Gorampa, a Sakya scholar, was a fierce critic of Tsongkhapa's philosophy and was a proponent of eliminating concepts to achieve an understanding of ultimate truth. As a result, his books were banned for sometime by the Gelugpa hierarchy in power in Tibet. With the ascendency of the Rime movement, his understanding of Nagarjuna has been assimilated into the other two schools (Nyimgma and Kagyu).
This is worth reading in it's entirety, although I believe it mischaracterises Tsongkahapa's view as being in disagreement with Chandrakirti that Buddha does not have concepts, there is also no mention of the fact that Tsongkhapa's method is intended to lead to a non-conceptual experience of ultimate truth:
Gorampa employs a fourfold negation known as the tetralemma (mtha’ bzhi) in order to refute all concepts in their entirety. Use of the tetralemma as a tool in Buddhist philosophy can be traced to Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārika, in which he famously remarks, “Neither from itself, nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause, does anything, anywhere, ever, arise”.
Gorampa understands the tetralemma as a tool that one uses to analyze the ultimate truth. One uses logic and reasoning to arrive at a conceptual understanding of the nominal ultimate, and meditative practices allow one to reach a direct, nonconceptual realization of the actual ultimate truth. The logical reasoning involved in the fourfold negation is implemented by ordinary persons in order to understand what the ultimate truth is like, but logic alone is not sufficient to arrive at a direct realization of the actual ultimate.
Gorampa understands the tetralemma as a tool that one uses to analyze the ultimate truth. One uses logic and reasoning to arrive at a conceptual understanding of the nominal ultimate, and meditative practices allow one to reach a direct, nonconceptual realization of the actual ultimate truth. The logical reasoning involved in the fourfold negation is implemented by ordinary persons in order to understand what the ultimate truth is like, but logic alone is not sufficient to arrive at a direct realization of the actual ultimate.
This particular way of understanding the tetralemma is, again, at odds with the views of Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa contends that Gorampa's assertion that all concepts must be eliminated entirely amounts to nihilistic quietism. Tsongkhapa understands each of the four extremes of the tetralemma as being qualified according to the conventional or ultimate truths. According to him, existence is negated ultimately, while nonexistence is negated conventionally.
This debate between Gorampa and Tsongkhapa is based on each philosopher's understanding of the ways in which negation functions within the tetralemma. Tsongkhapa upholds the law of double negation elimination (dgag pa gnyis kyi rnal ma go ba), a logical law stating that the negation of a negation implies an affirmation. The negation of existence, therefore, implies the acceptance of nonexistence, while the negation of nonexistence implies the assertion of existence. Because of this, Tsongkhapa's understanding of the tetralemma involves a complex system of logical statements, each qualified according to one of the two truths. If one accepts double negation elimination, then it makes no sense for both existence and nonexistence to be negated, unless these negations are qualified in certain ways.
Gorampa, on the other hand, does not adhere to double negation in the context of the tetralemma. Instead, he understands the tetralemma as a succession of four negations that are applied to the four possible ways of conceiving of the status of the ultimate truth. Because the ultimate truth is nonconceptualizable, Gorampa contends that Tsongkhapa's understanding of the tetralemma is incomplete, because it doesn’t negate enough (literally, it underpervades [khyab chung ba]). While Tsongkhapa's model successfully refutes the extreme view of existence at the ultimate level, Gorampa argues that it does not eliminate all extreme views ultimately and in their entirety.
Tsongkhapa argues that a negation of all four extremes at the ultimate level contradicts logic, but Gorampa contends that an elimination of logic is specifically the tetralemma's purpose. By negating all possibilities for logical, conceptual thought, the only recourse is to abandon concepts completely. True freedom from conceptual constructs lies outside of the scope of conceptual thought, and is therefore inexpressible. Gorampa maintains, however, that because ordinary persons utilize conceptual thought, they necessarily construe the ultimate truth as an object of conceptual constructs (that is, they construe it as the nominal ultimate). As such, one must first use conceptual reasoning to refute each of the four extremes, but these concepts must eventually be abandoned.
In other words, because all four extremes are negated under the analysis of the tetralemma, Gorampa concludes that a correct realization of the ultimate truth must be something that is other than these conceptualizations of and dichotomizations into existence and nonexistence. As such, the ultimate truth cannot be described using these terms. And, since these are the only possible ways of speaking of or conceptualizing the status of the existence of things, once they are all negated, one is forced to conclude that the ultimate truth cannot be described linguistically or conceptually. The actual ultimate truth transcends the boundaries of language and conceptual thought. However, Gorampa still maintains that logic and analysis are essential in arriving at a state of nonconceptuality.
As I read this essay, I was struck by the following:
After one has successfully negated the first extreme, Gorampa concedes that a person's natural inclination is to assume that the negation of existence implies the assertion of nonexistence. If one were to stop his logical analysis at this point, Gorampa argues that one would adhere to a nihilist view; failure to correctly negate nonexistence can lead one to wrongly believe that nonexistence is ultimately real. In order to show that the acceptance of nonexistence is untenable, Gorampa argues that the concepts of existence and nonexistence depend upon each other; one makes no sense without the other. And, since the concept of existence has already been negated, it makes no sense to conceive of nonexistence independently.
Indeed this appears to be central to his disagreement with Tsongkhapa who maintains that the negation of an opposite is an affirming negative as explained later in the article thus the negation of existence affirms non-existence and vice-versa. Tsongkhapa doesn't leave his analysis there either arguing that the extreme of existence is eliminated by understanding emptiness and the extreme of non-existence is eliminated by understanding dependent relationship.
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