The Philosophical Grounds and Literary History of Zhentong (original) (raw)

Though the subject of emptiness (śūnyatā, stong pa nyid) is relatively well established in English-language texts on Buddhism, it is usually presented only as the emptiness of lacking independent existence or, more literally, the emptiness of an own nature (svabhāva, rang bzhin). However, the general reader of English literature on Buddhism may not be aware that such an understanding of emptiness reflects a particular interpretation of it, advanced predominantly by the Sakya, Kadam, and Geluk orders, which has exercised a particularly strong influence on the dissemination of Buddhist studies and philosophy in the West. In Tibetan discourse, this position is referred to as rangtong (rang stong), which means that everything, including the omniscience of a Buddha, is taken to be empty of an own nature. It is this lack of independent, locally determined building blocks of the world that allows in Madhyamaka the Buddhist axiom of dependent origination. In other words, rangtong emptiness ...

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