Is Sunyatd Unknown to Pali Buddhism

Abstract

Over the last five decades or so, there has been considerable amount of research carried out in English on the subject of uwiyci/mmyata or emptiness as presented in the Madhyamaka Philosophy of Acarya Nagarjuna. One of the epoch making publications on this, is the book titled The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamaka System by Prof. T. R. V. Murti. Prior to him there were scholars such as Theodore Stcherbatsky who attempted to show that the Doctrine of tiunyatd is an innovation of Mahayana. Murti took this view to the climax and presented Madhyamaka Philosophy as the Copernican Revolution in Indian philosophical thought, especially on Buddhist Philosophy. This paper will argue that there are numerous instances in the Nikayas where the Buddha himself uses the term sunna/sunnata in a sense very much similarly to the one found in Madhyamaka. Not only the Nikayas, but Pali Commentaries too contain many such references. The paper will present the sunna concept in detail, as presented in Pali Buddhism. Very often the Buddha used many terms, phrases, sometimes even similes, metaphors etc, to bring out this idea of emptiness. To obtain a comprehensive view of the Buddha's emphasis on the emptiness of all phenomena, these related concepts and ideas need to be examined. Thus, the presentation incorporates an in-depth analysis of these related concepts.