Reinterpreting Asian Religious Philosophy: Through the Doctrine of Momentariness

What if the ground of Asian religious thought were not permanence but the moment?

The doctrine of momentariness (Kşaņikavāda) holds that whatever exists arises and perishes instant by instant. Buddhists built an entire ontology on it; their Hindu critics spent centuries trying to refute it. This book reads the argument as a shared inheritance rather than a quarrel. Moving from Abhidharma and Nägarjuna through Dharmakīrti and Jñänaśgrīmitra, into Śańkara's Advaita and the qualified momentarism of Madhusūdana, and finally to Wonhyo's One Mind, Woo-Hyun Jung traces a single question across traditions that rarely speak to one another: how can the unconditioned ground and the conditioned flow stand in relation without collapsing into either identity or difference?

The answer the author proposes is a constructive one. The Doctrine of Divine Momentariness (kşaņikavāda-īśvaravada) treats the experienced divine the isvara of devotion, the Buddha of nianfo, the God of prayer-as constituted moment by moment in religious consciousness, and takes this not as a defect but as the very structure of spiritual life. Drawing on Sanskrit, Päli, classical Chinese, and Korean sources, and closing with a chapter-length dialogue with Whiteheadian process theology, the book offers philosophers of religion, Buddhologists, and Indologists alike a fresh map of a very old terrain.