From Understanding Śūnyatā to Connecting It with the Tathāgatagarbha: The Emergence and Evolution of Sengzhao’s Emptiness of the Nonabsolute
Historical transmission and other controversies related to Sengzhao’s Things Do Not Shift have long been a subject of scholarly attention. However, his essay Emptiness of the Nonabsolute has been insufficiently studied, despite being traditionally deemed emblematic of the Chinese understanding of Mā...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
MDPI
2024
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| In: |
Religions
Year: 2024, Volume: 15, Issue: 5 |
| Further subjects: | B
hermeneutics of Chinese Buddhist classics
B Mādhyamaka in China B Sengzhao B Things Do Not Shift B Emptiness of the Nonabsolute |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Historical transmission and other controversies related to Sengzhao’s Things Do Not Shift have long been a subject of scholarly attention. However, his essay Emptiness of the Nonabsolute has been insufficiently studied, despite being traditionally deemed emblematic of the Chinese understanding of Mādhyamaka philosophy. The present study shows that this essay has also historically generated divisions and debates in the Chinese context. It finds that Emptiness of the Nonabsolute expresses the Mādhyamaka philosophy of emptiness in a distinctly Chinese manner by grounding itself in the principle of dependent origination, and by transforming issues of being and nonbeing and the name and the “thing-in-itself” into conditional emergence. Nevertheless, Sengzhao’s essay evoked the two markedly distinct construals of Buzhengukong 不真故空 and Bushizhenkong 不是真空 as Tathāgatagarbha and Buddha-nature philosophy within Chinese Buddhism. Bushizhenkong directly aligned Sengzhao’s ostensibly representative theory of Mādhyamaka emptiness in China with the doctrinal framework of Tathāgatagarbha and Buddha-nature, triggering almost a millennium-long period of discussions and controversies. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel15050588 |