Tsongkhapa’s advice is that only long-term meditative exercise is capable of ridding us of the innate sense of self: it is too wired into our psyche to be extirpated just by doing philosophy. This is indeed one of the reasons that meditative practice is so important in Buddhist traditions: it is a vehicle through which philosophy can be transformative, by allowing that philosophy to seep so deeply into our consciousness that it comes to shape our experience.
