Two of Nagarjuna's Most Radical Suggestions

Nagarjuna (c. 150–c. 250 CE) was an Indian philosopher who founded the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism. His best-known work is the Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way). His other writings included the Yuktisastiki (Sixty Verses on Reasoning), and the Shunyatasaptati (Seventy Verses on Emptiness).

      His disciple Arydeva (c. 200-c. 250 CE) became a leader of the Madhyamika school. Arydeva’s best-known work was the Catuhshataka (Four Hundred Verses).

      In the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna says that “whatever is dependently arisen is unceasing, unborn, unannihilated, impermanent, not coming, not going, without distinction, without identity, and free from conceptual construction.”¹ Nothing arises without causes or conditions (of its existence). Everything depends on causes and conditions of arising (or existence), and therefore the ultimate reality of things is that no real distinctions can be made between them. Our attempt to make distinctions between things is based on our perception of their conventional, but not their ultimate reality. When we make distinctions between things, we act as if they had self-nature or self-existence. But the ultimate reality of things is that they are dependently arisen. Their arising depends on causes and conditions beyond themselves. Everything shares unbornness (a lack of self-nature), impermanence, a lack of self-identity, and a lack of inherent existence. Nothing is self-caused or self-existent. Everything is empty of self-nature, self-causation, and self-existence.

      Nagarjuna also says that if everything is empty, then there is no (self-)arising and no (self-)ceasing or passing away (Chapter XXV). Thus, he makes the radical suggestion that if everything is empty, then nirvana is just as empty as samsara, and there is no real difference between them. Nirvana is not something that can be “attained,” and not something that “arises.” It's also not something that is permanent or compounded, and it's not something that can be possessed or relinquished. It's not self-caused or inherently existent, and neither is samsara. Nirvana is neither (self-)existent nor (self-)non-existent, so those who abide in nirvana are likewise neither said to be (self- or inherently) existent nor said to be (self- or inherently) nonexistent.

      Nagajuna also makes the radical suggestion that if everything is empty, then the Four Noble Truths are empty. The Four Noble Truths do not inherently exist, and neither does the Dharma (the teaching of the Buddha). Suffering doesn't inherently exist (it's not self-arisen or self-existent; its arising or existence depends on causes and conditions beyond itself), and neither do arising or ceasing. To be able to truly recognize suffering, as well as its “arising,” its “cessation,” and “the path to its cessation,” we must be able to recognize dependent arising (Chapter XXIV).

FOOTNOTES

¹Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika, translated by Jay L. Garfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 2.