Please forgive me for my shameless borrowing from NG Yu-Kwan’s book, T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Madhyamika, which is a revised version of his dissertation. T’ien-T’ai Buddhism doesn’t get the treatment it deserves in pop Buddhism being always overshadowed by dubious speculations of what pop Buddhist authors believe Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism, is about. Enough!
Grandmaster Chih-i (538–597 AD) taught that no-emptiness (pu-k'ung) is the Buddha-nature which is also the true Middle Way, not just the Middle Way of transcending extremes by means of emptiness. Transcending extremes, simply put, is negation without positive implication. Judging from its results, one is led to where there is neither permanence (nitya), universal substance (e.g., ekacitta) or Buddha-nature.
Chih-i uses the term Buddha-nature in contrast with emptiness (shunyata) which is incomplete. Emptiness is generally used to reveal the fact that phenomena are unreal and barren, hence, empty. Like a dream, all things (sarvadharma) are without substance or reality. In particular, emptiness was used by Nagarjuna to help people to stop clinging to conceptions.
“The ambrosial teaching of emptiness aims at abolishing all conceptions (samkalpa). But if someone believes in that [emptiness] you [have declared] he is lost” (Lokâtîtastava).
For Chih-i it became clear, if not obvious, that emptiness fails to expound the Buddha-nature which, itself, is not empty or barren. According to the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra: “When the Bodhisattva-mahasattva sees the Buddha-Nature, he gains the Eternal, Bliss, Self, and the Pure.”
Thank you for your story it give me some idea.
Posted by: Buddhapendant | August 11, 2012 at 12:15 PM