Eastern Philosophy of Religion

Harrison
This Element selectively examines a range of ideas and

arguments drawn from the philosophical traditions of South
and East Asia, focusing on those that are especially relevant to
the philosophy of religion. The Element introduces key debates
about the self and the nature of reality that unite the otherwise
highly diverse philosophies of Indian and Chinese Buddhism, Philosophy of Religion
Hinduism, and Jainism. The emphasis of this Element is
analytical rather than historical. Key issues are explained in
a clear, precise, accessible manner, and with a view to their
relevance to contemporary philosophical debates.
Eastern Philosophy
Eastern Philosophy of Religion

of Religion
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religion. It offers balanced, comprehensive
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philosophy of religion. Contributors to the
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Elements in the Philosophy of Religion
edited by
Yujin Nagasawa
University of Birmingham
EASTERN PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION
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Elements in the Philosophy of Religion
DOI: 10.1017/9781108558211
First published online: September 2022
University of Macau
Author for correspondence: Victoria S. Harrison, vharrison@um.edu.mo
Abstract: This Element selectively examines a range of ideas and

arguments drawn from the philosophical traditions of South and East
Asia, focusing on those that are especially relevant to the philosophy of
religion. The Element introduces key debates about the self and the
nature of reality that unite the otherwise highly diverse philosophies of
Indian and Chinese Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The emphasis of
this Element is analytical rather than historical. Key issues are explained
in a clear, precise, accessible manner, and with a view to their relevance
to contemporary philosophical debates.
Keywords: Buddhist ontology, rebirth, Asian philosophy, emptiness,

omniscience
© Victoria S. Harrison 2022

ISBNs: 9781108457484 (PB), 9781108558211 (OC)
ISSNs: 2399-5165 (online), 2515-9763 (print)
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Self 6
3 Being and Emptiness 24
4 Nothing and Something 42
5 Pluralism 55
6 Global Philosophy 61
References 63
Eastern Philosophy of Religion 1
1 Introduction
This Element is unusual in its scope and range. The topic of Eastern philosophy
of religion is potentially so expansive that the task of addressing it within
a small Element such as this one could be compared to the task of doing the
same with the topic of Western civilization! The reader should be warned that an
attempt such as this can only be intrepid, and that what is presented here is the
author’s selective view on which philosophical ideas and debates have
decisively shaped Asian spiritual traditions. As the reader will quickly notice,
the most significant authorial choice was to emphasize Buddhist philosophy in
its multiple forms as the thread that weaves together the otherwise very different
Vedic and Sinitic thought worlds. This metaphor is apt because texts from all the
traditions considered here are called sūtras, which literally means ‘thread’.1 The
Vedic and Sinitic intellectual worlds were drawn progressively closer together
by the continuous passing back and forth of important Buddhist sūtras. This
explains the prominence of Buddhist philosophy in this Element relative to the
other traditions covered.
By employing Buddhist thought, as it evolved first in India and then in China,
as a pathway through a dense network of ideas, this Element introduces the
major strands of Eastern philosophy of religion.2 Philosophical systems, like
Buddhism, that originated in the ancient world and matured over many centur-
ies require careful articulation and introduction, for they are at home in thought-
worlds that, in many fundamental respects, differ dramatically from our own.
Despite the cultural and historical gap between the original contexts within
which the philosophies considered in this Element developed and the probable
cultural context of its readers, this Element will show that many of the key
questions at the core of the philosophical traditions of Asia remain relevant to
people today. This relevance is assured because these questions concern the self,
the ultimate nature of reality, and the relation between the two: topics which
typically interest reflective people from all times and cultures.
Readers of this Element should also be aware that the systems of thought
introduced here are vastly complex and intertwined with continuously develop-
ing combinations of theory and practice. They also have important ethical,
moral, and practical implications for the daily lives of those who actively
practise the spiritual traditions to which the ideas discussed in this Element
are intimately attached. Acknowledging this complexity, this Element seeks to
1
‘Sūtras’ is an anglicized pluralization of sūtra.
2
This Element uses the terms ‘India’ and ‘China’ imprecisely as terms of convenience. The actual
borders of both countries have expanded and contracted dramatically over the historical period
covered by this Element.
2 Philosophy of Religion
elucidate the abstract philosophical assumptions and arguments that continue to

inform living traditions of commitment and spiritual practice.
1.1 Outline
This section explains how the term ‘Eastern Philosophy’ is used and outlines
what is included under the heading ‘Eastern Philosophy of Religion’. It also
briefly explains why the term ‘religion’ is problematic in the context of Asian
traditions, suggesting that we need to broaden the typical Western understand-
ing of religion if we are to appreciate the religious character of the philosophical
debates that form the core of philosophy of religion in Asia.
Section 2 focuses on questions concerning the nature of the self within the
early Sanskrit and Pāli intellectual traditions. Section 3 extends the debates
introduced in Section 2 to cover broader issues, such as what it means to exist,
and how being and non-being are related. Sections 2 and 3 are focused on Indian
philosophy, although a discussion of Chinese Buddhism at the end of Section 3
leads into a focus on Chinese philosophy in Section 4. Section 5 introduces
another important Indian philosophical tradition, Jainism, and explains why this
tradition is especially relevant for the growing movement of global philosophy
of religion that is the subject of the closing remarks in Section 6.
1.2 The Scope of Eastern Philosophy of Religion

The term ‘Eastern Philosophy’ can be used, somewhat imprecisely, to refer to
the various philosophical traditions that developed in South and East Asia.
These philosophical traditions fall into two main categories: those that emerged
on the Indian subcontinent and those that developed on the other side of the
Himalayas, in the region now known as China. The philosophical traditions of
India and those of China are very different. They emerged independently, each
drawing on a distinctive range of cultural resources and developing their own
textual traditions (Halbfass 1988). Their trajectories of development only began
to intersect with the transmission of Buddhism from India to China, which
began just prior to the Common Era and picked up momentum over the
following several centuries. Our knowledge of this early period of interaction
between Indian Buddhism and Chinese thought is incomplete, and exciting new
discoveries are still being made which sometimes change our understanding of
this period. Nonetheless, we do know that Indian Buddhist philosophy took root
in China and was transformed, under the influence of Daoist thought and
practice, into the distinctive traditions of Chinese Buddhism. These new
forms of Buddhism would later instigate dramatic developments within
Confucian philosophy (see Section 4.12), but they had a more immediate impact
on Buddhism in India. The meeting of Chinese and Indian Buddhism initiated

a new and highly creative phase of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy in India
(King 1997).
This complex history of the multiple transmissions of ideas across geograph-
ical barriers, times, and cultures – and the complex networks of influence
involved – makes it difficult to reach a deep understanding of any one of the
philosophical or religious traditions of Asia in isolation from an understanding
of the others. This difficulty can itself become a barrier to readers approaching
these traditions for the first time. One way to make this barrier less formidable is
to focus on the subjects that interested philosophers in the ancient traditions of
India and China. Many of these subjects are familiar to us today, such as ethics,
logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, although ancient philosophers
did not make the sharp distinctions between these subject areas that many of us
now take for granted.
Another characteristic of Eastern philosophies that can be confusing at first is
that ancient thinkers did not distinguish the domains of philosophy and religion
in the way modern thinkers tend to do. Nonetheless, looking back with our
modern way of thinking in place, we can see that religious, or spiritual,
questions and concerns were at the forefront of many of the early philosophical
developments in Asia. For complex historical and cultural reasons, religious
philosophy quickly assumed far greater prominence in India than it did in
traditional Chinese, Japanese (De Bary et al. 2001), or Korean (Lee & De
Bary 1997) thought. On the Indian subcontinent, philosophers were concerned
with religious questions to a degree not found elsewhere in Asia. This explains
why this Element focuses more on Indian than on Chinese philosophy.
1.3 What Do We Mean by Eastern Philosophy of Religion?

The term ‘Eastern Philosophy of Religion’ inevitably implies a contrast with its
Western counterpart. Conceptually, this contrast makes sense, for Western
philosophy of religion refers to philosophy concerned with Western religions
(defined as Abrahamic religions), while Eastern philosophy of religion is
philosophy targeted on the philosophical dimensions of the religions of Asia.
In Section 1.5, however, we will see that the contrast between supposedly
‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ philosophy of religion may be on the way to becoming
obsolete.
There are many short introductions to Western philosophy of religion avail-
able. Most of these introductions canvas a predictable range of themes: the
existence and nature of God, evil, faith, and so on. The contents of such books
are predictable because the philosophical questions addressed are all generated
from reflection on the central concept of Western theism: ‘God’. By contrast,

short introductions to Eastern philosophy of religion – in distinction to the
broader subject of Eastern philosophy – are rare. This short Element may even
be the first! One reason for this is that religions in Asia are generally not
perceived to be sufficiently like one another to merit common treatment. They
do not seem to be organized around a single shared central concept, in the way
that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are organized around the concept of God
(even though in reality a cluster of concepts of God is at stake). In fact, it is
increasingly acknowledged that the philosophical and religious traditions of
India are more akin to those of the Far West (i.e., Europe) than they are to those
of the Far East (McEvilley 2002). Consequently, an introduction to Eastern
philosophy of religion cannot draw on an established range of themes, the
discussion of which would serve as an effective introduction to the breadth of
the philosophies of religion found in Asia.
In response to this problem, it is tempting to resort to presenting an introduc-
tion to the philosophy of religion in Hinduism, then in Buddhism, then in
Daoism, and so on, through all the main traditions of India and China (and
Japan and Korea). To do so, however, would inevitably result in a loss of
philosophical depth in a short work such as this one. The alternative strategy,
which I have chosen for this Element, is to focus on a small number of important
topics, debate about which reveals the key trajectories of the evolution of
philosophy of religion in India and China.
Section 2 begins the investigation of Eastern philosophy of religion by
introducing a debate about the nature of the self. This debate began in India
over two and a half thousand years ago and is still ongoing (Kuznetsova et al.
2012). The different positions that emerged within this debate came to define
Buddhism in contrast to the Brahmanical tradition. The Brahmanical tradition
was to become what people much later came to refer to as Hinduism (Flood
1996). This ancient debate about the nature of the self provided the impetus for
the next key debate, considered in Sections 3 and 4, which concerned how to
understand being and becoming. This second debate continued for many cen-
turies, and it crossed back and forth between India and China. Rival positions
were advanced by different schools of Buddhist philosophy in both regions.
Non-Buddhist Chinese (Daoist) and Indian (Hindu) philosophers were also
drawn into this debate, as eventually, as we will see in Section 4, were
Confucian philosophers. Section 5 introduces a method of analysis first devel-
oped in ancient India by Jain philosophers. The method has been characterized
as a form of epistemological pluralism, for it aims to show how apparently
contradictory views – such as those advanced by other philosophers about the
self – could, at least in principle, all be correct. Through exploration of this set
of themes, this Element demonstrates that the religious philosophies of Asia,

while not focused on a common concept, such as the concept of God, have
several overlapping concerns. These concerns focus on understanding the rela-
tion between being and non-being (or ‘emptiness’, to use later Buddhist termin-
ology) and on articulating the implications of how we think about this relation
for our conception of becoming.
A concern with being, non-being, and becoming (or ‘arising’, as Buddhist
terminology has it) is evident within Buddhist philosophy from its earliest
appearance (Gowans 2003; Carpenter 2014). Indeed, it is no accident that
Buddhist philosophy plays a central role in this introduction to Eastern philoso-
phy of religion. Buddhist ideas and texts dealing with these issues crossed back
and forth over many centuries across the trade routes which connected India and
China. Consequently, the non-Buddhist philosophies and religions of India,
such as Advaita Vedānta (King 1997), and those of China evolved in tandem
with a Buddhism that was itself, as mentioned earlier, transformed by its
encounter with Sinitic styles of thought (Liu 2006).
1.4 Problematizing ‘Religion’

The meaning of the term ‘religion’ in the context of Asian traditions requires
some clarification. Outside Asia, religion is often taken to have something to do
with beliefs and practices directed towards God. This understanding is not too
far off the mark with respect to the Abrahamic religions that are common in the
West. However, this way of thinking about religion is too limited to cover
religion in India and China. Buddhism is the obvious example of a religion
that does not give a central role to supernatural beings, at least not in its earliest
forms. The other two main traditions of China, namely, Daoism (Moeller 2004;
Miller 2005) and Confucianism (Taylor 1990), also fall outside the standard
Western understanding of religion. Nonetheless, adopting what has been termed
a ‘family resemblance approach’ to religion, we can note that all the traditions
mentioned in this paragraph share features that allow us to categorize them as
religions (Harrison 2006). One such feature is the ubiquitous use of ritual along
with the designation of specific places for its implementation, such as temples,
shrines, churches, mosques, and monasteries. The traditions of Asia also share
a concern for the spiritual or moral improvement of human beings, which is
widely regarded as a core feature of religions.
1.5 The Future of Eastern and Western Philosophy of Religion

The philosophy of religion is now an academic subject with a global presence.
One consequence, as noted in Section 6, is that the distinction between Eastern
and Western philosophy of religion has begun to seem anachronistic to many

people. Philosophers now often draw on ideas and arguments shaped by earlier
philosophical work done both within and outside Asia (see Priest (2002) and
Ganeri (2012), for example). Buddhist philosophy has become particularly well
integrated into some ongoing philosophical debates (see Siderits (2004) and
Garfield (2015), for instance). The sections of this Element introduce some of
the most globally influential philosophies of Asia. The focus is on those aspects
of Asian philosophical traditions that are of most relevance to religious thought
and that are likely to be of interest to the new generation of philosophers of
religion who work in an intercultural register (see Baldwin and McNabb (2019),
for an example).
2 Self
The period between approximately 800 and 300 BCE saw a transition in
religious and philosophical thought in the developing urban centres of the
Indian subcontinent. The intellectual revolution that occurred during this period
fed into the Sanskrit intellectual tradition in all its later forms. During this time,
which is known as the Upaniṣadic period (see Section 2.3), several distinct
philosophies became recognizable that were eventually to have an impact on
human culture on a global scale. Buddhism was one such. At the core of early
Buddhist philosophy, we find a set of arguments against an understanding of the
self as non-material, unchanging, and eternal. (See Gowans (2003) and Siderits
(2007) for detailed expositions of these arguments.) The eternalist account of
the self that the early Buddhists rejected was widely held at the time by those in
the Brahmanical tradition. Prior to the rise of Buddhism, it must have seemed to
many a natural accompaniment to the widespread belief in rebirth.
In the Brahmanical worldview that Buddhism emerged in conversation with,
the belief, which was later to become so important in the lands to the west of
India, that there existed an omnipotent and benevolent God with consciousness
and personality who cared about the fate of individual humans, was not to be
found. Also absent was the belief that a God, or other supernatural being, judges
individual humans and thus arbitrates over their post-mortem state. Without these
beliefs, the spiritual life of people in early Brahmanical culture evolved in
response to different concerns. Reflective people in the Brahmanical world
forged an understanding of the spiritual significance of human life in relation to
the universe as a whole. Their understanding was codified in the oral traditions
that eventually became the texts of the four Vedas, which are the most important
pre-Buddhist texts of the region and are still the foundational texts of Hinduism
(Jamison & Brereton 2014). In addition to memorized oral traditions, ritual
practices transmitted this received understanding and guided people through their
current life towards a transition to their next rebirth. Spiritual life and religious
practices were both premised on an understanding of the self and its connection to
the whole (Ivanhoe et al. 2018). This explains why the questions asked about the
self, and the various answers given, are not merely of anthropological or histor-
ical interest, but constitute the core of philosophy of religion in Indian traditions.
Philosophical debate about the self retained its importance within Indian
philosophical traditions into the modern era. It became as central to philosophy
of religion in India as arguments about the existence and nature of God did in the
Western tradition. Over time, even within Buddhism, a plethora of rival views
emerged, and the Brahmanical tradition itself gave rise to widely diverse
perspectives. As we shall see in Section 5, Jains entered the debate with
a rival theory, while also proposing a meta-theory that sought to integrate the
many available views into a comprehensive understanding.
2.1 Outline
This section investigates a Buddhist view of the self as it developed in response
to widely held beliefs in reincarnation. The section introduces what, for con-
venience, I will call the ‘early Buddhist’ position. The term ‘early Buddhism’
must be treated with caution though, for in the centuries after the death of the
historical Buddha in approximately 405 BCE, many different forms of Buddhist
philosophy emerged that all claimed to be based on his teachings (see Carpenter
(2014) for an account of the main varieties of early Buddhist philosophy). Some
of these forms of early Buddhist philosophy, moreover, had opposing views on
central philosophical matters, such as whether impermanent objects were com-

posed of micro-entities whose existence was permanent or not. This section
presents the early Buddhist view in the form that became widely accepted in the
later tradition of Indian Buddhism, the tradition that is now commonly, if
anachronistically, known as that of Theravāda Buddhism (the Tradition of the
Elders). In Section 3, other forms of Buddhist philosophy are introduced. These
forms, which are collectively labelled as Mahāyāna Buddhism (Greater
Vehicle), came to prominence in the Common Era and have been especially
successful in China, Japan, and Korea (Williams 1989).
Section 2.2 explains the origins of Buddhism and related philosophical
traditions, while Section 2.3 introduces the main texts to be discussed.
2.2 Origins
The details of Buddhism’s origin during the post-Vedic, Upaniṣadic period
(circa 800 BCE–300 BCE) are still contested, the main point of contention
being the degree to which Buddhism emerged independent of influence from

Vedic culture. Until fairly recently, most scholars assumed that Buddhism
emerged from Vedic Brahmanical culture. This view has been challenged by
Johannes Bronkhorst (2007), who has argued at length that Buddhism devel-
oped in the cultural region of Greater Magadha, which, although it was an Indo-
Aryan region, was non-Vedic. Bronkhorst argues that Vedic cultural influence
spread through Greater Magadha several centuries after Buddhism’s emer-
gence, and that this eventually led to Buddhism being perceived as emerging
from the earlier Vedic tradition. Despite this uncertainty about its original
context of emergence, it is clear that Buddhism did not develop in a context
of cultural isolation but in conversation with the Vedic, Brahmanical tradition as
well as with other schools of thought, such as Jainism, which were active
intellectual forces at the time.
The origins of what we now call Hinduism are even more obscure. There is
wide agreement that Hinduism is not actually a religious tradition at all, or at
least that it is not a single tradition. ‘Hinduism’ is a term that covers a very
diverse selection of ideas and practices that have been and are to be found on the
Indian subcontinent and now also elsewhere. There is no single shared set of
doctrines or practices that all Hindus adhere to or follow because Hinduism has
always been constituted by a plethora of local traditions and lacks a centrally
organized structure (Nicholson 2010). The main thing these diverse traditions
have in common is that they are all shaped by ancient Vedic culture, although
many also have roots in the even more ancient civilization of the Indus Valley,
which flourished roughly between 2500 BCE and 1800 BCE.3
Introductions to Western philosophy of religion do not usually contain

accounts of the origins of the religious traditions whose ideas are to be the
subject of philosophical reflection. This Element largely follows this practice
and refers the reader to several excellent introductions to early Buddhism
(Gowans 2003; Harvey 2013) and to Hinduism (Flood 1996; Nicholson 2010).
The six philosophical schools associated with the Brahmanical Hindu tradi-
tions are distinguished as a group by their continued respect for the proto-
Sanskrit texts of the early Indo-European Vedic religion (see Hamilton (2001)
for a concise introduction to these schools). Buddhists and Jains reject these
texts.
2.3 Texts
The key texts from the pre-Upaniṣadic Vedic period are the four Vedas (veda
means knowledge in Sanskrit). The content of the Vedas was originally
3
See the informative website: www.harappa.com.
transmitted orally but now constitutes a large body of proto-Sanskrit literature

which very few people are familiar with in its totality. The most readable of the
Vedas is the oldest, namely, the Ṛg Veda (see Jamison and Brereton (2014) for
a recent English translation). Although few people read this text from cover to
cover, some key passages are extremely well known, such as the hymn express-
ing a very ancient understanding of cosmic origins:
1. The nonexistent did not exist, nor did the existent exist at that time.
There existed neither the airy space nor heaven beyond.

What moved back and forth? From where and in whose protection? Did
water exist, a deep breath?
2. Death did not exist nor deathlessness then. There existed no sign of night
nor day.
That One breathed without wind by its independent will. There existed
nothing else beyond that.
3. Darkness existed, hidden by darkness, in the beginning. All this was

a signless ocean.
What existed as a thing coming into being, concealed by emptiness – that

One was born by the power of heat.
4. Then, in the beginning, from thought there evolved desire, which existed as
the primal semen.
Searching in their hearts through inspired thought, poets found the connection
of the existent in the nonexistent. (Ṛg Veda 10.129:1–4, in Jamison and
Brereton (2014: 1608–9))
In the same chapter the Ṛg Veda contains other important verses (see chapter 10,
verses 82 and 90) witnessing to the presence of theism in this early stratum of
the Indian tradition. See Dasti (2012) for a survey and discussion of theism in
Indian philosophical traditions.
The Upaniṣads were initially appendages to the four Vedas (Brereton 1990),
which reveals the high regard in which they were held from early in their history
(see Olivelle (2014) for an English translation of the oldest and most influential
Upaniṣads). The Upaniṣads continue to be regarded by those in the Brahmanical
tradition as sacred literature and have a place among the most widely read of the
world’s religious classics. Despite their popularity, the Upaniṣads can be con-
fusing to read because they are not the work of a single author and do not present
a systematic philosophical or religious view. Instead, they contain reflections
collated over several centuries that question the meaning of the earlier tradition
and, with their growing focus on subjectivity and self-knowledge, set a new
direction for subsequent religious and philosophical reflection.
Later philosophical works in the Brahmanical Sanskrit intellectual tradition
consist of texts developing germinal ideas found in the Vedas or in the Upaniṣads
(Brereton 1990). These works – known as sūtras – each became foundational to one
of the six main Brahmanical philosophical perspectives (darśana) that emerged
following the Vedic period and were consolidated in the early centuries of the
Common Era (many of these texts can be found in Radhakrishnan and Moore
(1989)). The exception is the Sāṃkhya darśana. Their foundational text is the
Sāṃkhya Kārikā, which reached its final form only in the fourth or fifth century
CE. Based on each of these core texts, a long commentarial tradition evolved that
formed the vehicle for original philosophical work (Ganeri 2001; Matilal 2002).
This Element will not discuss all these philosophical perspectives and their texts (see
King (1999) and Harrison (2019) for more comprehensive introductions). It will,
instead, highlight just one: the tradition of Advaita Vedānta (see Section 3.9).
Buddhist and Jain philosophical traditions stood out from the Brahmanical
mainstream during the Upaniṣadic period, because Buddhists and Jains did not
accept the teaching of the early Vedic tradition, and hence were known as ‘non-
affirmers’. Each evolved an independent foundational textual tradition that set
the agenda for future philosophical work. The early Buddhist texts are collected
into the Pāli Canon (see Walshe (1995), Bodhi (2000), and Ñāṇamolí and Bodhi
(2001) for English translations of the three key collections of early Buddhist
texts). While the earliest Buddhist texts were written in Pāli, which is probably
close to the language spoken by the historical Buddha, Buddhist philosophers in

India soon switched to Sanskrit which was the common language used by
scholars, much as Latin was in the West (Carpenter 2014: 242–3).
The texts mentioned here formed the bedrock of philosophical reflection on
the Indian subcontinent. They were, however, the beginning and by no means
the end of philosophy in this part of the world (King 1999). Philosophers and
religious thinkers within the main traditions had a shared knowledge of these
texts and freely referred to them as they went on to develop highly sophisticated
philosophical systems over the extended time span between the end of the late
Vedic period at around 300 BCE and the onset of modernity in the 1800s
(Ganeri 2011, 2015a, 2017).
2.4 Rebirth
The philosophical perspectives mentioned so far in this section differed from each
other in many important respects. Nonetheless, their philosophical disagreements
were embedded in a context of shared understanding that included several key

ideas. One of these key ideas was that humans and other beings are caught in
a repetitive cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This cycle of rebirth is known as
saṃsāra. Escaping from saṃsāra can be regarded as the ultimate goal of the
spiritual and philosophical traditions of the post-Vedic Indian world, at least until
the Mahāyāna revolution of the early Common Era.
It can be difficult for people today to appreciate how compelling the idea of
rebirth was to those in the ancient world. Many today unreflectively assume that
time moves in one direction from the past to the future. Many also hold that this
flow of time began with the origin of the universe and that it will cease when the
universe comes to an end. These assumptions provide the context in which
a human life is envisaged as directed like an arrow, passing through time in one
direction, with a definitive beginning and a definitive end. Such a conception of
human life would, however, have been very unusual to find within the thought-
world of early Indian philosophy of religion. Within the culture of early India, as
in all early cultures, time was thought to move in cycles. Consider how one
cycle of the sun is followed by another, and another, and another. The cyclical
understanding of time is closely related to the way people must have experi-
enced the natural world in pre-modernity, with its agricultural cycles, the lunar
and solar cycles, and so on. This experience of predictable repetition in the
natural world provides the context for a view of biological life that sees human
beings as the subjects of cyclical repetition. A human life cycle was envisaged
as similar to that of a plant that slowly grew, bore fruit and seeds, before
disintegrating in its current form, only to reappear in another embodiment
when the seeds sprouted. There are many variations within different views of
rebirth, although the essence of all of them is the belief that a person’s death is
not the end for them as they will be reborn into another form (Burley 2016). The
transition from one embodiment to the next that was thought to follow death
was generally regarded to be without a natural end.
A well-known passage in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad reads:
A man who’s attached goes with his action,

to that very place to which
his mind and character cling.
Reaching the end of his action,
of whatever he has done in this world –
From that world he returns
back to this world,
back to action.
(Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.6, Olivelle’s
(2014: 121) translation)
Although there is little evidence that belief in rebirth was held within earlier
Vedic culture, it became so widely accepted from the Upaniṣadic period
onwards that no attempts can be found in early Indian texts to defend it as
a philosophical idea. This absence of argument makes sense considering that
there is no need to provide arguments for beliefs that virtually everyone
holds. Only when a view runs contrary to what people generally believe are
philosophers roused to mount defences and proffer justification for holding or
rejecting the view. No philosopher today, for example, is concerned to provide
an argument justifying the widely held belief that people die. This consideration
partly explains the lack of arguments defending belief in rebirth in the early
Indian material.
To ask today how philosophers in early India attempted to justify belief in
rebirth would be to ask the wrong question. As Mikel Burley has argued, we can
do better by trying to understand the significance of the idea of rebirth (Burley
2016). In the next section, we begin by considering whether it was regarded as
a good thing or a bad thing for a human to be reborn.
2.5 Is Rebirth Good or Bad?

Many people today, especially younger people from relatively affluent families,
find the idea of rebirth highly attractive. They are dissatisfied with the thought
that this one life might be the only one they will have, and the prospect of an
endless series of lives – all as enjoyable as their current one – seems vastly
preferable to a definitive end in death.4 This perspective, however, is not to be
found in early Indian philosophy, and it can present an obstacle to understanding
the meaning and significance of rebirth within pre-modern Indian thought.

The idea that the ultimate spiritual goal is to be released from saṃsāra (the
cycle of rebirth) is held by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. All of them, in one way
or another, hold that rebirth into another physical form is a bad thing insofar as it
commits us to another lifetime in the realm of causation, confusion, and suffer-
ing. Rebirth is also the ticket to another death, before the occurrence of which
we are likely to suffer greatly because of natural and seemingly unavoidable
changes within the human life cycle, such as the transition from maturity to old
age. We are also likely to suffer when we experience the death of those we love.
The perspective just described is not as alien to modern human experience as
it might initially have seemed. Many of us will be familiar with the intense
suffering that occurs when someone close to us dies. We can perhaps imagine
that we have already experienced this suffering repeatedly in a vast number of
4
These remarks are based on the author’s experience of discussing these issues in university
classrooms over multiple decades and in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Macao.
previous lifetimes, and that we will continue to experience it in a potentially

infinite number of future lifetimes. This thought experiment can yield a visceral
sense of the horror with which rebirth was regarded in post-Upaniṣadic culture.
It can also shed light on why many felt it to be so urgent to escape from this
deadly cycle.
The passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad quoted in Section 2.4 goes
on to provide advice about how one might break out of the deadly cycle of
rebirth:
Now, a man who does not desire – who is without desires, who is freed from
desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self – his vital
functions (prāṇa) do not depart. Brahman he is, and to brahman he goes.
(Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.6, in Radhakrishnan and Moore (1989: 87))
Having established that, in the post-Upaniṣadic period, rebirth is widely

regarded not only as a bad thing for a person but also as the worst thing that
can happen, as it exposes the person to a potentially infinite amount of suffering,
we can turn to the question of ‘Who or what is the subject of rebirth?’ A very
early stratum of philosophical debate in India developed around different
attempts to answer this question. Brahmanical and Buddhist schools of philoso-
phy came to be defined by the answers they gave.
2.6 Who or What Is Reborn?

Rebirth is a complex topic, and it would be impossible to do justice to it in the
short space available here. The reader should, therefore, be warned that what
follows is a simplification (see Burley (2016) for a more comprehensive
discussion).
At first glance, the idea of rebirth seems to presuppose that a person can
survive the death of their physical body. Although this idea is not found in the
early Vedic tradition, it is present in the Upaniṣads (see Sections 2.4 and 2.5).
In what shall be referred to here in general terms as ‘the Brahmanical view’,
the part of a person that was thought to pass from one physical body to another
in the process of birth, death, and rebirth was known as the ātman (ātman is the
Sanskrit word, in Pāli the word used is attā). While it might be initially
tempting to interpret this term as referring to the psychological dimension of
a person, encompassing their character, personality, and memories, this would
not capture the meaning of the Sanskrit term. Such an interpretation would be
inadequate because ātman was not held to be constituted by the psychological
dimension of a person at all. If a deceased person’s character, personality, or
memories do seem to leave some imprint on a subsequent embodiment, it
would be an accidental feature of the new embodiment not an essential one
(perhaps the result of a traumatic death).5 The teaching of the Upaniṣads is that
ātman is unchanging and everlasting and that it is one with the ultimate reality
of the cosmos, known as Brahman (see Section 2.5). Properly speaking, then,
on this view, ātman has neither physical nor psychological properties.
The view that became widespread in the Brahmanical tradition was that each
human embodiment is somehow related to an unchanging and everlasting
ātman. Being unchanging and everlasting means that the ātman can neither
die nor be reborn because death and rebirth require change. All individual
human lives came to be understood in relation to this eternalist context. The
central problem set for post-Vedic philosophy of religion was how to give an
account of the relation between the phenomenology of a human life as it is
experienced and a postulated unchanging, everlasting ātman, which was
thought to be entirely transcendent to that experience. If the true self is the
ātman, then the self that each of us is aware of subjectively and individually
(and that we each identify as ‘I’) cannot be who or what we really are. If this
view is correct, at a very fundamental level, most humans are radically mistaken
about their own identity. This explains why many ancient Indian philosophical
systems regard the core problem confronting human beings as ignorance about
the true nature of the self. A secondary problem for post-Vedic philosophers,
which follows from the first, was how to explain continuity between different
embodied human lives. In virtue of what might we say that one person is the
reborn form of an earlier one? Both these problems concern the struggle to
articulate what the identity of a self can mean, considering the tension between
continuity and change. We can note that this is the same basic issue that
continues to vex philosophers today who focus on problems of personal identity

and selfhood, for the tension between continuity and change is found in all
human lives that last long enough. We do not have to bring rebirth into the
picture to see what the philosophical problem is.
Karma, like rebirth, is an idea that forms part of the shared cultural under-
standing that shaped the post-Vedic traditions. It has been speculated that the
idea of karma came into early Indian thought as an attempt to explain the
continuity between different embodied human lives (McEvilley 2002). The
view developed that karma was a form of non-physical causation that linked
one embodied life to another. While this basic view of karma was widely shared
5
Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that common to many conceptions of rebirth, both
ancient and modern, is the idea that character traits can be transferred from one life to the next.
It is also commonly held that, given a sufficient level of spiritual attainment, it is possible to recall
one’s previous lives. The account of the Buddha’s awakening contains the claim to have recalled
‘a hundred thousand’ previous lives. (See Saṃyutta Nikāya II: 213–14, in Bodhi (2000: 673–4).)
For a discussion of some of the philosophical issues arising from claims to remember past live, see
Burley (2016: chapter 2).
(except by the Jains, who held karma to be physical), many different views
developed purporting to explain the mechanism of karma. One of the most
influential of these views is found in early Buddhist thought.
Siddhārtha Gautama (Siddhattha Gotama, in Pāli) lived between approximately
485 and 405 BCE. After his experience of awakening (which is discussed in
Sections 2.7 and 2.8), he became known as the Buddha, the Awakened One. The
title ‘Buddha’ came from the Pāli word bodhi, which means ‘awakened intellect’.
Much has been written about Siddhārtha Gautama’s life, both before and after he
became known as the Buddha, and there are many legends about him (Schmidt-
Leukel 2006: 19–29). Siddhārtha laid the foundations for a new approach to
understanding human persons that attempted to break free of the cluster of
problems outlined above. He rejected the claim that what ties together a series
of rebirths is their connection to an unchanging, eternal ātman that was perman-
ently fixed in an inaccessible realm transcendent to our experience. This new
approach did not directly refute the claim that there was an unchanging ātman, as
the Brahmanical tradition held. Instead, the Buddha proposed an alternative
account of human persons, rebirth, karma, and liberation (Gowans 2003;
Siderits 2004) that claimed to be closer to actual experience than the
Brahmanical one. In so doing he revolutionized the framework within which
many people thought about issues concerning human persons, rebirth, karma,
and liberation. The Buddha and his many disciples believed this new framework
to be more effective than the former one in helping people to achieve liberation
from rebirth and suffering.
2.7 Liberation
The foundations of the early Buddhist understanding of persons are found in the
following passage (and in many other early Buddhist texts from the Pāli Canon):
I could see as it really is the primary characteristic of human existence [i.e.,

suffering], how it arises, that it can cease, and the way leading to its cessation.
I knew as they really are the continuity tendencies, their arising, their ceasing,
and how to achieve their cessation. Knowing and seeing thus, my mind
achieved freedom from the binding effects of holding to opinionated views,
and my mind achieved freedom from the binding effects of ignorance. I then
knew for certain that I was liberated from rebirth, I had practised what was
necessary, done what had to be done, and my present state would generate no
further continuity. (Vinaya III.4. paraphrased in Hamilton (2001: 45))
Most scholars take this first-person narrative to be directly derived from the
Buddha’s oral teaching, which was based on the insights he gained during his
own experience of awakening. The narrative combines an analysis of human
experience with an account of how to achieve liberation by avoiding rebirth. The

English word ‘liberation’ is a translation of the Sanskrit term nirvāṇa (which
literally means ‘extinction’, the Pāli term is nibbāna).6 The Buddha taught that
nirvāṇa occurs when the cycle of rebirth is broken. He distinguished between
nirvāṇa-in-this-life, the state of one who is still living but has awakened, and
final nirvāṇa (known as paranirvāṇa), which is reached when the awakened one
dies. The narrative makes clear that the cessation of suffering is closely con-
nected to the state of being liberated from rebirth, for when one is liberated from
rebirth one’s suffering will have ceased (see Section 2.15 on cessation).
The passage quoted above also emphasizes the role of knowledge in liber-
ation, thus permanently establishing philosophy as an essential component of
Buddhist practice. Within all later forms of Buddhism, philosophy retained
a central place alongside meditation, which was another practice established
by the Buddha (although it was not the exclusive preserve of Buddhists, being
already well established in Indic culture by the time of the Buddha). Despite
many other developments, philosophy has remained tied to meditation within
Buddhism and has never become detached from its original soteriological
purpose (Shulman 2014).
Ultimately, Buddhism established a three-pronged approach to arriving at
liberation. This approach blended wisdom, ethical commitment to a lifestyle
structured by the idea of avoiding harm to others and to oneself, and meditation
(Vetter 1988). This approach is schematized in the well-known eightfold path,
which provides the framework for life as a Buddhist:
Right Understanding
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
Traditionally, the elements of the eightfold path are distributed between wisdom
(prajñā in Sanskrit, pañña in Pāli), ethics (śīla in Sanskrit, sīla in Pāli), and
meditation (samādhi in both Sanskrit and Pāli) in this way: right understanding
(sometimes translated as ‘right view’) and right intention contribute to wisdom;
right speech, right action, and right livelihood are components of an ethical life
6
For the sake of clarity, throughout this Element, I give both the Sanskrit and Pāli terms when
discussing concepts important to early Buddhism. When discussing later developments within
Mahāyāna traditions, I provide Sanskrit and Chinese terms where they are relevant.
(Harvey 2000); right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration

concern meditation (Takeuchi 1997).
The Buddha taught that a life shaped by the eight precepts of the Buddhist
path would be a life in the process of radical transformation. A core part of this
transformation would be intellectual, for the first precept, right understanding,
refers specifically to an understanding of the Buddha’s teaching. This teaching
is encapsulated in the four noble truths.
2.8 The Four Noble Truths

The four noble truths can be regarded as the four key insights gained by the
Buddha during his awakening. They are the bedrock of Buddhist teaching and
can be found in slightly different formulations in many early Buddhist texts
(including the passage discussed in Section 2.7).
The first insight is that suffering (duḥkha in Sanskrit, dukkha in Pāli) is
a pervasive feature of human experience.
Now this . . . is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is

suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeas-
ing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what
one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are
suffering. (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56:11, in Bodhi (2000: 1844))
The second insight concerns the origin or cause of suffering.
Now this . . . is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: It is this craving
[tṛṣṇā in Sanskrit, tanhā in Pāli] which leads to renewed existence, accom-
panied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for
sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination.
(Saṃyutta Nikāya 56:11, in Bodhi (2000: 1844))
The second insight leads to the third, which is the realization that suffering
can cease.
Now this . . . is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: It is the

remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving
up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it. (Saṃyutta
Nikāya 56:11, in Bodhi (2000: 1844))
Finally, the third insight leads to the fourth, which concerns how to bring
about an end to suffering.
Now this . . . is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering:
It is this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech,
right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentra-
tion. (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56:11, in Bodhi (2000: 1844))
This is neither the place to give a full account of Buddhist philosophy nor to
elaborate on the complexity of meaning carried by the word (duḥkha / dukkha)
that is here being translated into English as suffering. Instead, Sections 2.9 to
2.14 focus on explaining those aspects of the Buddha’s teaching that particu-
larly concern his understanding of human persons and their subjective experi-
ence. Gaining right understanding (or right view) of these matters is regarded
by Buddhists, and others in the post-Vedic Indian traditions, as being of great
spiritual importance. As will be explained in Section 2.9, the idea of imper-
manence lies at the heart of the Buddhist understanding of persons. Despite
the substantial variations between different styles of Buddhist philosophy that
began to develop after the Buddha’s death from the starting point of the
teaching schematized in the four noble truths and the eightfold path, the
basic teaching on impermanence (anitya in Sanskrit, anicca in Pāli) was
accepted by all Buddhists and so can safely be regarded as one of the core
teachings of Buddhism.
As we have seen, the Buddha provided answers to two questions: ‘What
causes the human experience of suffering?’ and ‘What causes rebirth?’ The
answers to both questions turned out to be closely connected. Impermanence
causes human suffering because of the attachments we form to transitory things,
and attachment to these things then fuels rebirth. The Buddha’s key insight was
that understanding of this deadly dynamic could be gained by looking very
closely at the causal relationships running between the impermanent psycho-
logical and physical realities that we experience and the effects that these have
on us. This insight led to the distinctive Buddhist analysis of the phenomen-
ology of experience that supports the early Buddhist understanding of persons.
2.9 Impermanence
The Buddha’s analysis of human experience and subjectivity is premised on the
realization that all our experience is transitory. The intuitive force of this
realization is easy for most people to grasp; indeed, it may be difficult to
avoid. It is obviously true that our hedonic experiences of pleasure and pain
are transitory. Consider that even the most pleasurable experience will give way
to discomfort and then to pain if it continues for long enough. The first glass of
a chocolate milkshake might be delicious, the next two less so. If one continues
to drink, one’s experience will transition quickly into discomfort and then pain.
Perceptual experience is also transitory. Sounds, odours, and colours come and
go as we move our heads and otherwise re-position our bodies in space.
Whether or not we ourselves are moving, we might notice that our perceptions
also change, and sometimes quite rapidly, with the passage of time.
Reflection reveals that not only is our experience transitory, the objects of that
experience are also impermanent. Artefacts easily break and disintegrate, while
natural objects have a variety of lifespans. Some trees, for example, have
a natural lifespan of only a few years, while a Giant Sequoia can live for over
4,000. Most of the physical objects we encounter in our day-to-day lives exist
for relatively short periods of time. It is telling that few people have many
objects in their personal possession that are over, say, 150 years old (and most of
their possessions probably only last a few years).
As even quite young children can realize, impermanence is also
a characteristic of human beings. People change from birth, through childhood,
adulthood, and finally through the process of dying. After a certain point in life,
most people become painfully aware of the changes they undergo through time,
as well as those undergone by others. Birth and death are probably the most
dramatic changes, but even these are part of a continuum. Human relationships
are also vulnerable to impermanence. Parents and children, husbands, wives and
partners, even beloved canine friends can be injured and will eventually die.
The upshot is that there is nothing either within our subjective experience or
within the range of physical objects we might encounter in the world that does
not change (sadly, as we have seen, this includes our own bodies). Everything is
impermanent. Failing to understand this, and especially failing to realize that it
also applies to ourselves, in the Buddha’s analysis, condemn us to future rebirth.
This is because if we fail to understand that everything is impermanent, we will
continue to crave things that inevitably pass out of our grasp. While understand-
ing of impermanence is necessary for liberation, it is not, however, sufficient.
The Buddha taught that to achieve liberation from rebirth acceptance of imper-
manence is also required.
The Buddha realized that one of the most powerful psychological barriers to
acceptance of his teaching about impermanence was the attachment many
people in his era felt to the idea of themselves as being constituted by
a permanent, unchanging ātman (attā in Pāli) (see Section 2.6). The ātman
of the Brahmanical tradition was a perfect object for attachment, as it was
conceived to be a self that was transcendent to the trials and indignities of life.
Because of the perceived danger of this idea, early Buddhist philosophers
sought to replace it with what they took to be a more accurate account of
human persons. They first argued, rather plausibly, that nothing within our
experience gives us any reason to think that we have within us a permanent,
unchanging, eternal self (see Section 2.10). This conclusion was then
employed as the basis for an account of human persons that rivalled the
Brahmanical one by more effectively explaining the phenomenology of our
experience.
2.10 The Five Bundles

The early Buddhist account of human persons is a philosophical extrapolation
of the experiences the Buddha had during meditation, and it can be regarded as
based on an argument (or, more exactly, on a series of arguments) from
introspection. As an argument based on an introspective analysis of experience,
it has the great virtue that anyone with normal intellectual powers can perform
the introspective exercise and confirm the results for himself or herself.
According to the Buddha’s teaching, a careful introspective analysis reveals
items belonging to the following – and only the following – categories, named
skandhas in Sanskrit (Pāli: khanda), meaning ‘bundle’ or ‘heap’:
1. A physical body (Sanskrit and Pāli: rūpa).

2. Feeling (Sanskrit and Pāli: vedanā) (the hedonic tone of experience: pleas-
urable, painful, or neutral).
3. Interpretive perception (Pāli saññā, Sanskrit saṃjñā) (the mental processing
of whatever is given within conscious awareness).
4. Mental formations/dispositions/tendencies (Pāli saṅkhāra, Sanskrit saṃskāra).
This covers several processes – all thought to be carriers of karma – formative
of character and having an influence on actions.
5. Consciousness (Pāli viññāṇa, Sanskrit vijñāna). This also carries karma.
There are three modes of consciousness:
– Pure awareness (abstract mental activity);
– Mental activity with content (thought about physical or mental objects);
– The mental functions of processing sense-data, judging, remembering
and generally reasoning. (Adapted from Harrison (2019: 110))
This analysis of human persons in terms of the five skandhas has been at
the core of Buddhist philosophy since its origins in the Buddha’s teaching.
The skandhas are listed in many early Buddhist texts, for example, the
Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta (Walshe 1995: 342). See also the Khandhasaṃyutta
Sutta 72, where the skandhas are more fully explained (Bodhi 2000: 914–18).
2.11 The Exhaustiveness Claim

Buddhist teachers invited would-be-disciples to try the introspective experi-
ment for themselves. Students of Buddhism were challenged to find anything
within their self-awareness that could not be classified as one of the five
skandhas. The challenge is as difficult for people today as it must have been
to contemporaries of the Buddha, for introspection does not reveal anything that
cannot be classified as an example of one of the five skandhas. The skandhas, in
other words, exhaust the possibilities. Mark Siderits has aptly labelled this the
‘exhaustiveness claim’ (Siderits 2007: 48–50).
A possible response to the exhaustiveness claim would be to say that,
whatever the self is, it cannot be categorized as one of the skandhas. The self
must not, therefore, be an object of possible human awareness. A Buddhist reply
would be to point out that to posit a self that we cannot be aware of has no power
at all to explain our experience.
Another possible response to the exhaustiveness claim would be to say that
the self must be one of the five skandhas. As we see in the following section, this
view is also problematic.
2.12 The Argument from Impermanence

Having established to his satisfaction that the list of five skandhas is exhaustive
(because nothing else reveals itself to introspection), the Buddha went through
the list asking if the phenomena within each category were permanent or
impermanent. The answer for each one is the same: It is impermanent. If none
of the skandhas are permanent, it follows that none of them can constitute
a permanent, unchanging self. We would therefore say with respect to none of
them ‘this am I, this is my self’ (Edelglass & Garfield 2009: 269). Once all five
skandhas have been disqualified from constituting the self because of their
impermanence, the argument from introspection that establishes the exhaust-
iveness claim is used to demonstrate that there is nothing else that the self could
be. The conclusion of these arguments is that there is no self to be found.
This was not the end of the matter, however, for the Buddhist view faces
a further objection. Some critics argued that, even if the exhaustiveness claim
were correct, the five skandhas together might constitute a self. The Buddhist’s
reply took the form of an argument that a collection of impermanent things
cannot come together to make something permanent and unchanging. They
agreed, of course, that the skandhas do combine, thereby giving rise to the
experience we all have of being persons with some measure of continuity
through time. After all, the theory was proposed to explain our experience of
personhood. The distinctive claim of early Buddhism was that whatever
a human person is can be no more than the skandhas contribute. A human
being just is a collection of parts – skandhas – arranged in a certain way.
2.13 No-Self
The conclusion that we do not have a permanent, unchanging, self is the core of
the famous Buddhist theory of no-self (anātman in Sanskrit, anattā in Pāli).
Notice that the Buddha is denying the existence of something very specific.
Namely, the permanent, unchanging ātman of the Brahmanical tradition.

His theory is, therefore, not necessarily inconsistent with other views about what
a human person might be. While the Buddha and his immediate followers seem to
have been more concerned to demonstrate that the Brahmanical view of the self
was false because unsupported, later philosophers in the Buddhist tradition sought
to articulate an account of human persons that was consistent with the theory of
no-self. Key to this account was the theory of conditioned co-arising.
2.14 Conditioned Co-Arising

As was explained in Section 2.12, early Buddhists argued that a collection of
impermanent things cannot together constitute a permanent, unchanging whole.
While this argument was originally deployed to refute a rival view about human
persons, it soon began to be applied more widely to all entities. In Section 2.9,
we saw that experience and reflection, on the Buddhist view, both tell us that
nothing whatsoever exists permanently and unchangingly. They held that if
something permanent and unchanging were to exist, it could neither have come
into existence (for it must always have existed) nor go out of existence (because
it cannot change). A core Buddhist conviction is that nothing exists in this way
for everything is subject to change. This set of ideas has profound and far-
reaching metaphysical implications, and the history of Buddhist philosophy is
the story of the gradual working out of these.
The early Buddhists connected the idea of impermanence with the further
idea of a lack of ontological independence. As we have seen, permanent,
unchanging entities simply cannot be caused to exist because they always
exist. The condition of such hypothetical entities is described as ‘ontologically

independent’ because their existence would be independent of all external
causes. A philosophical commitment agreed on by virtually all Buddhists is
that nothing whatsoever possesses ontological independence. This denial that
anything possesses ontological independence is also taken to apply to gods, and
this constitutes one of the major disagreements between Buddhism and trad-
itional Christianity (although McNabb and Baldwin (2022) argue that there is
really no conflict here because classical theists do not hold God to be an entity,
so such theists could agree with the Buddhist claim that all entities lack
ontological independence).
Commitment to the experientially based idea that all entities are impermanent
and lack ontological independence led early Buddhist philosophers to develop
a metaphysical perspective according to which everything that comes to be is
conditioned by what came before. In modern parlance, we would say that
everything that comes to be exists contingently, and we would mean by this
that if relevant conditions had been different the entity might not have come into
being at all. The early Buddhists claimed that all phenomena arise interdepen-
dently. The Sanskrit term for the Buddhist theory is pratītya samutpāda
(paticca-samuppāda, in Pāli). This term is often translated into English as
conditioned co-arising. As we have seen, entities that are subject to conditioned
co-arising lack ontological independence. The key point being asserted is that
because all things arise in dependence on conditions outside themselves, noth-
ing at all has ontological independence. We return to this key idea in Chapter 3.
2.15 Cessation
The theory of conditioned co-arising clarifies exactly what Buddhism denied
about the existence of selves and other entities. In the light of this, we can return
to the concept of nirvāṇa. As explained Section in 2.7, this Sanskrit term, which
literally means ‘extinction’, refers to final release from saṃsāra. Buddhists
deny that final nirvāṇa amounts to the annihilation of the self, so the English
translation that best describes the Buddhist idea is ‘cessation’ rather than
‘extinction’.
What happens when cessation occurs at the death of an awakened one? The
following passage provides a convenient summary of the early Buddhist view. It
is framed by the two opposite views rejected by early Buddhism: the view that
the self continues to exist after the death of the material body and the view that
the self is annihilated when the body dies.
He, however, who abandons this knowledge of the truth and believes in
a living entity must assume either that this living entity will perish or that it
will not perish. If he assume that it will not perish, he falls into the heresy of
the persistence of existences; or if he assume that it will perish, he falls into
that of the annihilation of existences. And why do I say so? Because, just as
sour cream has milk as its antecedent, so nothing here exists but what has its
own antecedents. To say, ‘The living entity persists’, is to fall short of the
truth; to say, ‘It is annihilated’, is to outrun the truth. (Radhakrishnan &
Moore 1989: 285)
The most straightforward way to interpret this passage is as an attempt to

divert discussion away from the traditional question of whether there is a self
that survives the death of the body or not. The first sentence says that one who
already believes in the existence of a self will have to hold one of two things:
either that the self will perish when the body dies or that it will not. These claims
are mutually exclusive (only one can be true) and exhaustive (there are no other
options). The second sentence of the passage explains the consequences of each
choice, although it does not provide arguments as these are well-rehearsed
elsewhere. This statement and the one in the final sentence are useful because
they give a clear account of the two views the Buddha rejected. His own
teaching on human persons does not assume that the self is a living entity that
could either persist or perish. The most significant sentence in the passage for
understanding the early Buddhist view is this one: ‘Because, just as sour cream
has milk as its antecedent, so nothing here exists but what has its own
antecedents.’
Suppose that you have a pot of sour cream in your refrigerator. You could ask
yourself if it will continue to exist or perish, or you could consider how it came
to be at all. The answer to the second question is that it had milk as its
antecedent. In other words, had there been no milk, there would have been no
sour cream. An obvious condition for the existence of sour cream is milk. The
Buddha suggests that instead of asking whether the self persists or perishes
when the body dies, we consider the antecedents of what we call the self. If we
come to understand the conditions that give rise to our experience of persistence
through time, we can then imagine those conditions having been absent, in
which case the experience of the self would not have arisen. The Buddha taught
that, ultimately, this understanding, when combined with meditation and prac-
tice of the ethical elements of the eightfold path, will allow us to prevent further
arising. This is what early Buddhists regarded as cessation, nirvāṇa.
3 Being and Emptiness

Having introduced the core Buddhist ideas of impermanence (anitya / anicca),
suffering (duḥkha / dukkha), no-self (anātman / anattā), conditioned co-arising
(pratītya samutpāda / paticca-samuppāda), and cessation (nirvāṇa / nibbāna),
we are now positioned to understand the key philosophical differences that

developed between Brahmanical and Buddhist schools (as well as between
different brands of Buddhist philosophy). Arguments concerning being and
emptiness are the focus of this chapter. The arguments to be considered all
concern the concept svabhāva (sabhāva in Pāli), about which there is no
consensus on how to translate into English most appropriately. Some of the
options are ‘own-being’, ‘independent existence’, ‘intrinsic nature’, and
‘essence’. For reasons to be explained in Section 3.3, my preference is to
translate svabhāva as ‘own-being’. Whichever translation is used, the argu-
ments which developed in clusters around the concept of svabhāva in India, and
around closely related issues in China, provide a window onto the key concerns
shaping major Indian and Chinese traditions of religious philosophy during the
first millennium of the Common Era. As was suggested earlier (Section 1.3),
these shared concerns allow us to regard the Asian traditions considered in this
Element as involved in a common philosophical project.
The issues can be approached by first focusing on two dichotomies which

seem naturally to present themselves when people think about existence. While
most, and possibly all, entities within our experience exist contingently (in the
sense that they might not have existed and may cease to exist), most of us can at
least understand what it would be like for something to exist necessarily.
Entities that exist contingently are not the cause of their own existence, they
are ontologically dependent (that is, dependent for their being) on something
extrinsic to themselves. An entity that exists necessarily is ontologically inde-
pendent, in the sense that its being is not dependent on anything extrinsic to
itself. The distinction between ontologically dependent contingent existence
and ontologically independent necessary existence forms our first dichotomy.
The second dichotomy is between permanence and impermanence. The two
dichotomies are closely related because the second is implied by the first, for
non-permanence is included in the concept of contingent existence and perman-
ence is included in the concept of necessary existence.
There is a vast literature on contingency and necessity within Western
philosophy, as these have been key concepts within metaphysics since the
mediaeval period (see Hale (2013) and Leftow (2022) for examples of recent
work on this topic). It is often overlooked, however, that the contrast between
contingency and necessity, regarded as two modes of existence, frames many
of the metaphysical systems of the ancient world. It is no less central to early
and mediaeval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophies (consider, for
instance, the works of Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Moses
Maimonides, and Ibn Sina) than it is to Asian religious philosophy – but
this is a story that will not be told here. The ubiquity of the dichotomies
between, on the one hand, ontologically independent necessary existence and
ontologically dependent contingent existence and, on the other hand, perman-
ence and impermanence can thus provide a conceptual bridge between other-
wise very different metaphysical systems. This Element uses this bridge to
show how Indian and Chinese philosophy meet each other with shared
concerns.
In both India and China, reflection on the package of ideas connected to the
two dichotomies introduced above led to the conclusion that anything possess-
ing ontologically independent necessary existence and, therefore, permanence
must lack parts. The argument was that having parts would imply that the
existence of the entity was dependent on the existence of its individual parts,
so composite entities could not be regarded as ontologically independent. As
will be explained in Section 3.9, this line of reflection supported monist views
about the ontological foundation of reality (that is, views holding that, at the
most fundamental level, reality is one thing lacking real differentiation). Monist
views are found in the works of a wide variety of thinkers across the world
(Ivanhoe et al. 2018), and such views are especially associated with Advaita
Vedānta Hinduism (Frazier 2022), Yogācāra Buddhism (Siderits 2007:
Chapter 7), and Lu-Wang neo-Confucianism (Ivanhoe 2009). In all these
philosophical traditions, to lack parts meant not only that an entity was materi-
ally non-composite but also that it was temporally non-composite. That which is
ontologically independent and permanent was regarded as a non-spatial and
non-temporal whole.
Monism about the ontological foundation of reality was not, however, the
only position to emerge from reflection on modes of existence. A rival view held
that reality had no ontological foundation, for insofar as anything existed at all
its existence could only be contingent and non-permanent (see Section 2.14).
This led to the claim that came to characterize Mahāyāna Buddhism, that all
beings, or all phenomena, are empty (see Section 3.4).
3.1 Outline
After providing some essential information on the textual sources for the
philosophies to be covered, this chapter introduces the great Buddhist philoso-
pher and saint Nāgārjuna (c. 150–c. 250 CE). Just as the Buddha had changed
the framework in which many people thought about the self and the cycle of
rebirth (see Section 2.6), Nāgārjuna developed a radically new framework for
thinking about being and non-being that had profound spiritual implications
(see Westerhoff (2009) for an accessible introduction). Nāgārjuna’s framework
was widely adopted, and it was later adapted by different branches of Mahāyāna
Buddhism in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. After explaining the early
Mahāyāna perspective, the chapter brings it into conversation with the contrast-
ing perspective of the Hindu philosopher Śaṅkara (c. 650–c. 800 CE),7 who
developed a form of monism that was indebted to Buddhist thought (King
1997). The topic of monism provides an entry point to ideas that became
prominent in China, these are introduced in Section 3.8 in preparation for
Chapter 4, which focuses on Chinese philosophers and classical Chinese
religious-philosophical texts.
3.2 Texts
Like all pre-modern works, the texts discussed in this chapter benefit from being
read with a modern commentary. It is not always easy for a modern reader,
without appropriate training, to distinguish between when an author is stating an
7
Śaṅkara is a transliteration of the Sanskrit , an alternative transliteration is Śaṃkara.
opponent’s position to later refute it or when an author is explaining their own

view. The practice of seamlessly weaving incompatible philosophical positions
into a dense set of sūtras was a heuristic device to aid memorization; a modern
reader, however, can easily come away from such texts with the impression that
the author is guilty of blatant self-contradiction. Learning to read ancient texts
carefully is a vital step in coming to understand Asian philosophical traditions.
In addition to their internal complexity, further difficulties are caused by lack of
secure information about the context and date of the composition of key texts,
whose authorship is often also uncertain.
The most important collection of Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtras is The Perfection
of Wisdom Sūtras (Prajñāpāramitā). These sūtras were compiled over many
centuries from the turn of the Common Era and the earliest show us the new
wave of philosophical creativity within Buddhist thought that was key to the
emergence of Mahāyāna Buddhism in its various forms. The Heart of Wisdom
Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sūtra) (see Section 3.7) is the most well known of
The Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras, as it contains the quintessential expression of
Mahāyāna teaching on emptiness and form (see Pine (2005) for an English
translation). Buddhist tradition holds this text to have originated in India; how-
ever, a growing number of scholars hold that its origins are in China. In addition
to lack of agreement about the origin of The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra, and despite
its importance, there is also a lack of consensus on its date of composition.
The Flower Ornament Sūtra (Avataṃsaka Sūtra) is another important text for
Chinese Buddhism. Many different Chinese translations of this Sanskrit text are
still in circulation today (see Cleary (1993) for an accessible English transla-
tion). It is one of the most influential Buddhist texts in East Asia and is the
foundational scripture of an influential form of Chinese Buddhism known as
Hua Yan (華嚴). See Liu (2006) for an excellent introduction to the main
schools of Chinese Buddhist philosophy.
In The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā),
Nāgārjuna sets out the early Mahāyāna teaching on emptiness and form and
articulates his stance on the emptiness of emptiness. See Garfield (1995) for
a translation and commentary. Key ideas from Nāgārjuna’s text are discussed in
Sections 3.6 and 3.7.
The Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra) is an important text
within Tibetan Buddhism that probably originated in the eighth century CE. It is
thought to have been originally composed in Sanskrit by Śāntarakṣita in the first
wave of the transmission of Buddhism into Tibet. It now exists only in Tibetan.
See Blumenthal (2004) for a translation and discussion.
Śaṅkara’s most famous work is a commentary on the Brahma Sūtra (which is
sometimes known as the Vedānta Sūtra). See Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya of
Shankaracharya, translated by S. Gambhirananda (1965).8 See Mayeda (1992)

for an accessible translation of Śaṅkara’s key teachings with a modern
commentary.
3.3 Svabhāva
The debate about being and emptiness within Indian philosophy concerned how
to understand the nature of ourselves and our reality. This was by no means an
abstract philosophical debate, for it was framed by the overriding spiritual
concern to deal with the suffering caused by rebirth by breaking its deadly
cycle. As was explained in Section 3.1, svabhāva was the most important
concept used to articulate the core issues at stake in this debate. The lexical
root of this Sanskrit term is bhāva, which means ‘being’, and its prefix sva
means ‘self’. A literal translation of svabhāva would, then, be ‘self-being’. This
literal translation does not, however, reveal the full complexity of the concept.
The first step to understanding the deeper meaning of svabhāva is to consider
its opposite, parabhāva, which literally translates as ‘other-being’. An entity
whose mode of existence can be characterized as parabhāva, other-being,
depends on another for its coming into being and for its remaining in being,
such an entity is ontologically dependent. In contrast to this, an entity whose
mode of existence can be characterized as svabhāva, self-being, does not
depend on another for its coming into being or for its remaining in being,
such an entity is ontologically independent. The core distinction between
these two modes of being, then, is that one mode – svabhāva – is characterized
by ontological independence, whereas the other mode – parabhāva – is charac-
terized by ontological dependence. This is a crucial distinction to keep in mind

when interpreting Indian philosophical texts, especially those from Buddhist
and Advaita Vedānta traditions.
No convenient English term adequately expresses the full range of meanings
carried by the Sanskrit svabhāva. This is largely because, as Jay Garfield notes,
none of the most obvious potential translations – such as, nature, substance, or
essence – come with a contrasting term that captures what is most important:
namely, that any entity possessing svabhāva is independent of anything external
to itself for its existence and its nature (Garfield 2015: 61). Because of this
problem, most commentators either leave svabhāva untranslated or employ one
of the hybrid terms that have been specially coined to express its meaning in
English: ‘own-being’, ‘own-nature’, ‘self-being’, and ‘self-nature’. Of these
four, the first – ‘own-being’ – is the least problematic. ‘Own-nature’ risks
importing views about what it is to have a nature, ‘self-being’ does the same
8
https://archive.org/details/brahma-sutra-bhasya-of-sankaracharya-swami-gambhirananda.
with respect to ‘self’, and ‘self-nature’ carries the risks attendant on both its
terms. ‘Own-being’ comes closest to capturing the key idea that an entity
characterizable as svabhāva is ontologically independent, being the source
(and sustainer) of its own being. Noting that the key idea that if any being
were to be accurately characterized as svabhāva, that being would be ontologic-
ally independent is included in none of the possible English translations, this
Element will translate svabhāva as ‘own-being’ in those cases when the word is
not left untranslated.
Garfield prefers to translate svabhāva with the compound term ‘intrinsic
nature’ because, by doing so, we can at least contrast ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’.
The difficulty with this choice, however, is that to ascribe the property of having
an intrinsic nature to an entity does not by itself tell us anything about how that
entity came to possess that intrinsic nature, nor does it tell us anything about
how the entity maintains its intrinsic nature. In other words, the key idea of
ontological independence is not (or, at least, not obviously) included in the
concept of intrinsic nature. A further difficulty is caused by regarding svabhāva
as if it were a single property, or even a cluster of properties. I suggest that rather
than focus on properties, it is helpful to think about svabhāva and its contrasting
term parabhāva as denoting two modes of existence. Properties, such as
permanence, can then be understood as derivative on these modes of existence.
Thus, an entity characterizable as svabhāva would possess the properties of
ontological independence, necessary existence, and permanence, while an
entity characterizable as parabhāva would possess the properties of ontological
dependence, contingent existence, and impermanence. So, to say that an entity
lacks svabhāva, own-being, means primarily that it does not enjoy a certain
mode of existence, and secondarily that it lacks the properties of ontological
independence, necessary existence, and permanence. While the strategy of
focusing on modes of existence may not work well in all contexts where the
terms svabhāva and parabhāva are used, it at least has the virtue of making the
core philosophical issues that are at stake stand out more clearly.
We can now express the most important question by emphasizing modes of
existence rather than properties: Does anything enjoy the svabhāvic mode of
existence? In the following section, we look at some answers to this question
proposed by Buddhist philosophers.
3.4 Buddhist Ontology

Despite their many other differences, virtually all Buddhist philosophers are
united in the view that our experience does not bring us into contact with anything
which enjoys ontological independence. Within the style of Buddhist philosophy
that came to ascendency in India prior to the Common Era, namely, Abhidharma
Buddhism, consensus developed that all the entities that we directly encounter
within our everyday experience are composite macro-entities that can be concep-
tually analysed into very small component parts, named dharmas. These dharmas
were thought to be outside the range of our possible experience. Macro-entities,
such as persons, elephants, and houses, in this early Buddhist view, cannot be
characterized as in possession of own-being. No composite entities can enjoy the
svabhāvic mode of existence for one obvious reason: they depend, both for their
coming into existence and for their continuing in existence, on their micro-
constituent parts. Human persons, for instance, just like elephants, depend on
both physical and mental parts (see Section 2.10), whereas houses depend on
different types of material constituents organized in a certain configuration to
form rooms, doors, and windows. It is notable that this early Buddhist position
could be consistently held alongside the view that the micro-constituents (the
dharmas) could enjoy the svabhāvic mode of existence. Indeed, important strands
of early Buddhist thought seem to have accepted that the micro-entities that
formed the ultimate constituents of the things we experience at the macro-level
were permanent and indestructible.9 In conversation with the Brahmanical philo-
sophical traditions, however, the view gradually disappeared that dharmas could
be correctly characterized as existing in the svabhāvic mode. While they did not
deny the conceptual coherence of the svabhāvic mode of existence, Buddhists
(unlike others among their Indian contemporaries) came to hold that nothing at all
existed in this way.
As we have seen, the Buddhist position gradually settled into the view that the
coming into being of anything is the result of a complex network of causal

conditions (Section 2.14). Beings arise as a result of background conditions, and
they cease to be when their sustaining conditions change in a relevant way. This
teaching is sometimes misinterpreted as the claim that nothing really exists and
that our experience comprehensively misleads us into believing that people,
water, trees, and so on, are real. Such ontological nihilism, as it has been called,
is not found in the early Buddhist material. Early Buddhists did not deny the
existence of the entities we take ourselves to experience. Their claims, rather,
concerned how the entities we experience come to be and what explains their
cessation. Their conclusion was that the existence of entities is dependent on
factors extrinsic to themselves. In other words, all entities can be characterized
as existing in the parabhāvic mode; they possess the properties of imperman-
ence and ontological dependence.
9
Similar ideas can be found in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. Consider, for instance, Democritus’
idea of the atom.
During the first few centuries of the Common Era, the early Buddhist view
was radicalized by philosophers under the influence of Nāgārjuna known as
Mādhyamikas (who were so called because they worked in the Madhyamaka
tradition). Building on the teaching of the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra,
Mādhyamikas came to deny not only that anything enjoyed the svabhāvic
mode of existence but also that anything enjoyed the parabhāvic mode of
existence. According to this way of thinking, there simply are no svabhāvic or
parabhāvic entities. In fact, these two concepts seem to have been reinterpreted
by bringing them into relation to the two opposite views about the self that were
denied by earlier Buddhists, namely, either that the self will perish when the
body dies or that it will not (see Section 2.15). Mādhyamikas proposed a middle
way between the two opposite and ‘extreme’ views, thus claiming to bring
Buddhist teaching more into line with the Buddha’s original intention. The
Mādhyamikas, then, popularized the view that all phenomeona lack bhava –
being. This claim covered both svabhāva and parabhāva. The denial of the
latter sharply distinguishes this position from the one advocated by earlier
schools of Buddhism, and it provided the Mādhyamikas grounds for the claim
that they were returning to the Buddha’s original teaching rather than propound-
ing a new philosophy.
Nonetheless, the Mādhyamikas’ claim that they were merely restating the
Buddha’s original teaching was rather disingenuous, for the radical conse-
quence of their handling of the notions of svabhāva and parabhāva was the
view that no entities ever arose or ceased. According to this Madhyamaka
interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching, there are no entities. This explains
why philosophers who adopt this perspective prefer to refer to phenomena

rather than entities. The term ‘phenomena’ can be used to describe anything
within human experience without thereby committing its user to the claim that
there is an entity that could be characterized as either svabhāvic or parabhāvic
(as these were taken to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive modes of exist-
ence, any entity that was found to exist would have to be enjoying one or the
other of these modes of existence).
Nāgārjuna is the most well-known and influential early exponent of the
Madhyamaka perspective. He changed the parameters of the debate about
being and non-being by giving a central place to the concept of emptiness
(śūnyatā) (Burton 2014). From this point on, the Mādhyamikas’ thinking
about being and becoming, arising and ceasing was framed by their understand-
ing of śūnyatā. Later we examine a Hindu expression of the opposite view, one
that reached maturity in the work of the Advaitin philosopher Śaṅkara, with his
conception of nirguṇa Brahman (qualityless Brahman), which is indebted to
earlier Buddhist reflections on emptiness (King 1997). Before doing so, we take
a closer look at Nāgārjuna’s understanding of what it means for all phenomena

to be svabhāva-śūnya (empty of own-being).
3.5 Svabhāva-Śūnya
As was explained in Section 3.4, the Mādhyamikas hold that neither macro-
scopic nor microscopic entities enjoy the svabhāvic mode of existence.
Nāgārjuna’s insight was that all phenomena, not just the macroscopic phenom-
ena that are large enough for us to experience, are interdependently arisen and
hence not svabhāvic. According to Nāgārjuna, all phenomena are empty (śūnya)
of own-being (svabhāva). Notice that, unlike earlier Buddhists, Nāgārjuna does
not claim that non-svabhāvic beings are parabhāvic. His view is that phenom-
ena are neither svabhāvic nor parabhāvic because bhava (being) is a concept
without instantiation. This is Nāgārjuna’s well-known theory of emptiness
(śūnyatā). Chapter 24, verse 19 of his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way
reads:
There does not exist anything

That is not dependently arisen.
Therefore there does not exist anything
That is not empty. (Garfield 2015: 64)
Nāgārjuna’s theory is sometimes characterized as a form of ontological nihil-

ism, understood as the sweeping view that nothing at all exists. Ascribing such
a view to Nāgārjuna is not, however, supported by textual evidence and is
inconsistent with Nāgārjuna’s overall position (Garfield 2014). To understand
Nāgārjuna’s position properly, it needs to be carefully distinguished from the
claim that nothing exists. No Buddhist philosophers have ever supported the
claim that nothing exists! Rather, Buddhist philosophies are all concerned to
offer an analysis of existents (or phenomena) as dependently arisen. Nāgārjuna
is no exception to this. To understand him (or any other Buddhist philosopher),
it is helpful to start by asking what is being identified as the object of negation.
In Nāgārjuna’s case, the object of negation is not existence but svabhāvic
existence. In other words, he is denying that any entity exists svabhāvically
and, thereby, claiming that nothing possesses the properties of permanence and
ontological independence.
Nāgārjuna’s theory of emptiness is also prone to misinterpretation by com-
mentators who bring to the discussion the assumption that svabhāva means
intrinsic nature (Garfield 2015: 65). If svabhāva could be adequately translated
as intrinsic nature, then svabhāva-śūnya could be rendered as ‘empty of intrin-
sic nature’. This interpretation, however, would lose sight of the vital contrast
between whether what causes something to be and sustains that thing in being is
extrinsic or intrinsic to that thing or not. One problem is that none of the
standard understandings of intrinsic nature available within Western philosophy
are tethered to a view about the original or sustaining cause of the being that is
said to possesses intrinsic nature. Consequently, from a Western philosophical
perspective, to deny that an entity has an intrinsic nature is not equivalent to
denying that it is the cause of its own being.
The key point denied by early Buddhist philosophers was that any entity is
ontologically independent of factors extrinsic to itself. Because of this, within
Buddhist thought, lack of an intrinsic nature is more accurately regarded as
resulting from ontological dependence rather than being a primary fact to be
understood in isolation from the more fundamental issue. Interestingly, as we
have seen, early Buddhists standardly accepted that ontological independence –
the svabhāvic mode of existence – was metaphysically and conceptually pos-
sible; they simply denied on both empirical and analytical grounds that any
entity was in this condition.
Prior to Nāgārjuna, the dominant view within Buddhist philosophy was that all
entities arise in dependence on others. After Nāgārjuna, the language typically
used by Indian, and later by Chinese and Tibetan, Buddhist philosophers began to
shift away from talk about beings or entities and causal dependency towards
discourse focused on phenomena arising and the conditions of that arising. To put
the matter bluntly, according to this view, beings are neither originated depend-
ently nor independently – for there are no beings, as such, only phenomena.
The obvious philosophical differences between the teachings of the Buddha and
his early followers and those of Nāgārjuna and his followers reveal an interesting
feature that seems to be built into the core of Buddhist thought. Buddhism’s basic
teachings, especially that of conditioned co-arising (Section 2.14), skilful means
(Section 3.7), and the theory of two truths (Section 3.7), encourage doctrinal
innovation and the continual adaptation of the teaching to new environments. In
effect, Buddhism has no final teaching, and this has allowed for its philosophical
fecundity and its ability to take root and transform itself in the context of cultures
very different from that of its original Indian home. Early Buddhism’s transition
into its various Mahāyāna forms witnesses to this extraordinary versatility. Mahā
means ‘great’ and yana means ‘means to’ (in the sense of ‘vehicle’), Mahāyāna,
then, can be translated as the ‘Great Means to Liberation’ – and it is a means that is
continuously expanding to meet new contexts.
3.6 Non-Duality
The Mādhyamikas’ claim that there are no beings but only phenomena,
although it was derived from early Buddhist teaching, marked a significant
departure from all previous Buddhist philosophy (see Section 3.5). As we will
see later, it also provided a starting point for the development of other significant
Mahāyāna traditions of the philosophical interpretation of Buddhism (one of
which being the Yogācāra, or Cittamātra – Mind Only – school; see Section 3.9).
The immediate and obvious consequence of Nāgārjuna’s view was, however,
the insertion of a theory of non-duality into Buddhism. The claim that there are
no beings, or entities, only phenomena, was ontologically levelling. Everything
that falls within the range of our possible or actual experience, according to this
theory, is an arisen phenomenon. Nothing is more real than anything else. This
raises the question of what differentiates an awakened one’s experiences from
those of ordinary un-awakened persons. Nāgārjuna’s most radical claim was
that ‘There is not the slightest difference between cyclic existence and nirvāṇa.
There is not the slightest difference between nirvāṇa and cyclic existence’
(Garfield 1995: 75). An awakened one, therefore, experiences the same world
as everyone else. Those who are awakened do not somehow escape to a realm
where beings enjoy existence in the svabhāvic mode.
Realizing the truth of Buddhism, according to Nāgārjuna, involves, first,
understanding that all beings are empty (śūnya) of own-being (svabhāva)
and, second, understanding, what he called, the emptiness of emptiness
(śūnyatā-śūnya). It is Nāgārjuna’s commitment to the emptiness of emptiness
that makes twentieth-century interpretations of him as an ontological nihilist
untenable. His claim that emptiness is empty can be interpreted as the claim that
emptiness makes no difference to the phenomenology of experience; likewise,
his claim that there is no distinction between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is not a denial
that either saṃsāra or nirvāṇa can be experienced. Nāgārjuna’s philosophy is

profoundly positive, which belies the common assumption that Buddhism is
a pessimistic philosophy whose core teaching concerns the inevitability of
suffering. In his own day, Nāgārjuna’s account of svabhāva-śūnya in terms of
the emptiness of emptiness provided a fresh perspective on the Buddha’s
message that the solution to the problem of human suffering had been found.
3.7 The Emptiness of Emptiness

Nāgārjuna’s conception of the emptiness of emptiness (śūnyatā-śūnya) was
framed within Buddhism’s teaching about ‘two truths’, which was originally
used to reconcile what appeared to be inconsistencies between some of the
statements attributed to the Buddha. In some of the Buddha’s discourses, for
example, there are references to selves, even though the Buddha taught that
there are none such. The Buddha was evidently skilful at adapting the presenta-
tion of his teaching to his audience by saying different things to different people
depending on their individual needs and level of understanding. Buddhists have

a technical term to describe this pedagogical practice: upāya, or skilful means.
The idea of ‘two truths’ was also used to deal with the fact that slightly varying
accounts of the Buddha’s teaching were passed down through different oral
traditions. Considering that the Buddha had a teaching career spanning forty-
five years, during which he taught many groups and individuals in a wide
variety of places, slight discrepancies in the oral traditions are unsurprising.
Given the Buddha’s practice of adapting his teaching to his audience combined
with the variety of environments in which he taught, it was impossible for later
Buddhists to make all the Buddha’s utterances consistent. The effort to system-
atize the Buddha’s teaching eventually led to the claim that there are two types
of truth.
Conventional truth is thought to be what people generally agree to be true
about the everyday world. The Sanskrit term for conventional truth is saṃvṛti-
satya. Satya means ‘truth’ and saṃvṛti qualifies what kind of truth is at issue.
Saṃvṛti is a significant choice of word with which to characterize this type of
truth, for, in addition to its primary meaning of conventional truth or truth by
agreement, it has a secondary meaning. Surprisingly, the secondary meaning is
suggestive of something hidden. Conventional truth, then, is a type of truth that
conceals rather than reveals. What it conceals is ultimate truth, known in
Sanskrit as paramārtha-satya, which is truth that tells us how things really are.
The distinction between two types of truth can be applied to many facets of
the Buddha’s teaching. It can be used, for example, to interpret the Buddha’s
different statements about selves along the following lines: When the Buddha’s
teaching includes talk of selves who have moral responsibility, what he says is
held to be true at the conventional level. When the Buddha explains that really
there are neither selves nor moral responsibility, what he says is held to be true at
the ultimate level. The distinction between two types of truth allowed the
Buddha’s followers to reconcile these two sets of claims.
Different views arose within Buddhism about how the two types of truth are
related (Zhao 2022: 189–91). The dominant view prior to Nāgārjuna was that
conventional truths could be reduced to ultimate ones through philosophical
analysis, and the entities to which conventional truths appeared to refer could
likewise be eliminated from a correct ontology (Thakchöe 2007). This reflected
a straightforward distinction between the way things appear to be convention-
ally and the ultimate truth about the way they are. Sometimes this distinction
was understood as the claim that reality can be conceptualized by means of two
different perspectives, one ultimate and one conventional. From the conven-
tional perspective, a human person, for example, appears to grow from a child
to an adult then to age and die, but from an ultimate perspective there is no
human person only the five skandhas.
Nāgārjuna revolutionized the way the relation between the two types of truth
was understood when he rejected the previously dominant view, claiming
instead that there was no substantial distinction between them. This claim
resulted in dramatic changes to the way other core doctrines of Buddhism
were interpreted and presented (Garfield 2015). Nāgārjuna’s bold claim that
‘the boundary of nirvāṇa is also the boundary of saṃsāra, there is not even
a subtle difference between them’ (The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle
Way, chapter 25, stanzas 19–20, in King (1999: 124)), which amounted to
a vision of reality as a unified whole (see Section 3.6), was a consequence of
his recasting of the teaching on two truths. Nāgārjuna favoured neither reduc-
tion nor elimination of saṃsāra (the phenomenal world) to nirvāṇa holding that
both strategies were neither analytically possible nor desirable. Ontological
non-duality (see Section 3.6) thus maps onto Nāgārjuna’s commitment to the
view that the so-called two truths are ultimately one and the same.
Prior to the rise of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophical perspective,
Buddhist teaching and meditative practices served to foster discrimination
between the appearance of our everyday world that was captured in
statements of conventional truth and the ultimate reality expressed in
ultimate truth. As we have seen, it was precisely this distinction that was
dissolved by Nāgārjuna (and others in the Madhyamaka tradition) when
they denied that the world as it appears to us is reductively analysable to
a more ultimate level. After Nāgārjuna, philosophers could still engage in
analysis provided they recognized that analysis does not entail reduction or
elimination because there is no privileged level of fundamental ultimate
reality to which truths about the conventional world could be reduced. This
is the doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness, the quintessential expression
of which is found in The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra (Pine 2005), which is the
first text of (arguably) Chinese origin to be discussed in this Element. Here
is the key stanza:
Form is empty.
Emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness.
Emptiness is not other than form. (Garfield 2015: 63)
In this passage, ‘form’ stands for phenomena, the stuff that populates the
conventional everyday world of our experience. It is this that the first line
tells us is empty of svabhāva. Phenomena do not arise independently.
The second line is a statement against the view that our analysis of phenomena
reveals an ultimate reality ‘emptiness’ underlying them. Emptiness is not

a separate ontological substratum; rather, it is nothing other than the phenomena
that arise and cease within our experience. Reading lines 1 and 3, and 2 and 4,
together makes these points even more clearly:
Form is empty.
Form is not other than emptiness.
Emptiness is form.
Emptiness is not other than form.
Lines 1 and 3 teach that phenomena are empty, for analysis reveals that there
is no more to them than emptiness. Correspondingly, lines 2 and 4 stress that
emptiness just is phenomenal appearance and there is nothing more to it than
that. As Jay Garfield sums up the view: ‘To be a conventional phenomenon is
to be empty; to be empty is to be merely conventionally real. The ultimate
reality of things (their emptiness) and the fact that they are merely conven-
tionally real are the same thing’ (Garfield 2015: 63). The distinctions
between conventional and ultimate reality and conventional and ultimate
truth have been transcended by rejection of the presupposition that was
widely held by philosophers prior to Nāgārjuna that ultimate reality was,
by definition, reality that possesses svabhāva. Nāgārjuna’s great intellectual
innovation lay in his conviction that nothing enjoys the svabhāvic mode of
existence at either the conventional or the ultimate level. It was this convic-
tion that led him to reject the previously taken for granted distinction
between two types of truth, the conventional and the ultimate, in favour of
a non-dualist view which took all reality to be on the same level. While we
can still understand reality from a conventional or from an ultimate perspec-

tive, the emptiness of emptiness teaching is that these two perspectives are
really one.
It is difficult to overestimate how influential Nāgārjuna’s teaching, as it is
transmitted through the lines quoted above from The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra,
has been on South and East Asian religion and philosophy.10 To give just one
example, Chinese Chan Buddhism, which is the predecessor of Zen Buddhism
(Cleary 1998), developed through an extrapolation on the perspective on
emptiness found in this sūtra.
10
Given the uncertainties about the origin and dating of The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra, which were
noted in Section 3.2, combined with uncertainties about Nāgārjuna’s biography, it is impossible
to say with certainty which came first. While the original composition of The Heart of Wisdom
Sūtra may well predate Nāgārjuna, Buddhist tradition closely associates Nāgārjuna’s teaching on
the emptiness of emptiness with this sūtra.
3.8 Emptiness and Interpenetration

Other important Buddhist philosophical traditions built on the foundations laid
by the Mādhyamikas, notably Yogācāra Buddhism (which was at a high point in
the fourth century CE) and Hua Yan Buddhism (which emerged in the sixth
century CE in China).
Yogācāra is alternatively known as Cittamātra (Mind Only), Vijñaptimātra
(Consciousness Only), and Vijñānavāda (the Way of Consciousness). All these
names well represent the focus of this strand of Buddhism on an analysis of
consciousness. While there are two different streams within Yogācāra, one
emphasizing the phenomenology of conscious experience and the other empha-
sizing consciousness as the unity underpinning the multiplicity of phenomena,
Yogācāra as a whole can be interpreted as complementary to earlier
Madhyamaka thought, for its analysis of subjectivity supplements the
Mādhyamikas’ analysis of phenomena.
One view of the relationship between the teachings of Yogācāra and
Madhyamaka is that the former can be read as giving a correct account of
conventional reality/truth which prepares the mind for the ultimate truth taught
by the Mādhyamikas. This is the view that, through the influence of
Śāntarakṣita, has been accepted in the Tibetan tradition since the ninth century
CE. Here is the key passage:
On the basis of Yogācāra,

One should understand the absence of external objects.
On the basis of our system [Madhyamaka],
One should understand that there is also a complete absence of self.
Whoever rides the chariot of these two systems.

Guiding them with the reigns of logic,
Will thereby attain the goal,
The realization of the Mahāyāna itself.
(The Ornament of the Middle Way, translation in
Garfield (2015: 82))
Śāntarakṣita’s explanation of the relation between the two strands of Mahāyāna

philosophy is compelling. It not only gives an account of their compatibility but
also serves as a corrective to an extension of the Yogācāra view that seemed to
imply that Mind or Consciousness was the one ultimate reality. This extreme
version of Yogācāra was incompatible with both the Madhyamaka teaching on
the emptiness of emptiness and the Mādhyamaka’s commitment to the view that
there is no ultimate ontological ground to what we conventionally regard as real.
As we have seen, the main insight fuelling both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra
is that emptiness is the consequence of the fact that phenomena are neither
self-generating nor self-sustaining, but arise when conditions are right for their
arising. A further philosophical development of this insight is found in The

Flower Ornament Sūtra, the main sūtra of the Hua Yan tradition. In this sūtra,
which many regard as the finest philosophical expression of Mahāyāna
Buddhism, the interdependence of all phenomena was taken to imply that
there are no discrete individuals and that everything is related to everything
else. Hua Yan Buddhists concluded from this that all phenomena are constituted
by relations and so they form a unity (on Hua Yan, see Liu (2006: Chapter 10)).
As Garfield sums up this development: ‘Emptiness here, just as in Indian
Madhyamaka, is a lack of independent existence. But it is more than that. It is
a lack of difference between entities’ (Garfield 2015: 76). With the qualification
that it is more accurate to refer to phenomena than entities, the point remains
that for Hua Yan ‘all is one’ (Garfield 2015: 76).
3.9 All Is One

While all the major Buddhist schools of the Common Era consolidated their
view that no phenomena enjoyed svabhāvic existence (see Section 3.3), the
opposite view gradually gained ground among non-Buddhist philosophers in
India through the influence of Śaṅkara’s compelling presentation of the Hindu
philosophy of Advaita Vedānta. Like Hua Yan Buddhism in China, Advaita
Vedānta taught that a correct understanding of the nature of reality is monist.
Section 1 concludes with a brief introduction to Śaṅkara’s view before turning
again to Chinese traditions in Section 4.
As is the case with many extremely well-known philosophers from the pre-
modern Sanskrit intellectual world, despite his importance there is a great deal
of uncertainty about the details of Śaṅkara’s biography. Prior to modernity,

biographical details were rarely recorded as the personal identity of authors was
not thought to be of particular importance. All we can say is that Śaṅkara
probably came from a South Indian Brahmanical family and probably lived
sometime between 650 and 800 CE (see Suthren Hirst (2005) for an illuminat-
ing reconstruction of Śaṅkara’s biography that relates it to the content and
manner of his teaching). Śaṅkara is often credited with formulating a Hindu
response to Buddhism and thereby beginning the period of Hindu resurgence
that corresponded to the eclipse of Buddhism within India. While this may be
exaggerated, Śaṅkara’s philosophical system certainly merits careful attention
for the way it engaged with the current intellectual issues of his day – especially
those concerning the nature of being and becoming. Śaṅkara’s response to
Buddhism is also notable as an example of philosophical synthesis, for it was
indebted to Buddhist reflections on svabhāva (King 1997).
As a philosopher in the ancient tradition of Vedānta, Śaṅkara’s heritage was

in the Vedas, the Upaniṣads (about which see Section 2.3), and in the later more
devotional text, the Bhagavad-gītā (Prabhavananda & Isherwood 2002). In his
elucidation of the Vedic tradition, Śaṅkara attempted to bring consistency into
his interpretation of the ancient material by employing a version of the theory of
two truths which, as we have seen, was widely used by Buddhist philosophers.
In Śaṅkara’s system, the distinction between two types of truth – the conven-
tional and the ultimate – was mapped onto two types of reality. Conventional
reality was taken to be the world of our everyday experience, while ultimate
reality was regarded as that on which conventional reality depended. Those
who, like Śaṅkara, took this distinction to concern ontology rather than per-
spective agreed that if anything were to exist non-conventionally, it would enjoy
the svabhāvic mode of existence – being the source of its own being and nature,
and existing outside the realm of change. The key difference between the
Buddhist positions and Śaṅkara’s lies in the latter’s assessment that ultimate
reality is not empty: the svabhāvic mode of existence is instantiated.
Śaṅkara’s name for ultimate reality, the single ground of the universe, is
nirguṇa Brahman. The term nirguṇa, however, signifies that this reality is
without properties (Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya, 3.2.18, Sankaracarya (1965)). In
Śaṅkara’s view, svabhāva is a term that in our conventional way of speaking
tells us what nirguṇa Brahman is not. We cannot give any positive character-
ization of nirguṇa Brahman, which entails that it is not accessible to human
reason. It should be noted that nirguṇa Brahman is not regarded by Śaṅkara as
a personal God. To be personal would require that a God had at least some
properties. Of course, Śaṅkara had to use some words to characterize nirguṇa
Brahman, and the terms he used most frequently were ‘being’ and ‘conscious-
ness’ (see Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya, 3.2.21, for example). These terms provided
the mind with objects for meditation but were not meant to be literal descrip-
tions of the ultimately real.
The view that ultimate reality is without properties is difficult to sustain
because it raises both philosophical and religious difficulties. Śaṅkara remained
committed to it because of his conviction that if anything were to exist
svabhāvically, it must be a unity, and unities, by definition, lack parts. As we
saw in Section 3.3, any entity enjoying the svabhāvic mode of existence is not
caused to exist by anything extrinsic to it; in other words, its existence is not
ontologically dependent. Śaṅkara reasoned that anything not causally depend-
ent on anything else for its existence (or continuation) must lack parts –
otherwise it would be dependent for its existence on those parts (Brahma
Sūtra Bhāṣya, 1.1.31). This is how he arrives at monism about the fundamental
nature of ultimate reality. As Jessica Frazier has recently pointed out, Śaṅkara
had additional reasons for defending monism. One of these was his conviction
that a monist account of the nature of reality had more power to explain the way
the world actually is than did rival ontologically pluralist theories (Frazier
2022).
Śaṅkara was well aware that this radical monist view has a host of further
consequences. For one, lacking properties nirguṇa Brahman is outside the
realm of possible experience. For another, because nirguṇa Brahman is
a unity, we cannot talk or think about it, except conventionally. For this reason,
he introduced saguṇa Brahman (Brahman with properties) into his system.
Saguṇa Brahman is a personal creator God, who is an object of religious feeling
and devotion. Śaṅkara’s careful articulation of the relation between nirguṇa and
saguṇa Brahman in his Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya is one of the most creative
features of his philosophical system. Essentially, in keeping with his commit-
ment to monism, he holds that saguṇa Brahman is nirguṇa Brahman. The
former is how the latter appears when projected (Śaṅkara’s word is adhyāsa,
which is often translated into English as ‘superimposition’) by consciousness
into the conventional world of our experience. Śaṅkara held superimposition to
be ubiquitous. He describes ‘a beginningless and endless natural process of
superimposition, whose nature is misconception, which creates agents and
experiencers, and is directly known to everybody’ (Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya,
1.1.1, translated in Bartley (2011: 143)).
Śaṅkara’s view is interesting for many reasons. His struggle to explain the
relation between the ultimate and the conventional realm provides an instructive
comparison to the ways in which this issue was dealt with by religious philo-
sophers in non-Asian traditions (Clooney 1993). The language used and the
conceptual framework may be different, but the relationship between transcend-
ence and immanence, God an sich and God as he might enter into human
experience, has been at the heart of Western theology and religious philosophy
since the earliest times (see Martin Ganeri (2015b) for a discussion of Vedānta
and Western theism). Moreover, considering Śaṅkara’s view in relation to the
Buddhist theories examined in this Element brings into relief the most signifi-
cant philosophical commitments of both traditions, as well as their perceived
consequences.
Śaṅkara’s view also has contemporary relevance for the philosophy of reli-
gion, because many of the issues he grappled with have not gone away.
Examining how he handled the philosophical problems raised by his radically
monist metaphysics and epistemology might show roads not taken in analogous
Western discussions about the nature of ultimate reality and our possibilities of
coming to know it. Moreover, it is rarely noticed that Śaṅkara’s actual influence
on current philosophy of religion has been profound. His characterization of
nirguṇa Brahman was a key influence on John Hick’s theory of religious

pluralism, which attempted to explain religious diversity by positing
a qualityless and inaccessible Real underlying all religions (Barua 2015).
Many of the philosophical questions discussed in this section have proven to
be of perennial interest. The answers given to them are, moreover, still contrib-
uting to exciting and innovative philosophical work (see Priest (2014) for one
example). As we shall see, the same can be said of the material covered in the
following section, which concerns how early Chinese philosophers dealt with
questions about being and becoming.
4 Nothing and Something

The philosophical traditions of classical China are often regarded as predomin-
antly concerned with ethical, social, and political issues. This emphasis can
make them seem remote from the metaphysical, epistemological, and religious
concerns of the Indian traditions. Closer inspection of the Chinese material,
however, reveals a rich stratum of philosophical speculation on the nature of
existence and the origins of being. This metaphysical interest is especially
noticeable in the ancient divinatory manual, the Yijing (Wilhelm & Baynes
1977), and in the foundational text of philosophical Daoism, the Daodejing
(Lau 1963).11
Here we explore some of the metaphysical perspectives found in early
Chinese traditions, paying particular attention to understandings of the relation
between nothing (wu 無) and something (you 有), a relation that was often taken
to be the key to understanding cosmic generation. The reader will notice that
this Element does not employ the term ‘nothingness’. As will become clear in
Section 4.4, this is because ‘nothingness’ can suggest an ontological commit-
ment in a way that the term ‘nothing’ does not. Given the importance of the
notion, and the heavy philosophical weight it carries, it is preferable to use the
more neutral term.
4.1 Outline
Section 4 introduces key texts, before focusing on the notions of nothing and
something found in the Daodejing (Lau 1963). Two rival traditional interpret-
ations of nothing and something are explained, each of which aligns with
a different view of cosmic generation and impacts how human beings, and
11
This Element follows the convention of using the terms ‘Daoism’, ‘early Daoism’, and ‘Daoist’
for convenience. These terms were coined retrospectively to refer to thinkers whose ideas could
be associated with the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi (see Section 4.2). Some scholars refer to the
‘Lao-Zhuang tradition’ to avoid giving the erroneous impression that already in ancient times
Daoism was a movement rather than a style of living and thinking practised by individuals.
their moral and spiritual constitution, are regarded. The section discusses the
significance for both spirituality and aesthetics of holding nothing to be an
ontologically foundational reality that can be conceptually represented as spa-
tial. The section then explores a different perspective on nothing and something,
according to which nothing is in fact something: it is the primordial state of the
universe, prior to differentiation.
The section explains that Daoist perspectives on nothing and something
provided the principal lens for the interpretation of Buddhist teaching within
China. The connection between the notion of nothing in the Chinese thought
world and that of śūnyatā in the domain of Indian thought is highlighted. The
iterations of Buddhism that emerged in China were significant not only for the
evolution of Chinese culture, but they also had a profound impact on later
developments within Buddhism in India and Tibet, as well as on the philosophy
of Advaita Vedānta (see Section 3.9). The Daoist perspectives on nothing and
something that were transmitted through Buddhism were also eventually
assimilated into Confucian philosophy, which underwent a creative transform-
ation from the eighth to the eleventh century CE (Harrison 2019: 190–9).12 The
section concludes with a brief discussion of neo-Confucian philosophy, which
was the mature fruit of the long intellectual exchange between the three main
streams of philosophical and spiritual reflection in China, namely, Daoism,
Buddhism, and Confucianism.
4.2 Texts
The three principal classical Chinese texts referred to in this section are the
Yijing (易經), the Daodejing (道德經), and the Zhuangzi (莊子) (see Cleary
(2003) for English translations). The Yijing is known in English as The Book of
Changes and, in the older Wade Giles system for representing Chinese in
Roman script, as the I Ching. Because of its antiquity and archaic language,
this text is notoriously difficult to translate (Legge (1975) and Wilhelm and
Baynes (1977) are two of the best attempts). The Yijing’s origins are obscure,
and its form has changed significantly over time. It began in ancient times as
a divinatory manual, and was used by the kings of the Western Zhou dynasty
(this dynasty was established at around 1050 BCE). Despite its antiquity and the
peculiar nature of the text, the Yijing is still widely used today and is regarded as
a classic of world literature (see Smith (2012) for a fascinating biography of the
Yijing). The cosmological speculations within the Yijing provided the
12
The full story of the interpenetration across various philosophical traditions of the ideas
discussed in this section does not end with neo-Confucianism. In the nineteenth century, these
ideas – as they were transmitted through neo-Confucianism – played a key role in the mature
articulation of Sino-Muslim philosophy in the work of Ma Dexin (Petersen 2018: 70–9).
foundations for the philosophical and religious systems that developed in China
long after its compilation (Liu 2006). Early Chinese thought on the cosmic
principles of yin and yang is found in the Yijing (see Cheng (2009) and Wang
(2012) on the significance of these). It also contains the first presentation of the
system of trigrams and hexagrams that was to have a decisive impact on the
Sinitic intellectual heritage (Wilhelm & Wilhelm 1979).
The Daodejing (Tao Te Ching in the older system of romanization) is
probably the most well-known Chinese text outside China, like the Yijing, it is
widely regarded as a world classic of religious literature. The Daodejing was
formerly known as the Laozi, an eponymous title that reflects the traditional
belief that the text was composed by the legendary Daoist sage Laozi (老子).
While that belief is now usually dismissed by scholars outside China, it con-
tinues to be normal practice to refer to Laozi as if he were the author of the text
rather than a legendary figure. This convention is useful because it allows
scholars to avoid frequent repetition of the cumbersome phrase ‘the unknown
authors of the Daodejing’. In fact, it is obvious that the Daodejing is the work of
multiple authors and editors as the text is composed of various strata and does
not have a single narrative thread or authorial voice. Keeping this in mind makes
it easier to recognize that the Daodejing does not promote a single philosophical
perspective but contains a variety of thematically connected yet distinctive
views. Despite considerable uncertainty about the origins of the material con-
tained in the Daodejing, it is generally agreed that the compilation reached its
final form sometime in the second century of the Common Era. There are now
many good English translations of the Daodejing, for which D.C. Lau’s trans-
lation sets the standard (Lau 1963). Some newer translations, such as that by
Victor Mair (1990), rely on a slightly different version of the text, known as the
Mawangdui version after the place in Hunan province of south-eastern China
where, in an exciting archaeological discovery during the 1960s, textual frag-
ments differing from the standard version of the text were found. This discovery
demonstrated that variant readings of the Daodejing were still in circulation
between 193 BCE and 140 BCE, when the tomb in which the fragments were
discovered was sealed.
The Zhuangzi is another important classical text of philosophical Daoism. It
is named after the philosopher and sage Zhuangzi (莊子), who is usually
thought to have lived from 369 to 286 BCE. This text shows a clear thematic
development from the Yijing and the Daodejing (Harrison 2019: Chapter 5),
and, like them, it is not the product of a single author. Only chapters 1–7 are
generally regarded as authentically representing Zhuangzi’s thought, and these
are referred to as the Inner Chapters. When dealing with texts as complex as
the Zhuangzi, it is always advisable to consult more than one translation.
See Graham (2001) for a translation and commentary on the Inner Chapters of
the Zhuangzi and see Ziporyn (2009) for an alternative translation.
The texts introduced in this section each gave rise to extensive commentarial
traditions that continued for many centuries after the texts reached their final
forms. In China, as in India, during the Common Era, commentarial traditions
were the principal medium through which philosophical ideas and insights were
transmitted to successive generations. Those who wrote commentaries on
ancient texts were not, however, merely explaining the ideas of others but
often propagated novel theories and ideas of their own. This process was
assisted, indeed necessitated, by the concise character of many of the ancient
texts (this is especially true of the Yijing). The commentarial tradition was
particularly productive in China during the Wei-Jin period of neo-Daoism in
the third century CE. Section 4.4 introduces two rival interpretations of a key
chapter of the Daodejing that were advanced within this neo-Daoist commen-
tarial tradition.
4.3 Nothing and Cosmology in the Daodejing

The content of the Daodejing is highly speculative. In its characteristic poetic
style, it addresses a wide range of deep and perplexing philosophical questions.
One of these questions concerns how to properly conceive of the notion of
nothing (wu 無) in relation to the origin and constitution of the material things
(you 有) that populate the cosmos. This question is the focus of Section 4.4.
A related question concerns how, if at all, we might encounter ‘nothing’.
This second question is the focus of Section 4.9. The Daodejing addresses
both of these questions in the context of a background concern to shed light on

the origin of the cosmos.
The Daodejing deals with these questions in several of its chapters, especially
in its eleventh chapter, which Douglas Berger aptly describes as ‘evocative’,
‘mysterious’, and ‘suggestive’ (Berger 2014: 166). Because of these character-
istics of chapter 11, and many other chapters, readers should not expect to find
clear answers within the Daodejing to the questions with which it grapples. In
fact, as we see in Section 4.4, two contrasting interpretations of the Daodejing’s
answers to these questions about ‘nothing’ were in circulation during the third
century of the Common Era.
4.4 Two Interpretations of Nothing and Something

in the Daodejing
Both interpretations of the relationship between nothing (wu 無) and something
(you 有) that are explained in this section result from attempts to draw out the
meaning of Chapter 11 of the Daodejing, which, despite the hermeneutical

challenges it poses, consists of only forty-nine Chinese characters (see Berger
(2014) for a more detailed discussion of these two traditional interpretations and
the philosophical questions they raise). As we shall see, the interpretation that
won out in this third-century hermeneutical disagreement had a significant
impact on what came to be regarded as the mainstream Daoist view of being
and becoming.
According to the highly influential commentator Wang Bi (226–249 CE),
‘nothing’ refers to the emptiness within things, such as cups and rooms, without
which these things would not exist for people to use. He took this to imply that
the Daodejing teaches that nothing is the fundamental ontological reality
required for anything to come into existence.13
Douglas Berger has provided an English translation of Chapter 11 of the
Daodejing that aligns well with Wang Bi’s ontological interpretation of
nothing:
Thirty spokes join at a hub;

In its nothing (wu 無), there is (you 有) the use of the cart.
Mixing clay produces a vessel;
In its nothing (wu 無), there is (you 有) the use of the vessel.
Cutting doors and windows produces a room;
In its nothing (wu 無), there is (you 有) the use of the room.
Thus, its something (you 有) produces benefit.
Its nothing (wu 無) produces use. (Berger 2014: 167)
The rival interpretation, propounded by Zhong Hui (225–264 CE), resists

the view that nothing is the singular ontologically foundational reality;

holding instead that nothing (wu 無) and something (you 有) are on a par
because both are required to constitute the objects that we encounter
experientially, such as cups and rooms. According to Zhong Hui, while
we might be able to separate analytically the nothing and the something
that constitute any object, they must nonetheless form an irreducible unity
for that object to exist at all. Furthermore, on this interpretation of the
teaching of Chapter 11 of the Daodejing, nothing does not enjoy any
ontological status at all apart from that which it has in relation to some-
thing (and vice versa).
Zhong Hui’s interpretation is supported by the following translation of
Chapter 11, which is provided by Berger:
13
We can compare Wang Bi’s ontologizing of nothing to the tendency, noted in Section 3.8, of
some Yogācāra philosophers to give an ontological interpretation of emptiness.
Thirty spokes join at a hub;

In its nothing (wu) and something (you) is the use of the cart.
Mixing clay produces a vessel;
In its nothing and something is the use of the vessel.
Cutting doors and windows produces a room;
In its nothing and something is the use of the room.
Thus, its something produces benefit.
Its nothing produces use. (Berger 2014: 168)
Berger points out that both translations of Chapter 11 are plausible renderings of
the Chinese characters that form the original text and that the difference
between them is largely the result of parsing. If close analysis of Chapter 11
is unable to adjudicate between the two interpretations, there would seem to be
no way to judge on internal textual grounds which is closer to the original
intention of the teaching recorded in the Daodejing. Fortunately, given the
importance of the issues, two strategies are available to us. One strategy,
which we pursue in Section 4.9, is to ask which interpretation coheres best
with what we can reconstruct of the ancient thought world that we can glimpse
in the Yijing, for this would have provided the intellectual context of early
readers of the Daodejing. Another strategy is to consider which interpretation is
more consonant with other chapters of the Daodejing, particularly those that
concern the central concept of Dao (道).
4.5 Dao
Debate about the Daodejing’s teaching on the relation between nothing and
something in everyday objects was connected to a wider hermeneutical question
about its first chapter, which concerns the relationship between nothing and the
origin of the cosmos:
A way [Dao] can be a guide, but not a fixed path;

names can be given, but not permanent labels.
Nonbeing is called the beginning of heaven and earth;
being is called the mother of all things.
Always be passionless, thereby observe the subtle;
ever intent, thereby observe the apparent.
These two come from the same source but differ in name;
both are considered mysteries.
The mystery of mysteries
is the gateway of marvels. (Cleary 2003: 11)
The standard interpretation of this chapter emphasizes the line ‘Nonbeing is

called the beginning of heaven and earth’, concluding that all things came from
nothing, which aligns with Wang Bi’s interpretation of Chapter 11. Likewise,
Chapter 40 highlights this same set of ideas: ‘the ten thousand things are
generated from what is (you 有), and what is (you 有) is generated from what
is not (wu 無)’ – ‘the ten thousand things’ being the stock expression used by
classical Chinese authors to stand for ‘everything that exists’.
The idea that all that is (you 有) is generated from nothing does not cohere
well, however, with Chapter 4 of the Daodejing. There we find the claim that all
things take form from the inexhaustible source of the Dao, which is itself
formless and shapeless. Chapter 39, moreover, claims that all numbers as well
as all things originate in the Dao, and that Dao is ‘one’. Chapter 42 goes even
further down this line of reflection by claiming that Dao generates oneness,
from which eventually follows the ten thousand things. As Berger observes,
‘during the third century, the question of how to grasp the relationship between
wu and you was placed within the framework of the purported relationship
between wu and Dao 道, understood as the “course” or “path” of the world’s
unfolding’ (Berger 2014: 167).
Despite the lack of a consistent account of the relationship between nothing,
something, and Dao across key chapters of the Daodejing, the idea that Dao
could be identified with nothing dovetailed neatly with Wang Bi’s interpretation
of Chapter 11, and together these came to form the dominant reading of the text.
As a result, the account of Daoist cosmology that came to be widely accepted
from the third century CE held nothing to be both ontologically foundational
and an ongoing essential constituent of everything that comes to be. In other
words, nothing – understood as the formless, shapeless Dao – was regarded as
both the original source of all beings and as that which sustains all things
(you 有), including ourselves, in being. One implication of the claim that the
cosmos-generating nothing is an essential constituent of all beings is that the

nothing that originally gave rise to ‘the ten thousand things’ must be perman-
ently intrinsic to them. Thus, the mainstream Daoist ontological perspective
settled into the view that things are constituted by a particular relation of
‘originary’, primordial nothing and something (you 有), where ‘something’
amounts to the material form of that which exists (Berger 2014: 171).
4.6 Encountering Nothing

The two rival interpretations of Chapter 11 of the Daodejing that were explained
in Section 4.4 hold different views about whether or not nothing (wu 無) has
a more fundamental ontological status than something (you 有). Proponents of
both interpretations nonetheless concur that nothing is a ubiquitous characteris-
tic of all that we experience. The implication of this view was taken by
subsequent Daoists to be that in experiencing something we are simultaneously
encountering nothing. The message was that nothing, and thereby Dao, the
ultimate mystery at the origin of all being, could be encountered in the most
mundane objects of our experience. This is an extraordinary convergence, in
another cultural register, with the Mādhyamikas’ conviction that the objects of
our experience are empty (see Section 3.5). It is remarkable that, in the early
centuries of the Common Era, philosophers in both China and India were
grappling with the fundamental ontological question of how nothing/emptiness
and something/form come into relation to constitute both the world that we
experience and ourselves as the experiencers of that world.
4.7 Nothing as Spatial

In its attempt to say something intellectually graspable about nothing, the
Daodejing deploys the device of linking the notion of nothing to that of
empty space. For example, in Chapter 11, nothing (wu 無) is explicated in
terms of the emptiness between walls that makes a physical structure into
a room. In addition to highlighting that it is the space within objects, such as
rooms and cups, that makes them what they are, Chapter 11 points out that the
space within objects also makes our use of them possible (see Section 4.4). The
representation of nothing (wu 無) as spatial is, arguably, the most distinctive
feature of the philosophical account of the relation between nothing and some-
thing found within and inspired by the Daodejing.
The explication of nothing in terms of empty space found in the Daodejing
opened new dimensions of the philosophical investigation into being and becom-
ing. The conceptual connection between nothing and empty space became one of
the foundational assumptions for many different approaches both to cosmology

and to spiritual practice within East Asia. It quickly led, for instance, to the high
valuation of empty spaces (kong 空) that eventually, after the passage of many
centuries, inspired the remarkable, austere aesthetic tradition of Zen Buddhism.
This development within Zen no doubt also built on the connection between
space and meditation made in several verses within the Pāli Canon, for example:
Rāhula, develop meditation that is like space; for when you develop medita-
tion that is like space, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not
invade your mind and remain. Just as space is not established anywhere, so
too, Rāhula, develop meditation that is like space; for when you develop
meditation that is like space, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will
not invade your mind and remain. (Mahārāhulovāda Sutta, in Ñāṇamolí and
Bodhi (2001: 530))
‘Bhikkhus, suppose a man came with crimson, turmeric, indigo, or carmine

and said: “I shall draw pictures and make pictures appear on empty space.”
What do you think, bhikkhus? Could that man draw pictures and make
pictures appear on empty space?’ – ‘No, venerable sir. Why is that?
Because empty space is formless and non-manifestive; it is not easy to
draw pictures there or make pictures appear there . . . . Eventually the man
would reap only weariness and disappointment.’
‘So too, bhikkhus, there are these five courses of speech . . . Herein,
bhikkhus, you should train thus: “Our minds will remain unaffected . . . and
starting with him, we shall abide pervading the all-encompassing world with
a mind similar to empty space, abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without
hostility and without ill will.” That is how you should train, bhikkhus.’
(Kakacūpama Sutta, in Ñāṇamolí and Bodhi (2001: 221–2))
Within Daoism the initial conceptual connection between nothing and empty
space paved the way for the Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi (see Section 4.2), to
regard the skilled use of space as a spiritual art (see Slingerland (2003) for
discussions of this theme, and see Chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi for an example).
Zhuangzi also established the trend, which was to become entrenched with later
Daoism, of regarding sages as characterized by their embodiment of nothing
(Chan 2014). Such a state was held to be marked by a general stance of being
unperturbed and a lack of emotional response to the vicissitude of life and death.
As noted in Section 4.4, the neo-Daoist commentator on the Daodejing,
Wang Bi, emphasized that empty space makes possible the material configur-
ations that result in the existence of objects. This idea developed into the view
that objects are constituted by material parts held together by their relations
within space, with space being seen as the grounding and foundational reality
holding composite objects together and making them what they are. Imagine,
for a moment, a world not populated by physical objects, such as desks and
chairs, plants and animals, but instead featuring a limitless expanse of empty
space within which clusters of matter are suspended in configurations that
sometimes make them useful for us. From such a perspective, space is not
only ubiquitous but is also a unified and foundational reality.
The Chinese character that was used in the early Daoist commentarial
tradition to refer to empty space was 空 (kong). This character is still
commonly used in modern Chinese to refer to air, sky, empty space, and
even free time. In both its ancient and modern usage, it also carries the
connotations of expansiveness, limitlessness, and infinity. These connota-
tions all reinforce the various conceptual connections that have been
described in this section between originary nothing, emptiness, and Dao.
As we saw in Section 4.6, the Daodejing moved seamlessly from reflection
on empty spaces in humble everyday objects, like houses and cups, to
speculation about the origin of the cosmos and the generation of ‘the ten
thousand things’ (see Section 4.5).
4.8 Nothing and Śūnyatā

The affinity between the Daoist notion of empty space (kong 空) and the Indian
Buddhist notion of śūnyatā (emptiness) did not go unnoticed by the early
interpreters of Buddhism within China. During the first few centuries of the
Common Era, Buddhism gradually spread across China. By the time it was
sufficiently well established to have enough of a literate Chinese following to
require the translation of Sanskrit sūtras into Chinese, Daoist reflections on
nothing (wu 無) and empty space (kong 空) were already highly evolved. It was
natural, then, for Chinese translators of Indian Buddhist sūtras to render the
Sanskrit term śūnyatā (emptiness) as kong 空. In the Indian sūtras, however, the
notion of śūnyatā always remained conceptually connected to the denial that
any entity enjoyed the svabhāvic mode of existence (see Section 3.3). This
conceptual connection was completely absent from the Chinese translations of
these sūtras, which instead suggested that empty space (kong 空) was the
foundational grounding reality within which material objects were somehow
suspended.
The next bold philosophical move connected this Chinese Buddhist under-
standing of emptiness with the stream of Yogācāra philosophy which held that
the objects of consciousness are internal to consciousness (see Section 3.8).
Kong 空 thus came to be associated with consciousness, and consciousness in
turn came to be regarded as the ‘space’ within which all ‘things’ come into
being and continue in being. This set of associations was highly influential on
Buddhist philosophy as it developed in both Japan (Kopf 2014) and Korea (Kim
2014). The influence of these ideas also extended into modern philosophy
through the Kyoto school (Kyōto-gakuha), which was the most important
school of philosophy in Japan during the twentieth century. Philosophers within
this school, such as Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990), continued to work with the
web of meanings that was generated when the notion of kong 空 was used to
interpret the Indian Buddhist technical term śūnyatā (Nishitani 1982). The
Kyoto school is also notable because it brought this traditional Asian perspec-
tive on nothing/emptiness into creative interaction with key themes and ideas
from modern Western philosophy, particularly drawing on the two seminal
German philosophers, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976). Philosophers in the Kyoto school deployed traditional perspec-
tives on emptiness to address what they regarded as the most serious philosoph-
ical problem of their times, namely, how to respond to nihilism (see Davis
(2019) for an introduction to the Kyoto school).
All the striking philosophical developments reviewed in this section, and in
Section 4.6, in one way or another, were extrapolations of Wang Bi’s
understanding of the notion of nothing (wu 無). As we have seen, Wang took
nothing to be the foundational ontological reality from which all beings were
generated. This view, combined with the identification of Dao with nothing,
proved more popular than Zhong Hui’s alternative view, which accorded noth-
ing a less elaborate ontological role. As noted earlier, Wang’s position became
the dominant interpretation of the Daodejing’s teaching, and it is still taken for
granted by many people today. As we shall see in the next section, however, it
has recently been suggested that Wang’s interpretation was flawed by his failure
to acknowledge both a crucial ambiguity in the Daodejing’s references to
nothing and the background cosmological understanding that would have
been taken for granted in its original context.
4.9 The Meaning of ‘Nothing’

The account of Daoist cosmology introduced earlier in this section presents
early Daoists as holding that being emerges from originary, primordial nothing.
JeeLoo Liu has recently challenged this understanding, claiming instead that
early Daoists never held there to be a state of primordial absolute nothingness
(Liu 2014). Liu argues that the ontological conception of nothing, which
supported the view that being emerges from nothing, was the result of Wang
Bi’s failure to acknowledge a significant ambiguity in the Daodejing’s notion of
nothing. According to Liu, the two most important possible meanings of
‘nothing’ in circulation at the time of the Daodejing’s compilation were
(i) ‘what seems to be nothing but is actually something’ and (ii) ‘the original
void’ (Liu 2014: 182). Liu points out that Wang Bi concentrated on the second
of these meanings rather than the first, and she notes that the first meaning is
more consistent with the ancient cosmological speculations found in the Yijing,
which early Daoists would have taken for granted.
Liu’s argument is significant because, if it is correct, the common identifica-
tion of Dao with nothing or non-being is unfaithful to the classical Daoist
perspective. Liu cites Chapter 25 of the Daodejing as textual evidence that,
prior to the third-century CE interpretations of the neo-Daoists, Dao was
regarded as something rather than nothing: ‘There is something (youwu 有物)
undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before heaven and earth’ (Liu
2014: 183). Liu notes that Chapter 21 of the Daodejing also supports this
reading:
The thing [物 wu, thing] that is called Dao is eluding and vague. Vague and
eluding, there is in it the form. Eluding and vague, in it are things. Deep and
obscure, in it is the essence. The essence is very real; in it are evidences (sic.).
(Here Liu relies on Chan’s translation, Chan (1973: 150))
The main point of this exegetical argument is to invite us to re-evaluate, what

Liu regards as, the overly metaphysical and spiritualized conception of Dao so
that we might regain an understanding that is closer to the original one. To reach
back to the earlier understanding of Dao requires a closer look into the cosmo-
logical speculations of the Yijing, which can be regarded as the foundational text
of Chinese civilization. Until Liu’s ground-breaking work, one of the great
puzzles in the history of Chinese philosophy was how to explain the connection
between the Yijing and the later Daoist classics the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi.
According to Liu, the key to this lies in a shared cosmology.
4.10 The Yijing, Dao, and the Primordial State

The idea that being emerges out of nothing found in the Daodejing, as we have
seen in Section 4.9, may not imply that early Daoists held being literally to come
from nothing. This is because, according to the earliest Daoist understanding
that we can reconstruct, ‘nothing’ may in fact be something. Following Liu’s
argument, the Daodejing implicitly relies on an ancient cosmological frame-
work, found in the Yijing, in which the original state of the universe was thought
to be formless rather than nothing. Liu notes that this cosmological framework
is explicit in the Zhuangzi, where ‘the initial, pre-ordered state of the universe is
a state of “chaos (hundun)”’ (Liu 2014: 184).
The central concept in this cosmological framework is qi (a term that is
untranslatable into English but can roughly be rendered as ‘vital force’ or
‘energy’). Liu claims that we will fail to understand the early Daoist perspective
on wu 無 and Dao unless we consider its conceptual framing within qi-
cosmology (Liu 2014: 183). Taking this framing into account, Liu suggests
that the notion of Dao found in the Daodejing is derived from a ‘conception of
qi in its initial state’ and that the notion of Dao ‘could be an idealized conception
of the nature and operation of qi’ (Liu 2014: 183). Liu argues persuasively that
this interpretation allows us to make better sense of the connection between the
Daodejing and the Yijing than the alternative interpretation which overlooks qi-
cosmology and ontologizes nothing. She also notes that the interpretation of
Dao in terms of qi-cosmology is consistent with those parts of the Daodejing
that were difficult to reconcile with the view that being emerges from primordial
nothing. One such passage is Chapter 42 of the Daodejing: ‘Everything carries
yin and embraces yang. Qi’s mutual agitation constitutes harmony’ (Liu 2014:
183). Qi, then, is the formless primordial state from which all being emerges.
Liu explains further that ‘the Daodejing’s cosmological claim is that, in the
beginning, there was qi in its primordial state, and this formless primordial qi is
what the Daodejing refers to as “nothing (wu, 無)” when it says that something
is generated by nothing’ (Liu 2014: 183). On this reading, Dao can be under-
stood not as an abstract metaphysical entity but more as a living thing consti-
tuted by qi.
4.11 The Supreme Ultimate

Despite the new perspective, briefly explained in Sections 4.9 and 4.10, which
attempts to provide a historically accurate account of the meaning of the ancient
Chinese texts, it remains the case that key concepts, such as wu 無 and Dao 道,
have been interpreted in ways that tend towards metaphysics rather than
naturalism. The more metaphysical interpretation that came to prominence in
the commentarial tradition of the third century CE again came to the fore in the
neo-Confucian philosophy that emerged in China, under the influence of
Buddhism, from the eighth century CE.
By the eleventh century, two main schools of neo-Confucian philosophy had
developed, the School of Laws or Principles and the School of Heart-Mind (for
a concise account of these schools see Harrison (2019: 190–9); Liu (2018)
provides a more detailed account). At the core of both schools was a theory
about the evolution of the cosmos from an original unity. According to the
School of Laws or Principles, the unity of the cosmos was grounded in a single
underlying principle that united all individual things into the whole. This
uniting principle came to be known as the supreme ultimate. One thinker
from this school, Zhu Xi (1130–1200 CE), characterized the supreme ultimate
as the ‘highest of all, beyond which nothing can be. It is the most high, most
mystical, and most abstruse, surpassing everything’ (Fung 1976: 297). He adds
that: ‘With regard to heaven and earth in general, the Supreme Ultimate is in
heaven and earth. And with regard to the myriad things in particular, the
Supreme Ultimate is in every one of them too’ (Fung 1976: 297).
To preserve the unity of the supreme ultimate, Zhu Xi concluded that it must be
within all things in its entirety. This implied that the supreme ultimate in its
entirety is within each human being, an idea which is key to neo-Confucian
spirituality with its focus on transcending self-boundaries rather than on an idea
of transcendence abstracted from the personal domain (Patt-Shamir 2021: 18).
The figure of the sage thus came to be regarded as the human manifestation of the
supreme ultimate. This initiated a debate about how those who were not yet sages
could come to know the supreme ultimate that was already within them, with the
rival views being either through introspection (an epistemological approach
indebted to Zhuangzi) or through the more traditional methods of studying the
classics and practising the rites. The School of Heart-Mind advocated the former
approach, while the School of Laws or Principles advocated the latter.
4.12 Universal Mind

The neo-Confucian School of Heart-Mind reached its most sophisticated
expression in the work of Wang Yangming (1472–1529 CE). Wang added to
the idea of the unity of all things the conviction that, ultimately, the unity
consists in a perfect correspondence between the mind and the world. This
position is poised delicately between the two poles of idealism (which holds the
mind to be ontologically foundational) and materialism (which regards matter
as ontologically prior to mind). As P.J. Ivanhoe has argued, in Wang’s concep-
tion, heart-mind and world are not external to one another but form a unity in
which neither can be reduced to the other or eliminated (Ivanhoe 2009: 101–5).
Philosophers of the School of Heart-Mind posited an Original Heart-Mind to
explain the unity of apparently individual heart-minds. Wang declared:
The mind of man is Heaven. There is nothing that is not included in the mind of
man. All of us are this single Heaven, but because of the obscurings caused by
selfishness, the original state of heaven is not made manifest. Every time we
extend our intuitive knowledge, we clear away the obscurings, and when all of
them are cleared away, our original nature is restored, and we again become
part of this Heaven. The intuitive knowledge of the part is the intuitive
knowledge of the whole. The intuitive knowledge of the whole is the intuitive
knowledge of the part. Everything is the single whole. (Fung 1976: 315)
The neo-Confucian theory of an original universal mind was the culmination of

a long process of intellectual syncretism and cross-fertilization between various
forms of Indian Buddhism, Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, and earlier Confucian
thought (see Makeham (2018) for a study of Zhu Xi’s assimilation of Buddhist
thought). As such, despite its conclusion that everything making up the universe
can be regarded as forming a unity, neo-Confucianism serves as a reminder that
intellectual traditions do not stand alone but are the result of streams of influ-
ence flowing back as far as we are able to trace them. In the following section,
we return to Indian thought and examine an ancient tradition whose core idea
was that – whatever the universe is actually like – human beings will come to
understand it through different perspectives.
5 Pluralism
This section introduces some key ideas from Jainism. The term ‘Jain’ is derived
from the Sanskrit ji, which means to conquer or overcome. People adhering to
this tradition are known as Jains, overcomers.14 The Jain tradition still has
14
‘Jains’ is an anglicized pluralization. The term ‘Jaina’ transliterates the Sanskrit spelling,
whereas ‘Jain’ transliterates the modern Indian pronunciation in languages such as Hindi and
Kannada. This Element renders the singular ‘Jain’ and the plural ‘Jains’.
a significant following within India, and it has, of course, evolved significantly

over time. Its root is identifiable in the earliest strata of intellectual history
within the Indian subcontinent. Like Buddhists, Jains reject the authority of the
Vedas (see Section 2.3) and so constitute one of the main non-Brahmanical
traditions of India. Their ethical code is distinctive for its rigorous commitment
to non-violence towards all living beings, including plants.
Jains have always been important participants in Sanskrit intellectual culture,
and they were involved in many of the key philosophical debates that have been
discussed in this Element. Nonetheless, outside India, Jain philosophical posi-
tions are still not yet as familiar as those of the Buddhist schools. Jains advanced
perspectival pluralism, which is a form of epistemological pluralism (see
Section 5.4). Pluralist theories in general and, specifically, epistemological
pluralism have been major concerns within twentieth- and twenty-first-
century Western philosophy. Consequently, Jain philosophy is slowly gaining
wider recognition as scholars investigate its distinctive ontological and epis-
temological positions (see Priest (2018) and Ganeri (2019) for examples).
5.1 Outline
This short section provides a concise introduction to Jain philosophy, outlining
its origins and its foundational textual tradition. The section focuses on those
aspects of Jain teaching which are most distinctive in the domains of ontology
and epistemology, namely, perspectival pluralism, the theory of the many-
sidedness of reality, the theory of the seven modes of assertion, and the pursuit
of omniscience (see Jaini (1979) for a more general account of Jain teachings).
5.2 Origins
Māhavīra (c. 599–527 BCE) is traditionally regarded as the founder of Jainism.
Many of Jainism’s core ideas, such as the idea that consciousness is indestruct-
ible, were, however, in circulation long before Māhavīra’s lifetime. It is not
implausible to claim that Jain ideas reflect an archaic tradition that was wide-
spread on the Indian subcontinent prior to the ascendancy of the Vedic tradition.
Despite the difficulty of providing material evidence to support such specula-
tion, many agree that the Jain tradition preserves a heritage of greater antiquity
than that found in the teachings of the other philosophical traditions that
flourished in the post-Vedic period (see McEvilley (2002) for a discussion).
5.3 Texts
The official Jain Canon of sacred texts was established at a council in the fifth
century CE, although Jain teaching is based on an oral tradition that was first
codified in the fourth century BCE. The foundational Jain sacred texts are
available online, translated into English by Hermann Jacobi.15 The first surviv-
ing systematic presentation of early Jain teaching, however, is found in the
Tattvārtha-sūtra. This was composed in Sanskrit in the early centuries of the
Common Era and is attributed to Umāsvāti (see Tatia (1994) for a modern
English translation). The Tattvārtha-sūtra deals with a wide range of topics and,
being the first extant text to elucidate early Jain logic, epistemology, and
ontology, it is especially important to philosophers. Also of especial relevance
to philosophers are the three treatises Nyāyāvatāra, Nyāyāvatāra-vivṛti, and
Nyāyāvatāra-ṭippana, which concern developments of Jain logic and epistem-
ology (Balcerowicz (2001) provides an English translation).
5.4 Perspectival Pluralism

Jain epistemology was shaped by the conviction that no entity possesses a unique
essence that would allow it to be fully known through a single epistemic
perspective (the Sanskrit term for ‘perspective’ is naya). The Jain account of
the many-sidedness of reality is the result of this conviction about ontology.
Because they took reality to be many-sided, Jains held that any philosophical
theory would be inadequate to our epistemic needs unless it explicitly accommo-
dated a plurality of perspectives. Philosophical theories, according to Jains,
usually rely on a single epistemic perspective through which philosophers erro-
neously seek to understand a reality that is complex because it is many-sided.
According to this view, disagreements between philosophical theories arise when
one theory employs an epistemic perspective focusing on a particular ‘side’ of
reality (the impermanence of entities, for example) while another theory employs
an epistemic perspective focusing on a different ‘side’ of reality (the permanence
of identity through change, for example). The Jain analysis of such disagreements
avers that the apparently rival theories both yield conclusions that are partly right
and partly wrong, because each theory is based on only one limited epistemic
perspective. Jains argued that a fuller account of the truth could only be obtained
by taking the deliverances of multiple epistemic perspectives into account. This
conviction led them to develop their own distinctive philosophical theory –
perspectival pluralism – that, rather than being based on just another single
epistemic perspective, aspired to embrace a number of epistemic perspectives
simultaneously.
15
Jacobi’s English translation of the Jaina Sūtras: www.sacred-texts.com/jai/sbe22/index.htm.
Jacobi’s translation was first published in 1884; although some of the transliteration of
Sanskrit into Roman script is now dated, the translation has retained its value.
The Jain theory of perspectival pluralism was not a cry of despair heralding
a plunge into scepticism in the face of long-standing and seemingly intractable
philosophical disagreements. Nor was perspectival pluralism a concession to
relativism about truth and our knowledge of it, for it is compatible with the view
that reality can genuinely be known, even though any single perspective can
only disclose a piece of it. Jains held that taking multiple epistemic perspectives
into account was a precondition for knowledge and not a temporary inconveni-
ence. Their theory of perspectival pluralism was proposed as a method to
reconcile at a higher level of abstraction the deliverances of single epistemic
perspectives by bringing them within the scope of a unified theory that operated
at a higher conceptual level.
The ambitious theory of perspectival pluralism required Jains to provide an
explanation of how we can use language to communicate successfully, given
that what we say about entities does not usually reflect multiple epistemic
perspectives. Assertions such as ‘the dog is wet’, for instance, do not convey
knowledge about the complex many-sided entity which is the dog. Jains devel-
oped a highly nuanced theory of language to complement their theory of
perspectival pluralism. Their view was that epistemic perspectives were ana-
lysable into modes of assertion, of which they identified the following seven:
1. Asserting.
2. Denying.
3. Assert-denying.
4. Both asserting and denying.
5. Both asserting and assert-denying.
6. Both denying and assert-denying.

7. Asserting, denying and assert-denying.
Jains held that the most complete description available to us of any object would
have to cover all seven modes of assertion. The basic problem with unmodu-
lated assertions like ‘the dog is wet’, according to Jains, is that they are not
specific enough. Such assertions need to be reframed using the seven modes of
assertion after being disambiguated carefully across, what Jains termed, param-
eters. They held that the parameters of substance, time, place, and state should
be considered when disambiguating assertions (although, they noted that not
every parameter would be relevant to every assertion). This was in recognition
of the fact that an assertion about an object might be true with respect to some
set of parameters, a particular time and place, for instance, and false with respect
to another set of parameters. The dog, for example, may have been wet on
Tuesday by the river but not wet on Wednesday in the apartment. To disam-
biguate the assertion ‘the dog is wet’ would require consideration of all the
relevant parameters. The disambiguated assertion might then be ‘with respect to

some place and time, the dog is wet’. Having disambiguated the assertion, one
might then proceed to analyse it according to the seven modes. (For another
simple example, see Harrison (2019: 55–7); for a more detailed account, see
Ganeri (2001: 128–50).)
Jains deployed the ideas explained in this section to make the point that
philosophical disagreements, such as those between Buddhists and Hindus,
arose because the apparently conflicting positions were based on a limited
grasp of reality. They held that the truth about reality could only be attained
when many different perspectives were allowed to contribute to an understand-
ing of the whole, and they took themselves to have provided a method by which
such a comprehensive vision could be achieved. They thus cultivated an irenic
atmosphere, which was surely important for the successful pursuit of a spiritual
life, the final goal of which was to achieve liberation from the cycle of rebirth. In
the Jain understanding, such liberation implied a state of perfection character-
ized by omniscience. This explains the tight connection between Jainism as
a spiritual tradition and its technical philosophical concerns.
5.5 Omniscience
As we have seen in Section 5.4, the Jain theory of perspectival pluralism
emphasizes the limitations of our epistemic perspectives, unless the truths
they disclose can be incorporated into a comprehensive vision. The method of
analysis provided by the seven modes of assertion was thought to allow
a limited human consciousness to expand its understanding of reality by
integrating seven epistemic perspectives. Also found within Jainism, however,

is the conviction that the full truth about our many-sided reality exceeds the
possible epistemic perspectives that could be adopted by a limited human
consciousness. This is because, as Piotr Balcerowicz puts it,
To know one thing means to know everything, inasmuch as everything is

interrelated. To know one singular entity, one should be required to know
both all its modes, including past and future, and its complex interrelatedness,
that is, the relations in which it entered, enters, and will enter with other
entities, but also relations which are precluded. Otherwise, our knowledge of
the singular thing would be partial. (Balcerowicz 2017: 79)
In short, knowledge of reality in all its dimensions was thought to require

omniscience. Siddhasena’s Nyāyāvatāra (verse 29) explains: ‘Since a thing
has manifold character, it is comprehended (only) by the omniscient’ (quoted
in Priest (2018: 86)). This strand of Jain teaching holds that, in principle,
a consciousness that was without limits could occupy all possible epistemic
perspectives simultaneously. If it did so, its knowledge of reality would be

complete. This is the Jain idea of omniscience (kevala). Achieving this state
is held by Jains to be the most important spiritual goal because it is tanta-
mount to a state of perfection. A consciousness in a kevalic state is thought to
be a consciousness with no limitations. Moreover, because an unlimited
consciousness could not be constrained by the range of perspectives avail-
able to an embodied being, it is held by Jains to no longer be the subject of
rebirth.
We can speculate that this remarkable position developed from the convic-
tion, which is present in the earliest strata of Jain teaching and probably dates to
archaic times, that consciousness is indestructible. It is easy to see how com-
bining this conviction with a belief in rebirth could lead to the view that a single
consciousness would eventually have been embodied in every possible type of
material life form and so would have occupied every possible epistemic per-
spective. An omniscient consciousness might originally have been regarded as
one that had accumulated all possible perspectives and had thus acquired full
knowledge of reality. We can conjecture how such an understanding of omnis-
cience may have been gradually transformed into the account explained in the
previous paragraph through its assimilation into a sophisticated philosophical
system. Speculative as it is, this theory can account for the distinctive emphasis
within Jainism on non-violence towards all life forms, even those, such as flies,
to which other Indian traditions do not typically assign value.
Whatever the origins of the Jain understanding of omniscience may be, the
philosophical debate about it was already underway at the time when both
Jainism and Buddhism were gaining recognition as distinctive philosophical

schools. During this time, the following account of Māhavīra’s epistemic
powers was in circulation:
When the Venerable Ascetic Māhavīra had become a Jina and Arhat, he was
a Kevalin, omniscient and comprehending all objects; he knew and saw all
conditions of the world, of gods, of men, and demons; whence they come,
wither they go, whether they are born as men or animals or become gods or
hell-beings, the ideas, the thought of their minds, the food, doings, desires, the
open and secret deeds of all living beings in the whole world; he the Arhat, for
whom there is no secret, knew and saw all conditions of all living beings in
the world, what they thought, spoke, or did at any moment. (Jacobi (1884:
263–4), transliteration slightly amended)
Accounts like this seem to have started something of an arms race in the ancient
world – with rival groups of devotees making increasingly extravagant claims
about their teachers. In the face of this extravagance, we can appreciate the more
restricted form of epistemic pluralism that characterized Jain philosophy during
the Common Era. As we have seen, in a move that facilitated the reconciliation of
apparently rival philosophical views, Jains constrained a potentially infinite
number of epistemic perspectives to those aligned with seven modes of assertion.
Indeed, for this achievement Jains can be regarded as constituting a model of
good practice for philosophical pluralism more generally. Such models are
especially important in the twenty-first century as philosophy of religion, and
philosophy more generally, becomes increasingly global.
6 Global Philosophy
Research focused on Asian philosophical traditions has increased dramatically
over the past several decades. Foundational work in both Indian and Chinese
traditions has made excellent translations of key texts widely accessible.
Despite all that has been achieved so far, and the exponential rate at which
new primary and secondary material becomes available, this remains a field of
research in which new archaeological discoveries and hermeneutical insights
can change seemingly well-established perspectives in unexpected ways. As
Indian and Chinese traditions become increasingly familiar to many Western
readers, research continues to expand on, for example, Korean philosophy
(Ch’oe et al. 2000; Ivanhoe 2016), Japanese philosophy (Dilworth et al. 1998;
De Bary et al. 2001; Ivanhoe 2016), and Tibetan philosophy (Kapstein 2001;
Thakchöe 2007).
The wealth of accessible and reliable material now available in English and
other European languages on Asian traditions converges with what has been,
arguably, the most exciting development within academic philosophy of reli-
gion within recent decades. Namely, the trend towards expanding the subject
area of the discipline to reach beyond its traditional focus on arguments and
ideas connected to Western theism.16 This trend is part of a creative research
agenda which is now testing the boundaries of global philosophy (see Connolly
(2015) for a discussion of some of the methodological issues raised by global
philosophy). In surveying key topics and arguments within Asian philosophy of
religion, some of which bear directly on concerns within current analytic
philosophy of religion, this Element has highlighted philosophical issues of
potentially global concern, such as the nature of the self, and how to conceptu-
alize the relation between being and becoming. Significant recent work within
the philosophy of religion, and within philosophy more broadly, has drawn on
philosophical ideas and arguments from both the East and the West to advance
16
For a discussion of this trend, see an online interview with the author: https://closertotruth.com
/ctt-chats/victoria-harrison-philosophy-world-religions.
our understanding of these and other issues (see Priest (2014) for an example of
this kind of philosophical work at its finest).
Asian traditions are also providing inspiration for the development of new
philosophical theories. Jonardon Ganeri, for instance, has recently suggested that
rather than focus exclusively on the technical details of the Jain theory of perspec-
tival pluralism, we might take it as model for a form of epistemic pluralism that is not
a pluralism of theories but a pluralism of epistemic stances or standpoints (Ganeri
2019). He proposes interpreting Jain epistemic perspectives as practical attitudes
that guide inquiry by targeting attention to particular facets of reality, such as to what
is present to experience. This creative interpretation portrays the nayas (perspec-
tives) as strategies for generating belief that are dynamically responsive to different
epistemic contexts. On this view, the nayas are more akin to what William Alston
has, in another context, called ‘belief-forming mechanisms’ than they are to static
conceptual vantage points from which the subject cannot move (Alston 1993). The
Jain theory of perspectival pluralism is thus morphed into a pluralist account of
belief-forming strategies, or, as Ganeri puts it, a plurality of ‘action-guiding policies
governing the application of epistemic principles’ (Ganeri 2019: 7). As such, Jain
philosophy gains a new relevance to issues of concern today.
In view of the growing body of work adopting a syncretic approach to ideas from
different traditions, some current philosophers of religion have suggested jettison-
ing the distinction between Eastern and Western philosophy or, at least, reserving
its use for work concerned with the history of philosophy (Harrison (2020), for
instance). Such a move would encourage free deployment of the conceptual
resources of a broad range of the world’s philosophical traditions in response to
the philosophical problems that are of concern in an increasingly globalized

environment. Among these conceptual resources, the phenomenological tools
honed by the Yogācāra philosophers, along with the Mādhyamikas’ approach to
ontology, seem particularly ripe to contribute to the global philosophical project,
given its current focus on understanding the psychology of experience and cogni-
tion combined with a predilection for ontological parsimony.
This Element has expounded ideas and arguments largely in abstraction from
the forms of life and traditions of spiritual practice they inform. The insights the
Element contains are largely the result of the author’s grounding in the methods
of analytic philosophy and the Element’s goal has been to provide a clear and
concise scholarly introduction to Asian philosophy of religion. Nonetheless, the
author is aware from her own experience that many of the ideas presented here
can have extraordinary transformative power on the lives of those who engage
with them. The analytic understanding of the issues presented here invites
further elaboration by philosophers who are themselves immersed in the tradi-
tions of spiritual practice in which these ideas found their original home.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my graduate students at the University of Macau for bringing
the ideas presented here to life through many animated discussions. I have
a particular debt of gratitude to John Zhao for his enthusiasm for the project and
his insight. I am also indebted to my colleague and friend Damian Shaw for his
astute observations and grammatical prowess. Thanks are also due to an
anonymous reviewer for taking the trouble to provide some very helpful
feedback on the manuscript. My greatest debt is to my husband, Rhett Gayle,
without whom nothing would be possible. This Element is dedicated to my
friend and companion 何南南, whose heritage harmonizes East and West.
Philosophy of Religion
Yujin Nagasawa
University of Birmingham
Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy and Co-director of the John Hick Centre
for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham. He is currently President of
the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He is a member of the Editorial
Board of Religious Studies, the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and
Philosophy Compass.
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Keywords: Buddhist ontology, rebirth, Asian philosophy, emptiness,

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3 Being and Emptiness 24

4 Nothing and Something 42

elucidate the abstract philosophical assumptions and arguments that continue to

1.2 The Scope of Eastern Philosophy of Religion

on Buddhism in India. The meeting of Chinese and Indian Buddhism initiated

why this Element focuses more on Indian than on Chinese philosophy.

1.3 What Do We Mean by Eastern Philosophy of Religion?

from reﬂection on the central concept of Western theism: ‘God’. By contrast,

of themes, this Element demonstrates that the religious philosophies of Asia,

1.4 Problematizing ‘Religion’

1.5 The Future of Eastern and Western Philosophy of Religion

and Western philosophy of religion has begun to seem anachronistic to many

central philosophical matters, such as whether impermanent objects were com-

being the degree to which Buddhism emerged independent of inﬂuence from

Introductions to Western philosophy of religion do not usually contain

transmitted orally but now constitutes a large body of proto-Sanskrit literature

There existed neither the airy space nor heaven beyond.

3. Darkness existed, hidden by darkness, in the beginning. All this was

What existed as a thing coming into being, concealed by emptiness – that

close to the language spoken by the historical Buddha, Buddhist philosophers in

were embedded in a context of shared understanding that included several key

A man who’s attached goes with his action,

2.5 Is Rebirth Good or Bad?

the meaning and signiﬁcance of rebirth within pre-modern Indian thought.

previous lifetimes, and that we will continue to experience it in a potentially

Having established that, in the post-Upaniṣadic period, rebirth is widely

2.6 Who or What Is Reborn?

continues to vex philosophers today who focus on problems of personal identity

I could see as it really is the primary characteristic of human existence [i.e.,

experience with an account of how to achieve liberation by avoiding rebirth. The

(Harvey 2000); right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration

2.8 The Four Noble Truths

Now this . . . is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is

The second insight concerns the origin or cause of suffering.

Now this . . . is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: It is the

ology of experience that supports the early Buddhist understanding of persons.

2.10 The Five Bundles

1. A physical body (Sanskrit and Pāli: rūpa).

and generally reasoning. (Adapted from Harrison (2019: 110))

2.11 The Exhaustiveness Claim

2.12 The Argument from Impermanence

Namely, the permanent, unchanging ātman of the Brahmanical tradition.

2.14 Conditioned Co-Arising

exist. The condition of such hypothetical entities is described as ‘ontologically

The most straightforward way to interpret this passage is as an attempt to

3 Being and Emptiness

we are now positioned to understand the key philosophical differences that

The issues can be approached by ﬁrst focusing on two dichotomies which

opponent’s position to later refute it or when an author is explaining their own

Shankaracharya, translated by S. Gambhirananda (1965).8 See Mayeda (1992)