THESIS
2000
Abstract
The Buddhist thought of Seng-chao is basically inherited from the teaching and translation works of Kumārajīva whose works are mainly on the Prajñā-sūtras and the Mādhyamika School. This thesis reviews the important doctrines of the Prajñā-sūtras and the Mādhyamika firstly, and then carefully elaborates the most important essays of Seng-chao, namely, "Prajñā is not knowledge", "The emptiness of the unreal" and "The immutability of things". We can see the thought of Seng-chao is consistently linked up with the Prajñā-sūtra and the Mādhyamika School....[
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The Buddhist thought of Seng-chao is basically inherited from the teaching and translation works of Kumārajīva whose works are mainly on the Prajñā-sūtras and the Mādhyamika School. This thesis reviews the important doctrines of the Prajñā-sūtras and the Mādhyamika firstly, and then carefully elaborates the most important essays of Seng-chao, namely, "Prajñā is not knowledge", "The emptiness of the unreal" and "The immutability of things". We can see the thought of Seng-chao is consistently linked up with the Prajñā-sūtra and the Mādhyamika School.
The concept of emptiness of the Prajñā-sūtras is characterized by the doctrine that the phenomenal world and the ultimate reality are mutually inclusive. It does not deny the phenomenal world, but emphasizes that the phenomenal world in the eye of a normal person should not be simply treated as real. The Mādhyamika elaborates the concept of emptiness as not existence and not non-existence. Emptiness is regarded as the general nature of phenomenal world, The phenomenal world is not existence in the sense that it is not the reality. The phenomenal world is not non-existence in the sense that it is not nothing.
Seng-chao inherited the concept of emptiness of the Prajñā-sūtra and the Mādhyamika School and further elaborated it. In his "Prajñā is not knowledge", he claims that "In the mind of sage, there is no cognized and therefore there is no uncognized." In "The emptiness of the unreal", Seng-chao uses 'unreal' to elaborate emptiness. "Unreal' excludes the view that things are real, and also excludes the view that things do not exist at all, because 'unreal' still represents a certain state of existence. By virtue of this two-fold exclusion, it gives rise to another way of understanding of existence, i.e. dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) which is what the concept of emptiness denotes. In "The immutability of things", he states that "there is no dharma (thing) that goes and comes." Things exist momentarily and do not station in the stream of time. So things do not alter their positions in the temporal order.
In the final section, based on the above understanding of Seng-chao's concept of emptiness, the author tries to give an answer to the question concerning the position of "The immutability of things". This essay of Seng-chao was criticized for holding a Hinayana (Small Vehicle) position. It was found that the argument of the criticizer was based on misunderstanding of Seng-chao's concept of Ch'ien. By clarifying the concept of Ch'ien and other related concepts, I think the problem can be dissolved.
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