Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen’s Response

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines the first major Gelukpa response to Taktsang, Panchen Losang Chögyen’s Lion’s Roar of Scripture and Reasoning. We explore how he provides point-by-point rebuttals to each of Taktsang’s “contradictions.” We begin with an overview of the arguments put forward by both Taktsang and the Panchen Lama, and then evaluate how successful the latter is in his rebuttal. In a number of places he mischaracterizes Taktsang’s position or attributes to him ideas that he does not endorse or explicitly rejects. Nonetheless, much of the Panchen Lama’s response has philosophical traction, although he fails to score a definitive checkmate of his opponent. The Panchen Lama’s charge that Taktsang’s approach would lead to an antinomianism that is incompatible with Buddhist ethics and karma theory is particularly important: if there is no reliable truth, then how can ordinary beings have confidence in any judgments or in Buddhist principles?