When Buddhism first came to China, it explained the concept of Emptiness of `Prajna` in terms of the Taoist Wu(無 ). Then the `Madhyamika` scholars further employed Lao-tze's ideas of Yo and Wu(有,無 ) and the dialectical methods found in the Book of Changes to interpret such Buddhist concepts as the various kinds of the Two Truths, `Nirvana`，the Middle Way，the Buddha Land，the Buddha Body，and so on，thus bringing the `Prajna` philosophy to the peak of its development. The two other schools of Buddhist thought which flourished alongside Madhyamika, namely，Hua-yen and T'ien-t'ai, expressed the cosmological idea of the perfect interpenetration of Li and Shih(Noumena and Phenomena) in a vertical way，with T'ien-t'ai emphasizing more the practice of meditation. As for Ch'an，it coincided with Chuang-tze's claim that the greatest eloquence is silence，which is in itself a dialectical maneuvering.
This paper touches on all the above-mentioned points, but is in the main an analysis of the concepts of Li and Shih in `Madhyamika` philosophy.
