This book offers a translation of the beginning of Jam-yang-zhay-pa Ngag-wang-tsön-drü’s Decisive Analysis of (Chandrakīrti’s) “Supplement to (Nāgārjuna’s) ‘Treatise on the Middle’”: Treasury of Scripture and Reasoning, Thoroughly Illuminating the Profound Meaning [of Emptiness], Entrance for the Fortunate, also called Decisive Analysis of the Middle and Great Exposition of the Middle. Since its publication in 1695, Jam-yang-zhay-pa’s remarkable treatise has served continuously as a textbook critical to the study of the Middle Way School in the Gomang College of the Drepung Monastery and related institutions throughout Inner Asia. It brings sharply into focus the manner in which the Indian master Chandrakīrti’s momentous Supplement to (Nāgārjuna’s) “Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Called ‘Wisdom’” both enhances Nāgārjuna’s reasoned inquiry into the meaning of emptiness and departs from other explanations of Nāgārjuna’s thought. In addition, Jam-yang-zhay-pa’s mature and relentlessly uncompromising exploration of the most meaningful themes that Chandrakīrti touches either briefly or at length gradually assembles an exhaustive clarification and vigorous defense of the revolutionary reading of Chandrakīrti’s Supplement that Tsong-kha-pa Lo-sang-drag-pa had composed three centuries earlier.

This initial volume looks deeply into two questions: What is the middle that Chandrakīrti’s treatise supplements, and how does it supplement that middle? At first glance one would perhaps assume that these questions could be answered simply and without controversy. Jam-yang-zhay-pa’s tenacious analysis of the evidence reveals otherwise. From there he turns to the obeisance of the translators and the surprising questions about the architecture of Buddhist discourse to which this apparently simple gesture gives rise. The book also includes a translation of the Mongolian scholar Ngag-wang-pal-dan’s commentary on the corresponding portions of Chandrakīrti’s Supplement to (Nāgārjuna’s) “Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Called ‘Wisdom’” as well as a translation of the same sections of Tsong-kha-pa’s ground-breaking Illumination of the Thought.