Nagarjuna

The teaching

Taught from his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with the Dispeller of Disputes and his letters to a king.

Dependent arising

Nagarjuna opens his verses in praise of the Buddha, who taught that whatever arises in dependence is without ceasing and without arising, without ending and without lasting, without coming and without going, neither one thing nor many: the quieting of all elaborations, peace. These eight denials are the whole book in brief. Things arise only in dependence on causes and conditions, on their parts and on the minds that name them, and what arises so has no being of its own, no essence, svabhava. That lack of essence is what he calls emptiness.

Neither from itself nor from another

The first chapter tests causation. Nothing whatever, anywhere, arises from itself, from something else, from both, or without a cause. This fourfold test, whether a thing is, is not, both or neither, is his method throughout: every view of what things are in themselves is tried in each of the four ways and found wanting, so that only dependent arising is left.

So too with motion. The road already travelled is not being travelled, the road not yet travelled is not being travelled, and apart from these no road is being travelled. A mover does not move, a non-mover does not move, and what third thing could? If mover and moving were one, the doer and the deed would be one; if they were different, there could be a mover without motion. Mover and motion are set up together, each by the other, and neither stands alone.

No self, and no mine

If the self were the parts of a person, body, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness, it would come and go as they do; if it were something other than them, it would have none of their marks and could not be found. With no self there is no mine. When the thought of I and mine falls quiet, inwardly and outwardly, grasping ends, and with it birth. Bondage comes from deeds and defilements, these from false conceptions, and these from elaboration, and elaboration ends in emptiness. So the Buddhas taught a self to some, no self to others, and to others neither self nor no self, as each hearer needed.

The two truths

The Buddhas teach by two truths: the conventional truth of the world and the truth of the highest meaning. Whoever does not know the difference between them does not understand the deep point of the teaching. Without leaning on the conventional the highest cannot be taught, and without reaching the highest, nirvana is not attained. Carts, persons, causes and paths are real in the world's sense, and the teaching works in that sense; that none of them has a being of its own is the highest truth.

To the charge that emptiness destroys the Buddha's teaching, the four truths, the path and its fruit, he answers that it is the other way round. Whatever arises in dependence is emptiness; that, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way; and nothing exists that does not arise in dependence, so nothing exists that is not empty. If things had essences, nothing could arise or cease, suffering could have no cause and no end, and no one could walk a path. For one to whom emptiness makes sense, everything makes sense.

Emptiness is no view to hold

Emptiness is not one more thing to believe. The Victors taught it as the giving up of all views, and those who make a view of emptiness itself are beyond help. Grasped wrongly it ruins the slow-witted, like a snake seized by the wrong end or a spell wrongly cast. To say that a thing exists is to hold that things last; to say that it does not exist is to hold that they are annihilated; the wise rest in neither existence nor non-existence.

Nirvana and the round of birth

There is not the slightest difference between the round of birth and death and nirvana; the limit of the one is the limit of the other, and between them there is not even the finest gap. Nirvana is not a place reached or a thing gained: not abandoned and not attained, not ended and not lasting. It is the stilling of all grasping and the quieting of all elaboration, peace; and, the chapter ends, no teaching was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone, anywhere.

An illusion that stops an illusion

If everything is empty, an opponent says, then your own words are empty and can refute nothing. Nagarjuna answers in the Dispeller of Disputes that his words, arising in dependence, are empty indeed, and work all the same, as a cart carries wood, a pot holds water and a cloth keeps off the cold though none has a being of its own. His denial works as one phantom conjured by a magician might stop another phantom; nothing with an essence is needed for it to do its work. And he holds no thesis: if he had one, the fault would be his, but he has none, so the fault does not touch him.

Counsel for a king

His letters bring the teaching into a life. The Precious Garland names two goods: high standing, which is happiness in this and future lives, and the highest good, which is freedom. Faith leads to the first and wisdom to the second; wisdom is chief, but faith comes first. The practice of high standing is sixteen things: to give up killing, stealing and taking another's partner; lying, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle talk; covetousness, malice and the view that nothing matters; and to keep from intoxicants, to live by right means, to do no harm, to give with respect, to honour those worth honour, and to love.

The Letter to a Friend asks the reader to treat alike the eight worldly concerns, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace, and to count contentment the greatest of riches. One whose hair or clothes caught fire would drop everything to put it out; so, the letter says, one should strive to end the round of births, for nothing is more urgent.