國立臺灣大學哲學論評

Abstract / PDF Download

This thesis is aimed to study the approach when Chi-tsang composed verses of　commentary on the Nagarjuna founded and Pivgala annotated Middle Treatise (Chung-lun), how, through back and forth debating on the relativistic concepts such as “delusion” and “non-delusion”, “selfness” and “selflessness”, “arising/ ceasing” and “non-arising /ceasing”, and finally summing-up to “mundane truth” and “noble truth”, he tried to bring up the notion of the “True Reality of All Dharmas”, and established the philosophical contents of Buddhist teaching. With argumentative analysis and　elucidation done in this thesis the author expects to assist fellow scholars to understand and grasp a sideway viewpoint in Chi-tsang‟s Buddhist thinking, so as to reflect on the essential philosophical issues of “by what it means to see „True Reality‟ ”, and/or “what the so-called „True Reality‟ is.”
The bibliography of this thesis mainly consists the Commentary on The Middle Treatise (Chung-kuan-lun Su) and other Buddhist writings and commentary works by Chi-tsang. An Argumentative Explanation Approach is adapted as the study approach; as for the methodology, through conceptual connotation analyzing, subject backgrounds　reestablishing, and multilayered probing and summarizing of the dogma, it achieves the goal of illustrating the　objective that Chi-tsang set to establish the debates on the True Reality philosophy.
The key argumentative points of this article are briefly summarized as follows:
Chi-tsang suggests, based on the “Ultimate Emptiness” notion of the true reality of all dharmas dogma, since it is not possible to establish any ideas such as “being” or “non-being” or even “oneness” or “multiplicity”, therefore, when sutras and　commentaries write about “selfness” or “selflessness”, or even “permanence” or　“impermanence”, although some relativistic pedagogical meanings might exist, nevertheless, in essence the dogma is established with the only intention to relate all phenomenon to the virtuous status of “non- attainment”.
In addition, Chi-tsang points out that every causal dharma of false phenomenon or illusory existence, at its heart “is real too.” Therefore, if we understand the existence nature of the illusory or false phenomenon dharma, knowing that it is dependent on arising, and furthermore cease to abide by illusory existence or false phenomenon, we then will be able to open the “Door of True Reality”.
By the verses of commentary Chi-tsang teaches us the basic conceptual approach to opening the “Door of True Reality”, which is by griping without parting the “Causation” theory of “Two Truths” doctrine, to carry out analyzing and differentiating issues such as “being” and “non-being”, “permanency” and “non-permanency”, and even “arising” and “ceasing”, “delusion” and “non-delusion”, knowing that basically they are no more than causal hypothesis of “duality but non-duality” or “non-duality but duality”, therefore, in order to approximate the truth, we must liberate ourselves from the mental processing style which forms illusory external phenomena, that is to say, we need to extinguish “differential false thinking” which stops us from observing correctly the genuine truth of dharmas.