Appendix I: Comparison with Yinshun’s Doctrinal Classification—Two Roads Back to the Original Concern¶

The preface acknowledged an intellectual lineage: this volume continues Yinshun’s classification into three systems, with a similar position but a different angle. Now that the main text is complete, that lineage requires a direct comparison. Where do his classification and this volume’s coincide? Where do they separate, and at what level does the root of their divergence lie? The comparison appears in an appendix because it changes none of the main text’s verdicts. It performs another task: allowing two systems of doctrinal classification to illuminate their own criteria through one another.

The framework of Yinshun’s classification

Yinshun divides Mahāyāna into three systems: emptiness of intrinsic nature and mere names—Madhyamaka; false imagination and Consciousness-Only—Yogācāra; and true permanence and Mind-Only—the tathāgatagarbha current.¹ He states their ranking clearly. Emptiness of intrinsic nature and mere names is Buddhism’s definitive meaning; false imagination and Consciousness-Only comes next; true permanence and Mind-Only stands farthest from the original meaning of dependent arising and is a transformation of Buddhism within the current of Brahmanization. Esoteric Mahāyāna continues the late current of true permanence, identifies celestial deity and buddha, and represents Brahmanization’s extreme. His criterion is doctrinal: dependent arising and emptiness of intrinsic nature constitute Buddhism’s fundamental profound meaning, and each system is measured by its fit. One sentence in the preface to Buddhism in India summarizes the classification’s program: “Establish the foundation in the simplicity of fundamental Buddhism; widely expound the practice and understanding of middle-period Buddhism—while guarding against opportunities for Brahmanization; adopt what is sound in late-period Buddhism; perhaps then Buddhism can be revived and the Buddha’s original concern fully expressed.”²

Three alliances

Record the alliances first, because they are substantive. First, both choose the early period as baseline. Yinshun’s “establish the foundation in the simplicity of fundamental Buddhism” and this volume’s early Buddhist baseline (Introduction, Chapter 1) make the same methodological decision: doctrinal classification requires a point of reference not supplied through the self-reports of the parties being classified. Second, the judgments of true permanence nearly coincide. Yinshun diagnoses Brahmanization: tathāgatagarbha and buddha-nature return toward a brahmanical self. This volume diagnoses advance payment and the reopening of the door: tathāgatagarbha makes an endpoint awaiting proof into a premise and pushes open the door to permanence, bliss, self, and purity barred by the three characteristics (the tathāgatagarbha part). One verdict comes from doctrinal history, the other from soteriology, and both point to the same lesion. They corroborate one another. The historical return explains the conceptual source of advance payment; structural soteriological analysis explains why Brahmanization is more than a question of genealogy. Third, both reject harmonizing absorption. Yinshun’s classification does not blur everything through “all are the Buddha’s words, and every gate is supreme.” This volume likewise explicitly refuses neutrality (Preface). Once doctrinal classification is undertaken, responsibility for judgment must be acknowledged.

One divergence: Madhyamaka’s position

The divergence concentrates at one point: where does Madhyamaka sit in the classification? Yinshun places it at the summit. Emptiness of intrinsic nature and mere names is definitive; Madhyamaka is dependent arising’s ultimate elucidation, as argued in The Contemporary Discussion of Madhyamaka. He goes further in Investigations into the Origins of the Study of Emptiness, tracing emptiness back to the Āgamas. Emptiness was already an old contemplative meaning there—formations and the world are empty—and Nāgārjuna’s thought rationally unfolds the Āgamas’ profound meaning rather than introducing a later innovation.³ This volume places Madhyamaka elsewhere: the first station in the trajectory of the five systems and suffering’s first migration (Madhyamaka Part II, Chapters 1 and 2).

The decisive point is this: the historical tracing in Investigations into the Origins of the Study of Emptiness can be entirely correct without refuting the migration thesis. The Āgamas contain emptiness; that is indisputable. Yet their emptiness belongs to contemplation. It is adjectival and therapeutic—observe the five aggregates as foam and bubbles, contemplate emptiness to leave greed. Madhyamaka emptiness is a proposition established by argument, a universal claim that all phenomena lack intrinsic nature. From contemplative use to the establishment of a thesis, the word is continuous while the operating surface changes. The former leaves greed through observation and exerts force upon feeling and appropriation; the latter uses a view to dismantle views and exerts force at the cognitive level. Genealogical research proves that both endpoints are genuinely connected; “connected endpoints” are exactly what the word “migration” presupposes. Without continuity nothing could migrate. Yinshun’s philology therefore marks the starting and ending points of this volume’s structural judgment.

The root of divergence appears at the level of criterion. Yinshun asks doctrinal fit: whichever system remains most faithful to the profound meaning of dependent arising is definitive. This volume asks soteriological efficacy: at which level does diagnosis strike, can the mechanism guide action, and on what basis is verification certified? The criteria measure different things, so the classifications do not directly conflict. This volume must nevertheless explain why it does not adopt Yinshun’s criterion. Making doctrinal fit the highest criterion silently presupposes that “the most correct view necessarily provides the best soteriology,” precisely Madhyamaka’s central assumption—epistemological optimism, analyzed in Madhyamaka Part I, Chapter 1. That assumption is an object tested by this volume’s five questions and cannot serve in advance as their standard. Yinshun’s placement of Madhyamaka at the summit simultaneously adopts Madhyamaka’s central assumption as the foundation of doctrinal classification. This volume bypasses the step, at the cost of having to ask the cumbersome questions of mechanism and verification system by system.

Three systems and five systems

The taxonomic difference follows from the criteria. Yinshun’s three systems are doctrinal genealogies, grouped according to how they interpret dependent arising and emptiness of intrinsic nature. Vajrayāna belongs to the late current of true permanence; Pure Land is dispersed among expedients of easy practice. This volume’s five systems classify proposals for liberation by their mechanisms for moving “from suffering to suffering’s cessation.” Vajrayāna forms an independent system because of rehearsal; Pure Land becomes a structural exception because it leaves soteriology. Neither classification replaces the other. Doctrinal genealogy reveals intellectual descent but cannot produce the two rows “object and mechanism of attachment” in this volume’s five-system table. Classification by proposals for liberation measures mechanism and verification but cannot establish the layers of doctrinal history. One related point: Yinshun’s account of Pure Land likewise decides according to meaning rather than sectarian sentiment. His New Treatise on the Pure Land therefore provoked fierce opposition within the tradition.⁴ On the principle that “doctrinal classification must accept responsibility for judgment,” he personally paid the cost.

Conclusion: one original concern

Yinshun’s declaration ends with “fully expressing the Buddha’s original concern”; the conclusion of Part VII of this volume is titled “Returning to the Original Concern.” The shared phrase is no coincidence but the common endpoint of two systems of classification: the original care of the Buddha’s teaching. Their roads back differ. Yinshun returns through doctrinal genealogy, using the labor of doctrinal history to distinguish which layer lies closest to the original meaning. This volume returns through mechanism and verification, using soteriological criteria to ask which system still answers “how does suffering cease?” If correct view alone warrants liberation, Yinshun’s classification is complete. If mechanism and verification still stand between view and cessation, the more cumbersome road cannot be omitted. This volume follows the latter, and this comparison makes one point clear: those who travel the latter road owe the former a genuine respect. This appendix has stated why.

References¶