notion in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. It examines the critique by the leading Nyingma school philosopher Mipham (1846-1912), one of the Tibet's brightest and most versatile minds, formulated in his diverse writings. The book focuses on related issues such as what is negated by the doctrine of Emptiness, the nature of ultimate reality and the difference between 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic' emptiness. These issues continue to be the subject of lively debate among contemporary exponents of Tibetan Buddhist thought. Karma Phuntso's book aptly undertakes a thematic and selective discussion of these debates and Mipham's qualms about the Gelukpa understanding of Emptiness in a mixture of narrative and analytic styles. For the first time, a major understanding of Emptiness, variant to the Gelukpa interpretation that has become dominant in both Tibet and the West, is revealed.

Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness, Karma Phuntso, Curzon Press, Hardcover, 2005, 304 pp, $180.00

Karma Phuntsho was trained to be a Khenpo, a Tibetan monastic abbot, for about a dozen years during which he studied, practiced and taught Buddhism in several monasteries in Bhutan and India. In 2003, he received a D.Phil in Oriental Studies from Balliol College, Oxford. He currently works at the University of Cambridge and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris as a post-doctral researcher specializing in Buddhism and Bhutan. His main interest lies in he preservation and promotion of Buddhist and Bhutanese culture.

Acknowledgements                                   xii
List of abbreviations                              xiv
Introduction                                       3  
 Emptiness and what there is                      3  
 Emptiness, to be and not to be                   6  
 Emptiness: a religious issue and the nature      10
 of the debates
 Mipham: a polymath and his works on Emptiness    13
 Sources and methodological considerations        19
1 Emptiness: its soteriological, doctrinal,        23
ontological and historical significance in
Buddhism
 Emptiness qua Non-self the heart of Buddhist     24
 soteriology
 Emptiness qua Prajnaparamita: the primary path   28
 Emptiness qua Pratityasamutpada: the central     31
 doctrine
 Emptiness qua nitartha: the ultimate topic       32
 Emptiness qua the ultimate: the ontological      33
 truth
 Emptiness qua nirvana: the religious goal        34
 Emptiness qua Madhyamika philosophy: a           37
 historical milestone
2 The big fuss about Emptiness: an outline of      40
the history of debates on Emptiness
 Controversies in India before Nagarjuna          40
 Nagarjuna's critiques and subsequent             42
 controversies
 Controversies during Early Propagation in        44
 Tibet
 Early debates in the Later Propagation           44
 Debates after Tsongkhapa                         47
 Mipham and the later debates                     51 (4)
3 What is negated by ultimate analysis? Debates    55
on the delimitation of the Madhyamika negandum
 The delimitation of the negandum                 56
 BA, IX/140 and negandum                          60
 Some Gelukpa criticisms of the Ngarabpa          66
 position
 What is 'hypostatically existent' and when       70
 does one negate?
 On insertion of the qualifiers                   75
 Mipham's main criticisms                         79
 On the tetralemma methodology                    91
 The Gelukpa interpretation of 'neither           95
 existent nor non-existent'
 The nuances of inferential arguments             98
 The verification of contexts                     101
 An analysis of the cognitive negandum (lam       103
 gyi dgag bya)
 On BA, IX/26                                     107
 Resemblances and reciprocal comparisons          109
4 The fully empty: Mipham's theory of the          113
ultimate reality
 The ultimate and two truth theories              114
 The ultimate and the nature of negation          120
 On BA, IX/33-5                                   132
 The two ultimates                                136
 The two ultimates and the two schools            142
 The ultimate and the coalescence                 148
 The ultimate, middle way and elimination of      153
 extremes
 On MK, XIII/8                                    159
5 Is Emptiness knowable and effable?               162
 On whether Emptiness is knowable (jya, shes    163
 bya)
 On BA, IX/2                                      166
 Rebutting his refuters                           170
 Verifvingsubjective thoughts                     175
 Apprehension, grasping and the ultimate          178
 Conceptuality, non-conceptuality and Emptiness   185
 Mipham's theory of non-conceptuality             189(4)
 On Hwashang and meditation on Emptiness          193
 Is Emptiness effable?                            198
Some concluding remarks                            208
Appendix I                                         213
Appendix II                                        215
Appendix III                                       217
Appendix IV                                        219
Notes                                              226
Bibliography                                       283
Name and place index                               297
Subject index                                      300