Jenny Hung

This article presents a novel interpretation of True Mind theories in Buddhism, drawing inspiration from Zongmi’s teachings, according to which: (1) we are the same mind as the cosmic True Mind, and (2) the essence of the True Mind is reflexive awareness devoid of content, whereas its conditioned function is reflexive awareness with content. This proposal aims to reconcile the tension between the concept of the permanent True Mind as our True Self and the Buddhist doctrines of universal emptiness and no-self.

Immortality has recently become a prominent topic of discussion, particularly in light of advancing technologies aimed at enhancing human life expectancy. Proposed scenarios encompass improved treatments for various diseases and the development of longevity medicine. In this essay, I examine the theory of the self and the concept of immor‑ tality as presented in Heshanggong’s commentary on the Daodejing. This analysis serves as a case study aimed at illuminating a unique perspective on the self that contributes to contemporary discussions of immortality. I argue that Heshanggong’s commentary em‑ phasizes the significance of jing 精, qi 氣, and shen 神, positing that our essential property is to have the essential spirits (jingshen 精神). Furthermore, it suggests the possibility of a disembodied form of immortality without a physical human body. This interpretation of immortality offers a novel understanding of how immortality may be achievable.

The Buddha famously asserts that Buddhist practice leads to the elimination of suffering. However, Tiantai Buddhism views suffering and evil as precious and indispensable. It asserts that Buddha-nature contains evil. After providing a short introduction to the most relevant aspects of the doctrine of Tiantai school, I provide an in-depth discussion of the theoretical and practical importance of evil and suffering in early Tiantai Buddhism as proposed by Zhiyi (智顗) and Zhanran (湛然). The question of evil is an unprecedented contribution of this school to the explication of the Bodhisattva path for at least three reasons. First, the evil tendency within Buddha-nature allows Buddhas to return to saṃsāra (rebirth), for example, to be reincarnated as a ghost or an animal to help sentient beings. Second, suffering is essential because it is needed for enlightenment. Third, Tiantai Buddhism has a special treatment of evil and suffering in its tripartite contemplation.

Jizang (549–623) is regarded as a prominent figure in Sanlun Buddhism (三論宗) and a revitalizer of Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka tradition in China. In this essay, I argue that Jizang’s concept of non-empty Buddha-nature is compatible with the idea of universal emptiness. My argument unfolds in three steps. First, I argue that, for Jizang, Buddha-nature is the Middle Way (zhongdao 中道), which signifies a spiritual state that avoids the extremes of both emptiness and non-emptiness. Next, I explore how and why Jizang believes that Buddha-nature is eternal. I examine Jizang’s notions of intrinsic eternality (dingxing chang 定性常) and conditional eternality (yinyuan chang 因緣常), aiming to demonstrate that his understanding of Buddha-nature as eternal can be framed within the concept of conditional eternality, where Buddha-nature is seen as the objective manifestation of the dharma body. Since this type of eternality aligns with the principle of universal emptiness, Jizang’s assertion that Buddha-nature is eternal is thus compatible with the notion of universal emptiness. Furthermore, I illustrate that Jizang’s theory of eternal Buddha-nature carries practical implications, suggesting that this assertion serves as encouragement rather than being merely an ontological claim.

In recent years, much debate has centered on the same-order representational theory of consciousness. According to this theory, (1) conscious mental episodes are episodes of which we are aware; and (2) the awareness of an external object and the immediate, reflexive awareness of the mental episode together constitute a single episode. In this paper, I propose that the reflexive-referential theory of content developed by Korta and Perry can be used to establish the claim that reflexive awareness is numerically identical to the mental episode it represents. The advantage of this model is threefold. First, it avoids misrepresentation and vicious infinite regress. Second, it illustrates the intimate connection between a mental episode and the reflexive awareness of it. Third, it explains why consciousness is an intrinsic property.

Abstract Objective Intuitive inquiry meditation is a unique form of Buddhist Zen/Chan practice in which individuals actively and intuitively utilize the cognitive functions to cultivate doubt and explore the concept of the self. This event-related potential (ERP) study aimed to investigate the neural correlates by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation induces flexibility in self-schema processing, highlighting the role of doubt and belief processes in this exploration. Methods Twenty experienced and eighteen beginner meditators in intuitive inquiry meditation were recruited for this ERP study. The interactions of doubt and belief processes with concepts of the self and Buddha were investigated. A 128-channel electroencephalography (EEG) system was used to collect EEG data. The ERP data were processed and analyzed using EEGLAB. Results The data showed a double dissociation between beginners and experienced meditators (monks) in the concepts of the self and Buddha: intuitive inquiry meditation reduced the brain activity of beginners when viewing Buddha image but not when viewing a picture of themselves. However, in experienced meditators, intuitive inquiry meditation reduced brain activity when they viewed images of themselves but not when they viewed Buddha image. Further event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analysis revealed that experienced meditators had a greater theta spectral power and higher intertrial coherence (ITC), indicating that they could more flexibly modulate ongoing cognitive processes than beginner meditators. Conclusion Intuitive inquiry meditation could help beginner meditators detach from the concept of Buddha but not from that of the self. However, in experienced meditators, the opposite was true. ERSP analysis showed that only experienced meditators exhibited significant alterations in brain activity dynamics during intuitive inquiry meditation, which might enable these practitioners to become spontaneously detached from the concept of the self. These findings revealed the neural mechanism by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation can influence the doubting process and its effect on self-schema processing.

What am I? There are a number of possible answers: I am a person, a mind, a human animal, a soul, part of a human being (e.g., a brain), I do not exist, and even more. Philosophers have been asking this for thousands of years and were not satisfied. In the contemporary analytic tradition, philosophers are attracted to a naturalistic, scientific ontology hence a materialistic personal ontology that matches the huge success in scientific discoveries. They think that we are material objects. However, their views do not match our intuition about some cases regarding our survival. Also, the possibility of an afterlife is eliminated. In my thesis, I explain the shortcomings of current philosophical theories, and develop a better account. I propose the Conscious Subject View, according to which (1) I am a subject of experience, a mental entity whose essential property is to be conscious, and (2) Subjects have haecceities, a property that makes an object a different object from other objects even if they are qualitatively identical with it. I provide two arguments for the claim that we are essentially subjects. The first is the Essentiality Argument. I first define an egoistic concern as one such that necessarily, my concern about X can be egoistic if and only if I exist and persist as X. Furthermore, I argue that necessarily, I can be egoistically concerned with an entity E if and only if E is numerically identical with my subject of experience. I then conclude that we are essentially subjects of experience. My second argument, which I call the Argument of Persistence, is that we have the intuition that we persist only when there is the gradual replacement of the brain. I argue that the best candidate to explain this intuition is that we persist as subjects of experience. I further offer a conceivability argument for the claim that haecceity of the subject determines its persistence. I defend a mentally-oriented proposal regarding our nature by examining the essential properties of our existence. It solves most of the problems with the materialistic personal ontology and shows the theoretical advantages of a long-neglected approach.

A phenomenal concept is a concept that one possesses only if one has the relevant experience. In this essay, I argue that phenomenal concept theorists, namely, those who believe that we acquire phenomenal concepts through being acquainted with the relevant experience, can never succeed in determining which species of non-human animals are phenomenally conscious because they prohibit any a priori correlation between phenomenal and non-phenomenal concepts. I make my argument by first discussing several ways in which a phenomenal concept theorist may explain which animal species are conscious, namely, with neuro-identity theory, behaviorism, and functionalism, and the problem that these approaches entail. I then illustrate how the alternative approaches of scientific inference to the best explanation, analogical inference, similarity inference, and inference by prototype face the same problem.

Nāgārjuna, the famous founder of the Madhyamika School, proposed the positive catuṣkoṭi in his seminal work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: ‘All is real, or all is unreal, all is both real and unreal, all is neither unreal nor real; this is the graded teaching of the Buddha’. He also proposed the negative catuṣkoṭi: ‘“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction’ and the no-thesis view: ‘No dharma whatsoever was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone’. In this essay, I adopt Gricean pragmatics to explain the positive and negative catuṣkoṭi and the no-thesis view proposed by Nāgārjuna in a way that does not violate classical logic. For Nāgārjuna, all statements are false as long as the hearer understands them within a reified conceptual scheme, according to which substance is a basic categorical concept; substances have svabhāva, and names and sentences have svabhāva.

This essay considers how the Zhuangzi 莊子 sheds light on a new direction to the contemporary discussion of desires. Harry Frankfurt proposes an account of personhood based on a hierarchy of desires. He defines a wanton as a being that does not have second-order volitions, the desires that a certain desire of action becomes her will. J. David Velleman proposes, in the context of the Zhuangzi, that when a Daoist sage performs her skills she can be regarded as a “higher” wanton because her actions are spontaneous flows of skillful actions. In this essay, I propose along the line of Velleman a constructive interpretation of the Zhuangzian way to deal with desires from my reading of the Zhuangzi. I argue that there are two roles a Daoist sage can play: the observer and the performer. A Daoist sage can be an observer at a certain time and a performer at other times. Although a performer can be regarded as a higher wanton, it is inappropriate to regard an observer as a wanton. Also, I propose that observation is a means to transform desires—once the practitioner achieves high spirituality, one does not need to possess second-order volitions because one’s first-order desires are transformed such that they are in accordance with the Dao 道.

This essay investigates the Zhuangzian theory of the self, which has long been the subject of a heated and controversial debate in Chinese intellectual history. According to an interpretation that has been quite prominent since the 1990s, the self in the Zhuangzi is a substantial, persisting self; it is a simple, basic object that is distinct from its properties. A substance, generally speaking, is an object or entity that has properties. Substance metaphysicians claim that substances, as primary units of reality, are unchanging entities in themselves that bear changing properties over time.Some scholars, such as Kuang-ming Wu, Yi Wu, and Leo K. C. Cheung, believe that the self in...

I reconstruct early Yogācāra theory of no-self based on works by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. I introduce the idea of the cognitive schema (CS) of the self, a conception borrowed from the developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget. A fundamental CS is a psychological function that guides the formation of perceptions. I propose that Manas can be understood in terms of being the CS of the self, a psychological mechanism from which perceptions of external objects are formed. In addition, I argue that non-imaginative wisdom can be regarded as an experience during which the CS of the self does not function, such that one only possesses pure sensations without perceptions of external objects. After the repeated experience of non-imaginative wisdom, the CS of the self is changed to the purified CS of no-self. It still supports interactions with the external world, but in a way that does not allow the four afflictions (self-delusion, self-belief, self-conceit, and self-love) to arise.