Sengzhao on the Way Things Truly Are
The notion of emptiness figures prominently in both Indian and Chinese philosophy. In India, Nāgārjuna (c. 150−250 CE), founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, propounded a philosophy of emptiness, according to which, since all things are dependently originated, all things are empty (śūnya) in the sense of having no independent and unchanging existence or nature (svabhāva). He set forth a doctrine of two truths/realities (satya) to the effect that things are empty and illusory from the perspective of ultimate truth (paramārthasatya), but are real from that of conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya). In the Madhyamaka school, ultimate truth is equated with emptiness (śūnyatā). However, there are wide disagreements on how best to construe the notion of ultimate truth.
With the introduction of Buddhism into China during the early centuries of the common era, the notion of emptiness (kong, 空) soon became a focus of attention among Buddhist thinkers. In the Wei-Jin period (220−420 CE), Chinese philosophers were typically preoccupied with the trend of thought known as “arcane learning” (xuanxue, 玄學), which laid great emphasis on the Daoist classics the Laozi and the Zhuangzi and the notion of nothingness (wu, 無). In this intellectual milieu, while Chinese thinkers were less likely than their Indian peers to dismiss the notion of emptiness as nihilistic, even those of Madhyamaka leanings might interpret it in the light of Daoist views.1
One naturally wonders, given the strong Daoist presence in the Wei-Jin period, how anyone from the period would construe the notion of emptiness and take the myriad things to be empty. As a way of illuminating this issue, I shall, in this paper, turn to Sengzhao (僧肇, 374?−414 CE), a prominent Chinese Mādhyamika philosopher, to explore his exposition and modification of the Indian Buddhist doctrine of emptiness.2 Sengzhao exerted a considerable influence on later Chinese Buddhist thinking, so our exploration will shed light on the general Chinese reception of the doctrine. In addition, it will be seen that Sengzhao’s notion of emptiness is philosophically interesting in itself, in terms of its relevance for ontology and the relationship between language and reality.
For the sake of conceptual analysis, let us distinguish the level of the myriad things qua individuals from that of the way things truly are. We shall call them, respectively, the ontic and the ontological levels. These two levels correspond to conventional and ultimate truth/reality as understood by Sengzhao. For Sengzhao, the myriad things constitute conventional truth (sudi, 俗諦), and their ontic status is exposed as that of being empty or void. Meanwhile, he equates the way things are at the ontological level with ultimate truth (zhendi, 真諦), supreme void (zhixu, 至虛), emptiness, the way (dao, 道), nirvana, and even non-attachment. Herein, I use the term ‘emptiness’ principally to indicate the way things are at the ontological level. However, it should be noted that Sengzhao eventually affirms the sameness or non-duality of the two truths. Hence, the distinction between the two levels is primarily conceptual rather than substantive, because the myriad things at the ontic level are, at the bottom, the same as emptiness at the ontological level.
In light of the foregoing, we need to explicate the ontic status of the myriad things and the ontological notion of emptiness, as well as the relationship between the myriad things and emptiness. In this paper, I read Sengzhao as dismissing the idea that reality has a mind-independent structure that comprises discrete entities waiting to be captured by concepts. I shall show that his notion of emptiness points to a subject-object unity wherein both the subject and the myriad objects are conceptually undifferentiated. Moreover, for Sengzhao, to be empty is to be devoid of determinate form and nature, so for him, the emptiness of the myriad things is related to their indeterminacy. On his view, the nature of each of the myriad things is indeterminate in itself, and taken together, the true nature of the myriad things is to form a conceptually indeterminable and undifferentiated whole.
In what follows, I will provide a philosophical analysis and rational reconstruction of Sengzhao’s philosophy of emptiness. In the second section, I discuss the sense in which the myriad things are, for Sengzhao, empty, and ascribe to him a thesis of ontic indeterminacy. In the third section, I explore his conception of emptiness qua subject-object unity and explicate its relationship with the myriad things. In the fourth section, I draw out some implications of Sengzhao’s philosophy and suggest its relevance for contemporary philosophical reflection.
Why, and in what sense, are the myriad things at the ontic level said to be empty? For Sengzhao, they are empty because, first, they are not real, and second, their status is intrinsically the same as that of emptiness at the ontological level. Later, we shall add provisos to this account, to accommodate certain subtleties in Sengzhao’s thought; for now, we will focus on the ontic status of the myriad things as not real.
For a proponent of Madhyamaka, things arise, change, and cease, completely dependent on various causes and conditions. They are dependently originated and thus never self-existent. Further, things are thoroughly impermanent and ever-changing. Thus, things are empty of any independent and unchanging existence or nature. They are then not substantially existent. Consequently, Indian Madhyamaka holds that things are empty and illusory. On similar grounds, Sengzhao speaks of the myriad things as not real and as empty.3 However, he offers a further reason for the myriad things’ not being real: they are devoid of determinate form and nature and thus cannot ultimately or exclusively be determined as such and such.4 As a result, they are not definitively existent in the way that is suggested by their seeming verbal determinability. This issue warrants closer inspection.
We are accustomed to discriminating between things and determining them as definitively this or that, say, as cats or dogs, blue or yellow, desirable or undesirable, and so forth. For Sengzhao, however, such determination is based on conceptualizations that are inevitably inaccurate, indeed delusional, and does not accord with true states of affairs.5 For example, one may take a green tree to be definitively such. Yet, the tree may be green only in respect of the surface of its young bark and leaves, not elsewhere; furthermore, even the green surface will look differently to a color-blind person, to a dog, or under a microscope. Moreover, what a villager takes to be a tree may be just food for tree-eating bugs, a post ablaze for some meditating yogis, or a great mass of wave-particles of indeterminate nature for a stubborn quantum physicist.6 Therefore, the tree is not definitively a green tree.
From the human perspective, it may not be erroneous to conventionally or expediently determine a particular tree to be a tree. Even if we dismiss any universal property, such as treeness, in virtue of instantiating which all trees are trees, the tree has a number of features that distinguish it from dissimilar things, namely non-trees, such that one is justified in calling it a tree. However, this does not mean we can use the word ‘tree’ or other, similar terms to have a complete determination of the tree. In its use of general terms, such as ‘tree’ and ‘maple’, language operates on the grounds of resemblance or commonness. It relies for its operation on the application of a general term to many particular objects that are held to be subsumed under the concept that corresponds to that term. For example, the word ‘tree’ does not by itself designate only one particular tree, but can be used, on the ground of different trees’ resemblance to one another, to refer to any one tree or all trees. Yet, features that are truly specific to a particular tree do not fall within the semantic range of the word. It will not help if we appeal to more specific words such as ‘maple’ or ‘sugar maple’, because they, as general terms, also function on the grounds of resemblance. Then, such features can themselves be so concrete, specific, and fine-grained that the tree evades complete conceptual or linguistic determination, which must be abstract, generic, and coarse-grained.
The ontic level is the conceptual level at which we conceptually cognize things as distinct individuals and, generally, we tend to take them to be determinate. Nevertheless, we can also recognize, right at this level, that things are ontically indeterminate on the grounds of their being devoid of determinate form and nature. In light of the foregoing, we attribute to Sengzhao this thesis of ontic indeterminacy: given anything X, no linguistic term can truly and conclusively be applied to X in the sense of positing a determinate form or nature therein.
For Sengzhao, the way things appear to us is typically conditioned by concepts. As we shall see in the next section, for him, reality is somehow amorphous; it becomes (conceptually) structured into a world of distinct objects only when it is conceptually articulated and cognized by us. In today’s terminology, he would agree that there is no ready-made mind-independent world with a determinate structure that empirical investigation can reveal to us; a world that houses properly sliced res waiting to be labeled accurately by linguistic terms. We may even suggest that much of what things are taken to be, as such and such, is only relative to the observer’s conceptual scheme and perspective; there is no ultimate, perspective-free determination of things as what they are.7
Let us now consider the issue of ontic indeterminacy in relation to the use of language. After arguing that words do not match anything real, Sengzhao contends as follows:8
As the Zhonglun puts it, “things are neither this nor that.” Yet, one person takes this to be this and that to be that, while another takes this to be that and that to be this. This and that are not determined by one word [‘this’ or ‘that’], but deluded people think they must be so. Then, this and that are originally not existent, whereas to the deluded they are existent from the beginning. Once we realize that this and that are not existent, is there anything that can be deemed existent? Hence, we know that the myriad things are not real; they have for long been provisional appellations [jiahao, 假號]!
A thing may be referred to by ‘this’ and taken by the speaker as this. However, it would be the referent of ‘that’ and taken as that in respect of another speaker some distance away. The thing can be referred to by both ‘this’ and ‘that’, but is not fittingly determined by either. Though it can provisionally be said to be this or that, it is not definitively either. This observation is made only with respect to indexicals. However, Sengzhao extends the point to apply it to all referring expressions and their referents, whether the expressions are indexical or not. The argument implicit here is shaky, in that Sengzhao shifts the ground from indexical expressions to expressions that people conventionally think to have a fixed reference. It might be that he views demonstratives or indexicals as primordial among all nominals and so capable of representing other nominals. In what follows, we shall, utilizing some other ideas of Sengzhao’s, try to reconstruct an argument in support of his view that things do not have any determinate form that the use of any words whatsoever may tend to superimpose on them.
Just as we may, mistakenly in the eyes of Mādhyamikas, take the myriad things to be mutually independent, we may also treat individual words as independent of other words. We may further entify and reify the referents of nominal words, taking them to be self-identical, real, and distinctly demarcated entities. It is then a short step to believing that things, as referents of linguistic expressions, are endowed with determinate forms or natures. Nominal words are supposedly connected to, and properly matched with, their referents; in their literal uses, they, via definite meanings, direct our attention straight to the referents and identify determinate properties therein. Hence, we believe that something that can reasonably be expressed by the word ‘existent’ is definitively existent, while that expressed by ‘nonexistent’ is definitively nonexistent. We may further suppose that existence and nonexistence are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, such that a given thing must be either existent or nonexistent, but not both or neither.9
This whole picture of the way referring expressions function is arguably flawed. Many words, and their correlated concepts, are interdependent and complementary, forming such pairs as ‘high’ and ‘low’, ‘life’ and ‘death’, ‘something’ and ‘nothing’, and so on. In such cases, one cannot introduce one concept without simultaneously introducing another for its opposite. Surely, for Sengzhao, the demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’ form a codependent pair of opposite concepts. Indeed, given any nominal word ‘X’, we can always coin a word, say, ‘non-X’, to form a codependent pair of concepts. Let us term such codependence “notional codependence.” In light of notional codependence, it seems that we can cognize something as existent, as being something of which the concept of existence can be predicated, only when we are aware of nonexistent items of which the concept of nonexistence can be predicated. In this sense, the existent and the nonexistent, as objects of conceptual cognition, are interdependent. We can then appreciate Sengzhao’s claim that there is no existence without nonexistence, and no nonexistence without existence.10
In general, the word ‘X’ can refer to the thing X only by depending on the word ‘non-X’ and non-X things. It follows that X cannot be identified and fixed by ‘X’ or the correlative concept independently, without regard to non-Xs. For example, the word ‘cat’ can refer to something and make us think of it as a cat only in relation to the category of non-cats, namely, things other than cats. A cat cannot be identified and fixed by ‘cat’ independently, without any regard to non-cats. A cat is a cat only in relation to non-cats. Moreover, due to the fact that X, the intended referent of ‘X’, cannot be identified independently of non-Xs, it is not what we may think of as a determinate X; that is, it is not an X as something fittingly determined, with an identifiable determinate form, by ‘X’, and thereby definitively differentiated from all non-Xs. Using the same example as above, we say that a cat is not something fittingly determined by ‘cat’ and definitively differentiated from non-cats. It is not endowed with a determinate cat-form identified by the word ‘cat’. Put paradoxically, X is not definitively X and not definitively different from non-Xs.
In light of the foresaid, we can appreciate Sengzhao’s view implied in the above quotation that things conventionally referred to by the word ‘X’ are not fittingly determined by ‘X’. They are not definitively Xs, not things endowed with a determinate X-form. This constitutes his thesis of ontic indeterminacy. In addition, there is no sharp demarcation between Xs and things referred to by the word ‘non-X’. Under a different context or conceptual scheme, the Xs may well be designated by ‘non-X’.
As noted above, the myriad things are considered not real partly because they cannot ultimately or exclusively be determined as such or such. Just as the verbal referentiality of a thing induces us to reify it, similarly, its seeming verbal determinability leads us to attribute to it definitive existence. Now, if a given thing cannot be fittingly determined by its designating expression, it, qua a thing designated thereby, is not existent in the sense of having a definitive existence that people associate with its verbal determinability. It is not definitively existent. Since the myriad things cannot be fittingly determined by words, they are then said, in the earlier quotation, not to be real.
From the recognition that the myriad things are not real in the sense of being substantially and definitively existent, Sengzhao concludes that they are empty. It is critical to appreciate that emptiness here does not mean sheer nothingness. Sengzhao, as a good Mādhyamika, contends that as things originate dependently and are endowed with various forms and features, they are not nonexistent. Their non-reality stems from their lacking substantial (inherent and unchanging) and definitive existence, but not from their being mere nothings. The non-reality of the myriad things also stems from their being objects of conceptual experience, and not being the way things truly are.
For Sengzhao, the myriad things are neither existent nor nonexistent, though they can provisionally be said to be existent and/or nonexistent.11 Here, all words are for him provisional because they do not denote the real, and are used to express their referents without positing any determinate nature therein. Consequently, one and the same thing can be expressed simultaneously by both ‘existent’ and ‘nonexistent’, insofar as the two words are understood provisionally; namely, such that their use does not ascribe to the thing singly determinate and mutually exclusive properties.
So far, I have discussed Sengzhao’s claim that the myriad things are empty because they are not real. In the next section, we turn to his second reason for saying that the myriad things are empty: that their status is intrinsically the same as that of emptiness at the ontological level.
In addition to the considerations of the preceding section, according to Sengzhao, the myriad things are empty because they are intrinsically the same as emptiness qua the way things truly are. After all, if a thing is of the nature of, and intrinsically the same as, emptiness, it can reasonably be said to be empty. In fact, even emptiness itself is empty,12 for it is neither substantially or definitively existent nor conceptually determinable. With a view to clarifying this crucial notion of emptiness, I now attend to the ontological level and Seng-zhao’s ideas on ultimate truth and nirvana.
To begin, consider this passage:13
Though the myriad things are widely diverse, they are one in their true nature. They should not be taken [definitively] as things, yet neither are they nothings. When they are taken as things, names and forms spread out diversely. When they are not taken as things, they are themselves the real [zhen, 真]. Hence, sages do not take things [definitively] as things, nor do they take things to be nothings.
For Sengzhao, Buddhist sages can, like the rest of us, conceptually take the myriad things to be things, cognize forms therein, and use words to designate them. The myriad things qua individuals constitute the world of conventional truth, which cannot to be ignored or discarded, because it is the world of experience in which we live as human beings. The myriad things are not nothings; they form the framework of our world. However, given Buddhist sages’ knowledge of what we call ontic indeterminacy, they do not delusionally take them definitively as things. The myriad things are devoid of any determinate thing-form. The fact of their being intrinsically the same as the real qua the way things truly are also indicates that they are not definitively things.
A Buddhist sage, indeed an enlightened buddha, can also approach things without conceptualization, in that he can experience things pre-conceptually in their conceptually undifferentiated and unconstructed state. Things in such a state are here known as the real, which is none other than the way things truly are, namely, emptiness. By contrast, not only do we, the unenlightened, normally experience things conceptually, but we also tend, delusively with a mind of attachment, to take them to be determinate. Then, when we learn that the myriad things are indeterminate, we further tend to take them to be definitively indeterminate. Since determination is a function of conceptualization, the best way for one to break away from such tendencies would be to eschew any conceptualization and attain a pre-conceptual experience of emptiness. Ultimately, emptiness can only be realized when the myriad things are not conceptually taken as things.
What is realized only pre-conceptually is without any conceptually identifiable form. Given the correlation of language and concepts, if an item lacks a conceptually identifiable form, it is not directly and properly expressible. Since emptiness is realized pre-conceptually, it is, in an appropriate sense, formless and nameless. Here, while the myriad things, being conceptually accessible, are, in principle, directly expressible, emptiness is not.14 It cannot be represented adequately by words. Hence, emptiness as the way things truly are is ontologically indeterminate, in the sense that it lies beyond any conceptual identification and linguistic representation.
The difference between emptiness and the myriad things qua individuals corresponds to that between ultimate truth and conventional truth, a distinction drawn by Nāgārjuna. Here, one may be tempted to view “ultimate truth” as a metaphysical notion that refers to some underlying ineffable reality as the ground of the myriad things. However, Sengzhao emphasizes that verbal difference between the two truths by no means predicates that they are two types of thing. Ultimate and conventional truths are intrinsically one and the same actuality. Their difference concerns two different ways in which the myriad things can be presented in experience, namely, the pre-conceptual and the conceptual. We shall return to this issue later.
Nāgārjuna is widely read as holding that emptiness is itself empty, and that there is, ultimately, no difference between ultimate and conventional truths. Based on this reading, several contemporary philosophers of Indian Madhya-maka have adopted a broadly semantic interpretation of ultimate truth to the effect that the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. On one view, this means that the truth that must be grasped in order to attain full enlightenment is that there is no statement that corresponds to the ultimate nature of mind-independent reality. On another view, it means that the truth that must be grasped is that there cannot exist anything that is what it is in separation from everything else.15 In either case, the point made is that there is no such thing as the way things truly are.
Irrespective of which stance Nāgārjuna might have taken on this issue, the above interpretation does not tally with Sengzhao’s notion of ultimate truth. For Sengzhao, the teaching of ultimate truth highlights the idea that the myriad things are not definitively existent, and that when not taken as things, they are themselves the real. Truly, there is no true statement that corresponds to the ultimate nature of mind-independent reality. However, this is because there is, in a sense, no mind-independent reality, and, even if there is anything ultimate, it lies beyond the grip of words and concepts. Ultimate truth is ineffable; it is not a propositional fact that one can grasp conceptually and formulate in words. In addition, one cannot attain enlightenment by grasping the fact. And yet, for Sengzhao, as for Mahayana Buddhists in general, the direct realization of ultimate truth would effectively lead to the attainment of enlightenment.
Meanwhile, some may want to adopt a pragmatic interpretation of Sengzhao’s notion of ultimate truth.16 Indeed, on one occasion Sengzhao equates ultimate truth and conventional truth, respectively, with nonacquisition (wude, 無得) and acquisition (youde, 有得).17 Since nonacquisition is a state of mind, it would seem that, for Sengzhao, nothing is ontologically real and the notion of emptiness is simply a soteriological expedient that is meant to empty one’s mind of cravings and to suggest that enlightenment comprises freedom from any attachment whatsoever. However, this pragmatic interpretation does not appear to concord with the work of Sengzhao, who refers approvingly to emptiness or ultimate truth and takes them to be realized by a sacred mind. For Sengzhao, it is not that no reality is truly real; the fact is, rather, that the real is realized only by a mind of non-attachment.
If all these alternatives fail to account for Sengzhao’s notion of ultimate truth, what option is there left for us? I think we need to look at his conception of nirvana, for it concerns what is considered ultimate in his philosophy, and he cites approvingly a line from an unspecified sutra to the effect that ultimate truth is nirvana.18 Sengzhao discusses nirvana at some length, so we are in a good position to investigate his view on ultimate truth and emptiness. In this context, the following passage is the most noteworthy:19
Things [in reality] have no form of existence or nonexistence. Sages have no knowledge of existence or nonexistence…. There is no figure in the exterior, no [objectifying] mind in the interior. Both the [exterior and interior] are quiescently ceased; both things and oneself are harmoniously one. Being tranquil and traceless, this state is termed nirvana.
In this passage, it is clear that Sengzhao takes nirvana to be a state of quiescent emptiness in which external things and oneself, forms and the mind, become one. The myriad things are rid of any conceptually cognizable forms (of existence, nonexistence, etc.) and sharply demarcated identities. This state of nirvana is a quiescent subject-object unity, in which the interior and the exterior cease to be divided, in that they no longer have conceivable separate forms.
On the ontic level, the myriad things are conceptually cognized and demarcated, but Sengzhao exposes their nature of being codependent, indeterminate, and without sharp demarcation in between. On the ontological level, emptiness is realized pre-conceptually, and enlightened beings apprehend how things are independent of our conceptual scheme and any concepts we happen to employ. On the one hand, it is advisable to refer to emptiness as the way things truly are, for it is what the myriad things are in the absence of conceptual differentiation and structuring. On the other, since emptiness cannot be represented by words, there are no true statements that represent how it is independent of the concepts we employ in trying to express it. Being devoid of conceptually imposed structures, emptiness qua reality is somewhat like an amorphous lump,20 to be carved up using our conceptual scheme into the things that we take to be constitutive of our world.
In emptiness, Xs are not yet Xs, and Ys not yet Ys. However, although the myriad things are not yet conceptually taken as things, as this or that, they are not completely nonexistent. For Sengzhao, the notion of emptiness implies a quiescence of conceptual differentiation (and this is one reason why emptiness is called ‘emptiness’), but not the elimination of pre-conceptual (non-human-made) differences and features. Indeed, he takes emptiness to embrace the multiplicity of the myriad things while transcending all conceptual differentiation and determination.21
Now, if, for Sengzhao, emptiness transcends all conceptual differentiation, then by implication it must transcend the conceptual differentiation between the subject and the object. As a matter of fact, the subject-object divide is the most fundamental and enduring conceptual differentiation in our conscious life. Our daily experiences involve an experiencing subject and an object that is experienced. We think that external things are objective and separate from the mind. However, in emptiness qua reality, the subject is not yet the subject, and the object not yet the object. In recognition of this, in the quoted passage, Sengzhao speaks of oneself and objects as being quiescently one. Moreover, our discussion above about notional codependence enables us to see that the subjective and objective are interdependent, such that there cannot be one without the other. Their interdependence at the conceptual (ontic) level indicates their indeterminacy and non-reality, the knowledge of which may induce one to relinquish attachment to either the subjective or the objective and to seek to go beyond the conceptual divide. We then have subject-object unity at the pre-conceptual (ontological) level.
In the pre-conceptual experience of emptiness, the subject and objects are not yet conceptually differentiated. Clearly, emptiness as the way things truly are cannot be characterized as either subjective or objective. It is both and neither. For Sengzhao, emptiness is not a mind-independent objective reality, because what we conceptualize as mind at the ontic level is part of it. He would suggest that there is no such reality: when we see mountains as mountains, streams as streams, both of them as things external to our mind, they cease to be real things. Correlatively, the mind is not separate or independent from the things either. There is no real pure subjectivity.
As noted at the beginning of the paper, the distinction between the ontic and ontological levels is conceptual rather than substantive. The distinction is indeed conceptual, for, as mentioned above, the difference between ultimate and conventional truths concerns two different ways in which the myriad things can be presented in experience, namely, the pre-conceptual and the conceptual. The point is that the difference between the two levels is primarily that between the myriad things, the subject included, as conceptually individuated on the one hand and as realized pre-conceptually on the other. At the ontic level, the myriad things are conceptually differentiated; at the ontological level, the very same things form an ineffable intermingled whole. That being so, emptiness and the myriad things qua individuals are not intrinsically different. They are the same thing as experienced in two different ways, the pre-conceptual and the conceptual.22
The view that emptiness and the myriad things qua individuals are intrinsically one and the same actuality accords with Sengzhao’s statement that the two truths are not two types of thing. However, this does not mean that emptiness and the individual things are identical. If they were identical, there would be no difference between the pre-conceptual and the conceptual, and an unenlightened person would be a buddha in every respect, which is absurd. While this is an intricate issue, we shall, for our purposes here, adhere to the conceptual distinction between the two levels concerned.
On Sengzhao’s view, the myriad things are empty, indeterminate, and without any sharp demarcation between them. All this is reinforced by his acknowledgement of emptiness as their true nature. The myriad things are empty partly because they are of the nature of emptiness. Their ontic indeterminacy is strengthened by the ontological fact that emptiness cannot be conceptually determined. Moreover, the fact that, in emptiness, all things are conceptually undifferentiated strengthens the view that the myriad things are not definitively distinct from one another. From this, we see the intimate relationship between emptiness and the myriad things.
Correspondingly, as one recognizes that the myriad things are codependent and should not be taken definitively as this or that, one may refrain from attaching oneself to any of them while comprehending that things are interrelated and not truly mutually distinct. One may then turn toward the ontological level, wherein the myriad things are not conceived as things at all.
As discussed in the preceding section, Sengzhao’s ontological notion of emptiness implies the quiescence of conceptual differentiation and structuring as well as formlessness and ineffability. The subject-object divide is also quiescent, and emptiness entails a subject-object unity. Thus, in a line reminiscent of the Zhuangzi, Sengzhao writes, “Heaven and earth have the same root as me; the myriad things and I are one body.”23 Emptiness, indeed, is the common root for all things exterior and interior. Far from being sheer nothingness, it embraces the multiplicity of the myriad things in their pre-conceptual state.
Adopting Sengzhao’s notion of emptiness, we can view this world in a new and enriched light. Instead of taking the myriad things to be clearly demarcated and independent, we may now see them as interdependent, interwoven, and deeply equal. The world does not distance itself from us; rather, it is we humans who distance ourselves from the world. As we learn to feel ourselves as one with the myriad things and begin to appreciate the intimate connections between ourselves and other humans, other living beings, and the environment, we may develop increased compassion and an increased motivation to care for these things. This would surely make for a better world to live in.
Significantly, Sengzhao’s articulation of emptiness is of direct relevance for contemporary philosophical reflection. He would concur with a number of contemporary philosophers in rejecting the ontological realist views that objects and properties exist independently of our mental access to them, and that the world is as it is independent of what we think about it. This does not mean, however, that for Sengzhao there is no such thing as the way things truly are. Nevertheless, emptiness as the way things are is somehow amorphous; it is transformed into a world of individual things when it is conceptually cognized and structured by us. Even though the myriad things are not real, they are not nothings either. Being constitutive of conventional truth, and as direct referents of provisional words, the myriad things may be said to have conventional and provisional existence. In addition, they are deemed to be real when they are not conceptually taken to be things.
If contemporary philosophers who reject the above realist views acknowledge the prevalence of notional codependence, they may appreciate the thesis of ontic indeterminacy that we ascribe to Sengzhao. Some of them may agree that the myriad things are empty in the sense of lacking substantial and definitive existence. Nonetheless, it would be difficult for contemporary philosophers to swallow Sengzhao’s ontological notion of emptiness. Many of them, believing that all awareness is a conceptual or linguistic affair,24 would readily dismiss as impossibility any concept-free experience that reveals a subject-object unity.
Our conscious experience is normally laden with concepts. One could even argue that concepts are prerequisites for our daily experience, in that the ways the myriad things appear to us are fundamentally conditioned by them. However, it is doubtful whether all seeing involves propositions and concepts, such as seeing that (X is F, for any F) or seeing as (X as F), such that, for any subject S, if S sees X, then S has the concept F and applies it in her awareness of X. It is one thing for one to have the concept F, but quite another for one to apply it in one’s awareness of things. It seems to be neither phenomenologically evident nor logically necessary that our conscious experience always involves the application of concepts.
The genuine experience of emptiness is even less likely to involve concepts than any other nonconceptual experience, if any. Sengzhao would claim that such experience could be had only by those extraordinary beings who have attained enlightenment. In experiencing emptiness, one perceives the world without making conceptual differentiation between oneself and the world or between this and that object. While such an experience can easily be taken to be a kind of mystical experience with soteriological significance, it is unlike other mystical experiences in that it does not obliterate the myriad things and dissolve the subject in an utterly undifferentiated vacuity.
To defend Sengzhao’s view, we can say that once we concede that the myriad things lack substantial and definitive existence and cannot be taken definitively as X or non-X, it is only one step further to recognize that they are in their true nature conceptually indeterminable. In addition, conceptualization may bring in subjective coloring and structuring that obscure the way things truly are. Consequently, the best way to know the true nature of the myriad things is to resort to pre-conceptual experience. As stated earlier, what is eventually realized in such experience will involve a realization of subject-object unity. In any case, the point for us to note is that the notion of emptiness is in tune with the dismissal of a purely objective, mind-independent reality.
Even though emptiness is indicated previously as somewhat like an amorphous lump, this does not mean that the various ways in which we could possibly carve up reality are equally valid with regard to the texture of reality, or that we can rationally carve up reality according to whatever perspective we please. In Sengzhao’s philosophy, there is a reality beyond people’s conceptual constructions. Reality is devoid of conceptually identifiable forms. Still, it comprises pre-conceptual differences. While conceptualization tends to preclude the presentation of reality as it is, some conceptual differentiations are better than others in reflecting the differences. Likewise, while words cannot properly represent reality, some ways of indirectly expressing the differences are better than others. For example, on a clear shiny day, the statement “the sky is clear” is conventionally true, while “the sky is full of rain clouds” is not. Even if the statement “the sky is clear” is conventionally true, it is not true by convention. We can say that it is conventionally true because it somehow correctly, though indirectly, expresses the pre-conceptual differences related to the sky. Similar points can be made about conceptual differentiations. Thus, when it comes to carving up reality, it is not the case that any conceptual scheme or perspective works as well, or as badly, as any other. Sengzhao’s philosophy, then, would not collapse into an incoherent relativism to the effect that no one perspective—relativism included—is any truer than any other perspective.
Correlatively, the myriad things on the ontic level are endowed with concrete and specific features that evade complete conceptual determination. For instance, from our human perspective, a tomato is sense-perceived with such and such concrete features that the perceiver is justified, given the relevant convention, in calling it a tomato, but not a ball or an orange. The perception cannot be reduced to conceptual determination, let alone the perceiver’s whim, but has to be regulated by the features of the perceived object. That being so, when it comes to our perceptual access to the world, it is also not the case that any conceptualization works as well, or as badly, as any other.
We have previously suggested that much of what things are taken to be, as so and so, is relative to the observer’s conceptual scheme, and that people of different cultures and languages have different conceptual schemes. Still, this does not mean that different conceptual schemes are equally suitable (or equally unsuitable) as means for carving up reality. This is indeed a complicated issue, and we should just concern ourselves with two situations. First, people in different societies somehow perceive things differently, which contributes to the difference in their conceptual schemes. The Inuit reportedly have numerous words for different kinds of snow and ice. We may agree that their perception of snow/ice is more finely grained than ours, and that their conceptual scheme in this respect is more in tune with the pre-conceptual differences of snow/ice than our scheme. Second, the difference in our conceptual schemes affects how we further classify a perceived object: say, one society may classify a tomato as a fruit, another as a vegetable, a third one both a fruit and a vegetable. In the first situation, we should be able to find reasons for judging that a given conceptual scheme is more suitable than others for revealing a certain aspect of the reality. In the second situation, we are probably unable to judge between different conceptual schemes, yet this inability is not of much significance. Overall, while the world as we know it is conceptually structured by us, the structuring is not entirely a matter of social convention, much less of personal discretion.
For Sengzhao, objects and properties in our world do not exist independently of our conceptual access to them, though at the same time they are not merely conceptual constructions. Concepts are interdependent and incapable of fully determining the intended referents. This recognition should induce one to look for the way things truly are before all conceptual processing. In his philosophy, the ontological notion of emptiness represents precisely the way things are before conceptualization, which is not a structured world of discrete objects, but a quiescent subject-object unity. This notion, together with the correlated indeterminacy thesis, comprises a theory of emptiness that is coherent and philosophically interesting. Irrespective of its soteriological import, the theory itself constitutes a viable alternative in the ongoing debate between realism and anti-realism. It provides a refreshing and challenging perspective on how we may perceive the world and understand our relationship to it.25
1 Concerning the charge of nihilism leveled against Indian Madhyamaka, see Jay Garfield’s contribution to the present volume (Chapter 3).
2 Sengzhao’s main works are the Zhaolun and the Zhu Weimojiejing, which are here cited according to the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō, henceforth abbreviated as T.
3 In Zhaolun (T 45: 152c16−20), Sengzhao implies that as things do not really arise (out of themselves), they are not substantially existent, that they are not nonexistent either, and that, consequently, they are not real and can be said to be empty and illusory.
4 Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 377a7−10, 386b18−20, 389b21−22). Such a view is not clearly evident in Indian Madhyamaka, although Matilal (1971a, 155−159) had long ago construed ‘emptiness’ as meaning the indeterminacy of all things in the world.
5 The word ‘delusional’ is added to designate the kind of conceptualization that grasps things with attachment and take them to be definitively such and such. Such conceptual activity is present in greater or lesser degrees in all unenlightened people. Because an enlightened Buddhist sage can, and indeed needs to, make use of conception to identify things and communicate with others, not all conceptualization is delusional. Cf. Zhaolun (T 45: 152c24−27, 153c8−10, 154b3−8).
6 Sengzhao’s own example is exotic: just as a goddess can, with her divine power, turn a man into a woman, so a person does not really have a determinate male or female form. See Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 389c9−11).
7 For a criticism of the notion of a ready-made world, see Putnam (1982). By “conceptual scheme,” I mean a network of basic concepts and propositions by which people of a society organize, classify, and describe their experience. People of different cultures and languages have different (though often overlapping) conceptual schemes.
8 Zhaolun (T 45: 152c23−28). The Zhonglun is Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Piṅgala’s commentary thereon.
9 Some similar views are repudiated in Zhaolun (T 45: 153c15−22, 159a17−23).
10 Zhaolun (T 45: 159a27−b3), and Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 332c29−333a1).
11 Zhaolun (T 45: 152b1−7, b18−c20, 156b11−13); Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 332c27−29). In Sengzhao’s view, to say provisionally that X is existent is to show that X is not nonexistent; to say provisionally that X is nonexistent is to show that X is not existent.
12 Editors’ note: see Chapter 3 where Garfield analyzes the emptiness of emptiness.
13 Zhaolun (T 45: 156b8−11). For Sengzhao’s emphasis on the intrinsic sameness of the myriad things and the real, see also Zhaolun (T 45: 152b1−4, b11−18, 153a1−5).
14 If emptiness is ineffable, the question arises as to how words can be used to gesture toward it. One cannot even say that emptiness is unsayable, because in doing so, one would have made it sayable. In his contribution to this volume, Graham Priest points out the predicament and contradiction of speaking of the ineffable. His strategy for resolving the predicament is to endorse the contradiction (see Chapter 7). By contrast, I have, in Ho (2006), attempted to resolve the predicament by proposing a strategy that does not require us to accept a statement of ineffability as both true and contradictory. Consequently, I shall assume that this issue does not constitute a serious problem for our approach.
15 See Siderits (2007, 202) and Arnold (2010, 394), respectively, for the two views.
16 For this interpretation in relation to Chinese Madhyamaka, see Cheng (1984, 53, 98−99) and Liu (1994, 103).
17 Zhaolun (T 45: 152b11−16). In Sengzhao’s writings, the word ‘acquisition’ signifies conceptual obtention of something that is taken as real and determinate and is an object of attachment. The word ‘nonacquisition’, by contrast, signifies a state of mind without such an obtention. Cf. Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 377c9−26) and Zhaolun (T 45: 161b1−4). We can treat ‘nonacquisition’ and ‘non-attachment’ as interchangeable.
18 Zhaolun (T 45: 159a25−27; cf. 159b27−29). It is here stated that conventional truth consists of existent and nonexistent things, which, for Sengzhao, should mean the myriad things qua individuals.
19 Zhaolun (T 45: 159c8−11; cf. 161a7−19, 161b7−9). All these passages come from the essay titled “Nirvana Is Nameless,” the authenticity of which has been questioned by some modern scholars. The bulk of modern scholarship, however, seems to regard the essay as penned by Sengzhao himself. That Sengzhao affirms a state of subject-object unity can also be seen in Zhu Weimojiejing (T 38: 372c19−24).
20 For the picture of reality as an amorphous lump, see Dummett (1981) and Eklund (2008).
21 In Zhaolun (T 45: 154c6−10), Sengzhao refers to the myriad things as being real and formless. Immediately afterwards, he indicates that, on the ontological level, things are implicitly different, but are not yet conceived as different.
22 This situation confers on the myriad things a paradoxical character. They are intrinsically unitary, real, formless and nameless, yet appear to be divergent, non-real, and endowed with forms and names.
23 Zhaolun (T 45: 159b28−29). The corresponding line in the Zhuangzi reads, “Heaven and earth were born together with me, and the myriad things are one with me” (Zhuangzi yinde 5/2/52−53). The influence of the Zhuangzi on Sengzhao’s philosophy of emptiness is unmistakable. On the other hand, Sengzhao’s notion of emptiness differs from the classical Daoist conception of nothingness as the cosmogonic origin of all things. Emptiness does not causally give rise to the myriad things.
24 See, for example, Sellars (1963) and McDowell (1996).
25 The author would like to thank JeeLoo Liu, Douglas Berger, and Wren Akasawa for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.