In the Three Vows Sapaṇ provides a kind of abstract criticism of the logic of calling a practice “self-sufficient” when it is part of a list of five. It is perhaps in response to this point that Padma Karpo, a defender of the Kagyu, called Sapaṇ’s argument a “childish criticism”, depicting it as merely a worry about the meanings of words (D. Jackson 1990: 37). He says that if this is why it is faulty to say that Mahāmudrā is “singularly sufficient”, then it is also faulty to speak of the standar