Foundations of T'ien T'ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truth Theory in Chinese Buddhism
Häftad bok. Asian Humanities. 1989. 399 sidor.
Mycket gott skick. The first comprehensive study in English of the teaching of the threefold truth, perhaps the single most important doctrine in T'ien-t'ai Buddhism, also including a translation of Chih-i's Fa hua hsuan i. The T`ien-t`ai school, or Tendai as it is known in Japan, was one of the major Chinese Buddhist schools and the key to its philosophy was Chih-I`s concept of the threefold truth - emptiness, conventional existence, and the middle. Chih-I (538-597) was one of the greatest Chinese Buddhist philosophers, and the earliest to successfully synthesize the various aspects of Buddhism in his time into a truly Chinese school. The central insight around which all else revolved was the threefold truth, which provided the principle for bringing together the disparate elements of Buddhism into a cohesive system of teaching and practice. The background to this was an extension of the Madhyamika idea of the two truths - mundane worldly truth and supreme truth. "The development of Madhyamika in China beyond the classic two truths theory of Nagarjuna is an important part of that tradition`s history.
