Philosopher
Sengzhao
c. 378 – 413 CE
Also known as Seng-Chao, Seng-chao
Buddhist monk and disciple of Kumārajīva whose Treatises of Zhao are the main source for early Chinese Madhyamaka, teaching emptiness through paradox.
Sengzhao lived in the Period of Disunity between the Han and Tang dynasties. From a poor family, he worked as a copyist, and so read the classics and histories; he especially valued Laozi and Zhuangzi, but found in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra what they had not given him, and became a monk. He became a disciple of the Central Asian missionary Kumārajīva, followed him to Chang’an, and helped edit the translations of Buddhist treatises made there. Kumārajīva told him that his own explanations were on a par with Sengzhao’s, but Sengzhao’s wording was far better. He died in Chang’an at thirty-one.
His Treatises of Zhao may be the only extensive collection of early Chinese Madhyamaka writings, and he was the person chiefly responsible for passing on its teaching in China, often in paradoxes reminiscent of the Zhuangzi. Scholars study him to ask how far the Chinese understood the Indian system, and how it related to Daoism and Confucianism.
Key ideas
- Things do not shift
- Motion presupposes separate things, a separation that does not ultimately hold. From the standpoint of absolute truth motion and rest are one and the same; only the deluded multiply distinctions and quarrel over them.
- Emptiness is not an absolute
- Delusion comes from compounding things with names. Things are empty, yet emptiness is not itself something absolute that could be grasped; the sage acts in the world yet stays free of its snares.
- Wisdom without dichotomy
- Perfect wisdom (prajñā) has no marks and cannot be grasped in words or symbols. It knows by not knowing, beyond concepts and the split between subject and object.
- Nirvana beyond concepts
- Conceptualisation, tied to the belief in an independent self, is the chief obstacle. Wisdom, by illuminating emptiness, brings about a nirvana that cannot be named and has neither beginning nor end.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- Chang'an, China
- Schools
- Madhyamaka
Influences
Key works
- Treatises of Zhao (Zhaolun)
- Read free at Wikisource (in Classical Chinese)
Terms on this page
- prajñā
- Wisdom, the insight that sees things as they truly are. Jinul paired it with concentration (samādhi) as two sides of one practice; for Sengzhao it knows without concepts or a split between subject and object.
Sources
- Jeffrey Dippmann, Sengzhao, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy