This book is the last of eight volumes presenting Tibetan views on the controversy that arose in Buddhist India over how to refute production from self. The dispute revolves around the opening phrase of the first stanza of the first chapter of Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Called “Wisdom”:

Not from self, not from others,
Not from both, not causelessly
Do any things
Ever arise anywhere.

Nāgārjuna’s principal Indian commentators explain the refutation of production from self in varying detail, the differences engendering the split between what came in Tibet to be called the Autonomy School and the Consequence School.
Buddhapālita’s commentary on the refutation of production from self provoked Bhāvaviveka into extensive criticism and into a demonstration of his own preferred style of commentary. Chandrakīrti defended Buddhapālita, counterattacking Bhāvaviveka’s way of refuting production from self; this
turns into a discussion of compatibly appearing subjects, a source showing that Bhāvaviveka accepts that phenomena inherently exist.

This book is in some ways the most introductory of the eight volumes because it opens with the Second Dalai Lama Gen-dün-gya-tsho’s lucid distillation of the core issue, showing how Chandrakīrti exposes Bhāvaviveka’s assertion of inherent existence. It examines how several Tibetan scholars read just a few words in the same passage in Chandrakīrti’s Clear Words. This minute attention, because it focuses within the main issue, serves to provide further immersion in it. The impact is momentous as it reveals the conflict between how phenomena appear and actually exist, and thereby points to an identification of systemic ignorance and to the path of wisdom.