Debates
Trisong Detsen, hosted a famous two-year debate from 792-794 CE, known in Western scholarship as the "Council of Lhasa" (although it took place at Samye at quite a distance from Lhasa) outside the capital. He sponsored a Dharma debate between the Chinese Ch'an Meditation Master Mo-ho-yen (who represented the third documented wave of Ch'an dissemination in Tibet) and the scholar Kamalashila, a student of Shantarakshita. Effectively the debate was between the Chinese and Indian Buddhist traditions as they were represented in Tibet.
Sources differ about both the nature of the debate as well as the victor. Stein (1972: p. 66-67) holds that Kamalashila disseminated a "gradualist approach" to enlightenment, consisting of purificatory sadhana such as cultivating the Six Perfections. Kamalashila's role was to ordain Tibetans as Buddhist monks and propagate Buddhist philosophy as it had flourished in India. Stein (1972: p. 66-67) holds that Kamalashila was victorious in the debate and that Trisong Detsen sided with Kamalashila.
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“The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.”
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