Sakya Chok-den (གསེར་མདོག་པཎ་ཆེན་ཤཱཀྱ་མཆོག་ལྡན་)
A brilliant and controversial figure in the Sa-gya tradition. Disciple of rong-don, rival of gorampa. Described by Dreyfus as one of “the best philosophical minds in the Tibetan tradition” (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 28).
Life and Controversy
- Often perceived as controversial by Sa-gya members due to his unorthodox interpretations of sakya-pandita
- His provocative list of questions on Sakya Paṇḍita’s Differentiation of the Three Vows was seen as undermining Sakya Paṇḍita’s credibility
- Alleged conversion to the emptiness-of-other view (གཞན་སྟོང་, gzhan stong) under the influence of the Seventh Karmapa Chodrak Gyatso (1454–1506)
- Tu-gen divides his career into three stages: Mādhyamika, Cittamātra, and Jo-nang-pa — though this is polemical and oversimplified
- His works, long thought to be irretrievably lost, were discovered in Bhutan and published as late as 1975 (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 28; shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara-intro, p. 12)
Contributions to Pramāṇa
His masterful commentary on Sakya Paṇḍita’s system, The Defeater (composed 1474, age 46), plays an important role in Dreyfus’s study. Unlike his later works, this text does not mention emptiness-of-other.
Philosophical Positions
- Strong antirealist on universals: distinguishers (ལྡོག་པ་) are entirely conceptual
- Fundamental distinction between practical understanding (འཇུག་པའི་ཚེ་) and critical examination (འཆད་ཚེ་): practically, a jar and its distinguisher are not differentiated; critically, thought is found to deal with unreal universals (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 168)
- Individuations (བྱེ་བྲག་, viśeṣa) are not individual substances but conceptual distinctions — an “assemblage of at least two distinguishers” (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 168)
- Criticised Ge-luk assertion that things instantiate their own distinguishers (རང་རང་གི་ལྡོག་པ་ཡིན་པ་)
- Combined Dharmakīrti’s two accounts of valid-cognition into a unified account involving nondeceptiveness, intentionality, and novelty (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, pp. 291–292)
Polemical use of history
Dreyfus reads Sākya Chok-den as Tibet’s “most systematic practitioner” of using historical reconstruction as philosophical critique. His characteristic move is to show that views presented by his Ge-luk opponents as faithful renderings of Dharmakīrti are in fact distorted by-products of Tibetan innovations going back to cha-ba — and that the Ge-luk thinkers don’t even get Cha-ba right, since they keep Cha-ba’s equivalence of held and appearing objects while combining it with the Sautrāntika causal theory that Cha-ba originally introduced the equivalence to refute (pp. 384–87). Dreyfus considers this argument largely sound but notes that Sākya Chok-den overstates: Dharmottara does use the “conceived object” Sākya Chok-den says is a Tibetan creation (p. 386).
Three-stage philosophical evolution
Dreyfus pushes back against the polemical Ge-luk simplification (Tu-gen) and the Sa-gya denial (Ngak-cho) of any real change in Sākya Chok-den’s thought. His own reading: the Defeater (1474) and contemporaneous works mention no gzhan stong; the Dharma Treasury and contemporary works mention but do not endorse it; from 1484 onward (after meeting the Seventh Karmapa) Sākya Chok-den explicitly advocates emptiness-of-other (History of the Madhyamaka, Distinction Between the Two Traditions (1489), History of Valid Cognition (1502)). Dreyfus argues that even then his gzhan stong is not assimilable to Dol-bo-ba’s Jo-nang version: Dol-bo-ba holds gnosis is eternal and permanent, Sākya Chok-den holds it must be momentary as a cognition (pp. 29–30).
On Dharmakīrti as False Aspectarian Yogācāra-Mādhyamika
In his later works Sākya Chok-den reads Dharmakīrti through ascending scales of analysis culminating in False Aspectarian Madhyamaka, against the dominant Sa-paṇ-style reading of Dharmakīrti as Sautrāntika-Yogācāra. Dreyfus accepts the model of ascending scales but argues that Dharmakīrti’s primary aim is epistemological rather than soteriological — so the apex should be read more deflationarily than Sākya Chok-den does (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, pp. 435–38).
Sources
- dreyfus-recognizing-reality — major figure throughout; especially Intro II on his philosophical evolution; Ch. 8 on predication and individuations; Ch. 16 on valid cognition; Chs 23 and 27 on the polemical use of history and on Yogācāra