Contradiction and Ambiguity in Chinese Buddhist Philosophy

本篇論文針對在漢傳佛教中觀學傳統所傳承之文本中的語文策略進行分析，且由此進而解釋中國大乘佛學救度學所涵蓋的哲學含義。本篇探討的佛學原典範圍，包含《中論》、《大智度論》、《肇論》、《華嚴法界玄鏡》、《妙法蓮華經玄義》等著作所使用以弔詭表述為主的語文策略相關的經文在內。本篇出發點，就是美國藏傳佛教學者Jay Garfi eld及英國邏輯學者Graham Priest以龍樹「第一義諦」視為「真實矛盾」（true contradiction）的詮釋。第一段主要是筆者對此的批判；第二段解釋上述漢傳佛教經典以歧義用語（ambiguous use of language）為語文策略的救度學特色及其哲學含義。

關鍵字

矛盾；歧義；真空；假名；虛假性；虛無；虛妄顛倒；中道；語文策略；救度學

並列摘要

The following analyzes the linguistic strategy and rhetorical function of contradiction and ambiguity in Chinese Buddhist texts. These are compositional patterns designed to enhance and promote the soteriological intention of Mahayana Buddhism, which essentially aims at our detachment from falseness. Mahayana ”emptiness” (sunyatā) implies that attachments are not only obscured but also produced by conventional linguistic habits. Consequently, the verbal realization of this insight must-as the Chinese Buddhist thinker Seng Zhao (384-414) states-defy the conventions of a univocal form of articulation. The implicit ambiguity of Buddhist texts means they should not be understood as a manifestation of apodictic statements, for it rather functions in a practical way to undermine the reader's potential to become attached. Chinese Mahayana traditions, then, consider linguistic expression in an ambivalent way: on the one hand as a source of unwholesome attachments, on the other as a precondition for detachment.This paper discusses two major issues regarding ambiguity as a compositional feature of Chinese Madhyamaka, Tiantai, and Huayan texts. First, the compositional ambiguity not only corresponds to but enhances the soteriological intention implied by the meanings of liberation and emptiness. Second, it often can be seen to arise from the classical Chinese language itself-more precisely from the indeterminacy of Chinese characters' word class and their resultant semantic ambiguity. Here I will discuss three selections from texts ascribed to Seng Zhao (374-414), Zhiyi (538-597) and Dushun (557-640) which exemplify ambiguity as a compositional feature. While Seng Zhao's and Zhiyi's texts deal with the relationship between the two truths-the conventional and ultimate truth-the passage from the text ascribed to Dushun expounds the relationship between distinctive form and emptiness.