肇論 肇論序

The Preface to the Zhaolun is not Sengzhao's own preface. It is the guide written by Huida, Śramaṇa of the Small Zhaoti Monastery, after more than twenty years in halls of teaching, for the Fundamental Thesis and the four treatises beginning with On the Immutability of Things. Its general preface first sets the treatises within the lineage of transmitting the sūtras through Kumārajīva's community: Dao'an and Kumārajīva opened traditions and proclaimed their guiding principles; Sengrui, Xie Lingyun, and the monastic and lay community corrected languages and closely investigated meanings; amid these worthies, Sengzhao could mark the root while reaching the branches, go beyond speech while according with silence. Huida also records the Six Houses and Seven Schools and the marketplace jeers, thereby making clear the orientation from which he protects the Zhaolun.

The particular preface then lays out a path of reading. The Fundamental Thesis marks true reality. On the Immutability of Things and On the Emptiness of the Unreal open ultimate and conventional truth. Prajñā is the cause of complete realization, and nirvāṇa is the ultimate fruit. Yet as soon as the root is established, Huida says that no root can be named; as soon as the two truths are spoken, he says that they are spoken only by following names. Prajñā discloses illumination by being without knowing, and nirvāṇa discloses its virtue by being nameless.

The heart of this preface, then, is not only its praise that Sengzhao is foremost in understanding emptiness. It teaches the reader to know the sequence of the four treatises without becoming trapped by sequence or names: enter through transmission and read by the Fundamental Thesis; open the gate through the two truths; pass through prajñā to nirvāṇa; establish words in order to guide, then release words so as not to become stuck.

General Preface 1: Why this preface was written

I, Huida, am shallow in learning and discernment. I now write a general preface to the Fundamental Thesis and the four treatises beginning with On the Immutability of Things, composed by Dharma Master Sengzhao of Chang'an.

As the Buddha-Dharma passes into its latter age, the responsibility for transmitting the sūtras and teachings truly falls to bodhisattvas who rely on the teaching and protect the Dharma. The Dharma's transmission to China follows the same principle. Dao'an, honored as the Great Worthy Whose Virtue Filled the Heavens, and Kumārajīva, whose name was rendered Youthful Longevity, both opened traditions of teaching and established their guiding principles. They sought to discern the measure and ultimate reach of both principle and phenomena. What they widely transmitted, proclaimed, and clarified was the profound principle of empty stillness, the one principle comparable to that with which the sages silently accord.

From their time onward, through successive generations down to the present, there were both those recorded in monastic biographies and those left unrecorded: more than three thousand monks, including Sengrui, and some eight hundred lay followers, including Xie Lingyun. Among them were those able to distinguish and correct the languages of different regions, articulate the structure of a text, carefully examine its established terminology, and investigate its meaning with precision. Gathered together, these worthies produced teachings that were comprehensive in scope.

Among all these people, one man worthy of praise was Sengzhao. He went beyond ordinary speech while also possessing the silent accord beyond speech. When he marked out the root, sentence after sentence penetrated the Buddha's mind; when he clarified the branches, sentence after sentence reached throughout the teachings. This is truly an elegant Mahāyāna classic and an expansive work of the vaipulya teaching.

General Preface 2: Praising the Zhaolun and recording earlier schools

From antiquity to the present, many eminent worthies composed writings and established teachings. From the treatises written by Zhi Faxiang, Zhu Fatai, and others, through what came to be called the Six Houses and Seven Schools, and onward to twelve schools, each distinguished the good from the faulty and deviation from what was fitting. Yet only Sengzhao's writings, sufficient to serve as a standard, were free of those defects and errors.

This is because Sengzhao's breadth of mind makes it impossible to say that he clung to any one school. His mind was like a deep sea: it surpassed the numbered streams of the nine schools, stood lofty and clear, and rose quietly beyond ordinary things. Few truly understood Master Zhao. To turn toward him was also to receive Kumārajīva's guiding intent. If people of the world could not understand him, that only made his worth more evident.

General Preface 3: Huida's joy at encountering these treatises

I, Huida, was fortunate to be born into the world and encounter this right sound. My delight and exhilaration could not be contained; whether eating or resting, I felt no weariness. Whenever I opened the scroll and followed its words, I could not keep from moving my hands and feet with joy. I vowed, life after life, to spend this life entirely in transmitting and expounding it. If Sengzhao's surviving words could move me so deeply, how much more should my joy increase before the contemplative methods of the Middle Treatise, the Hundred Treatise, and the Twelve-Gate Treatise, and before the profound Mahāyāna sūtras?

General Preface 4: Rejecting the jeers of the marketplace

A saying circulated in the world that Sengzhao's writings were merely the ultimate-truth teaching of the Chengshi Lun, the comprehensive doctrine of the Treatise on the Ten Stages, and language borrowed from the Zhuangzi and Laozi, combined into wild assertions without foundation. This is a deeply harmful claim. It slanders one who has died and is no more than the coarse noise of streets and lanes; it is not worth adopting.

Subtle principle has no shape, and even a keen mind is difficult to portray. Words are constrained by the forms of language, while the meaning they seek to convey reaches very deep. For that reason, diverse explanations bend the text from different directions. Could Sengzhao have chosen this way of expression for no reason at all? There is indeed a principle within it. If some still follow and draw near to those jeers, I vow not to meet them, life after life. Only when I myself gain the patient strength to bear them will I return to guide those still in a lower place.

General Preface 5: Declaring the intent behind the preface

I spent more than twenty years in halls of teaching and encountered many distinguished seats of instruction, yet only later did I see these treatises. I now entrust my understanding to this preface. Worthies who share my mind, and later students who surpass me, should await the examination of sages yet to come.

Particular Preface 1: The sequence from fundamental non-being and the two truths to prajñā and nirvāṇa

In its broad doctrinal division, the profound meaning is called fundamental non-being. The Fundamental Thesis therefore comes first, marking out the guiding intent of true reality. Nothing is more essential to opening the way of empty dharmas than ultimate and conventional truth; the next two treatises therefore explain the two truths and disclose the teaching-gate of the Buddha-Dharma.

No cause of complete and perfect realization stands above prajñā, and the ultimate fruit is only nirvāṇa. The last two treatises therefore open a double profundity and reveal where all sages abide. This is the reading sequence Huida sets before the reader: enter first through the fundamental thesis and ultimate and conventional truth, then read from prajñā as cause to nirvāṇa as fruit.

Particular Preface 2: Once names have been established, release the names established

Although being empty of intrinsic nature is used to point toward the root, there is in fact no root that can be named. Even when the root is spoken of, it is originally beyond speech and is not a place the activities of thought can reach.

Thus On the Immutability of Things corresponds to conventional truth, yet conventional dharmas are originally unborn. On the Emptiness of the Unreal speaks of ultimate truth, yet even the ultimate is spoken only by following names. If one opens and clears the heart, honors this path, purifies the ear, and empties the breast, no longer grasping the two truths through words, the function of pure illumination appears; hence prajñā is without knowing. The virtue and activity that do not fall within names then arise; hence nirvāṇa is nameless.

Particular Preface 3: A general praise of the four treatises

As I see it, the teaching of these four treatises is comprehensive and complete, exhausting the Buddha-Dharma's oceanic depths. Vast and without boundary, it penetrates the substance and characteristics of all dharmas. Though the words are concise, their meaning is abundant; the language is beautiful, and the principle reaches its mark. The movement of the prose links like interlocking rings, while its purport rises alone and lofty. Every excellence of fine writing seems to find full expression in this great work.

Kumārajīva therefore praised it: “In explaining the meaning of emptiness, Master Zhao is foremost.” This statement has a basis; it is clearly recorded in the text.

Particular Preface 4: Why the Fundamental Thesis is called a thesis and the four pieces are called treatises

The guiding intent of the Fundamental Thesis is open and spacious, with no boundary against which a challenge can press. The four pieces beginning with On the Immutability of Things, by contrast, use concrete principles and phenomena to disclose the teaching and guide the reader; through question and answer they analyze what is subtle. They are therefore called treatises. This preface has now completed its work. It is not a fifth treatise written by Sengzhao, but an introductory preface in which Huida guides later readers into the Fundamental Thesis and the four treatises.

Before reading the four treatises, why does Huida first write a preface?

Begin with the textual ground: first discern whose voice this is

When the Zhaolun opens, the first voice is not Sengzhao's. It is that of Huida, Śramaṇa of the Small Zhaoti Monastery. His first sentence says that he is writing a general preface to the Fundamental Thesis and the four treatises beginning with On the Immutability of Things, works composed by Dharma Master Sengzhao of Chang'an. That sentence protects a basic distinction for the reader: the sequence of the four treatises, the lineage of Kumārajīva's community, the Six Houses and Seven Schools, and Kumārajīva's praise are presented in Huida's guide to Sengzhao after he had read the treatises. They must not be rewritten as Sengzhao's own preface.

Although the preface does not transcribe a passage from a prajñā sūtra line by line, it makes its scriptural and treatise coordinates clear. Huida moves from the contemplative methods of the Middle Treatise, the Hundred Treatise, and the Twelve-Gate Treatise to the profound Mahāyāna sūtras. He then calls prajñā the cause of complete and perfect realization and nirvāṇa the ultimate fruit. This is not the creation of a fifth treatise. It tells the reader that the four treatises are to unfold within a Mahāyāna and prajñā path of reading.

Why does Huida write a general preface before a particular preface?

Xiaoyue catches the structure of the entire work by dividing the preface into two chapters: the first explains the occasion from which the treatises arose and is the general preface; the second properly explains the guiding intent of the treatises and is the particular preface. What looks at first like an elaborate foreword thus becomes two live questions: Where did these treatises come from? And in what order should a reader enter them?

The general preface answers the first question. Huida first places the responsibility for transmitting the sūtras in the latter age upon those who protect the Dharma according to the teaching. He then moves from Dao'an and Kumārajīva to Sengrui, Xie Lingyun, and the monastic and lay community, evoking a world of translation and teaching in which languages were corrected, textual meanings ordered, established terminology examined, and doctrine closely investigated. Sengzhao did not compose in a void outside that world. He matured within Kumārajīva's shared work of translation and scriptural inquiry, while answering it in a voice distinctively his own.

The particular preface answers the second question. Huida no longer recounts people and an age, but arranges the four treatises into a path: the Fundamental Thesis first marks out true reality; the two truths, ultimate and conventional, open the gate of empty dharmas; prajñā is the cause; nirvāṇa is the fruit. Only when a sequence is given will the reader not break the four pieces into unrelated sayings. Yet as soon as he establishes the sequence, Huida relinquishes the characteristics he has established. He does not permit the reader to grasp the root or the two truths as newly fixed names.

Among the thousands around Kumārajīva, why is Sengzhao singled out?

Huida's mention of more than three thousand monks and some eight hundred lay followers is not an attempt to overwhelm the reader with numbers. It shows that the age already possessed a vast community of translation, teaching, and treatise composition. Only then does he bring Sengzhao forward as the worthy man who surpassed speech while according with silence, who marked the root sentence by sentence in penetration of the Buddha's mind, and who clarified the branches sentence by sentence throughout the teachings.

"Marking the root" and "clarifying the branches" form a blade for reading the preface. If one speaks only of the root, the words may hang too high; if one speaks only of the branches, the guiding intent may scatter. Huida prizes Sengzhao because he can mark out the fundamental thesis while allowing each sentence of the treatises to reach concrete teachings. Xiaoyue therefore reads the Fundamental Thesis as an overarching statement of the guiding intent of the four treatises, and the four pieces beginning with On the Immutability of Things as clarifying principle through matters and guiding later students. The "combination" praised in the preface is not a blending of schools into one mass. It is root and branches illuminating each other, speech and silence supporting each other.

Why should the Six Houses and Seven Schools be recorded here, but not adjudicated?

Huida looks back upon the Six Houses and Seven Schools and the extension to twelve, explicitly noting their judgments of good and faulty, deviation and fitness. This is a discerning review of earlier teachings. Yet this unit is not On the Emptiness of the Unreal itself and cannot decide the doctrinal merits of every school in advance. Here the reader need see only this: Huida places the Zhaolun within the history of competing early prajñā interpretations and expresses his own orientation by declaring Sengzhao's work alone sufficient to serve as a standard.

The marketplace report recorded in the preface must likewise be read according to its literary role. Some claimed that Sengzhao's writings were merely the ultimate-truth teaching of the Chengshi Lun, the comprehensive doctrine of the Treatise on the Ten Stages, and language borrowed from the Zhuangzi and Laozi. These are the jeers Huida rejects, not a hidden genealogy that the preface concedes. To turn a rejected claim into Huida's own position would invert the whole general preface.

After more than twenty years in teaching halls, why does Huida still say that he saw these treatises only at the end?

Huida was not a beginner who happened upon a book. He says that he had spent more than twenty years in teaching halls and met many distinguished seats, yet only at the end encountered these treatises. His joy is therefore not the excitement of novelty, but the joy of meeting a "right sound" after a long search for the Dharma.

That joy explains the preface's intensity: reading without weariness, moving hands and feet with delight, vowing to transmit the treatises life after life, even vowing not to meet those who followed the jeers. An exposition need not cool this language down. It shows that Huida is not compiling a detached catalogue, but protecting a work that he encountered fully only after many years. Even so, he leaves examination to those who come later, asking like-minded worthies to await sages of the future. Fervent protection of the treatises and an invitation to later examination stand together in the preface.

How does the sequence of the four treatises become a path of reading?

Huida begins by saying that, in the broad division, the profound meaning is called fundamental non-being, and that the guiding thesis is therefore established in words to mark out true reality. This is the entrance. The Fundamental Thesis first marks the guiding intent of the whole collection. On the Immutability of Things and On the Emptiness of the Unreal then open ultimate and conventional truth; On Prajñā Without Knowing presents the cause of complete realization; On Nirvāṇa Being Nameless presents the ultimate fruit.

Yet an entrance must not become a cage. Huida immediately says that although emptiness of intrinsic nature is used to point toward the root, there is no root that can be named, and that to speak of the root is already beyond speech, not a place reached by the activity of thought. Fundamental non-being is only a guiding name. To seize it as a nameable and thinkable entity would contradict Huida's own insistence that no root can be named. Xiaoyue sharpens the point: when the mouth would speak, its words are lost; when the mind would take the matter as an object, its thought is forgotten. The point is not that there are no words or no mind, but that neither speech nor discrimination can enclose the principle toward which they point.

Thus On the Immutability of Things concerns the conventional, yet conventional dharmas are unborn; On the Emptiness of the Unreal concerns the ultimate, yet the ultimate is spoken only through names. Prajñā is said to be without knowing, and nirvāṇa to be nameless. The four treatises establish a path of reading while gradually loosening the reader's grasp upon the names established along that path. This is what the preface means by prose linked like interlocking rings: each sentence receives the one before it, while also preventing the one before it from hardening.

How should Kumārajīva's praise be read?

Huida closes his praise with an exceptionally high assessment attributed to Kumārajīva: Master Zhao is foremost in understanding emptiness. The preface preserves this evaluation and Huida uses it to establish the weight of the Zhaolun. The extant monastic biography can verify Kumārajīva's remark that his own understanding was not inferior to Sengzhao's but that he should receive from Sengzhao in matters of expression. It does not, however, yield the same continuous wording as the statement preserved in the preface. The reader may therefore know with confidence that this praise is transmitted in Huida's preface and Xiaoyue's commentary without being compelled to assign it an earlier documentary source that has not been established.

Such honesty does not weaken the preface. It allows two voices to remain in their proper places: Huida preserves the praise of Kumārajīva as he knew it, while the present edition preserves the boundary of what the extant canon can demonstrate. Transmission hands on what is certain and what remains uncertain together; it does not fill every gap with certainty.

Continuation / what carries forward

What first carries forward from the Preface to the Zhaolun is a way of reading. Xiaoyue's division into six sections of the general preface and four divisions of the particular preface lets later readers see Huida's order of operations: he first explains the people and the transmission, then the doctrine and its sequence; he first protects the Zhaolun, then warns against grasping the names it establishes. The Jin commentary attributed to Huida supplies a parallel allocation in which the two truths illuminate the first two treatises, while prajñā and nirvāṇa illuminate the latter two, but it does not gloss this preface line by line. When each ancient commentary remains within the scope it actually possesses, no one mirror covers over Huida's original preface.

After this preface, as the reader enters the Fundamental Thesis and the four treatises, the most important thing is not to memorize a set of labels in advance. It is to remember the movement Huida arranges: enter through transmission and read according to the sequence; establish the root so as to know the direction, then relinquish the root so as not to become stuck; open the gate through the two truths, then pass by prajñā to nirvāṇa. The preface does not speak on Sengzhao's behalf. It opens the door through which later readers may approach him.