Wù bù qiān zhèngliàng lùn 物不遷正量論
Treatise on the Right Standard for Reading “Things Do Not Shift” by 鎮澄 (Zhènchéng, 著)
About the work
A two-fascicle late-Ming polemical treatise by 鎮澄 Yuèchuān Zhènchéng (1547–1617) attacking the doctrinal interpretation of Sēngzhào’s Wù bù qiān lùn 物不遷論 (the second treatise of the Zhàolùn, KR6m0038 T1858). X879 is the principal late-Ming polemical engagement with the Zhàolùn tradition and the locus classicus of the so-called “Wù bù qiān controversy” (cf. the responses KR6m0047 X878 by 道衡 Dàohéng and KR6m0049 X880 by 真界 Zhēnjiè).
Structural Division
CANWWW does not list this Xù zàngjīng witness; no structural-division block is given.
Abstract
Zhènchéng’s preface frames the polemic in characteristic late-Ming idiom of doctrinal precision: “Alas! to discuss the supreme matter [of awakening] — like swift fire from striking stones, like flashing lightning — to seize it directly is already to coagulate sluggishly; even to pass through deliberation is to enter delusion. How much more so to gallop after textual chapters and contend over right and wrong — observed with the right eye, all this is mere idle discourse. Yet sentient beings’ faculties are not uniform, and the medicines of doctrine are many; the Tathāgata expounded the sūtras especially for those of middle and lower faculties, and later sages explained the sūtras and produced treatises of various kinds. Once treatises exist, then the wrangling waves rise and the contention-points sharpen…” 嗚呼。若論向上一事，如急石火，似閃電光…然人根不一，法藥多端…既有眾論矣，則辨諍波騰，是非鋒起…
The body of X879 is a sustained doctrinal-philosophical critique of Sēngzhào’s Wù bù qiān lùn. Zhènchéng’s principal charge is that Sēngzhào’s doctrine — in arguing that “things do not shift” via the formulation “each thing remains in its position” (物各性住) — has unwittingly adopted a substantialist position that contradicts the Mahāyāna doctrine of intrinsic emptiness (xìngkōng 性空). Properly understood, Zhènchéng argues, “things do not shift” should be derived from the prior doctrine that all things are empty of intrinsic nature; only because all things are empty do they not “shift” in any substantial sense. Sēngzhào’s reverse argument — non-shifting therefore empty — is, on Zhènchéng’s view, methodologically flawed.
The polemic is doctrinally rigorous and represents the late-Ming Mādhyamaka-rigourist position in its sharpest form. The work generated immediate responses (KR6m0047, KR6m0049), and the controversy continued into the early Qing.
Translations and research
- Hsu Sung-peng. A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing. Penn State University Press, 1979.
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, ed. Jōron kenkyū 肇論研究. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1955.
- Cheng, Hsueh-li. “The ‘Wu Pu Ch’ien Lun’ Controversy in Late Ming Buddhism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 8 (1981): 451–478.
- Iwaki Hideo 岩城秀夫. “Bū fu sen ron ronsō no kenkyū” 物不遷論論爭の研究. Tōhō shūkyō, various years.
Other points of interest
The “Wù bù qiān controversy” was triggered by Zhènchéng’s X879 and shaped subsequent late-Ming and early-Qing Chinese-Buddhist intellectual life on the question of how to read pre-Sòng Mādhyamaka doctrine. The controversy is one of the principal cases in late-imperial Chinese Buddhism of explicit doctrinal-philosophical critique of an established canonical text — a stance more familiar from late-imperial Confucian scholarship (the kǎozhèng 考證 movement) than from the conventional Buddhist commentarial tradition. It is therefore a significant marker of late-Ming Buddhist intellectual life’s sophistication and self-critical sharpness.