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Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism
Tiantai Buddhism emerged from an idiosyncratic and innovative interpretation of the Lotus Sutra to become one of the most complete, systematic, and influential schools of philosophical thought developed in East Asia. Brook A. Ziporyn puts Tiantai into dialogue with modern philosophical concerns to draw out its implications for ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Ziporyn explains Tiantai's unlikely roots, its positions of extreme affirmation and rejection, its religious skepticism and embrace of religious myth, and its view of human consciousness. Ziporyn reveals the profound insights of Tiantai Buddhism while stimulating philosophical reflection on its unexpected effects.
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2016
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March 15, 2024
Want radical? Deconstruction has got nothing on Tiantai Buddhism. Right upfront in this book we are warned: the philosophy of the Chinese Tiantai school can be shocking, wildly perplexing, conflicting and, at times, an affront to common sense, even to those who are seasoned students of the mind-twisting paradoxes of Buddhist thought. Tiantai (pinyin pronunciation “tee-en tai”, 天台) has been criticized for being at odds not only with basic Buddhism but also with general religion and ethics. This is not philosophy for the faint of heart but rather wild, challenging, sweeping, yet also profoundly meaningful philosophy.
Ziporyn’s presentation of Tiantai provides us with nearly 300 pages of spell-binding philosophical insights on the nature of the human condition, chock full of Indian-cum-Chinese wisdom which, in Ziporyn’s expert hands, is deftly and at times humorously explained using contemporary language and cultural references. It’s a shame there aren’t already 500 reviews of this book here on Goodreads—Ziporyn’s work deserves a much larger readership and wider exposure. As a long-time student of Buddhism and East Asian philosophy, I spent the summer of 2016 slowly digesting this book soon after it came out. I continue to go back to it in order to more completely absorb its many insights. Only now do I feel ready to write this review.
As you’ve probably already guessed, Emptiness and Omnipresence is not an introductory book on Buddhism but rather best described as an introductory book on Chinese Tiantai for those already familiar with Buddhism. People new to Buddhism would be easily lost here. If you’re inclined towards original Hinayana-Theravada Buddhism, you best go elsewhere—this is Mahayana emptiness on steroids. If you’re a Zen or Tibetan Buddhist practitioner interested in learning about a different form of East Asian Buddhism, then this is a great place to start. If you’re interested in cross-cultural philosophy, you’ll learn how Tiantai is the distinctive synthesis of two very different cultural systems of thought: a) indigenous Chinese philosophy and b) Indian Mahayana Buddhism as read from one primary text, the Lotus Sutra. The Tiantai school is,
the most rigorous theoretical edifice in all of East Asian intellectual history, using modes of argumentation and praxis that are derived squarely from Indian Buddhism but in the service of ideals and metaphysical conclusions that are rooted deeply in the [Chinese] indigenous philosophical traditions. The result is a comprehensive system of thought that is utterly new, rarely understood, and, as it happens, still quite unique and unduplicated fifteen centuries later (preface pp. ix-x).
Author Brook Ziporyn, professor of Chinese religion, philosophy, and comparative thought at the University of Chicago, notes in the preface that Tiantai Buddhism is of particular interest to contemporary Westerners in that it is a rare example in world history when two radically different cultural systems of thought encountered each other and entered into a prolonged reconciliation and synthesis of their differences. It is of interest to us in this regard because of how we find ourselves in a similar situation wherein Western thought, struggling from decades of its own internal existential crisis, is confronted with increasing challenges from Asian cultural systems. The Tiantai synthesis of Chinese and Indian Buddhist philosophical systems stands as a model for the current Asian-Western encounter. The opportunities for cross-cultural fertilization are staggering as the postmodern West and the nondual East gradually interpenetrate.
Now to the contents:
On my reading, the book can be divided into three parts having to do with the consequences of adopting the philosophy of emptiness: 1) Chapters 1 to 4 deal with basic Mahayana Buddhist thought ending with the emptiness of space—of things and of states; 2) Chapters 5-7 deal with the Lotus Sutra and its unique teaching of the emptiness of time, past and future; 3) Chapters 8-10 present the Tiantai synthesis in the doctrine of the Three Truths: emptiness, provisional positing, and the center (aka: emptiness, dependent arising, and nonduality). The third truth of Tiantai, the Center (pinyin zhong, 中), is thoroughly Chinese and a beautiful expansion of the Mahayana Two Truths doctrine.
Once again (for the second time), I am returning to edit this section of my review as my past two attempts to describe the Tiantai meaning of the word in the title omnipresence have been inaccurate. Before I described omnipresence as synonymous with the idea of Buddhanature, as a kind of “nondual presence” in contrast to “nondual absence” or emptiness, the two being the primary nondual dialectic of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. This dialectic notwithstanding, the Tiantai meaning of omnipresence represents the furthest possible reaches of the philosophy of emptiness and dependent origination as aided by the Tiantai concept of the center.
In relation to all phenomena, all possible coherences, any determinate something, omnipresence means all is present in each; each is present in all. Each is the center, the basis for all others. Each is all others in disguise. Another way to describe the view of omnipresence is that each subsumes all others; not reflects, as in the Indra’s Net of Huayen Buddhism, but subsumes, pervades, or entails. A synonym for omnipresence is thus interpervasion or intersubsumption, the most radical holism possible but without being fundamentalist holism. Dependent arising means each arises as all which means, each subsumes all and all subsumes each; each pervades all and all pervades each… this “reverse asness” as Ziporyn calls it, is emptiness as dependent arising in full completion. Thus omnipresence or intersubsumption is considered the perfect or most complete teaching in the Tiantai system.
The intro and the first four chapters present basic Buddhist thought from the Four Noble Truths, to prajnaparamita and Madhyamaka, up to Buddha-Nature.
Chapters 1-2: The first two chapters examine original Buddhism’s approach to suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana). Chapter one examines the paradox at the heart of original Buddhism—the desire to end suffering. By employing the parables of the Raft and the Arrow, chapter two shows how Buddhism leads to the doctrine of the Two Truths, conventional and ultimate truth. Chapter two begins with the enticing question: Does the end of suffering begin? These first two chapters are excellent summaries of the basic tenets of Buddhism.
Chapters 3-4: Chapters three and four introduce the central Mahayana concept of emptiness and how it expands the original Two Truths of early Buddhism. Chapter four adds the further development of emptiness in the concept of Buddha-Nature. Together, chapters three and four deconstruct our standard ideas of “things” and “states” in “space” (states as states of affairs, moments).
Chapter three is a fascinating examination of the exceedingly common idea of “a thing” which, in this explanation, lies at the heart of our samsaric confusion—we are unliberated because of how we think of “things”. Emptiness shows that our standard view that things persist through time, possess characteristics, have definite borders, or exist in and of themselves is deeply mistaken. The Two Truths model of Mahayana Buddhism is a way to “wean ourselves from this type of default ‘thing-thinking’ based on attachment, which inevitably leads to suffering” (p38). After a brief explanation of the concepts of emptiness and its corollary dependent origination, Ziporyn presents an excellent summary of six approaches to emptiness in relation to conventional ideas of what things are: 1-The whole/part approach, 2-The cause/effect approach, 3-The thing/characteristic approach, 4-The language approach, 5-Emptiness as the self-overcoming of both holism and reductionism, 6-The this/that approach.
Here Ziporyn also introduces another way to understand the Mahayana concept of emptiness in what he terms ontological ambiguity. This simply means that since all things arise only due to causes and conditions, no thing (no state, condition, experience, element, no phenomenon) can ever exist independently, definitively, as-it-is-of-itself-apart-from-everything-else. No thing has inherent is-ness (in Sanskrit, svabhava). This is the meaning of pratitya-sammutpada, the Buddhist doctrine of dependent arising. Since no thing can exist in isolation as itself alone, “whatever you are seeing, touching, thinking, or feeling right now got there and to the way it is because of something else.” Something else is always necessarily involved in whatever you have before you now. Chapter four expands on chapter three and contains an extended analysis of our commonsense notions of space which, in Ziporyn’s hands, are as mind-bendingly weird as anything in modern physics.
Chapters 5-6-7: Chapters five through seven introduce the Tiantai interpretation of the Lotus Sutra which focus on its unique teaching of the emptiness of time, of past and future, and the consequences thereof. By applying the previous analysis of the emptiness of things, Ziporyn shows how the Lotus radically reframes the doctrine of transmigration and the idea of rebirth through infinite lifetimes to show that all beings are on a path to Buddhahood—all beings are “buddhas in the making” over the course of infinite lifetimes. Ziporyn’s story of The Dolphin School is a beautiful illustration of the themes in chapter five. Chapter six presents new perspectives on the Middle Way offered by the parables in the Lotus Sutra, perspectives that constitute much of Tiantai philosophy. Chapter seven describes how “The Lotus Sutra provides a template with which to rethink how holders of one view can regard holders of another view. It is an idea about ideas and about what it means for different ideas to ‘contradict’ one another, or to ‘be included’ in a larger idea, or ‘be versions of’ or ‘extensions of’ one another” (p118). The latter part of this long chapter gets rather bogged down in my view. Much of chapter seven’s discussion of the interpervasion of views revolves around the meaning of Mahayana idea of “the One Vehicle.”
Chapters 8-9-10: Chapter eight presents the meat of Tiantai philosophy in the doctrine of the Three Truths. Ziporyn employs the Chinese philosophical concept of “coherence” (pinyin li, 理) and shows how it can be used to characterize any phenomena as a “local coherence,” an instance of dependent arising, but also emptiness as “global incoherence” which is another way of saying no one (local) context of meaning/truth satisfies all (global) contexts of meaning/truth. Local coherence is conventional truth. Global incoherence is ultimate truth. The third truth that links the Two Truths of (ultimate) emptiness and (conventional) dependent arising is the (nondual) Center. All phenomena arise as all three: ultimate, conventional, nondual (Ziporyn’s summary of these ideas is on p156-157). Chapter eight is so chock full of nondual insights that you’ll just have to read it yourself!
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Chapter nine presents a number of Tiantai techniques and practices having to do with meditation and contemplation. I’ve yet to mention the scholar-sage responsible for establishing the Tiantai view – Zhiyi, (智顗, pronounced “Juh-yee”) the illustrious founder who lived in the mid- to late 6th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhiyi). Zhiyi’s voluminous works were substantially supplemented by two subsequent Tiantai scholars, Zhanran (8th c.) and Zhili (late 10th c.). Nine is a very valuable chapter in that Ziporyn takes a number of these practices and walks us through performing them in the context of what has been presented. It makes what would be a book of abstract philosophy into a practical handbook of practices.
Chapter ten sets out to demonstrate the utility of Tiantai ethics by applying its insights to what is arguably the most complex and problematic scenario of ethical violations in human history, Hitler and the Holocaust. Ziporyn, who is from Jewish background, is well aware of the perils of so doing and addresses these upfront. Can Tiantai perspectives possibly shine any new light onto the long and labored history of Holocaust studies? My sense is that most people will not think so after reading this particularly since “getting” nondual Tiantai thought takes so much time and effort in the first place. Nevertheless, to the extent Tiantai philosophy is a fundamentally novel approach and so thoroughly non-Western, it has the potential to bring some new understandings to this great human tragedy. Judge for yourself.
Ziporyn ends with an epilogue, a lovely summary of Tiantai principles and practices as they apply to our contemporary lives. How are we to live as practitioners of Tiantai principles? It starts by quoting Zhiyi’s One-Practice Samadhi, a gorgeous pointing-out instruction that has the effect of a long and serene breathing-out into the knowing that everything is alright, completely and utterly the way it should be. Yet this is not traditional Tiantai but Tiantai Buddhism for current times brought to us through Ziporyn’s skillful presentation.
I could say a thousand more things about this book. If you are an open-minded student of Buddhism, by all means treat yourself to Ziporyn’s works.
Posted May 28, 2019
Edited: May 31, 2019
Shortened (due to Goodreads' new length limitation), October 16, 2019
Edited: April 22, 2021, June 15, 2023
Ziporyn’s presentation of Tiantai provides us with nearly 300 pages of spell-binding philosophical insights on the nature of the human condition, chock full of Indian-cum-Chinese wisdom which, in Ziporyn’s expert hands, is deftly and at times humorously explained using contemporary language and cultural references. It’s a shame there aren’t already 500 reviews of this book here on Goodreads—Ziporyn’s work deserves a much larger readership and wider exposure. As a long-time student of Buddhism and East Asian philosophy, I spent the summer of 2016 slowly digesting this book soon after it came out. I continue to go back to it in order to more completely absorb its many insights. Only now do I feel ready to write this review.
As you’ve probably already guessed, Emptiness and Omnipresence is not an introductory book on Buddhism but rather best described as an introductory book on Chinese Tiantai for those already familiar with Buddhism. People new to Buddhism would be easily lost here. If you’re inclined towards original Hinayana-Theravada Buddhism, you best go elsewhere—this is Mahayana emptiness on steroids. If you’re a Zen or Tibetan Buddhist practitioner interested in learning about a different form of East Asian Buddhism, then this is a great place to start. If you’re interested in cross-cultural philosophy, you’ll learn how Tiantai is the distinctive synthesis of two very different cultural systems of thought: a) indigenous Chinese philosophy and b) Indian Mahayana Buddhism as read from one primary text, the Lotus Sutra. The Tiantai school is,
the most rigorous theoretical edifice in all of East Asian intellectual history, using modes of argumentation and praxis that are derived squarely from Indian Buddhism but in the service of ideals and metaphysical conclusions that are rooted deeply in the [Chinese] indigenous philosophical traditions. The result is a comprehensive system of thought that is utterly new, rarely understood, and, as it happens, still quite unique and unduplicated fifteen centuries later (preface pp. ix-x).
Author Brook Ziporyn, professor of Chinese religion, philosophy, and comparative thought at the University of Chicago, notes in the preface that Tiantai Buddhism is of particular interest to contemporary Westerners in that it is a rare example in world history when two radically different cultural systems of thought encountered each other and entered into a prolonged reconciliation and synthesis of their differences. It is of interest to us in this regard because of how we find ourselves in a similar situation wherein Western thought, struggling from decades of its own internal existential crisis, is confronted with increasing challenges from Asian cultural systems. The Tiantai synthesis of Chinese and Indian Buddhist philosophical systems stands as a model for the current Asian-Western encounter. The opportunities for cross-cultural fertilization are staggering as the postmodern West and the nondual East gradually interpenetrate.
Now to the contents:
On my reading, the book can be divided into three parts having to do with the consequences of adopting the philosophy of emptiness: 1) Chapters 1 to 4 deal with basic Mahayana Buddhist thought ending with the emptiness of space—of things and of states; 2) Chapters 5-7 deal with the Lotus Sutra and its unique teaching of the emptiness of time, past and future; 3) Chapters 8-10 present the Tiantai synthesis in the doctrine of the Three Truths: emptiness, provisional positing, and the center (aka: emptiness, dependent arising, and nonduality). The third truth of Tiantai, the Center (pinyin zhong, 中), is thoroughly Chinese and a beautiful expansion of the Mahayana Two Truths doctrine.
Once again (for the second time), I am returning to edit this section of my review as my past two attempts to describe the Tiantai meaning of the word in the title omnipresence have been inaccurate. Before I described omnipresence as synonymous with the idea of Buddhanature, as a kind of “nondual presence” in contrast to “nondual absence” or emptiness, the two being the primary nondual dialectic of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. This dialectic notwithstanding, the Tiantai meaning of omnipresence represents the furthest possible reaches of the philosophy of emptiness and dependent origination as aided by the Tiantai concept of the center.
In relation to all phenomena, all possible coherences, any determinate something, omnipresence means all is present in each; each is present in all. Each is the center, the basis for all others. Each is all others in disguise. Another way to describe the view of omnipresence is that each subsumes all others; not reflects, as in the Indra’s Net of Huayen Buddhism, but subsumes, pervades, or entails. A synonym for omnipresence is thus interpervasion or intersubsumption, the most radical holism possible but without being fundamentalist holism. Dependent arising means each arises as all which means, each subsumes all and all subsumes each; each pervades all and all pervades each… this “reverse asness” as Ziporyn calls it, is emptiness as dependent arising in full completion. Thus omnipresence or intersubsumption is considered the perfect or most complete teaching in the Tiantai system.
The intro and the first four chapters present basic Buddhist thought from the Four Noble Truths, to prajnaparamita and Madhyamaka, up to Buddha-Nature.
Chapters 1-2: The first two chapters examine original Buddhism’s approach to suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana). Chapter one examines the paradox at the heart of original Buddhism—the desire to end suffering. By employing the parables of the Raft and the Arrow, chapter two shows how Buddhism leads to the doctrine of the Two Truths, conventional and ultimate truth. Chapter two begins with the enticing question: Does the end of suffering begin? These first two chapters are excellent summaries of the basic tenets of Buddhism.
Chapters 3-4: Chapters three and four introduce the central Mahayana concept of emptiness and how it expands the original Two Truths of early Buddhism. Chapter four adds the further development of emptiness in the concept of Buddha-Nature. Together, chapters three and four deconstruct our standard ideas of “things” and “states” in “space” (states as states of affairs, moments).
Chapter three is a fascinating examination of the exceedingly common idea of “a thing” which, in this explanation, lies at the heart of our samsaric confusion—we are unliberated because of how we think of “things”. Emptiness shows that our standard view that things persist through time, possess characteristics, have definite borders, or exist in and of themselves is deeply mistaken. The Two Truths model of Mahayana Buddhism is a way to “wean ourselves from this type of default ‘thing-thinking’ based on attachment, which inevitably leads to suffering” (p38). After a brief explanation of the concepts of emptiness and its corollary dependent origination, Ziporyn presents an excellent summary of six approaches to emptiness in relation to conventional ideas of what things are: 1-The whole/part approach, 2-The cause/effect approach, 3-The thing/characteristic approach, 4-The language approach, 5-Emptiness as the self-overcoming of both holism and reductionism, 6-The this/that approach.
Here Ziporyn also introduces another way to understand the Mahayana concept of emptiness in what he terms ontological ambiguity. This simply means that since all things arise only due to causes and conditions, no thing (no state, condition, experience, element, no phenomenon) can ever exist independently, definitively, as-it-is-of-itself-apart-from-everything-else. No thing has inherent is-ness (in Sanskrit, svabhava). This is the meaning of pratitya-sammutpada, the Buddhist doctrine of dependent arising. Since no thing can exist in isolation as itself alone, “whatever you are seeing, touching, thinking, or feeling right now got there and to the way it is because of something else.” Something else is always necessarily involved in whatever you have before you now. Chapter four expands on chapter three and contains an extended analysis of our commonsense notions of space which, in Ziporyn’s hands, are as mind-bendingly weird as anything in modern physics.
Chapters 5-6-7: Chapters five through seven introduce the Tiantai interpretation of the Lotus Sutra which focus on its unique teaching of the emptiness of time, of past and future, and the consequences thereof. By applying the previous analysis of the emptiness of things, Ziporyn shows how the Lotus radically reframes the doctrine of transmigration and the idea of rebirth through infinite lifetimes to show that all beings are on a path to Buddhahood—all beings are “buddhas in the making” over the course of infinite lifetimes. Ziporyn’s story of The Dolphin School is a beautiful illustration of the themes in chapter five. Chapter six presents new perspectives on the Middle Way offered by the parables in the Lotus Sutra, perspectives that constitute much of Tiantai philosophy. Chapter seven describes how “The Lotus Sutra provides a template with which to rethink how holders of one view can regard holders of another view. It is an idea about ideas and about what it means for different ideas to ‘contradict’ one another, or to ‘be included’ in a larger idea, or ‘be versions of’ or ‘extensions of’ one another” (p118). The latter part of this long chapter gets rather bogged down in my view. Much of chapter seven’s discussion of the interpervasion of views revolves around the meaning of Mahayana idea of “the One Vehicle.”
Chapters 8-9-10: Chapter eight presents the meat of Tiantai philosophy in the doctrine of the Three Truths. Ziporyn employs the Chinese philosophical concept of “coherence” (pinyin li, 理) and shows how it can be used to characterize any phenomena as a “local coherence,” an instance of dependent arising, but also emptiness as “global incoherence” which is another way of saying no one (local) context of meaning/truth satisfies all (global) contexts of meaning/truth. Local coherence is conventional truth. Global incoherence is ultimate truth. The third truth that links the Two Truths of (ultimate) emptiness and (conventional) dependent arising is the (nondual) Center. All phenomena arise as all three: ultimate, conventional, nondual (Ziporyn’s summary of these ideas is on p156-157). Chapter eight is so chock full of nondual insights that you’ll just have to read it yourself!
[image error]
Chapter nine presents a number of Tiantai techniques and practices having to do with meditation and contemplation. I’ve yet to mention the scholar-sage responsible for establishing the Tiantai view – Zhiyi, (智顗, pronounced “Juh-yee”) the illustrious founder who lived in the mid- to late 6th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhiyi). Zhiyi’s voluminous works were substantially supplemented by two subsequent Tiantai scholars, Zhanran (8th c.) and Zhili (late 10th c.). Nine is a very valuable chapter in that Ziporyn takes a number of these practices and walks us through performing them in the context of what has been presented. It makes what would be a book of abstract philosophy into a practical handbook of practices.
Chapter ten sets out to demonstrate the utility of Tiantai ethics by applying its insights to what is arguably the most complex and problematic scenario of ethical violations in human history, Hitler and the Holocaust. Ziporyn, who is from Jewish background, is well aware of the perils of so doing and addresses these upfront. Can Tiantai perspectives possibly shine any new light onto the long and labored history of Holocaust studies? My sense is that most people will not think so after reading this particularly since “getting” nondual Tiantai thought takes so much time and effort in the first place. Nevertheless, to the extent Tiantai philosophy is a fundamentally novel approach and so thoroughly non-Western, it has the potential to bring some new understandings to this great human tragedy. Judge for yourself.
Ziporyn ends with an epilogue, a lovely summary of Tiantai principles and practices as they apply to our contemporary lives. How are we to live as practitioners of Tiantai principles? It starts by quoting Zhiyi’s One-Practice Samadhi, a gorgeous pointing-out instruction that has the effect of a long and serene breathing-out into the knowing that everything is alright, completely and utterly the way it should be. Yet this is not traditional Tiantai but Tiantai Buddhism for current times brought to us through Ziporyn’s skillful presentation.
I could say a thousand more things about this book. If you are an open-minded student of Buddhism, by all means treat yourself to Ziporyn’s works.
Posted May 28, 2019
Edited: May 31, 2019
Shortened (due to Goodreads' new length limitation), October 16, 2019
Edited: April 22, 2021, June 15, 2023
February 2, 2018
This book is a fantastic walk through the mind-bending, viewpoint-destroying, world-inverting approach of Tiantai Buddhism. I had a sense that things were really weird in this corner of the Buddhist tradition, but I'd never dug too deeply into it, and I'd never really tried to understand what it could mean to think that all Buddhas and all devils interpenetrate. But lately, I've been thinking more and more about interdependence, and looking at the ways that pervasive interdependence is understood across theoretical traditions. So, I knew that I would have to take the deep dive down to Dolphinland (see Chapter 5), and see what it means to think that everything is good, evil, good and evil, and neither good nor evil. This book is a wild ride, and Ziporyn is a really clear writer. He has given me a better sense of what a radically nominalist and anti-essentialist metaphysics must look like; he has helped me to see what a metaphysics of processes is likely to look like (even though this wasn't really one of his aims); and he has opened up forms of theorizing that I had never really thought about exploring before. The only thing that I'm not sure what to do with is Chapter 10, which deals with the "Hitler question". This was also a mind-bender, but I can't yet decide whether I think that the things that Ziporyn says here are worth entertaining and thinking through more deeply. This chapter made me feel uncomfortable in a lot of ways - and Ziporyn notes that it's likely to do this. So I'll probably let this stuff sit for a while, then go back and read the book again and see if I can recontextualize it in ways that make it an expression of Buddha-nature, I guess that's what I would do if I were taking up the Tiantai approach to these kinds of questions.
March 5, 2022
I had never heard of Tiantai Buddhism before. I was quite familiar with Zen Buddhism and knew, but not well, about Nagarjuna’s emptiness doctrine, but never Tiantai. Before jumping into specific Tiantai teachings, Ziporyn offers a brilliant introduction into Mahayana Buddhism, after all Tiantai is also a Mahayana school. I found this illuminating because I knew few of the Mahayana conclusions but not how they got where they got. Most interestingly, Ziporyn explains, Tiantai has its own conclusions quite radical and surprising that you might completely reject them, and funnily enough your rejection of it makes you part of it and it never leaves even when you try to avoid it as much as possible. The book is written in a straightforward way, yet you won’t turn into a Bodhisattva after you’ve read it once: I think I’ll have to re-read it soon, and I will. Perhaps what you’ll resist most is how it challenges the monotheistic idea of truth that is so deeply ingrained into us that we will find a deep anxiety and fear at the thought of ever leaving it. Yet that idea of truth is not somehow less true than what is presented in this book, Ziporyn stresses that repeatedly, both are true provisionally: locally coherent, globally incoherent. You might not even be able to leave even if you entirely reject it, and swear on your sweet mothers grave that you rejected it, because it will always exist in a negative sort of way. At the end of this book you might find your worldview shifted radically or not at all, and you might say that this very not-at-allness doesn’t really matter, indeed that is what the bloody book says. And this itself Ziporyn would say is a recontextualization: nothing changes yet is changed, and that’s it and nothing more.
December 1, 2021
Clearly written and opened me up to a new way of thinking. Hard to get much better than that. The SEP article Ziporyn wrote on Tiantai Buddhism is a condensed form of this book, and as such it is explained much better than I could. Particularly interesting and important is the setup/punchline structure of reality and the non-teleological dialectical reversals of positions. Also important is the commitment to ontological ambiguity (as formulated by Ziporyn, a commitment which entails local coherence but global incoherence...) Seems to me like a radicalization and logical conclusion of Merleau-Ponty. Would recommend checking this out if you are into MP/Phenomenology or Hegel (or Buddhism obviously - apparently Tiantai radicalizes aspects of Mahayana as well, which he details well).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bu...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bu...
June 4, 2021
Tiantai is the game and we are all playing it. It is fine because breaking the rules is the only strategy and refusing to play it does not disqualify you. Instead, you find out that you are the best player, just like every other player, but that does not make the word “best” meaningless since to be meaningful it has to be contrasted with something other than best. Rather, it makes meaninglessness meaningless since to be meaningless it would have to be contrasted by something meaningful. As such, a seemingly meaningless category such as “best” serves to expose the seemingly meaningful category juxtaposed to it: not-best. The game, being everyone in it and everyone in it being the game, is organized by contextual hierarchies of coherence. What is best locally is not-best globally and must also be constituted of not-best if it is to be divisible. Rather than offering a vision of everything being average or constituted of a balance of best and worst, context is responsible for what anything is and the thing shapes the context that surrounds it.
What I wrote may seem either coherent or incoherent, but this book made me feel like this does not matter, hence my 3 stars review. It is very convoluted yet claims to adopt a simple writing style for its readers in the introduction. At many instances I did not know whether I disagreed or did not understand what I read. I found many statements in the book frustrating as it seemed to be a framework to rationalize everything since its logic was much too obtuse to make any absolute statement yet seemed to force one to abuse language to claim anything.
That being said, I enjoyed the beginning; it offered a good recap of the Lotus Sutra and raised a few philosophical questions that were interesting. I like how these concepts allows one to challenge their perception indefinitely and to see things from many perspectives. It provides a good strategy to avoid dogmatism without rejection of dogma per se.
TL;DR The book is written in a very confusing manner that is quickly tiring. Some of the points and arguments seem self-negating, almost nihilistic; but perhaps that was intended. I did find that it had some really good content.
What I wrote may seem either coherent or incoherent, but this book made me feel like this does not matter, hence my 3 stars review. It is very convoluted yet claims to adopt a simple writing style for its readers in the introduction. At many instances I did not know whether I disagreed or did not understand what I read. I found many statements in the book frustrating as it seemed to be a framework to rationalize everything since its logic was much too obtuse to make any absolute statement yet seemed to force one to abuse language to claim anything.
That being said, I enjoyed the beginning; it offered a good recap of the Lotus Sutra and raised a few philosophical questions that were interesting. I like how these concepts allows one to challenge their perception indefinitely and to see things from many perspectives. It provides a good strategy to avoid dogmatism without rejection of dogma per se.
TL;DR The book is written in a very confusing manner that is quickly tiring. Some of the points and arguments seem self-negating, almost nihilistic; but perhaps that was intended. I did find that it had some really good content.
April 27, 2021
Not that shocking, philosophically speaking that is. Not a bad introduction to Tiantai (Tendai/JP) Buddhist thought.
Ziporyn's usage of comedy and 'ordinary' examples to help illustrate some of Tiantai's central ideas was a breath of fresh air in the world of stuffy academic philosophy/religion.
Ziporyn's usage of comedy and 'ordinary' examples to help illustrate some of Tiantai's central ideas was a breath of fresh air in the world of stuffy academic philosophy/religion.
January 1, 2022
Within Buddhist philosophy, great emphasis is placed on the teaching of Buddhism itself. Indeed, from a certain perspective, it could be argued that there is nothing to Buddhism but the teaching of how to teach Buddhism, since becoming a teacher of Buddhism (a bodhisattva) is taken to be the highest attainment of at least its Mahayana branch. The actual attainment of nirvana is taken as secondary to or even the same as the development of the endless skillset by which an eternally-rebirthing being might induct others into their method. All of this skillfulness may be summarized by a single term: upaya. Much more than the semantic trickery which sometimes marks Buddhist argument, this term denotes the challenge of trying to guide a given being towards enlightenment. How do you put this esoteric stuff in terms they'll understand? Upaya is and describes the solution.
With this in mind, it should hardly be surprising when I call "Emptiness and Omnipresence" itself an example of utmost upayan reasoning. Much like the parables it centers, this book is aimed at bringing the esoteric heights of Buddhism down to the reach of the common man, or at least that of the Western philosophy student. As a result, this book is not just useful as an explanation of its specific Taintai leanings, but also as an introduction into Buddhism itself. Overall, there are just two minor aspects which bring down the didactic value inherent to this volume. The first is a relative lack of historical context; though I assume the book is overcompensating for those regular academic which overindulge in obscure details, I would have liked to see a bit more background. My second issue is with the structure of the text: the need to progressively unfold Tiantai philosophy means that its entire Buddhist lineage has to be explained first. As such, certain things which are asserted at the start are almost (but not entirely) refuted by the end. But then this is a common feature of upayan teachings.
As for the Tiantai teachings which are taught so upayically, they are at least as interesting as the structure of the book itself. The core idea of Tiantai Buddhism is a simple one: each phenomenon is a composite expression of all other phenomena as the universe. As such, this one entity (a cup) can be found to determine or even reside in every other entity, while at the same time, this entity itself is nothing except for the combined appearance of these external entities. Each is a composite of the rest, and so each is also present in all. If that sounds tricky, the book does a great job of explaining this piece of complex Buddhist argumentation one step at a time.
Beyond this basic explanation of Tiantai metaphysics, the author also spends a fair amount of time on several ancillary concerns. Beyond a considerable section on the 'Lotus Sutra' which inspired the Tiantai school, there is also a consideration of Tiantai meditation practices and its implication for Buddhist ethics. Particularly in this last section, the author maintains a careful balance between obvious fascination with if not appreciation of this philosophy, while also acknowledging how greatly unusual or even off-putting it can be from a more conventional (Western) perspective. This semi-distance is itself appreciated; nowhere did it feel like I was being proselytized, like my critical faculties were being disrespected for the sake of a Buddhist sales pitch.
Overall, I had a great time reading this work, and would heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in Buddhism, philosophy, or any sufficiently different mode of thought. Even if the work is imperfect, giving it anything but the full 5 stars would implicitly diminish the intellectual achievement that is its upayan approach. I'll be happy to read more from this author.
With this in mind, it should hardly be surprising when I call "Emptiness and Omnipresence" itself an example of utmost upayan reasoning. Much like the parables it centers, this book is aimed at bringing the esoteric heights of Buddhism down to the reach of the common man, or at least that of the Western philosophy student. As a result, this book is not just useful as an explanation of its specific Taintai leanings, but also as an introduction into Buddhism itself. Overall, there are just two minor aspects which bring down the didactic value inherent to this volume. The first is a relative lack of historical context; though I assume the book is overcompensating for those regular academic which overindulge in obscure details, I would have liked to see a bit more background. My second issue is with the structure of the text: the need to progressively unfold Tiantai philosophy means that its entire Buddhist lineage has to be explained first. As such, certain things which are asserted at the start are almost (but not entirely) refuted by the end. But then this is a common feature of upayan teachings.
As for the Tiantai teachings which are taught so upayically, they are at least as interesting as the structure of the book itself. The core idea of Tiantai Buddhism is a simple one: each phenomenon is a composite expression of all other phenomena as the universe. As such, this one entity (a cup) can be found to determine or even reside in every other entity, while at the same time, this entity itself is nothing except for the combined appearance of these external entities. Each is a composite of the rest, and so each is also present in all. If that sounds tricky, the book does a great job of explaining this piece of complex Buddhist argumentation one step at a time.
Beyond this basic explanation of Tiantai metaphysics, the author also spends a fair amount of time on several ancillary concerns. Beyond a considerable section on the 'Lotus Sutra' which inspired the Tiantai school, there is also a consideration of Tiantai meditation practices and its implication for Buddhist ethics. Particularly in this last section, the author maintains a careful balance between obvious fascination with if not appreciation of this philosophy, while also acknowledging how greatly unusual or even off-putting it can be from a more conventional (Western) perspective. This semi-distance is itself appreciated; nowhere did it feel like I was being proselytized, like my critical faculties were being disrespected for the sake of a Buddhist sales pitch.
Overall, I had a great time reading this work, and would heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in Buddhism, philosophy, or any sufficiently different mode of thought. Even if the work is imperfect, giving it anything but the full 5 stars would implicitly diminish the intellectual achievement that is its upayan approach. I'll be happy to read more from this author.
May 11, 2024
Tiantai Buddhism has been described as "Mahayana Buddhism on steroids." A school of Chinese Buddhism less well known and generally less popular than Huayan, Chan (Zen), and Pure Land Buddhism, Tiantai was nevertheless of significance particularly in the Sui and early Tang dynasties. "Emptiness and Omnipresence" is worth reading for those interested in delving deeply into this more radical, mind-blowing/mind-stretching variant of Buddhist philosophy.
Tiantai takes the Lotus Sutra as its frame of reference - but takes a radical interpretation that goes beyond more traditional readings of the Lotus Sutra. Not only are we all Buddhas in training, we are all already Buddhas experiencing Buddhahood. But we are only Buddhas experiencing Buddhahood by not being a Buddha and by struggling towards Buddhahood. At the core of Tiantai are the Three Truths: conventional truth, ultimate truth, and the center. The "center" is the Tiantai addition to the more traditional Buddhist teaching of the other two truths: the center consisting of non-duality between conventional and ultimate truth, making conventional and ultimate truths the same, as in the aforementioned duality of Buddahood and non-Buddahood.
Ziporyn clarifies this by renaming conventional and ultimate truths as "local coherence" and "global coherence" and then going on several explanatory mind journeys to explore how the two are intersubsumptive of each other - each subsumes the other - and how indeed everything that is, according to Tiantai, subsumes everything else. As just one example, an apple is an apple but what does an apple consist of? Break down an apple into all its non-apple parts and there is no apple left. Thus there is nothing that can be called an apple as a thing separated from everything else. Or think about time: the present implies and includes past and future. If the present is instantaneous and unconnected, it cannot have real content, but if it isn't instantaneous, it isn't just the present, but is divisible into pasts and futures. "But if two things are necessarily related, such that they cannot exist without each other, then they are really not two things; they are two parts of one thing. There is only one thing there, with two parts. But a relation, by definition, is a relation between two things. Hence there are no relations either! There are no individual things to be related" (p. 39).
Concepts that appear to be locally coherent (such as the concept of the apple or of the present) are in fact also globally incoherent: they cannot be explained by reference to themselves, but intersubsume everything else: the apple intersubsumes everything non-apple, the present intersubsumes past and future.
Tiantai takes this insight and drives it to the radical conclusion of "illimitable ambiguity," everything being subsumed within everything; each experience we have includes both itself and also all other experience of all other beings at all times; our joy includes sorrow, our sorrow includes joy; our evil includes good, our good includes evil. "Whenever you have any experience, it is the entire multiverse (the subject) encountering the entire multiverse (the object), thereby giving rise to the entire multiverse (the experience)" (p. 199). Tiantai meditation, instead of trying to empty the mind and get closer to emptiness, focuses on expanding one's awareness of mind: seeing all things as part of self, seeing the self as part of all things, both spatially and temporally.
"Emptiness and Omnipresence" is Ziporyn's attempt to introduce this mind-blowing philosophy to a wider (non-academic) readership. As such, Ziporyn uses multiple examples and mind journeys to illustrate the teachings of Tiantai. I would have preferred a deeper introduction to the texts and major figures of Tiantai alongside Ziporyn's explanations - the former are only very briefly touched upon directly. I was also uncomfortable with the chapter on Tiantai ethics, due to the Tiantai teaching that good subsumes evil and evil subsumes good - that the two are identical. Kudos to Ziporyn for not shying away from using the ultimate example of modern evil (Hitler and the Holocaust) to elucidate this Tiantai view: but a nevertheless uncomfortable coverage that, to me at least, persuades me that ultimately Tiantai ethics fall short.
An amazing book regardless, "Emptiness and Omnipresence" illustrates just how thoughtful and relevant Tiantai Buddhist philosophy should be for any holistic coverage of philosophy more broadly. Reading this book made me interested in taking a basic philosophy class and in engaging more with philosophies of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. I would love to see Tiantai Buddhist philosophy engaged in conversations with other ancient and modern philosophies, such as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others.
Tiantai takes the Lotus Sutra as its frame of reference - but takes a radical interpretation that goes beyond more traditional readings of the Lotus Sutra. Not only are we all Buddhas in training, we are all already Buddhas experiencing Buddhahood. But we are only Buddhas experiencing Buddhahood by not being a Buddha and by struggling towards Buddhahood. At the core of Tiantai are the Three Truths: conventional truth, ultimate truth, and the center. The "center" is the Tiantai addition to the more traditional Buddhist teaching of the other two truths: the center consisting of non-duality between conventional and ultimate truth, making conventional and ultimate truths the same, as in the aforementioned duality of Buddahood and non-Buddahood.
Ziporyn clarifies this by renaming conventional and ultimate truths as "local coherence" and "global coherence" and then going on several explanatory mind journeys to explore how the two are intersubsumptive of each other - each subsumes the other - and how indeed everything that is, according to Tiantai, subsumes everything else. As just one example, an apple is an apple but what does an apple consist of? Break down an apple into all its non-apple parts and there is no apple left. Thus there is nothing that can be called an apple as a thing separated from everything else. Or think about time: the present implies and includes past and future. If the present is instantaneous and unconnected, it cannot have real content, but if it isn't instantaneous, it isn't just the present, but is divisible into pasts and futures. "But if two things are necessarily related, such that they cannot exist without each other, then they are really not two things; they are two parts of one thing. There is only one thing there, with two parts. But a relation, by definition, is a relation between two things. Hence there are no relations either! There are no individual things to be related" (p. 39).
Concepts that appear to be locally coherent (such as the concept of the apple or of the present) are in fact also globally incoherent: they cannot be explained by reference to themselves, but intersubsume everything else: the apple intersubsumes everything non-apple, the present intersubsumes past and future.
Tiantai takes this insight and drives it to the radical conclusion of "illimitable ambiguity," everything being subsumed within everything; each experience we have includes both itself and also all other experience of all other beings at all times; our joy includes sorrow, our sorrow includes joy; our evil includes good, our good includes evil. "Whenever you have any experience, it is the entire multiverse (the subject) encountering the entire multiverse (the object), thereby giving rise to the entire multiverse (the experience)" (p. 199). Tiantai meditation, instead of trying to empty the mind and get closer to emptiness, focuses on expanding one's awareness of mind: seeing all things as part of self, seeing the self as part of all things, both spatially and temporally.
"Emptiness and Omnipresence" is Ziporyn's attempt to introduce this mind-blowing philosophy to a wider (non-academic) readership. As such, Ziporyn uses multiple examples and mind journeys to illustrate the teachings of Tiantai. I would have preferred a deeper introduction to the texts and major figures of Tiantai alongside Ziporyn's explanations - the former are only very briefly touched upon directly. I was also uncomfortable with the chapter on Tiantai ethics, due to the Tiantai teaching that good subsumes evil and evil subsumes good - that the two are identical. Kudos to Ziporyn for not shying away from using the ultimate example of modern evil (Hitler and the Holocaust) to elucidate this Tiantai view: but a nevertheless uncomfortable coverage that, to me at least, persuades me that ultimately Tiantai ethics fall short.
An amazing book regardless, "Emptiness and Omnipresence" illustrates just how thoughtful and relevant Tiantai Buddhist philosophy should be for any holistic coverage of philosophy more broadly. Reading this book made me interested in taking a basic philosophy class and in engaging more with philosophies of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. I would love to see Tiantai Buddhist philosophy engaged in conversations with other ancient and modern philosophies, such as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others.
May 23, 2022
There's a lot of good stuff in this book to parse. Just be prepared to get confused.
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