This dissertation investigates the significance, characteristics, evolution, and hermeneutics of the doctrine of “non-self” (Skt. anātman; Ch. wuwo 無我) in Ming-dynasty Buddhism, with a focus on the deeply influential monk Zibo Zhenke (紫柏真可, 1543–1604). The “Self” (Skt. ātman) criticized in the mainstream discourse of Indian Buddhism is a metaphysical Self that persists along the dimension of time; what Zibo's “non-self” negates is something different. This dissertation defines it as what I term the “oppositional self”: the illusory subject constructed through the perceiver’s reflexive self-cognition of itself as a cognizing subject set in opposition to its cognized object. This “self” finds a comparable concept in Indian Buddhism, namely, the Yogācāra notion of the “grasper” (Skt. grāhaka), yet in India this was not directly regarded as the ātman to be negated.
This dissertation argues that Zibo’s case reveals the inapplicability of various previous models of Buddhism’s development in China and its relationship to Indian Buddhism. First, Zibo still treats “non-self” as an important doctrine rather than a marginal one. Second, the “self” he negates is nevertheless not the Indian ātman, and his teaching is therefore not a doctrine of “non-self” in the strict sense. Third, he is still discussed within the Yogācāra structure of consciousness, with its bifurcation into grasper and grasped, rather than articulating "non-self" from within the context of Confucian ethics; his position therefore cannot simply be regarded as a product of “sinification.”
This complexity in fact reflects the dominant position of tathāgatagarbha thought in late-Ming Buddhism, as well as late-Ming Buddhists' engagement with the issue of “selflessness” (Ch. wusi 無私) in Yangmingism, that is, Zibo’s attempt to put forward a Buddhist version of a “non-self” as a path to sagehood. This demonstrates the different roles that “non-self” plays in different contexts: in India, as a wedge issue; in the late Ming, as a semantic field shared between Confucianism and Buddhism.