Jizang

Life and Historical Context

Jizang (Chinese: 吉藏; 549–623) was the most influential philosopher of the Sanlun (Three Treatises) school, the primary Chinese form of Madhyamaka or Middle Way Buddhism. He lived during the politically fragmented but intellectually fertile period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the early Sui and Tang eras, a time in which Chinese Buddhists were actively systematizing and interpreting Indian Buddhist texts recently translated into Chinese.

Born in Xinjiang County in northern China, Jizang was of non-Han (often described as Sogdian or Central Asian) descent, a background that may have contributed to his role as an interpreter of Indian systems for a Chinese audience. Orphaned at an early age, he entered the Buddhist order as a novice and studied under the eminent Sanlun master Falang (507–581) at Xinhuang Monastery in Chang’an. Under Falang’s guidance, Jizang gained a reputation for extraordinary erudition in the Three Treatises—the Madhyamaka-śāstra, Dvādaśanikāya-śāstra, and Śata-śāstra—translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva.

After Falang’s death, Jizang was invited to teach in the south, eventually settling in Jiankang (modern Nanjing). There he taught at several important monasteries, including Jiaxiang Temple, with which his name later became closely associated. Patronized by members of the imperial house and aristocracy, he attracted many disciples and presided over public lectures that helped to spread Sanlun ideas throughout the Sinosphere.

Works and Doctrinal Agenda

Jizang was an extraordinarily prolific commentator. While the exact number of works attributed to him varies, several texts are widely accepted as authentic and central to his thought:

• Commentaries on the Three Treatises
  Jizang wrote extensive commentaries on each of the Three Treatises that defined the Sanlun school. These commentaries sought to clarify Nāgārjuna’s and his successors’ arguments for a Chinese readership and to defend Madhyamaka against rival interpretations, including those that read emptiness as a form of nihilism.

• Erdi yi (二諦義, Meaning of the Two Truths)
  This work expounds the doctrine of two truths—conventional and ultimate—seen as central to Madhyamaka. Jizang elaborates gradations of understanding, effectively turning the two truths into a pedagogical and hermeneutic tool for guiding practitioners through multiple levels of insight.

• Sanlun xuanyi (三論玄義, Profound Meaning of the Three Treatises)
  This text provides a systematic introduction to Sanlun doctrine, organizing the often terse and paradoxical Madhyamaka materials into a more accessible framework for Chinese students.

• Erdi zhang (二諦章, Treatise on the Two Truths) and related essays
  These shorter works further refine his views on language, concept formation, and the stratification of doctrinal teachings.

Across these writings, Jizang’s agenda was not simply exegetical. He aimed to establish Sanlun as a coherent Chinese school with:

1. A distinctive reading of emptiness,
2. A graded pedagogy of insight, and
3. A strategy for reconciling, relativizing, or critiquing other Buddhist schools (such as Tiantai, early Yogācāra, and various scriptural traditions) without falling into dogmatism.

Philosophical Themes and Methods

Emptiness and the Middle Way

At the core of Jizang’s philosophy is a nuanced interpretation of emptiness (śūnyatā). Following Nāgārjuna, he argued that all dharmas lack svabhāva (inherent nature). However, he was particularly concerned to avoid two misunderstandings:

1. Nihilism: the claim that nothing exists or matters at all.
2. Reification of emptiness: treating emptiness as a new metaphysical essence or absolute substance.

Jizang’s solution was a strongly relational and therapeutic view of emptiness. Doctrines, including emptiness, are expedient means to dissolve attachment to fixed positions. Once they have served their function, they too must be relinquished. This is often summarized (by later interpreters) as “emptying emptiness” or emptiness of emptiness.

In this sense, the Middle Way is not a single metaphysical thesis but the ongoing practice of refusing all extremes—existence vs. non-existence, identity vs. difference, permanence vs. annihilation. Jizang’s writings continually return to the idea that clinging to any determinate view, even an ostensibly “correct” one, obstructs wisdom.

Progressive Negation and Layered Interpretation

One of Jizang’s most distinctive contributions is his use of multi-level hermeneutics. He frequently presents teachings in stages, each negating or relativizing the previous:

• At the first level, one might affirm the reality of phenomena to counter a crude denial of moral causality.
• At a second level, one affirms their emptiness to counter essentialism.
• At a third, one denies even this emptiness as an absolute, to counter subtle attachment to the concept of emptiness.
• At a further level, all such positions are seen as context-bound expedients.

This method can be seen in his elaborations of the two truths into multiple “grades” or layers, each suited to a particular audience or doctrinal controversy. It also appears in his discussions of four levels of two truths or multiple “Middle Ways,” which reflect shifting standpoints rather than an ultimate hierarchy of doctrines.

Critics sometimes argue that such stratifications risk turning a fundamentally anti-essentialist philosophy into a subtle doctrinal system of its own. Supporters respond that Jizang’s explicit insistence on the provisional nature of every level guards against such reification and provides a flexible interpretive tool for diverse situations.

Language, Concept, and Liberation

Jizang treated language and conceptual thought as both indispensable and dangerous. On one hand, doctrines are formulated in words and concepts; without these, teaching and learning would be impossible. On the other, language tends to solidify fluid processes into things, encouraging attachment to views.

His strategy is often described as a form of deconstructive hermeneutics:

• He analyzes doctrinal claims in detail, showing how they depend on relative contrasts and assumptions.
• He then demonstrates the limitations and paradoxes of each position, pushing the reader toward a perspective that no longer clings to fixed conceptual markers.

This approach is closely tied to his understanding of prajñā (wisdom) as non-obstructive insight: a mode of awareness in which distinctions still function conventionally but are no longer taken as ultimately binding. Rather than erasing conventional discourse, Jizang emphasizes using it freely without bondage—what later East Asian Buddhists would call “non-obstruction” between emptiness and phenomena.

Influence and Reception

Jizang’s work effectively crystallized the Sanlun tradition in China, and his interpretations became normative for later East Asian Madhyamaka. Yet his legacy developed along several distinct lines:

• Sanlun School in China: As an institutional lineage, Sanlun did not survive long as an independent sect, overshadowed by Tiantai, Huayan, and later Chan. However, Jizang’s methods and doctrines deeply informed these schools’ own treatments of emptiness and doctrinal classification.

• Transmission to Korea and Japan: His commentaries and organizing concepts influenced Korean Samnon and Japanese Sanron traditions. In Japan, Sanron scholars such as Jizang’s later interpreters used his works as authoritative guides to Madhyamaka, though eventually these traditions were also absorbed by other schools.

• Engagement with Other Chinese Schools: Tiantai thinkers, especially Zhiyi and his successors, engaged closely with Sanlun ideas, sometimes adopting, sometimes criticizing Jizang’s approach. Debates centered on whether Sanlun’s emphasis on pervasive emptiness adequately accounted for the dynamic functioning of phenomena and the integrative schemas favored by Tiantai and Huayan.

• Modern Scholarship: Contemporary scholars see Jizang as a key figure in the Sinification of Madhyamaka, transforming Indian arguments into a system attuned to Chinese philosophical concerns about harmony, gradation, and practice. Some interpret his approach as an early form of philosophical “deconstruction,” although this comparison remains debated.

Overall, Jizang stands as a central figure in the history of East Asian Buddhist philosophy: a thinker who insisted that even the deepest doctrines must ultimately be let go, and that the Middle Way is best understood not as a settled dogma but as a disciplined refusal to rest in any fixed view—emptiness included.