enth and eighth centuries CE, where it was known as the
Hosso ̄ school. The Chinese Maha ̄ya ̄na Buddhists, during the
fifth and sixth centuries, wrestled with the cognition of emp-
tiness first in relation to Neo-Daoist notions of nothingness
(kong), which implied that emptiness is a primary source
from which all phenomenal forms arise. In the flowering of
Buddhism in China (from the sixth century CE through the
first half of the ninth century CE), Buddhist scholars under-
stood emptiness within the context of the broadbased Chi-
nese philosophical problem of the relation between the sub-
stance or foundation (ti) of everything and its function or
appearance (yong) in the changing world. Within the Sanlun
school, contrasting understandings of this relation between
substance and function are found in the writings of Sengzhao
(374–414 CE) and of Jizang (549–623 CE). Sengzhao as-
sumed the identity of substance and function, affirming that
emptiness is the foundation of all things that appear through
dependent co-arising and is the nature of insight that recog-
nizes the illusory (empty) character of phenomena; thereby
the enlightened person abides in non-abiding (emptiness)
and moves (in an empty manner) in conditioned existence.
Jizang, on the contrary, held that substance and function
need to be clearly distinguished, and emphasized that the
highest truth is manifest when the conventional truth is ne-
gated. Emptiness is basically the dialectical negation of both
being and nonbeing and of both affirmation and negation.
The highest truth is known in conditioned existence when
names and characteristics of things are negated or transcend-
ed in nonphenomenal awareness. During the sixth and sev-
enth centuries CE, the Chinese Buddhists synthesized the no-
tions of emptiness, multiple kinds of truth (reality), and
dependent co-arising within a cosmological context in devel-
oping two distinctly Chinese schools or teaching lineages.
These were Tiantai, formulated by Zhiyi (531–597 CE), and
Huayan, systematized by Fazang (643–712 CE). Both are at-
tempts to relate substance and function in one harmonious
and interrelated matrix of reality. Chih-i held that there was
a threefold truth—the empty (kong), the provisional (jia),
and the middle (zhong)—and that these three parts are recip-
rocally identical and simultaneous. Rather than view the
truths in a lower-to-higher order, he presented them as dif-
ferent modalities of one universal consciousness. While they
appear to be separate processes, he maintained, in their deep-
est character of interrelatedness they are one undifferentiated
matrix whose principle is beyond dualistic or linear compre-
hension. Fazang held that the “nature of things” was empti-
ness, by which he meant the harmonious interdependent co-
arising of particular, concrete phenomena. Such a universe
is “the body of the tatha ̄gata.” Rather than devaluing particu-
lar phenomena because they are conditioned (non-eternal),
his system insists that each has supreme value in its interre-
latedness to everything else. Fazang held that the three na-
tures (levels of awareness) proposed by Yoga ̄ca ̄ra teachers are
intrinsically interrelated, and together form a whole, because
they are all empty. The most profound nature is the incom-
prehensible “suchness” (formless emptiness), which is also
the emptiness of the interrelatedness of conditioned exis-
tence (dependent co-origination); this, in turn, is also the
non-self-substantial (empty) nature of illusory mental con-
struction. To know the intrinsic emptiness (“suchness”) of
all forms is the highest awareness. However, most people do
not see the complex emptiness of everything. At a lower level
of awareness, one can also say that the evil and pain experi-
enced in the world represent only the potential for realizing
incomprehensible “suchness” and that the tatha ̄gata-garbha
causes the transformation of enlightenment in particular
minds and moments of consciousness. Nevertheless, in reali-
ty, the world is an inconceivably vast expression of emptiness
that is the glorious manifestation of unchanging fullness, an
overbrimming potential of “openness.” Another very impor-
tant expression of emptiness is found in the “Meditation
school,” which is known as Chan in China and Zen in Japan.
The focus in Chan communities has been, and is, on “the
practice of emptiness.” The basic negation of concepts as in-
adequate communication of “the way things are” and an em-
phasis on quieting the mind and extending the empty mode
of perception into daily life continue the themes found in
the Bodhisattva Path as portrayed in the Prajña ̄pa ̄ramita ̄
Su ̄ tras. Zen masters have commented on these discourses as
well as on the central Ma ̄dhyamika and Yoga ̄ca ̄ra treatises
and on the poems and comments of previous Zen masters.
Zen is the practice of manifesting “the Buddha mind,” which
is also “no-mind.” The realization of “no-mind” is the loss
of attachment to conventional perceptions, theoretical con-
cepts about reality, and self-images. In that state of aware-
ness, a Zen practitioner is directly confronted with empti-
ness—not as an idea or as the denial of an idea but as “what
is at that moment.” Many Zen masters have emphasized that
the notion of emptiness is misleading or useless when it is
used to describe a distinctive quality of experience. At the
same time, “emptiness” is prominently used as a focus of
meditation, in which the meditator is called on to “become
emptiness.” Basically, it is a mental tool to dissipate attach-
ment to images and concepts. In the contemporary discus-
sion of cross-cultural philosophy and interfaith dialogue in
which Buddhists are involved, the notion of emptiness and
the negating dialectic are important points of engagement
with other philosophies. The empty perception of “the way
things are” has been compared with the critique of reason
given by the eighteenth-century German philosopher Im-
manuel Kant and with the distorting character of language
described by the twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. The claim that all
things are dependently co-originated is compared with simi-
lar concepts in “process philosophy,” as expounded, for ex-
ample, in Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. The
notion of emptiness forms a central concern in the philo-
sophical thought of the contemporary Japanese philosophers
Nishida Kitaro ̄ and Nishitani Keiji as they discuss the nature
of goodness, existence, and selfhood in a cross-cultural philo-
sophical context. In interfaith dialogue, emptiness is a major
topic in the Christian and Buddhist discussion of the natureS ́U ̄NYAM AND S ́U ̄NYATA ̄ 8859