The emptying of emptiness: The Chao-lun as graduated teachings

This study examines Seng-chao's Chao-lun, the earliest and most complete collection of Chinese Madhyamika treatises available. Written over a ten year span in the early fifth century, the Chao-lun consists of an introduction, four independent treatises and a set of correspondence. Earlier interpretations have looked upon the work as a "collection of texts," as opposed to the unified "text" accepted within the Sinitic tradition. In its present form, however, the Chao-lun does not conform to the accepted chronology of its composition, and in fact follows a specific structural pattern designed with a particular soteriological goal in mind. The principal aim of this study is to examine the Chao-lun as a text and determine how and why its editors deviated from its original composition. The arrangement and structure of the text are examined so as to reveal the manner in which the religious and historical milieu of medieval China and Mahayana Buddhism shaped both the concerns and organization of the Chao-lun. My conclusions demonstrate that editors clearly designed the Chao-lun in such a way as to lead the reader progressively and gradually through the emptying of all things, including emptiness itself, philosophically and structurally reproducing the Buddhist hermeneutical method of graduated teachings and mirroring the Madhyamikan concern for "emptying emptiness.".;Part I presents a brief introduction to the text and the historical framework of fifth century China. This section surveys the historical and religio-philosophical context within which the Chao-lun initially made its appearance. Part II examines the text as a text, focusing on how and why the present text deviates from the chronological order of its writing and analyzing the work from the perspective of graduated teachings. In addition, both the textual tradition of Mahayana Buddhism and the Chinese practice of tenet classification are explored to determine the antecedents out of which the unified Chao-lun was produced. A fully annotated translation of Seng-chao's Chao-lun is included as a Supplement.