Chapter Five: Jizang—Four Tiers of the Two Truths, the Middle, and the Provisional¶

Three Treatise learning passed south from Kumārajīva's disciples, developed through the three generations of Senglang, Sengquan, and Falang, and reached its synthesis in Jizang. His writings were voluminous. This chapter takes only three matters that answer this essay's question: the distinction between truths relative to their audience and teaching truths, the four tiers of the two truths, and the meaning of the middle and the provisional.¹

The distinction of truths relative to their audience (于谛) is the foundation of Three Treatise doctrine. The Meaning of the Two Truths says: “What ordinary people understand is conventional truth; what sages understand is ultimate truth.” Concerning the same things, ordinary people understand existence and sages understand emptiness. Truth is tied to whom it is for; hence truths relative to their audience. Above these, teaching truths (教谛) are separately established: “The basis is truths relative to their audience; the Dharma as expounded is teaching truths.” The Tathāgata teaches on the basis of the two kinds of truth relative to their audience; the two modes of verbal teaching thus expounded are teaching truths.² This move handles the truth predicate at two levels. In truths relative to their audience, truth is relativized to the hearer. In teaching truths, the two truths are moved altogether out of the object domain and become a classification of verbal teachings.

The Profound Meaning of the Mahāyāna takes the second level to its limit: the two truths “are only modes of teaching and have nothing to do with objects or principles.” They are two ways of speaking, not two worlds or two levels of objects.³ Chapter Six of Essay Eighteen formally locates the two truths in a distinction between levels of assertion. Fourteen hundred years apart, the two statements say almost the same thing. Their kinship and differences will be formally compared in the next chapter.

Since modes of teaching are skillful means, they can ascend through tiers. The four tiers of the two truths appear in full in Fascicle One of the Profound Meaning of the Mahāyāna. First: “They take only existence as conventional truth and emptiness as ultimate truth.” Second: “Both existence and emptiness are conventional truth; only neither emptiness nor existence is called ultimate truth.” Third: “Emptiness and existence are two; neither emptiness nor existence is not-two. Both two and not-two are conventional truth; neither two nor not-two is called ultimate truth.” Fourth: “These three kinds of two truths are all modes of teaching. These three modes are taught to bring realization of not-three. Only when there is nothing to rely on or apprehend is it called principle.” The summit is sealed with: “Only when words are forgotten and thought ceases is there ultimate truth.”³ Three structural points deserve notice. First, each tier demotes all the distinctions of the preceding tier, taken together, to conventional truth. This mechanizes the principle that emptiness, too, is empty, making level clause (c) into a staircase that can be climbed step by step. Second, the staircase carries an index of opponents. The text explains that the first tier addresses Abhidharma, the second the Establishment of Truth, and the third and fourth the consciousness-only teachers of the time. Each tier's ultimate truth consists precisely in demoting another school's ultimate to its own conventional. This staircase is also a history of doctrinal classification. Third, the top tier is not a higher object: only with nothing to rely on or apprehend is there principle; only with words forgotten and thought ended is there ultimate truth. Principle occupies no slot. This agrees with Essay Eighteen's judgment: silence at the level of situations is proper; ultimate truth is an invariant, not a higher domain. Jizang has another fine expression of awareness that teaching is a means: “One cannot point to the moon with the moon; one should point to the moon with a finger.” Teaching is the finger, not the moon. Anyone who grasps the two truths as objects is pointing to the moon with the moon.³

The meaning of the middle and the provisional (中假) can be stated briefly. The middle way is not posited as a third kind of domain. After the middle comes the provisional; after the provisional comes the middle. The middle is spoken of to refute partiality, the provisional to preserve functioning. This is isomorphic to Essay Eighteen's reading of the verse with three ‘is’ statements: the middle way is the joint name for double rejection plus preservation, not a new metaphysical position.

The Three Treatise lineage's achievements: moving the two truths from objects and principles to verbal teaching; making the principle that emptiness, too, is empty into an operational staircase; and supplying, under the name of modes of teaching, the distinction missing in Sengzhao's time—speaking of emptiness without falling into annihilationism, rejecting without positing. One unresolved question is retained: the staircase rises and falls to suit its audience, while Essay Eighteen's levels are fixed by scope. Are these two notations for the same thing? The next chapter opens the examination.

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