WorkNāgārjuna

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

Some 450 verses arguing that nothing, not even nirvana, exists by a nature of its own — the founding text of Buddhism's Middle Way school.

by Nāgārjuna235 passages held

German, a translation held here

Original title: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Original language: Sanskrit

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Overview

Buddhist scholars of the Abhidharma, the schools that turned the Buddha's teaching into a system, had broken the world down into its smallest elements, dharmas, and credited each with svabhāva, a nature of its own that makes it what it is whatever else exists. In some 450 terse verses, Nāgārjuna argues that nothing has such a nature: a thing exists only in dependence on its causes, its parts and the concepts that pick it out, and that dependence is what he calls emptiness. Historians place him in the second or third century CE, probably in southern India. The verses take one subject at a time — causes, motion, the senses, the self, time, the Buddha, nirvana itself — and show that treating any of them as self-standing ends in contradiction. The twenty-fourth chapter faces the obvious objection, that this empties the Buddha's teaching too, and answers that the teaching works on two levels of truth, the everyday and the ultimate, and that the ultimate cannot be taught without the everyday. The twenty-fifth concludes that there is not the slightest difference between nirvana and the round of rebirth. The verses founded Madhyamaka, the school of the middle, and were argued over for a thousand years. Kumārajīva, a monk and translator, put them into Chinese in 409, where they became a founding text of the Three Treatise school; in Tibet the reading of Candrakīrti, a seventh-century commentator, prevailed. Max Walleser, a German Indologist, translated the Tibetan version in 1911. That version carries the verses inside the Akutobhayā, an early commentary that Tibetan tradition ascribes to Nāgārjuna himself, though many scholars doubt it. A year later he translated the Chinese version.

Key concepts

What is svabhāva, a nature of its own?

Svabhāva is what a thing would have if it were what it is entirely by itself, owing nothing to causes, parts or names. The scholars Nāgārjuna argues against credited every smallest element of the world with one. He denies that anything has it, because a thing that owed nothing to anything else could never arise, change or end, and everything we meet does all three.

Does emptiness mean that nothing exists?

No. Emptiness means lacking a nature of one's own, not being nothing. A thing is empty because it exists only in dependence on other things, and the verses treat being empty and arising dependently as one fact. Their case of doer and deed shows it: no one is a doer without a deed, and no deed is done without a doer, yet both are real enough to act on.

What are the two truths?

They are two levels on which the Buddha's teaching speaks. The everyday, or veiled, truth is the world as language and custom present it: things arise, people act, a teacher teaches. The ultimate truth is that none of this has a nature of its own. The verses hold that whoever misses the difference misses the teaching, and that the ultimate is reached only through the everyday.

Why does every chapter ask whether two things are one or different?

Because that question is the verses' main tool. Take fire and fuel: if they were one thing, the burner and the burnt would be the same; if they were two, fire could burn without fuel, which it never does. When neither answer holds, the pair cannot have natures of their own, and only dependence is left. The same test is run on mover and motion, self and body.

What are the skandhas, the aggregates?

The skandhas are the five groups into which Buddhist analysis divides a person: bodily form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. The verses use them as the test case for the self. A self identical with these changing groups would arise and perish with them, and a self apart from them could never be found, so neither the self nor the groups stand on their own.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Nothing Stands Alone

Whatever we name seems to be there on its own, with a nature that makes it what it is. The verses ask whether anything at all could exist like that, and answer no.

Nāgārjuna's targets were Buddhist scholars who had broken the world into its smallest elements and credited each with svabhāva, a nature of its own. He takes their categories one at a time, causes, motion, the senses, time, and asks of each pair, fire and fuel, mover and moving, whether they are one thing or two. Either answer ends in contradiction. What remains is dependence: things arise from causes, parts and the names that pick them out, and that dependence is what he calls emptiness. Nothing is abolished, only its independence.

emptiness
dependent origination
dependent arising
dependence
svabhava
intrinsic existence
causality
causation
arising
arising and ceasing
cessation
existence
identity
difference
time
impermanence
perception

Enter a dialogue

Two Truths and Nirvana

If nothing has a nature of its own, the Buddha's teaching seems to empty itself too. What is at stake is whether suffering, deeds and release still mean anything once emptiness is granted.

Nāgārjuna meets the objection head on: emptiness does not abolish the four noble truths, it is what makes them possible, because a path with a fixed nature could never be walked. The teaching rests on two levels of truth, the everyday and the ultimate, and the ultimate is reached only through the everyday. Deeds bear fruit as a sprout follows a seed, without an unchanging doer behind them. And nirvana is no other place: between it and the round of rebirth there is not the slightest difference.

nirvana
liberation
suffering
karma
action
rebirth
self
aggregates

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 235
distinct concepts: 172
by passages held, corpus-wide: #317

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “dependent origination” and “emptiness”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
dependent origination	emptiness	21
causality	dependent origination	16
causality	karma	13
emptiness	self	11
identity	self	11
dependent origination	self	10
emptiness	nirvana	10
dependent origination	karma	9
emptiness	karma	7
causality	emptiness	5
causation	self	5
dependent origination	identity	5
causality	identity	4
causation	emptiness	4
causation	identity	4
emptiness	identity	4
karma	self	3
causation	dependent origination	2
dependent origination	nirvana	2
causality	nirvana	1
causality	self	1
karma	nirvana	1
nirvana	self	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Letter to a Friend (Suhṛllekha)
The practical counterpart to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: where that work argues, this one advises, and its reader is a layman with a kingdom to run.
EN
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) you are here DE

— or open another of their works