Sān wúxìng lùn 三無性論
Treatise on the Three Non-Natures trans. 真諦 (Zhēndì = Paramārtha, 譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle Yogācāra philosophical treatise on the three non-natures (tri-niḥsvabhāva: lakṣaṇa-niḥsvabhāva, utpatti-niḥsvabhāva, paramārtha-niḥsvabhāva) — the three modes in which entities lack inherent existence, derived from the Yogācāra trisvabhāva / three-natures doctrine. The author is unattributed in the catalog; the work is conventionally regarded as an excerpt from a now-lost Indian Yogācāra commentary, possibly Sthiramati’s commentary on the Madhyāntavibhāga or a related Triṃśikā commentary, translated by 真諦 during his Chén-period activity.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not preserve a structural division for T31N1617. Internally the two fascicles correspond to the three niḥsvabhāva in conventional order, with extensive doctrinal exposition of the relationship between the three natures (paratantra, parikalpita, pariniṣpanna) and their corresponding non-natures.
Abstract
The Yogācāra tri-niḥsvabhāva doctrine is one of the three principal frameworks for the school’s account of conventional and ultimate reality. Each of the three natures (svabhāva) — the imagined / unreal (parikalpita), the dependent / mutually-conditioned (paratantra), and the perfected / inherently-pure (pariniṣpanna) — has a corresponding non-nature: the parikalpita lacks a characteristic nature (lakṣaṇa-niḥsvabhāva); the paratantra lacks a productive nature (utpatti-niḥsvabhāva) since it arises only conditionally; and the pariniṣpanna lacks an ultimate (paramārtha) inherent nature in the Mādhyamika sense. The doctrine reconciles the apparent affirmation of the perfected nature with the Prajñāpāramitā tradition’s universal emptiness.
The text is one of three works on the three-natures / non-natures doctrine in Paramārtha’s Chinese translation corpus — alongside KR6n0024 Zhuǎn shí lùn (T31n1587) and KR6n0025 Xiǎn shí lùn (T31n1618) — that together transmitted the late-Indian Yogācāra philosophical apparatus to China prior to Xuánzàng. The three are conventionally treated as a yìshū 義疏 / “extracts” set, possibly derived from a lost Sthiramati commentary.
The dating bracket (558–569) follows the standard Paramārtha late-period range. The work is not in the Tibetan canon and the Sanskrit source is unidentified; the modern critical literature regards the text as presumably an independent extract from a larger work.
Translations and research
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹. Shintai sanzō kenkyū ronshū. Kyoto, 2012.
- Paul, Diana Y. Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China. Stanford, 1984.
- Iwata Takashi 岩田孝 et al. Sanmushōron no kenkyū 三無性論の研究. Tokyo, various.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠. Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.
Links
- CBETA
- 真諦 Zhēndì DILA
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (565): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/