Summary |
The Three-Treatise (or Sanlun) school is an orthodox
Chinese Mādhyamika tradition, which was pioneered by Kumārajīva (344?−413?), a prestigious thinker and
translator of Indian extraction, and his distinguished disciple Sengzhao (Seng-chao;
374?−414), and later vigorously revived by Jizang (Chi-tsang;
549−623). The school derives
its name “three-treatise” from its emphasis on the three translation texts of
early Indian Madhyamaka, the Middle Treatise (Zhong lun), the Twelve
Gate Treatise (Shiermen lun), and the Hundred Treatise (Bai
lun). Both Sengzhao and Jizang, the two leading philosophers of the school,
uphold the view that all things are indeterminate and empty. Sengzhao affirms
the nonduality of motion and rest, the myriad things and emptiness, and also the
subject and the object. Jizang highlights the notion of nonacquisition (or nonattachment) and famously
reinterprets and reconstructs the Mādhyamika doctrine of two truths. |