Motion and Rest from a Chinese Buddhist Perspective

Stance | 2008 27 Seng-Chao’s writing as a Chinese Buddhist signified the start to a new development in Buddhist philosophy in China.1 He was one of the first writers to draw on a tradition called the Three-Treatise (or Middle Doctrine) School, which had come over from India in the form of three significant texts, namely Nāgārjuna’s2 Treatise on the Middle way, and Treatise on the Twelve Gates and Āryadeva’s3 One-Hundred-Verse Treatise, which were translated into Chinese.4 Seng-Chao was one of the earliest Chinese philosophers interested in making a place for Buddhism within a traditionally Taoist and Confucian society. While his work is grounded in distinctly Buddhist ideas, there are definite Taoist influences to his perspective. In this paper I will outline Seng-Chao’s discussion of motion and rest, drawing on connections this argument has with Nāgārjuna’s account of motion and Śāntaraksita’s5 account of consciousness and memory in relation to the perception of images. Next I will examine Seng-Chao’s discussion of time and the relationship between past, present and future. I will make connections to Candrakīrti’s6 account of memory and its implications on Stance Volume 1 April 2008