Nagarjuna Quotes
- I praise that perfect Buddha,
- The Supreme Philosopher,
- Who taught us relativity;
- Free of cessation and creation,
- Without annihilation and permanence,
- With no coming and no going,
- Not a unity, nor a plurality,
- Fabrications quieted, the supreme bliss!
- (MMK I, 1-2, tr. in Thurman 1984: 10)
- In the famous XXIVth chapter of the Wisdom (Prajña-mula-madhyamaka-karika or MMK), this antagonist states that if everything were empty, then it would be inevitably consequent that everything would be annihilated, all causation, all meaning, all reason, all virtue, all understanding. Nagarjuna's reply to them is the classic refutation of this misunderstanding. He completely reverses the burden of defense, as it were, pointing out that precisely the opposite is true. If everything were not empty, then it would be inevitably consequent that everything would be annihilated, all causation, all meaning, all reason, all virtue, and all understanding.... (Thurman, 1984: 156. Also, Cf. commentary p. 158 ff.)
(The following is from MMK, XXIV, 7-20, as translated by Thurman, 1984: 156 ff.):
7.Let us explain this. You do not know either the use, sense, or referent of 'emptiness,' And therefore you do yourself such damage.
8.The Buddha's teaching of the Dharma relies on the two realities: the social, superficial reality (lokasamvritisatya), and the reality of Ultimate Import (paramarthasatya).
9.Those who do not discern the difference between these two realities do not understand the profound, the principle of the Buddha-Doctrine.
10.Without employing the conventional, the Ultimate is not taught. Without understanding the Ultimate Reality, Nirvana is not attained.
11.A wrongly viewed emptiness destroys the weak intelligence, like a clumsily held snake or an ill-worked spell.
12.Thus the ascetic's mind was quite averse to teaching, knowing how hard it is for the dull-witted to fathom this principle.
13.This rebuttal you repeatedly level against emptiness is not the faulty consequence of our position; it does not logically apply to emptiness.
14.Everything works properly which properly works with emptiness. And nothing works properly which does not work properly with emptiness.
15.You are merely projecting the faults of your position (that is, non-emptiness) upon ours, like a man on horseback forgetting the horse beneath him.
16.If you regard things as existent by virtue of their intrinsic reality, you thereby regard them as bereft of causes and conditions.
17.And thereby you are condemning effects, causes, agents, actions, activities, originations, cessations, and even fruitional goals.
18.Whatever is relativity, we proclaim that emptiness. It is dependent designation. It is also the central way.
19.Nothing whatsoever is found which is not relativistically originated. Therefore, nothing whatsoever is found which is not empty.
20ab.So if all things were not empty, there would be no origination and no destruction.
Nagarjuna on the ‘Emptiness of emptiness’ | ||
emptiness, the transcendence of all views |
MMK, XIII, 8 |
Thurman: 1984, 151 |
one who adopts emptiness as a view is thereby pronounced incurable |
MMK, XIII, 8 |
Thurman: 1984, 153 |
Buddhas mention 'self,' and also teach 'selflessness,' as well as teaching that there are no such things as self and selflessness. |
MMK, VIII, 6 |
Thurman: 1984, 154 |
The Buddha's Doctrine is that all is Reality, unreality, both Reality and unreality, and neither Reality nor unreality. |
MMK, VIII, 8 |
Thurman: 1984, 154 |
'All is empty' should not be asserted, nor should 'all is not empty,' 'all is both (empty and non-empty),' nor 'all is neither (empty nor non-empty).' Each is maintained (only) in the context of conventional reality. |
MMK, XXII, 11 |
Thurman: 1984, 154 |
