| Summary: | <p>Emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā; Chs. kong 空/kongxing 空性; Tib. stong pa nyid) is undoubtedly one of the most important concepts in the history of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, East Asia, and Tibet, and the concept as it appears in a wide range of periods and geographical regions has been investigated in depth in modern scholarship. However, there is a one conspicuous omission: there has been no comprehensive book-length study focusing on the idea of emptiness across Mahāyāna sūtras, particularly between the beginning of the Common Era to the foundation of the Gupta Empire in the early fourth century CE, which is arguably the most formative period of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India.</p>
<p>My thesis endeavours to fill this gap by providing the first comprehensive study of the meaning of and the relationship between the concept of emptiness in the early Prajñāpāramitā and the same concept in the Tathāgatagarbha scriptural traditions, which are two of the most influential scriptural traditions in Mahāyāna Buddhism but are often considered to be incompatible, based on all their existing versions in Sanskrit, Gāndhārī, Chinese or Tibetan. Building on an investigation of the meaning of emptiness in the early Buddhist discourses, I argue that four broad senses of emptiness can be found in the early Prajñāpāramitā and the Tathāgatagarbha scriptures. First, emptiness has the meaning of lacking a personal self. Second, emptiness means unreality, which may be further analysed as transcendental unreality. Third, emptiness is equivalent to the notion of nothing, which can be differentiated into the senses of ‘a pure negator’ and ‘non-existence’. Fourth, emptiness, which is also associated with the idea of non-emptiness, is closely related to the ultimate goal of nirvāṇa in Buddhism. However, while three broad senses of emptiness are shared between the two scriptural traditions, these scriptures often interpret the term in very different ways, especially concerning its role in their respective theories of the bodhisattva path. Thus, from a historical point of view, there is no answer to the normative question on the true meaning of emptiness in Mahāyāna sūtras.</p>
|
|---|