Nāgārjuna, the founder of Indian mādhyamaka school, exerted mādhyamika philosophy concerning thoughts about śūnyatā and niḥsvabhāva. And the Chinese Buddhism master Sengzhao who was the best interpreter of emptiness used terms of Taoism to interpret mādhyamika philosophy from Indian. This article attempts to discuss the philosophy of“changing”of Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao, besides comparing the philosophies and arguments of Nāgārjuna’s view of time and Sengzhao’s view about nature of things. On Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of “time”, the article will analyze the Chapter 2 and Chapter 19 in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. In Chapter 2, Nāgārjuna uses three time divisions, semantics and ontology to analyze “movement” while negating the reality of movement, mover and time of movement. In Chapter 19, Nāgārjuna also negates the reality of time and regards time as the vital significance in the epistemology. However, Sengzhao analyzes his viewpoint about nature of thing in “Wu buqian lun”物不遷論. He regards the time and thing as a whole construction—“time–thing” ontological construction, and divides the time into “now” and “past” stages. And then Sengzhao criticizes the identity of things or the realism. He cliams all things are “stirless” but not “moving”. Finally, this article will focus on some discourses in Sengzhao’s texts which may lead to a “fracture” interpretation of things, cause and effect, and time sequence, though. Through understanding of overall context of Sengzhao’s texts and other interpreters’ views, we may understand that Sengzhao’s interpretation about nature of things has “borrowed” such terms as “moving”, “stirless”, “being” and “not being” from Taoism thought, and is somewhat similar to the ontology thought of Indian mādhyamaka school.
