of ultimate reality, human nature, and religious awareness.
Likewise, the empty apprehension of oneself that is best
manifested in compassion is compared with mystical disci-
plines that require the love of others found in various reli-
gious traditions. As a fundamental and multidimensional
concept, emptiness continues to engage reflective people
who pursue the tantalizing question of the nature of things.
SEE ALSO A ̄laya-vijña ̄na; Bodhisattva Path; Buddhism,
Schools of, article on Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism;
Buddhist Philosophy; Chan; Dharma, article on Buddhist
Dharma and Dharmas; Huayan; Ma ̄dhyamika; Na ̄ga ̄rjuna;
Nirva ̄n:a; Numbers, article on Binary Symbolism; Prajña ̄;
Prat ̄ıtya-samutpa ̄da; Soteriology; Tatha ̄gata-garbha; Tiantai;
Yoga ̄ca ̄ra; Zen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A good historical introduction to the development of the “teach-
ing of emptiness” in India is Edward Conze’s Buddhist
Thought in India (London, 1962); his translations of the
Prajñapa ̄ramita ̄ Su ̄ tras, especially The Perfection of Wisdom in
Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary (Bolinas, Calif.,
1973), are basic for understanding how the term “empty”
functions in communicating the Bodhisattva Path. A stan-
dard philosophical analysis of Indian Ma ̄dhyamika thought,
emphasizing the logical dialectic, is T. R. V. Murti’s The
Central Philosophy of Buddhism, 2d ed. (London, 1970), and
a useful linguistic and philosophical analysis of the transla-
tion of the Indian Madhyamika into Chinese thought is
found in Richard H. Robinson’s Early Ma ̄dhyamika in India
and China (Madison, Wis., 1967). In my book Emptiness: A
Study in Religious Meaning (New York, 1967) I compare the
religious language structure of the term “emptiness” and the
Indian Ma ̄dhyamika dialectic with other kinds of religious
expression in order to delineate their religious meaning. A
collection of essays edited by Minoru Kiyota, Maha ̄ya ̄na
Buddhist Meditation (Honolulu, 1978), contains several ex-
cellent essays on the meaning of emptiness in Buddhist theo-
ry and practice in India, Tibet, China, and Japan. An intro-
duction to the understanding of emptiness within the
meditative practice of Tibetan Buddhism is Practice and The-
ory of Tibetan Buddhism, edited and translated by Geshe
Lhundup Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins (New York, 1976). A
lengthy explanation of the realization of emptiness according
to the texts and oral traditions of the Pra ̄san ̇ gika-
Ma ̄dhyamika tradition in Tibet is Jeffrey Hopkins’s Medita-
tion on Emptiness (London, 1983). Two different and com-
plementary interpretations of emptiness in Huayan Bud-
dhism are found in Garma C. C. Zhang’s The Buddhist
Teaching of Totality (University Park, Pa., 1971) and Francis
H. Cook’s Huayan Buddhism (University Park, Pa., 1977).
A classic introduction to the Zen negation of mental images
is D. T. Suzuki’s The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind (London,
1949), which is also found in an abbreviated form in Zen
Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki, edited by Wil-
liam Barrett (Garden City, N.Y., 1956). Nishitani Keiji’s Re-
ligion and Nothingness, translated by Jan van Bragf (Berkeley,
Calif., 1982), is a prime example of a contemporary philo-
sophical use of the notion of emptiness to explore the deepest
awareness of existence.
New Sources
Burton, D. Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nagarjuna’s
Philosophy. Richmond, U.K., 1999.
Hopkins, J. Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism: Dy-
namic Responses to Dzong-ka-ba’s The Essence of Eloquence: I.
Berkeley, 1999.
Hopkins, J., and E. Napper. Meditation on Emptiness. Boston,
1996.
Ichimura, S. Buddhist Critical Spirituality: Prajña and Sunyata.
Delhi, 2001.
King, R. Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist
Thought. Washington, D.C., 1999.
Napper, E. Dependent-Arising and Emptiness: A Tibetan Buddhist
Interpretation of Madhyamika Philosophy Emphasizing the
Compatibility of Emptiness and Conventional Phenomena.
Boston, 2003.
Viévard, L. Vacuité (Sunyata) et Compassion (Karuna) dans le
Bouddhisme Madhyamaka. Paris, 2002.
Williams, P., and A. Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Intro-
duction to the Indian Tradition. New York, 2000.
FREDERICK J. STRENG (1987)
Revised BibliographySUPERNATURAL, THE. Mysterious occurrences
and beings that habitually or occasionally impinge upon
one’s everyday experience are called “supernatural.” It is
commonly said that belief in the supernatural characterizes
all religions and that belief in the supernatural wanes in mod-
ern societies.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOTION. The term su-
pernatural was given wide currency by Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274) and the Scholastics, but it had numerous ante-
cedents in the idiom of the Hellenistic thinkers and church
fathers. Neoplatonists in particular accumulated superlatives
to speak of the realm of the divine: It was above the highest
heaven, beyond the world, and even beyond being. Chris-
tians spoke of God as being above nature: He had not grown
out of anything but was eternally self-subsistent. They also
spoke of Christ as bringing to humankind benefits that were
above nature, that is, benefits that were beyond what human
beings could reach with their own powers. This link between
grace and the supernatural became firmly entrenched in
scholastic theology. Thomas taught that in the Fall humanity
was hurt in its very nature (that is, weakened as a being) and
lost its supernatural gifts, especially its access to the vision
of God. God, according to Thomas, in his grace gratuitously
heals the wounds (and thus restores to humans what natural-
ly belongs to them) and reopens humanity’s path to his su-
pernatural end, thus restoring access to the added bliss of life
with God. This theology expresses a constant theme in the
Christian faith: The natural and the supernatural are at odds;
the sacred and the profane are estranged. God, who is quite
separate and distinct from the world, is not responsible for
this state of affairs, and his intention is to rectify it. Nature
and supernature will, in time, be reconciled.8860 SUPERNATURAL, THE