Nāgārjuna

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

Neither creator nor Absolute: all is empty because it arises dependently

No creator GodInferred from their doctrine

Nāgārjuna does not discuss the existence of God in the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, but his analysis leaves no room for a creator. The first verse of chapter 1 denies that anything arises from itself, from another, from both or without a cause: a god who produced the world would be an «other» cause endowed with its own nature, which is precisely what the treatise refutes. Nor does he replace God with an impersonal Absolute. Emptiness is not a background reality but the name of dependent origination (24.18), and of whoever turns it into a view he says that they are incurable (13.8). The ultimate, according to the dedication, is the stilling of conceptual proliferation. His work allows one to answer that liberation depends on no supreme being, but on understanding how things arise.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

Neither the self nor its negation has its own existence

There is no permanent selfStated explicitly

Chapter 18 of the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way examines the self (ātman). If the self were identical with the aggregates, it would arise and cease with them; if it were different, it would lack the characteristics of the aggregates and could not be known. It is found neither way, and when the «I» and the «mine» cease, clinging ceases. But Nāgārjuna does not turn the absence of self into a metaphysical thesis: in 18.6 he recalls that the buddhas sometimes taught the self, sometimes non-self, and sometimes that there is neither self nor non-self, according to what each listener needed. The self exists only as a conventional designation dependent on the aggregates. In the Precious Garland he applies the same analysis to the person made of the six elements: apart from them, it is not found.

Why do we suffer?

Karma and afflictions arise from conceptual construction; they cease in emptiness

Craving and attachmentStated explicitly

Nāgārjuna gives a precise genealogy of suffering in verse 18.5 of the Fundamental Verses: liberation comes with the end of karma and afflictions; karma and afflictions proceed from conceptual constructions; these from proliferation, and proliferation ceases in emptiness. Chapter 26 runs through the twelve links of dependent origination, where ignorance sets the formations in motion and clinging feeds rebirth. Chapter 12 adds that suffering is not made by oneself, nor by another, nor by both, nor without cause: it too lacks its own existence. We suffer because we cling to things as though they existed by themselves; clinging is the visible symptom of that underlying ignorance, and it disappears when one sees that nothing has such existence.

What happens after death?

One is reborn through karma, though no one with own-existence transmigrates

Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

Nāgārjuna assumes the Buddhist framework of rebirth and defends it at the conventional level. In the Letter to a Friend he describes to the king the destinies of the hells, hungry ghosts and animals to urge him to right conduct, and in the Precious Garland he links the actions of this life to future births. But in the Fundamental Verses he subjects the same process to analysis: chapter 16 shows that, if there were a self or formations with their own existence, they could not transmigrate, and chapter 27 rejects both that the future self is identical to the present one and that it is different. Rebirth is a continuity of causes and effects without a traveller passing from one life to another. Liberation consists in that continuity ceasing to be fed.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Liberation comes when conceptual proliferation ceases in emptiness

Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly

For Nāgārjuna, what liberates is understanding. Verse 18.5 of the Fundamental Verses formulates it as a chain: with the end of karma and afflictions comes liberation; these are born of conceptual constructions, which are born of proliferation, and proliferation ceases in emptiness. The instrument is analysis: examining causes, motion, self, time or nirvāṇa until one sees that nothing stands by itself. This knowledge is not one more thesis; emptiness is the relinquishing of all views (13.8). The Precious Garland and the Letter to a Friend, addressed to a king, complete the picture: generosity, ethics and patience prepare the ground, and wisdom cuts the root. Without the conventional the ultimate is not taught, and without the ultimate nirvāṇa is not attained (24.10).

Is a teacher necessary?

He venerates the Buddha as teacher but develops no doctrine of the spiritual guide

Did not address it

Nāgārjuna's securely attributed works do not deal with the relationship between master and disciple. What they do is place all teaching under the Buddha's authority. The Fundamental Verses open with a reverence to «the best of speakers», who taught dependent origination, and close with another to Gautama, who taught the good Dharma for abandoning all views. Chapter 24 explains that the buddhas' teaching rests on two truths and that without the conventional, that is, without words, teachers and texts, the ultimate is not taught. The Precious Garland and the Letter to a Friend also show his own practice as adviser to a king. From this one can infer that transmission matters, but not a theory of the master.

Is the world real?

Dependent origination we call emptiness: that is the middle way

A web of causes without substanceStated explicitly

Nāgārjuna's answer is the classic formulation of this stance. The Fundamental Verses begin by denying that anything arises from itself, from another, from both or without a cause (1.1), and culminate in 24.18: dependent origination we call emptiness, which is a dependent designation and is the middle way. The world is not unreal: it functions, produces effects, and karma and practice act within it. What it lacks is its own existence (svabhāva). Hence Nāgārjuna rejects both «it exists» and «it does not exist», as did the Buddha in the instruction to Kātyāyana (15.7). Conventional truth describes the world as it operates; ultimate truth shows that nothing in it stands alone. And nothing distinguishes saṃsāra from nirvāṇa (25.19): there is no other world behind this one.

What is love?

Compassion and emptiness together: giving, caring and aspiring to the good of all

Boundless compassionStated explicitly

The Fundamental Verses do not speak of love; the works addressed to a king do. The Precious Garland presents the bodhisattva path as a union of wisdom and compassion, and asks the sovereign for generosity towards the poor, the sick, travellers and prisoners, care for animals and a justice tempered by mercy. In its last chapter it proposes aspirations in which the practitioner wishes to be, for all beings, as useful as earth, water or air. Compassion does not contradict emptiness: precisely because beings suffer without knowing that nothing has its own existence, they deserve help, and the Letter to a Friend recommends cultivating love, compassion, joy and equanimity without limit. To love is to wish actively that all be freed from suffering.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Agent and action depend on each other; neither exists by itself

There is no doerStated explicitly

Chapter 8 of the Fundamental Verses examines agent and action and concludes that the agent depends on the action and the action on the agent; there is no other way to establish them (8.12). A doer with its own existence, prior to its acts and able to choose them from outside the web of conditions, does not hold up. This does not abolish responsibility. Chapter 17 defends the continuity of karma against those who think it incompatible with emptiness, and chapter 24 warns that it is whoever denies emptiness, not whoever affirms it, who destroys causality and practice. On the conventional level one acts and reaps fruits; on the ultimate, agents, acts and fruits are like a city of gandharvas, a mirage or a dream (17.33).

Why meditate or pray?

Meditating is analysing until conceptual proliferation is stilled

Seeing reality as it isInferred from their doctrine

Nāgārjuna wrote no meditation manuals, but his major work is itself a contemplative exercise. The Fundamental Verses examine causality, motion, the senses, the self, time and nirvāṇa itself, and in each chapter lead one to see that nothing stands by itself. This analysis does not seek to build a thesis but to still conceptual proliferation, which is how the dedication defines the auspicious. The Letter to a Friend, addressed to a king, also recommends the common practices: mindfulness of the body, meditation on impermanence and the four boundless abodes. Meditation serves, in short, to see things as they are, empty and dependent, and to stop clinging to them. Prayer hardly appears, except in the hymns of devotion to the Buddha.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Reason undoes all views, its own included: I have no thesis

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

Nāgārjuna is one of the most rigorous dialecticians in the history of philosophy, and he uses reason to show its own limits. The Fundamental Verses examine each concept, cause, motion, time, until it falls into contradiction, often through the tetralemma: neither is, nor is not, nor both, nor neither. In the Refutation of Objections he declares that he holds no thesis and that, therefore, no fault can be laid against him (29). Emptiness is the relinquishing of all views, and whoever makes it a view is incurable (13.8). But reason is not despised: without relying on the conventional the ultimate is not taught (24.10). It leads to the threshold; the ultimate is the stilling of conceptual proliferation, which no argument contains.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

He advises a king: rule with compassion, care for the poor, the sick and prisoners

Order societyStated explicitly

Nāgārjuna was a monk and his philosophical work does not deal with politics, but two texts of accepted attribution are addressed to a sovereign, probably of the Sātavāhana dynasty. The Precious Garland devotes much of its fourth chapter to good government: it asks the king to found hospices, rest houses and wells along the roads, to attend to the blind, the sick, the poor and the destitute, to care for animals, to treat prisoners with clemency and to appoint upright and wise ministers. It warns him that a kingdom ruled against the Dharma is lost. The Letter to a Friend joins moral and spiritual counsel for a powerful layman. For Nāgārjuna, the wisdom of emptiness does not require abandoning the world: it is also realised in a just order.