Chapter 2: The Three Truths and the Tiantai Reading of the Verse¶

One and the same verse has been read once already, in Chapter 6 of Part 18 of this book: whatever arises from the assembly of conditions, I declare to be nothing; it is also a conventional designation; it is also the meaning of the middle way. The reading given there made the verse the joint name of the theorem's three clauses: emptiness is the rejecting face; conventional designation is the positive mechanism of the E2 level; the middle way is the joint name of two rejections plus one layer of preservation, and not a third metaphysical position. Tiantai reads the same verse as three truths (the truth of emptiness, the truth of the provisional, the truth of the middle) with the threefold contemplation in one mind contemplating all three together, in perfect fusion, within a single thought. Collating the two readings is the first of this part's main verdicts.

Begin with the form in which Tiantai quotes the verse, for there is information in that already. The Mohe zhiguan quotes it and preserves the text as it stands: "Whatever arises from causes and conditions, I declare to be empty; it is also a conventional designation; it is also the meaning of the middle way."¹ The Fahua xuanyi quotes the same verse in this form: "Whatever arises from causes and conditions is at once empty, at once provisional, at once the middle."² Four lines have been compressed into three "at once", and the reading by three truths is branded directly upon the quotation. That two ways of quoting stand side by side within one school shows that the three "at once" is the interpretation and the verse as it stands is the base text: Tiantai could itself tell which was the letter and which the sense.

Now to the gloss Zhiyi put upon the truth of the middle, which is the most important testimony in this case. The Fahua xuanyi, in the same passage, states it in so many words: "It is not that apart from emptiness and existence there is, besides, a separate middle way; that is why it is said to be not different." And Zhiyi enters his own estimate of the point: "This too agrees with Nāgārjuna's intent."² The middle way is not a further thing set up outside emptiness and existence. If that sentence holds, then Tiantai's truth of the middle is not a third domain of objects; the three truths in perfect fusion are a threefold statement of one and the same dependently arisen dharma; and the "at once" is a connective of exposition, not a proclamation of identity of substance. Put in this book's notation: the truth of emptiness answers to the rejecting face, the truth of the provisional to the preserving face, and the truth of the middle to the joint name of the two faces; the reading by three truths is the perfect-teaching variant of the reading by levels of assertion, isomorphic with the joint-name reading of Part 18. The Mohe zhiguan has a further sentence of self-attestation, where the threefold contemplation and the three wisdoms are pressed through to the end: "though three statements are made, it is in truth one inconceivable dharma."¹ Three statements and one dharma: that is precisely how a joint name talks.

The risk must be placed with the same fidelity. The Fahua xuanyi divides "the three truths held apart" from "the three truths in perfect fusion, which is the wonderful dharma":² held apart, the three truths stand each in its own place in sequence; in perfect fusion, the three "at once" run without obstruction. Zhiyi's ranking of perfect fusion as the wonderful was meant to keep the three truths from being read as three steps of a stair. But among the later masters there really were readings that enshrined the truth of the middle as an exclusive middle, a wonderful substance, and set up a domain of its own for it outside emptiness and existence; a truth of the middle of that kind is a D3-type claim, and it falls within the scope of Part 18 and must stand trial there. The draft verdict: at the legislator's own text the Tiantai reading is isomorphic with this book's, and the substantializing of the truth of the middle is a risk incurred by the later masters and not an obligation laid down by the original text. The evidence sheet, together with the final verdict, goes to Chapter 6.

References¶