Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa (1357–1419) is a well-known Tibetan religious philosopher and one of the most influential and innovative scholars and practitioners in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. He added to the Tibetan Buddhist traditions more globally by setting a paradigm to integrate theory and practice while maintaining focus on ethics, monastic discipline, and the traditions of scholarship and meditation within the esoteric Buddhist tradition. His main contribution to Buddhist philosophy was to show how to develop a robust realism about the conventional world, and how to make sense of epistemology and the possibility of knowledge in the context of global illusion. He does this through the vehicle of commentary, focusing on how to make sense of the Madhyamaka doctrine of the two truths in a way that vindicates Chandrakīrti and does not fall into a nihilism. The historical Tsongkhapa lived during the period immediately following the final redaction of the Kangyur (bKa’ ’gyur; Buddhist canon into the Tibetan language). He proposed a distinctive Middle Way (Madhyamaka; dbu ma pa) philosophy which differentiated between Chandrakīrti’s (fl. ca. 600) correct Consequentialist (prāsaṅgika; thal ’gyur pa) interpretation of the works of the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (third-fourth century), and an incorrect Autonomist (svātantrika; rang rgyud pa) interpretation by Bhāviveka (also known as Bhavya and Bhāvaviveka, fl. ca. 550). He is strongly influenced by the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition (pramāṇa; tshad ma), founded by the Indian epistemologists Dignāga and Dharmakīrti (fifth to seventh century). Tsongkhapa strikes a balance between knowledge and praxis, what we might term orthodoxy and orthopraxy. He explains that the emptiness of intrinsic existence (Svabhāvaśūnyatā; rang bzhin gyis stong pa nyid) is the ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya), but that even this is only true conventionally. At the same time he develops a hermeneutics to help retain the authority of correct moral statements on both a covering (saṃvṛti) or conventional (vyavahāra) level. Tsongkhapa was a prolific author who wrote over 300 works, which were collected into 18 volumes. His most influential writing reconciles the philosophy of emptiness with the imperative of praxis, as embodied in a universal altruistic principle (bodhicitta). He reconciles antinomian tantric praxis with ordinary moral life, and also develops a distinctive analysis of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) to support his assertion that entities represent both conventional and ultimate truths. Upon his passing in 1419, Tsongkhapa gave his yellow hat to Gyaltsab Dharma Rinchen (rGyal tshab dar ma rin chen) as a symbolic gesture that the disciple had been chosen to succeed him.