🧘Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa

1357-1419 · Indo-Tibetan Buddhism · Little-known

Tsongkhapa was a Tibetan philosopher and monastic reformer who founded the Gelug school the Dalai Lamas belong to. Nothing holds together on its own, emptiness included, and your actions still carry consequences you cannot dodge. He kept both halves, refusing to let emptiness cancel moral cause and effect, and set out a graded path, the lamrim, that Tibetan monks work through in order.

Signature

The position Tsongkhapa is most identified with in the Profiler:

Identity

leans Changing

Ethics Basis

Virtue / Intention

Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer

Society

leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)

Identity

leans Changing (81 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)

Meaning

leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)

Ground of Being

leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)

Ignorance

leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)

Conviction

leans Certain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)

14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Tsongkhapa refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.

Foundational questions

Theology

Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods?

Government

Monarchy / Clerical Theocracy
What is your ideal form of government?

Highest Good

Wisdom
What is the highest good?

Good and Evil

Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil?

End of Things

Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things?

Perception

Conceptual Mediation / Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive?

Knowledge

Pure Reason / Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge?

Ethics Basis

Virtue / Intention
What is the ultimate basis of ethics?

Agency

Karmic Causation / Non-Self
What is the nature of human agency and freedom?

Beginning of Things

Cyclical Recurrence
What is the origin of reality?

Time

Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time?

Authority

Sacred Tradition / Charismatic Authority
What is the legitimate source of authority?

Paradox

Apophatic Pointer / Dialectical Sublation
What is the status of paradox?

Death

Karmic Cycle
What happens at death?

Human Nature

No-Self
What is human nature?

Primary Bond

All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?

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