Tattvasiddhi

The Tattvasiddhi school of Buddhism (Chinese: 成實宗; pinyin: Chéngshí zōng; Japanese pronunciation: Jōjitsu-shū) was a sect of Nikaya Buddhism based on the Tattva Siddhi Sastra by the Indian Buddhist Harivarman (3-4th century CE). It was influential but short-lived in India and had a brief continuation in China and the Asuka and Nara periods of Japan.

This school was based on the text known as the *Tattvasiddhi (Chinese: 成實論; Japanese pronunciation: Jōjitsu-ron, previously reconstructed as the Sādhyasiddhiśāstra) authored by the Indian master Harivarman (250-350) and translated into Chinese in 411 by Kumārajīva. The translation is the only extant version.

A.K. Warder sees this text as outlining the Abhidharma of the Bahuśrutīya school. The Tattvasiddhi's positions are closest to those of the Sautrāntika and Sthavira nikāya. Kumārajīva's student Sengrui discovered Harivarman had refused the abhidharma schools' approach to Buddhist seven times in the text, suggesting a strong sectarian division between them and the Sautrāntikas.

In this text Harivarman attacks the Sarvastivada school's doctrine of "all exists" and the Pudgalavada theory of person. The Tattvasiddhi includes the teaching of dharma-śūnyatā, the emptiness of phenomena. This text also mentions the existence of a Bodhisattva Piṭaka. The central teaching of the text is that dharmas have no substance or substratum, they appear real but they are "like bubbles or like a circle of fire seen when a rope torch is whirled around very quickly." Harivarman writes:

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