Buddhist Philosophy between India and China: From Madhyamaka to Sanlun

As part of a Starting Grant funded by the European Research Council devoted to the study of Chinese Buddhist philosophy, a workshop on ‘Buddhist Philosophy between India and China: From Madhyamaka to Sanlun’ is scheduled to be held at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA), part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), in Vienna on 17-18 August 2024.

The research project of which this workshop forms parts is titled The Ethics of Empty Beliefs: Chinese Buddhist Philosophy in the ‘Period of Disunity’ (ChinBuddhPhil). Centrally concerned with the Sanlun 三論 school most closely associated with Sengzhao 僧肇 and Jizang 吉藏, the project intends to study Sanlun’s contributions to Chinese Buddhist philosophy in historical and systematic manner, with an especial focus on the ethics of belief. In so doing, the project hopes to transform the conventional understanding of philosophically valuable traditions by demonstrating that Chinese Buddhist philosophers merit consideration not only as historical artifacts but as genuinely interesting and insightful contributors to live philosophical problems. It likewise aims to redress the preponderant exclusion of Chinese perspectives from philosophically oriented scholarship in Buddhist studies, and to do so in a manner that bridges it with philologically oriented Buddhology.

This workshop will be devoted to Sanlun in conversation with its Indian antecedents. More particularly, the aim is to study the transmission of religious and/or/cum philosophical ideas and arguments between Buddhist South Asia and the Chinese world in the early centuries of the common era, specifically in a bid to unearth and evaluate Chinese Sanlun’s distinctive contributions to and elaborations on Indian Madhyamaka.

Schedule

Saturday 17 August 2024

08.30-09.00. Coffee

09.00-09.20. Welcome and Introduction. Rafal K. Stepien

09.20-10.00. 'Nāgārjuna’s Twelve Gates Treatise (十二門論)? A Contribution to Chinese Madhyamaka/Sanlun Buddhist Philosophy'. Rafal K. Stepien

10.00-10.40. 'Trapped in Language: Shared Metaphors for Reevaluating the Role of Speech Acts (karmavacana) in Madhyamaka'. Maria Electra Pacini

10.40-11.00. Coffee Break

11.00-11.40. 'Zhong lun and Dazhidu lun in China: Interpretation of, and Interpreting with, the Madhyamakakārikās, on Agentless Ethical Action'. Matthew Orsborn

11.40-12.20. 'The Nature of the Sengzhao Trick: A Key Term in the Zhaolun and a Sinitic Response to Madhyamaka'. Rafal Felbur

12.30-14.30. Lunch (speakers only)

14.30-15.10. 'Resolving a Madhyamaka Puzzle'. Chien-hsing Ho

15.10-15.50. 'Double Negation: How Sēngzhào Applies the Zhuāngzǐ to Resolve Riddles of Purity in Classical Mādhyamaka Thought'. James Garrison

15.50-16.30. 'Jizang on the Mutual Identity between the Two Truths: A Critical Reassessment of the Semantic Non-Dualist Reading of the Two Truths Doctrine as it Pertains to Sinitic Madhyamaka Buddhism'. Ernest B. Brewster

Sunday 18 August 2024

08.30-09.00. Coffee

09.00-09.40. 'Comparative Background for the Study of the Two Truths in Post-Nāgārjunian Madhyamaka Exegesis'. Jackson Macor

09.40-10.20. 'Sanlun Master Jizang’s Nonduality of Speech and Silence'. Hans-Rudolf Kantor

10.20-10.40. Coffee Break

10.40-11.20. 'Guan: Jizang’s Entering of the Middle Way'. John Zhao

11.20-12.00. 'Is Emptiness Non-empty? A Study of Jizang’s Conceptions of Emptiness and Buddha-nature'. Jenny Hung

12.00-12.10. Concluding Remarks. Rafal K. Stepien

12.10-19.00. Break

19.00-21.00. Workshop Reception & Dinner (speakers only)

Website

For further information regarding the workshop, please see:

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ikga/events/event-detail/buddhist-philosophy-between-india-and-china

For further information regarding the project overall, please see:

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/projects/chinbuddhphil

Registration

To register for on-site participation, please write to rafal.stepien(at)oeaw.ac.at before Friday, August 9, 2024.