Nargarjunas Twelve Gate Treatise: translated, with Introductory Essays, Comments, and Notes by Hsueh-

·期刊原文

Nargarjuna's Twelve Gate Treatise: translated, with Introductory Essays, Comments, and Notes by Hsueh-

Li Cheng

Alan Fox

Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1985.12

PP. 449-452

Copyright @1985 by Dialogue Publishing Company

Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

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P.449

The Shih Erh Men Lun, or Twelve Gate Treatise, attributed
to Nagarjuna, is an important piece of the puzzle which
constitutes the development and evolution of Chinese
Buddhism. As Dr. Cheng points out, the style and approach of
the text run extremely parallel to the more popular
Mulamadhyamaka Karika, or Doctrine of the Middle Way (Chung
Lun). As the latter is generally recognized to be from the
pen of the pivotal Buddhism thinker Nagarjuna, there is no
reason to doubt that the Twelve Gate is also a product of
this important figure. However, while the similarities
between the two texts are striking, the differences are also
significant.
In Chapter 3 of his introductory essay, Cheng discusses
four major distinctions between the Twelve Gate and the Chung
Lun, which justify the former's individual importance as one
of the three central texts of the San Lun or 'Three Doctrine"
School, the Chinese counterpart of the original Indian
Madhyamika School.
The first is that the Twelve Gate serves as a concise
crystallization of the thought of Nagarjuna as expressed in
the Chung Lun. Secondly, while the Chung Lun was written
primarily for monks of the Hinayana schools of Buddhism, the
Twelve Gate was written to be understood by Buddhists and
non-Buddhists alike. Thirdly, the Twelve Gate does deal with
some issues not covered in the Chung Lun, such as the notion
of the Creator; and finally that the Twelve Gate goes into
more detail on certain topics which are not completely or
clearly handled in the Chung Lun.
As one of the three central texts, along with the Chung
Lun (also by Nagarjuna), and the Hundred Treatise (by
Aryadeva), recognized by the San Lun school, the text is
significant for its role as a transitional link between
Indian Madhyamika thought and Chinese Mahayana thought in
general. Translated by Kumarajiva from the no longer extant
Sanskrit text, the text represents a period of scholarship in
which Buddhist ideas came to be filtered

P.450

through traditional Chinese terminology, arriving at an
expression of Buddhist thought which, although not altogether
consistently faithful to the Sanskrit, nevertheless provided
roots for an indigenous, particularly Chinese approach to
Buddhism in general, and Madhyamika's negative dialectics in
particular.
Aside from the historical importance of the text, it also
deals with several key concepts in Mahayana Buddhism. Central
to the exposition is the idea of Emptiness. Dr. Cheng
outlines four understandings of Emptiness that he finds
within the San Lun tradition: a) the absence of definite
nature, characteristic, or function;b) that concepts are
unintelligible by nature; c) a means by which the notion of
"things" is devalued;and d) a soteriorogical or pedagogical
device (upaya). Basically, in order to avoid the extreme
positions of Being and Non-Being, the Madhyamaka follows the
Middle Way of Emptiness, which is non-propositional. As Cheng
quotes the great San Lun master Chi Tsang, "Right View is
called 'Right' because all views have been abandoned. if it
were accepted as a view, it would become a wrong view which
ought to be rejected." (p.21) When, on the same page Cheng
adds, 'Wisdom is not the attainment of a theory, but an
absence of it," he could almost be quoting from the Lao Tzu,
chapter 48:

In the pursuit of learning, one knows more every day, in
the pursuit of the way one does less every day. One does
less and less until one does nothing at all, and when one
does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone.(1)

Here we can again see clearly how fertile a garden was
already present in China to receive the seeds planted by the
early Buddhist pioneers from India, resulting in a distinctly
Chinese variety of Buddhist thought.
Some confusion does seem to arise from consideration of
several specific aspects of the translation itself. Most
significantly, Dr. Cheng chooses to render you wei(a) and wu
wei(b) as "created things" and "noncreated things". In
keeping with the spirit of Buddhist philosophy and its
emphasis on Causality, these terms would probably be more
correctly translated as equivalent to the Sanskrit samskrta
and asamskrta, meaning "conditioned things" and
"unconditioned things", retaining the implications of
causality present in the Sankrit term.

P.451

In addition, Dr. Cheng uses the English "formed" when
translating the Chinese cheng(c) when Nagarjuna's emphasis on
the propositional nature of truth might rather suggest the
word "established", for its connotations of intention.
Another element of the translation which also proves
confusing is when the two Chinese terms Wo (d) (atman, self)
and Shen(e) (spirit, soul) are both rendered as "Self". The
text here is very difficult to penetrate, and the arbitrary
and inconsistent use of the word "Self' serves only to
further confuse the issue.
Moreover, Cheng seems to miss the point when he
translates Xiang Wei(f) on page 60 as "opposite" and on
page 69 as "contradictory". The distinction he fails to
grasp is between contradiction and opposition. Whereas
contradiction implies a relationship between two terms A and
B such that B=~A, allowing for no third possibility,
opposition allows for a third term C such that C is also
equal to A. For example, the two terms "human" and
"non-human" are contradictory: there is nothing which fits in
both categories, and everything fits into one category or the
other. On the other hand, the terms "human" and "dog" are
merely contradictory, because we can posit a third term "cat"
which is also not human, but which is furthermore not "dog".
So we see that contradiction is a more encompassing concept
than opposition, a distinction which is disregarded in Dr.
Cheng's translation.
In general, the problem with the translation seems to be
its lack of emphasis on this linguistic, conventional aspect
of Nagarjuna's thought. Since Nirvana, for Nagarjuna, is
prapanca pasasama, the annihilation of the manifold of named
things, the nature of so-called "samsara" is linguistic/
conceptual, and therefore empty of meaning. This emphasis on
the dispositional as opposed to the propositional nature of
truth is not easily found in Dr. Cheng's translation.
However, the work, which includes several splendid glossaries
of Chinese and Sanskrit terms, is generally extremely useful
and fills a critical deficiency in the exposure to the West
of pivotal Buddhist texts.

NOTES

1. from D.C. Lau's translation of the Tao Te Ching,
Penguin Books, NY. 1963.

P.452

CHINESE GLOSSARY

a:Τ b:礚 c:Θ d:и e: f:笻