Part five
Tantras should be understood by means of other Tantras.
Sūtras should be understood by means of other Sūtras.
Stras should also be understood by means of the Tantras
Tantras should also be understood by means of the Sūtras.
Both should be understood by means of both.
This all-encompassing approach, simultaneously drawing on Sütras and Tantras, puts to pics rather than just the differentiation of systems-to the forefront in a search for meaning. In presentations that are usually considered the classical texts of separate systems, he sees in each of those texts multiple systems crowned by the great middle way. For instance, he considers separate passages of the Sütra Unraveling the Thought, considered by many to be just mind-only, to present the views of mind-only and the great middle way, the latter being ultimate mind-only,’ also called supra mundane mind-only and final mind-only, which is beyond consciousness. Also, in
certain Indian treatises usually taken to be strictly mind-only he finds passages teaching conventional mind-only and others teaching the great middle way.
Still, Döl-bo-ba’s presentation is by no means a collage drawing a little from here and a little from there and disregarding the rest. Rather, he has a comprehensive overarching perspective born from careful analysis, like other great synthesisers of his period. For him, others had just not seen what the texts themselves were saying, and instead read into classical texts the views of single systems. Since he draws from a great variety of Sütras, tantras, and treatises, Döl-bo-ba’s perspective is syncretic, but it is perhaps synthetic only in the sense that he found within these an exposition of a view beyond what had become the traditional schools. It was not a mere putting together of pieces from here and there.
He also criticised the then (and still) popular notion that recognition of
Conceptions themselves as the body of attributes of a buddha “would alone
bring about enlightenment, “without requiring abandonment of any mis-
conceptions.