Reading path · Going further
Buddhist philosophy from India to Japan
8 stops
Follow Buddhist thought from the Buddha's teaching on suffering and non-self, through the great Indian schools, to China and Japan, where it took new forms.
Buddhism began in India as a teaching about suffering and its end, and grew into one of the richest bodies of philosophy anywhere, carried across Asia by monks, translators and teachers.
This path follows one thread through it: what is real, and how can we come to see it? Each stop takes up the question in a new place.
The path
The Buddha
The Buddha taught that suffering arises from craving, rooted in ignorance of suffering, impermanence and non-self, and that it can be ended. Every later stop builds on this teaching.
Nāgārjuna
Nāgārjuna founded the Madhyamaka, or “middle way”, school. He argued that nothing has intrinsic nature (svabhāva): everything is empty (śūnyatā), because everything depends on other things.
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu argued that external objects cannot coherently be built from atoms, and that the world we experience is “appearance only” (vijñaptimātra): minds and mental states, with no outer world behind them.
Xuanzang
Xuanzang spent sixteen years travelling to and studying in India, and brought hundreds of texts back to China, where he and his disciple Kuiji founded the Consciousness-only school.
Fazang
In China, Fazang’s Flower Garland (Huayan) Buddhism read emptiness as interconnection: in Indra’s net each jewel reflects all the others, and each thing contains the whole.
Huineng
Chan, known in Japan as Zen, traced its teaching to Huineng, whose Platform Sutra says that our own nature is already Buddha-nature, and that meditation and wisdom are one.
Kūkai
In Japan, Kūkai founded Shingon esoteric Buddhism, teaching that the whole cosmos is the Buddha preaching, and that one can become a Buddha in this very body.
Hōnen
Hōnen held that the old practices were beyond people in a degenerate age, and founded the Pure Land school: simply saying Amida Buddha’s name in trust, a practice open to everyone, is enough.
For discussion
- Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu both deny that things exist as they seem. Where do they disagree?
- How does Fazang's image of Indra's net change what emptiness means?
- Kūkai and Hōnen both bring liberation closer than earlier teachers did. What does each ask of the practitioner?
- What changed as Buddhist ideas moved from India to China and Japan, and what stayed the same?
Terms on this page
- svabhāva
- Intrinsic nature or inherent existence: the nature a thing would have of itself, uncaused, unchanging and independent of anything else. Nāgārjuna argued that nothing has it.
- śūnyatā
- Emptiness: the central notion of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka, that all things are empty of intrinsic nature (svabhāva), since nothing exists independently of other things.
- vijñaptimātra
- “Appearance only” or “ideation only”: the central Yogācāra thesis that everything in the world merely appears, and has no real existence beyond perception.
Sources
- Mark Siderits, Buddha, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Jan Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Richard Hayes, Madhyamaka, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Jonathan C. Gold, Vasubandhu, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Der Huey Lee, Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Norman Harry Rothschild, Fazang (Fa-tsang), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- John M. Thompson, Huineng (Hui-neng), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Peter D. Hershock, Chan Buddhism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- John Krummel, Kūkai, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Dennis Hirota, Japanese Pure Land Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy