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Added by: Tammo LossauAbstract:
The Chao Lun (ca. 400 CE) is the main philosophical work of the Chinese Buddhist monk Sēngzhào, a student of Kumārajīva who first translated major Buddhist philosophical works like those of Nāgārjuna into Chinese. Sēngzhào develops a metaphysical conception of time according to which time is not real. What instead exists are an array of entirely static worlds - "time slices" in modern parlance (Sēngzhào's views are an early example of a "B-theory" of time). Our selves are being moved from one world to the next, creating an illusion of progression and things like causation. For Sēngzhào, enlightenment can be found by simply remaining in the present, not moving on to the next state. Sēngzhào leans both on Buddhist and on Daoist influences, but also develops an epistemologically less radical view in chapter 3 that, unlike those of Nāgārjuna and Zhuangzi, cannot be associated with skepticism.
Comment: The book can be read in three sessions as a whole. It is also possible to read single chapters, especially chapter 1 in a course on the philosophy of time. For a better understanding of that chapter, it is helpful to understand Nāgārjuna's conception of Nirvana as an extratemporal state achieved through meditation - a resource for this can be the final two chapters of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
Sēngzhào. Chao Lun
1968, Liebenthal, W. Chao Lun - The Treatises of Seng-chao. Second edition. Hong Kong University Press.
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