Abstract
As a synthesizer of the Māhayānic Prajñāpāramitā tradition in the early development of Chinese Buddhism, Jizang (549–623 CE) was one of the most important representatives of the Sunlun School (aka. The Three-Treatises School), whose doctrine centers on emptiness. This paper concerns the unfolding of the deconstructive strategies in Jizang’s rendering of the four levels of twofold truth, demonstrating how Jizang’s method of negation as a form of “critical philosophy” is utilized to correspond to the Sanlun appropriation of the Madhyāmikan understanding of emptiness. According to Jizang, the doctrine of the twofold truth functions as a pedagogical means, aiming to achieve two major purposes: (1) to put forth a critique of both nihilist and absolutist interpretations of emptiness; and (2) to resolve certain obscurities and inconsistencies in the teachings within the Buddhist tradition.
The author submits the idea that the Sanlun philosophy exhibits a more positive attitude toward the conventional through Sinicized conceptualization of the Middle-Way-as-Buddha-Nature, and that the Sanlun thought is more dependence upon affirmative expressions (i.e. kataphasis) than negative ones (i.e. apophasis) to promulgate its thesis. The paper concludes by pointing out that the Jizang’s method of negation has a significant impact on the later development of Chinese Buddhism, such as the Tiantai school’s doctrine of Emptiness-Provision-Middle and the Chan Buddhist teaching of non-abiding.
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Notes
- 1.
The Sanlun School, known as the “School of Emptiness” (Kong Zong 空宗) and the School of Wisdom, (Bore Zong 般若宗) is one of the earliest Buddhist schools in China during Sui and early Tang periods. The Sanlun School is also known as the Chinese representative of the Indian Madhyamaka school of Nāgārjuna. It was introduced to China by a half-Indian missionary-scholar names Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什 344–413 CE) who translated into Chinese three Madhyāmika texts, namely, the Zhong Lun 中論 (Treatise on the Middle Doctrine, Madhyāmika Śāstra) by Nāgārjuna, the Shiermen Lun 十二門論 (Treatise on Twelve Gates, Dvadasamukha Śāstra) by Nāgārjuna, and the Bai Lun 百論 (Treatise on One Hundred Verses, Satasastra Śāstra) by Aryadeva 提婆. See the section on “The Philosophy of Emptiness: Chi-Tsang [Jizang] of the Three Treatise School” in Chan 1973. The five Sanlun precursors whose works influence Jizang’s philosophy include Nāgārjuna, Kumārajīva, Sengzhao 僧肇 (Seng-Chao 364–414 CE), and Falang 法朗 (507–581 CE), Jizang’s mentor. While some scholars have pointed out that there was no Sanlun School existed before Jizang, others contend that the Sanlun thought represented by Kumārajīva and his disciples are called in the Buddhist history of China “The Old Sanlun of Central Gate” (Guanzhong Jiulun 關中舊論) or “The Old Sanlun of West Gate (Guanxi Jiulun 關西舊論). The two names here indicate the places where the group transmitted Mādhyamika. For a more detailed discussion, see Yang 2008: 251–252.
- 2.
The Sanskrit word bhāva denotes a metaphysical existence which Nāgārjuna rejects. See Kalupahana 1986: 32.
- 3.
Also see Liu 1994: 140. Liu also contends that Jizang’s negative argument aims at making “nonattachment” the common thread for the Sanlun school in order to ultimately overcoming existence/nonexistence duality.
- 4.
The citation is from Jingang Bore Shu 金剛般若疏. Also see Shih Chang-Wing 2004: 99.
- 5.
The quotation is cited from Cheng 1981. The English translation has been modified for the sake of consistency, and those in [] are added by me.
- 6.
Dasheng Xuanlun. T45, 1853: 15a17.
- 7.
In the article “Once More on the Two Truths: What Does Chi-tsang [Jizang] Mean by the Two Truths as ‘Yueh-chiao [Juejiao]’?” Whalen Lai contends that the distinction between the verbal teaching and a fixed principle is critical for Jizang’s non-attached position on the hermeneutical understanding of the Madhyāmika notion of emptiness. For a detailed analysis, see Lai 1983: 505–521. Also Nagao 1989.
- 8.
CT here refers to conventional truth and UT refers to ultimate truth.
- 9.
In his insightful essay “The Non-duality of Speech and Silence: A comparative Analysis of Jizang’s Thought on Language and Beyond,” Chien-hsing Ho points out that there are two kinds of silence implied in Jizang’s notion of silence even though Jizang has not spelt it out explicitly for the sake of avoiding a dualistic distinction. That is, silence as a principle and silence as teaching, and the latter belongs to the level of conventional truth. See Ho 2012: 13.
- 10.
I need to point out here that the notion of non-conceptual religious/spiritual knowledge qua silence has been the subject of some debate in past decades among scholars. Stephen Katz, for example, questions the claim of a pure, unmediated experience, that is, a non-conceptual, mystical experience maintained by Buddhism. Katz insists that the mystical experience or direct awareness spoken by Buddhism must be conceptually-laden. See Katz 1978: 22–74.
- 11.
See Ho 2012: 11. In fact, Ho in his essay renders ti as “body” rather than “substance” in order to avoid substantiating Jizang’s position and thus making the principle of the twofold truth dualistic.
- 12.
The concept of “mutual identity” is another way for Jizang to express his idea of non-duality of the twofold truth.
- 13.
- 14.
Jizang sometimes follows traditional interpretations. For example, he takes śāstras (lun 論) upon which his own Sanlun theories have formulated as a “zheng” to a variety of inconsistence existent in śutrās (jing 經). This is Jizang’s way of operating panjiao (判教) through which different teachings and doctrinal issues can be harmonized by reclassification.
- 15.
The terms truth-qua-instruction (jiaodi 教諦) and truth-qua-viewpoint (yudi 於諦) are used to refer to the conventional truth and the ultimate truth by the Sanlun School exclusively. See Hong 2009: 137.
- 16.
Here the first view, “mental non-existence” (xinwu 心無), refers to the idea that one has no
awareness of things, but the things are not non-existent. The second view, “identical with form” (jise 即色), refers to one that identifies emptiness with form (or matter) even though it agrees to the idea that form does not cause itself to form. The third view, “original non-existence” (benwu 本無), refers to a position that takes “non-existence” as the non-existence of existence. All these views are rejected by Sengzhao. See Swanson 1985: 35–36.
- 17.
Some changes have been made to his translation for the sake of consistence in terms and concepts.
- 18.
The word “un-negation” here refers to Jizang’s notion of weiwu 非無, a method of negation. At the same time, it has a similar meaning to Derrida’s idea of “de-negation” which I use in the paper as well. It is a method of a negation that “denies itself” rather than a pure negation of negation. See Coward and Foshay 1992: 25.
- 19.
Here Jizang also uses water and fire metaphors, pointing out that emptiness is like water and the purpose of it is to extinguish fire (of attachment). But “if water itself were to catch on fire, what would one use to distinguish it? Both nihilism and eternalism are like the fire, and emptiness is capable of extinguishing them. But if one persists in becoming attached to emptiness, there is no medicine which can extinguish this.” (T45, 1852: 7a14).
- 20.
Sanlun Xuanyi. Quotation is from De Bary and Bloom 1999: 438–9. Minor changes in translation are done for the sake of coherence in wording for this paper.
- 21.
Fox argues that Jizang’s threefold category of being corrective can be recapitulated as three methods of negation: (1) the method of refuting competing points of view in terms of independent criteria; (2) the method of using opponent’s own logic against himself (reduction absurdum), and the method of putting to rest of obsessive intellectualized and discursive discourse. See Fox 1992: 17.
- 22.
It should be noted that sometimes it is ambivalent that Jizang’s suspicion of concepts is due to their intrinsic limitations or confusions caused by the fact that there is a problem of having a clear definition in Chinese Buddhism. Alan Fox has pointed out the Sanlun tradition, including Jizang, seems to ignore the problem of definitions such as the concept of “self-nature” that so occupied Candrakirti and others in the Indian Madhyāmika tradition. Fox is correct on this difference since the Chinese tradition as a whole does not pay much attention to conceptual definitions. For more detailed discussion on Jizang’s view on language, see Ho 2012: 1–19. Ho insists that Jizang does not hold a clear-cut distinction on conventional speech and sacred silence as one would see in the works of Nāgārjuna.
- 23.
Although the Hongzhou Ch’an lineage is the subject of some contention, the descended line, namely, the lineage in the order of Mazu
BaizhangHuangboLinji is traditionally accepted according to the dialogical history of Ch’an Buddhism. For a comprehensive and systematic study of the method of negation in Ch’an, see Wang 2003: 52–80. - 24.
- 25.
For example, before the arising of the Sanlun school, one of the most popular notions of the Buddha-nature is the “Buddha nature of a correct cause” (zhengyin foxing 正因佛性) which puts an emphasis on the existence of a subjective mind. See Yang 2007: 259–260. Yang argues that Jizang in his late life held more affirmative views such as the idea of the Buddha-nature due to his interaction with masters of other schools such as Zhiyi 智顗 (Chih-i 538–597 CE) of the Tiantai School 天台宗). At the same time, Zhiyi’s theory on emptiness-provision-middle-way (kong-jia-zhong 空-假-中) shows the influence of the Sanlun School. For a more comprehensive study of the relationship between the Sanlun School and the Tiantai School with regard to the doctrine of emptiness, see Ng 1993.
- 26.
Cf. Chap. 7 of this anthology for the discussion of Sengzhao’s Wubuqian Lun.
- 27.
Also see Chapter Six on Sengzhao in Robinson 1967: 123–155.
- 28.
Mogliola plays with the Buddhist notion of coming/going, pointing out that emptiness is BETWEEN “easy come and easy go” and “hard to come by.”
- 29.
See Fox 1992: 8.
- 30.
It should be noted that whether Nāgārjuna’s ultimate truth in his twofold truth theory points to something absolutely transcendent is a question under the debate. T.R.V. Murti, for example, has pointed out that for Nāgārjuna the ultimate truth transcends discursive thought in a sense that it is unreachable via rationality, either empirical investigation or philosophical speculation. Yet this does not mean that Nāgārjuna is a nihilist or negativistic thinker, for “[t]he dialectic should not be taken, as it is done by the uniformed, as the denial of the Real – Nihilism” See Tuck 1990: 52.
- 31.
Of course, whether or not Jizang dichotomizes ti and yong is debatable. Wing-Tist Chan argues that in Jizang “substance and function are sharply contrasted” in comparison with Sengzhao who identifies substance with function. See Chan 1973: 358. Aaron K. Koseki holds the same opinion. See Koseki 1982: 58. Ho, on the other hand, shows a different viewpoint. I concur with Ho on this point. I think one of the major differences between Sengzhao and Jizang is that the former tends to use more conjunctions (both…and) whereas the latter more disjunctions (neither…nor), yet both expressions can lend to the idea of nonduality.
- 32.
For Jizang, “loss” or “non-acquisition” is another word for “emptiness.”
- 33.
Shih Chang-Qing, who has offered a historical overview of the development of the Sanlun School, points out that Jizang’s emphasis on the relationship between acquisition and loss is due to the influence of Falang, his mentor. To establish the relationship between these two concepts enables Jizang to contend his argument on nonduality between the wisdom of the sage and the mind of the ordinary people. See Shih 2004: 337–338.
- 34.
When speaking of a Derridean deconstruction, John Caputo makes a remark that deconstruction is a “religion without religion” that points to a moment of transcendence yet not “transcendence” in a traditional sense, since it means “excess,” the exceeding of the stable boarders of the presently possible.” See Caputo 1997: xix. I think that the same thing can be said of Sanlun Buddhists in China.
- 35.
Scholars like Wing-Tist Chan, however, argues that Sanlun thought is not Chinese enough which accounts for its failure to survive in China. He says, “Ironically, Chi-tsang’s (Jizang) success was at the same time the failure his school, for it became less and less Chinese. As a systematizer and transmitter of Indian philosophy, he brought about no cross-fertilization between Buddhist and Chinese thought.” See Chan 1973: 358.
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Zhang, E.Y. (2018). Po: Jizang’s Negations in the Four Levels of the Twofold Truth. In: Wang, Y., Wawrytko, S. (eds) Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2939-3_9
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