After attaining a stilled and settled state of shamatha, to attain liberation from the sufferings of uncontrollably recurring samsaric rebirth it is necessary to join that state with an exceptionally perceptive state of vipashyana and to have it focused non-conceptually on voidness (emptiness). To do that requires relying on the teachings of voidness found in texts of definitive meaning. These are the classical treatises by the great Nalanda masters of India – specifically, those written by Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, together with their commentaries by Chandrakirti. They constitute the Prasangika Madhyamaka tenet system.
Voidness is the absence of an impossible way of establishing the existence of something. The definitive, deepest meaning of that impossible way, as taught in these texts, is by means of a self-establishing nature, figuratively called an “atman-soul.” Existence established by such a nature is called “self-established existence,” often translated as “inherent existence.” To cognize that there is no such thing as such a nature, it is necessary to refute that there is such a thing. Refuting it requires identifying it correctly, and to do that requires excluding incorrect identifications of it. If we refute an incorrectly identified object to be refuted, we either over-refute or under-refute the correctly identified one. Here, in the first part of the vipashyana section of Lam-rim chen-mo (Grand Presentation of the Graded Stages to Enlightenment), Tsongkhapa identifies the most commonly found misidentifications of the object to be refuted and soundly refutes the lines of reasoning their proponents give for asserting them.