Nagarjuna’s Middle Way
The Meaning of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
“Everything is real and is not real,
Both real and not real,
Neither real nor not real.
This is Lord Buddha’s teaching.”
— Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Ch. 18)
“All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.” — Principia Discordia
Nagarjuna (ca. 150–250AD) was an Indian Buddhist philosopher. He is, perhaps, the most influential philosopher within the Mahayana tradition and the founder of the Madhyamaka (“centrist”) school within Buddhism, a primary concern of which was finding a middle way between essentialism and nihilism. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK) was his magnum opus.
Nagarjuna’s Tetralemma
Throughout the MMK, Nagarjuna uses a sort of apophatic method whereby he negates or refutes various positions on all kinds of philosophical questions. He will take a prominent view espoused by the Indian philosophers of his day and demonstrate it to be false, only to turn around and demonstrate that the opposing view is equally untenable. He then goes further to demonstrate that a synthesis of the two views is inadequate while an outright rejection of both views is also unreasonable. Nagarjuna lays out what would appear to be all possible solutions to a problem in the form of a tetralemma:
- a: proposition a, the thesis
- ¬a: negation/rejection of proposition a, the antithesis
- aΛ¬a: combination of propositions a and ¬a, the synthesis (both/and)
- ~(aˬa): rejection of both the thesis and antithesis (neither/nor)
After laying out the tetralemma, Nagarjuna refutes all four views. At first glance, it looks like Nagarjuna is arguing that all possible answers are obviously wrong. What Nagarjuna is saying in the MMK is, first and foremost, that philosophical speculation can’t lead you to the ultimate truth. He wants the reader to stop clinging to philosophical views and, instead, to embrace Buddhism and turn to the meditative techniques recommended by the Tathāgata, as this is the only sure means of gaining experiential knowledge of ultimate truth.
His point seems to be to convey that ultimate truth cannot be approached using the methods of logic and philosophy. The tetralemma and the negation of its component parts is not just a method of winning an argument but a starting point from which one can depart in order to eventually experience enlightenment. In this way, Nagarjuna’s exhaustive negations seem to me to function almost as a long-drawn-out koan — a riddle without a solution that serves the purpose of bringing the reader to the realization that logical methods of discovering ultimate truth are inadequate and, hopefully, also to induce enlightenment or insight into the nature of ultimate reality.
Emptiness and the Futility of Clinging to Philosophical Views
This is not, however, to say that Nagarjuna is content with merely negating the views of others. There is, in fact, a positive statement (a fifth possibility beyond the tetralemma) that Nagarjuna wants to emphasize. He wants to assert that all phenomena and things are “dependently arisen,” affirming the Buddhist doctrine of pratitya-samutpada, that all things arise in relation to, and dependent upon, other things. No thing exists independently of other things. Therefore, insofar as things exist, their existence is interdependent with other things in such a way that they cannot be viewed as having an independent or inherent essence. And this points, of course, to the corollary doctrine of śūnyatā, the “emptiness” of all phenomena — all things lack a concrete independent essence and are therefore empty or open-ended. These truths, however, logically lead to the conclusion that one must relinquish all views and stop clinging to philosophical views.
Nagarjuna starts the MMK by asserting that the Buddha taught that everything that is dependently arisen (which happens to be everything) cannot be conceptually understood in any adequate sense and he concludes by asserting that Buddha’s dharma “leads to the relinquishing of all views.”
“I prostrate to the Perfect Buddha,
The best of teachers, who taught that
Whatever is dependently arisen is…
Without distinction, without identity,
And free from conceptual contruction.
[…]
I prostrate to Gautama
Who through compassion
Taught the true doctrine,
which leads to the relinquishing of all views.”
Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, first verses & final verses)
Jay Garfield ties together the beginning and ending verses of the MMK, offering the following explanation:
“There is a startling grammatical and poetic parallel between this closing verse and the drammatic dedicatory verses…. The echo at the end of the opening is apparent, and it draws attention to Nagarjuna’s denial in the dedication of the possibility of any predication from the ultimate point of view — of the inability to say anything positive that is literally true about the ultimate nature of things. When this is joined with our reading [of various verses from the body of the text] — all of which emphasize in different ways the impossibility of literal statements about the ultimate and the merely ostensive character of language about it, despite the need for such conventional assertion to enable one to approach ultimate truth — we can see a double entendre in this verse. For, if one reads it not from the conventional point of view as in the previous interpretation [i.e. relinquishing only false views], but as an echo of the dedication, one can see Nagarjuna’s own view and the Buddhist Dharma itself included under ‘all views’ and, hence, necessarily to be relinquished once it is understood and used.”(Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakarika: Translation and Commentary, Ch. 27 of the commentary)
Nagarjuna, upon this interpretation, can be seen as also echoing the message of the Buddha in the simile of the raft from the Majjhima Nikāya in the Pali Canon:
““Bhikkhus, I shall show you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping. Listen and attend closely to what I shall say.” — “Yes, venerable sir,” the bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said this:
“Bhikkhus, suppose a man in the course of a journey saw a great expanse of water, whose near shore was dangerous and fearful and whose further shore was safe and free from fear, but there was no ferryboat or bridge for going to the far shore. Then he thought: ‘There is this great expanse of water, whose near shore is dangerous and fearful and whose further shore is safe and free from fear, but there is no ferryboat or bridge for going to the far shore. Suppose I collect grass, twigs, branches, and leaves and bind them together into a raft, and supported by the raft and making an effort with my hands and feet, I got safely across to the far shore.’ And then the man collected grass, twigs, branches, and leaves and bound them together into a raft, and supported by the raft and making an effort with his hands and feet, he got safely across to the far shore. Then, when he had got across and had arrived at the far shore, he might think thus: ‘This raft has been very helpful to me, since supported by it and making an effort with my hands and feet, I got safely across to the far shore. Suppose I were to hoist it on my head or load it on my shoulder, and then go wherever I want.’ Now, bhikkhus, what do you think? By doing so, would that man be doing what should be done with that raft?”
“No, venerable sir.”
“By doing what would that man be doing what should be done with that raft? Here, bhikkhus, when that man got across and had arrived at the far shore, he might think thus: ‘This raft has been very helpful to me, since supported by it and making an effort with my hands and feet, I got safely across to the far shore. Suppose I were to haul it onto the dry land or set it adrift in the water, and then go wherever I want.’ Now, bhikkhus, it is by so doing that that man would be doing what should be done with that raft. So I have shown you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping.”
(translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi)
More About the Tetralemma
“Whatever comes into being dependent on another
Is not identical to that thing.
Nor is it different from it.
Therefore it is neither nonexistent in time nor permanent.”
— Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Ch. 18)
To truly understand what Nagarjuna is doing in the MMK, we must delve deeper into the tetralemma and the method of negation used throughout the text. Nagarjuna’s method is brilliantly summarized by Peter Kakol:
Now Nagarjuna’s tetralemma considers the relation between two opposing concepts or positions, lets call them X and non-X. There are four possibilities: (1) X and non-X are identical, or interdependent; (2) X and non-X are different, or mutually independent; (3) X and non-X are both identical and different; (4) X and non-X are neither identical nor different. Nagarjuna argues that neither identity nor difference can supply us with an understanding of the relation between X and non-X, for in the case of identity (or mutual dependence) there are no longer two different terms to be related, so there can be no relation; and in the case of difference (or mutual independence), the relation must itself be a third thing between the two terms and thus itself needs to be related to the terms by the addition of further relations regressing to infinity, so again there can be no relation. And the combination of identity and difference — either as a conjunction or a double-negation (these are logically equivalent) — gets us nowhere, as this is clearly self-contradictory. (1995: 36–7, 54; 1997: 169–70, 187) The conclusion which Nagarjuna draws from this analysis is that the search for the relation between any two conceptual opposites is open-ended, like infinitely empty space, and thus unsuccessful. This is the meaning of sunyata, which is usually translated into English as ‘emptiness’; but a more accurate translation, which takes account of both contextual usage and intertextual references, is ‘openness’ or ‘open-endedness’. This translation better illustrates the identity between pratitya-samutpada and sunyata. As Nancy McCagney puts it: ‘Pratitya samutpada is the arising and ceasing of dharmas which are indeterminate (animitta) and open-ended (sunyata)’ (1997: 35, 115).” — Peter Kakol (Asymmetrical Interdependence: An Integration of Buddhism and Process Philosophy)
So the tetralemma becomes a framework for negating competing views. The easiest way that I can think of to explain this approach of negation is to explain how it might be applied to the “problem of the one and the many.” The one-many problem refers to the difficult philosophical question of how the general relates to the particular. There are many individual trees but then there is a single category of treeness. How does the individual tree relate to the category? Do we call it a “tree” because it partakes of some essence of “treeness” that is shared with the category as a whole? or do we see similarities in disparate particular things and generalize in order to create the general category of trees? Which is primary, the one or the many? If we were going to apply Nagarjuna’s method to the one-many problem, we might do so by laying out a tetralemma as follows:
- a: ultimacy of the one (the one is independent and the many are dependent upon it)— The one category of things takes precedence over the many particular things. If this were not the case, then how could we say that this particular thing is actually a tree? For a tree to belong to the category of trees, it must partake of some essence/nature of treeness; therefore, the one (general category) must take precedence over the many (individual instance). The individual tree is a tree because it inherited the essence of treeness from the parent tree from whose seed it was itself born. The many depend upon the one for their very existence.
- ¬a: ultimacy of the many (the many are independent and the one is dependent upon them)— If the many depended on the one for their existence, then the general category of trees would have to precede the existence of any particular thing that you could call “a tree.” This leads to the absurdity of all possible things somehow existing eternally in a theoretical form before any particular instance of said thing arises. If I invent a new piece of technology, never before seen or conceived, then proposition a would imply the absurd idea that my new invention somehow already existed prior to me inventing it. It must, therefore, be the case that individual things (the many) exist first and the general category (the one) results from generalizing particular things into categories.
- aΛ¬a: the one and the many are equally ultimate (the one and the many are symmetrically interdependent)— The one and the many are equally ultimate, neither is independent of the other. They are equally dependent upon one another (symmetrical interdependence). [The Christian philosopher Cornelius van Til, for instance, points to the Ontological Trinity in Christian theology as implying such a position.]
- ~(aΛ¬a): neither the one nor the many are ultimate (they are both asymmetrically independent)— Neither the one nor the many depends upon the other. The category of things and the particular things that fit into that category are asymmetrically independent and, therefore, unrelated.
Nagarjuna would then refute all of these positions. Proposition a seems untenable because how could you categorize things if there were no independent things to categorize? Proposition ¬a seems untenable because how could a particular thing, like a human, even be “human” if there were not some sort of general “human nature,” existing independently of it, which nature it shares with others? Proposition aΛ¬a is untenable because symmetrical dependence implies identity while two opposing views can’t be identical. Furthermore, two diametrically opposite positions that are both false cannot magically become true by being placed side by side. Finally, proposition ~(aΛ¬a) is obviously untenable because it would mean that the one and the many are totally unrelated, which can’t be true because how could we logically categorize things if individual things all had no relationship to general categories into which we might classify them.
The point of Nagarjuna’s exhaustive negation is to demonstrate the futility of metaphysical or philosophical speculation as a method of discovering ultimate truth or reality. All possible solutions seem to be logically untenable. In the MMK, Nagarjuna takes up twenty-seven different philosophical questions or topics and applies this exhaustive negation method to them, seemingly demonstrating that all possible positions are logically untenable and problematic. Nagarjuna basically concludes, as Mark Siderits puts it, that “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” or, at least, that the ultimate truth is unknowable — or unknowable through any sort of ratiocination or logical reasoning.
The reality that Nagarjuna points out is pratitya-samutpada, or “interdependent co-arising,” which Peter Kakol refers to as asymmetrical interdependence — a fifth possibility that transcends the tetralemma. The one and the many are interdependent but they are not symmetrically interdependent as proposition aΛ¬a suggests. The reality is that the one and the many each are not concrete things with stable and abiding essences that exist independently and can, therefore, relate to one another as separate independent things. The one and the many both lack any inherent essence. The ultimate reality is that both of these things lack essence. The one and the many correspond to conventional realities rather than ultimate reality. When we talk about a tree or about trees in general, we are dealing with conventional truth. “This is a tree,” “Trees are plants with certain features,” etc. The ultimate truth is that each tree is just a cluster of atomic interactions and chemical reactions — phenomena related to other phenomena with no inherent essence or stable core. The concept of a tree is a construct created by our minds in order to enable us to function in this world. The phenomena as independent things are empty.
Peter Kakol finds it useful to discuss Nagarjuna in light of process philosophy and presents him as espousing a sort of “process-relational” ontology. Things aren’t properly things but processes. A “human body” isn’t a body but a bunch of physical and chemical processes giving rise to the epiphenomenological occurrence of the “human.” The idea of asymmetrical interdependence is merely a fancy philosophical way of restating the Buddhist doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda. All phenomena and entities arise dependently (or interdependently) upon other phenomena and entities. Things are interdependent. A mother and a son are related as cause and effect. However, the mother is only a mother by virtue of having a son, so her identity is dependent upon the son, though not to the same extent that her son’s existence is dependent upon hers. And there are myriads of other entities and phenomena entangled in the mesh of causation that gave rise to both of them. Everything dependently arises from other things, such that nothing is independently existent — nothing exists apart from the ways in which it relates to other things. Relationships and processes give rise to everything — apart from relationships and processes, nothing exists!
Pratītya-samutpāda in turn is just another way of looking at the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā (emptiness). Everything is ultimately empty, without any inherent essence, because we are all interdependent. We can say that something has an essence in a conventional sense but that essence is really just an epiphenomenon brought about by a variety of other things. Who I am is a product of my biology, my upbringing, my environment, etc. My “essence” or “self” is impossible to pinpoint. While I exist in a conventional sense, my “self” is ultimately empty or without essential existence. Who or what I happen to be is a complex web of processes and relationships — a body comprised of physical particles and chemical reactions plus a persona determined by countless relationships to others (a son, a student, a husband, a friend, a neighbor, an employee, a volunteer, a citizen, a writer — all process-relational terms). If pressed to give an account of who I am without using relational terms, I could only respond with silence. There is no there there.
This can be seen as a sort of philosophical view in itself but Nagarjuna warns against turning the doctrine of pratitya-samutpada (asymmetrical interdependence, interdependent co-arsing) and its corollary sunyata (emptiness) into a philosophical view that one might cling to. Why? Because this doctrine of emptiness is supposed to help one stop clinging. Also, because this fifth possibility that transcends the tetralemma is, in some sense, no answer at all because the tetralemma is looking to determine the ultimate truth related to some phenomenon by determining the essential nature of reality — the dharma espoused by Nagarjuna suggests that there is no ultimate solution to be found because nothing has an essential nature to discover. Insofar as this dharma expressed in conventional terms is a view that you can believe in, it is really just a raft that needs to be abandoned once you reach the other shore.
“The Emperor said, ‘What is the foremost sacred truth?’
Bodhidharma said, ‘Vast emptiness, nothing sacred.’
The Emperor said, ‘Who is it that faces me?’
Bodhidharma said, ‘I don’t know.’”
— Dōgen Zenji (from The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master, chapter 8)
The Middle Way: Conventional Truth vs. Ultimate Truth
“The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma
Is based on two truths:
A truth of worldly convention
And an ultimate truth.
[…]
Without a foundation in conventional truth,
The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,
Liberation is not achieved.”
— Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Ch. 24)
The Madhyamaka school, which Nagarjuna founded, draws a distinction between conventional reality and ultimate reality (or conventional truth and ultimate truth). Take a table, for instance. The conventional reality — the truth that we must accept in order to get by in this world — is that a table is a single object about which we can make a statement. On a deeper, more ultimate level, however, we find that a table is not a singular thing at all — it lacks any unified essence and is made up of many seemingly disparate particulars, tiny atoms and, if we examine closely enough, subatomic particles. And each of those component parts breaks down into something less substantial — into energy, waves, “strings,” or some sort of vague je ne sais quoi. Ultimately, we can’t say anything about what a table is because its ultimate reality is incoherent, incomprehensible, and indescribable. As Jay Garfield puts it, in his commentary on Nagarjuna, “discourse about the ultimate is perilous…. there is the ever-present danger of talking sheer nonsense. For the ultimate truth is, in some sense, ineffable in that all words and their referents are by definition conventional.”(The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Ch. 22) It is conventionally true that a table exists but it is not ultimately true that it exists. What exists is a bunch of chemical reactions and processes taking place that lead to this ultimately unstable phenomenon that we interpret as a table.
“That there is a self has been taught,
And the doctrine of no-self,
By the buddhas, as well as the
Doctrine of neither self nor nonself.”
— Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Ch. 18)
A core doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism is that things lack essence — there is no core essence to any particular entity or phenomenon. The most basic application of this idea is to the question of the “self.” What is the self? What is the essence of my being? I am not identical to my thoughts, to my feelings, to my memories, etc, etc, etc. To whatever extent that there is a there there at all, it’s not in any specific thing. The self is not a real fundamental phenomenon but rather an epiphenomenon produced by the aggregation of other phenomena. Just as a table isn’t really a singular thing (it has no core essence that you can pinpoint), so too the self is not a singular thing but only really exists in a conventional sense rather than an ultimate sense. This conventional/ultimate reality distinction is the reason that a Buddhist can say something like “Do this in order to come to the realization that your atman (self) does not exist.” The sense in which you exist is different from the sense in which you do not exist. You do exist (conventional truth) but you lack any stable abiding essence (ultimate truth). You experience consciousness and you think that you are the one experiencing it — you’re not! You are the experience.
A person with knowledge of biological evolution and modern science might be starting to see how this conventional/ultimate distinction really corresponds to reality. They may also be starting to piece together just how conventional truth came about as a phenomenon. As a species, we evolved in order to survive. Our brains did not need to understand how everything is really just energy, waves, “strings” or whatever. Understanding that was really not relevant since it would have given us no advantage in the realm of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Meanwhile, perceiving and understanding globs of particles as unified wholes was evolutionarily advantageous. Seeing a tiger as a unified entity (conventional reality) rather than “as a glob of ten-octillion chemical reactions taking place in close proximity to one another” helped prevent us from being eaten by tigers too frequently. If tigers had not been interpreted as one single phenomenon (a giant cat that likes to kill things), our ancestors would not have survived long in this world and we would never have been born. It is conventionally true that a tiger is a big scary cat that will rip us to shreds if we don’t stay away from it but it is ultimately just a glob of atoms that reduce to vibrational energy or who-the-heck-knows-what.
While an understanding of conventional reality is all that is needed in order for us to survive and thrive within this world, some insight into the nature of ultimate reality might benefit our psychological wellbeing and even help to satisfy our natural curiosity. And, from a Buddhist perspective, the recognition that conventional reality is not ultimately real is the key to overcoming duḥkha, the dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and angst that results from seeing the conventional as ultimately real. The self and the suffering that it experiences exist only on the conventional level — the ability to experientially detach from conventional reality in order to experience a glimpse of ultimate reality is the key to overcoming the dissatisfaction inherent in human existence. Plus this conventional/ultimate distinction allows one to embrace the Middle Way (madhyama pratipada) between the extremes of nihilism and essentialism, creating a theoretical framework for realizing the emptiness of things and, hopefully, allowing one to thereby cease clinging to them.
As Jay Garfield puts it:
“This is the soteriological import of this discussion of fundamental ontology: If one reifies phenomena — including such things as one’s own self, characteristics (prominently including one’s own), or external objects — and if one thinks that things either fail to exist or exist absolutely, one will be unable to attain any peace. For one will thereby be subject to egoism, the overvaluing of oneself and one’s possessions. These are the seeds of grasping and craving and, hence, of suffering. The alternative, Nagarjuna suggests, and the path to pacification, is to see oneself and other entities as non-substantial, impermanent, and subject to change and not as appropriate objects of such passionate craving.”(Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakarika: Translation and Commentary, Ch. 27 of the commentary)
What Nagarjuna teaches in the MMK is firmly rooted in classical Buddhism but there is a strong shift in emphasis. In the Nikayas or Agamas, the authentic discourses of the Buddha, the Buddha employs the same method (using the tetralemma and negations) and reaches a similar conclusion. Nagarjuna has clearly just adopted the approach of the Buddha. However, the Buddha’s focus was more introspective. He was primarily concerned with looking at the nature of the self and suffering and how we might transcend the existential crises and dissatisfactions that come with sentient existence. If we read the discourses of the Buddha, we can easily see how Nagarjuna is simply drawing out broader implications of the Buddha’s teachings rather than doing something totally original here.
We find this discourse in the Pali Canon:
Kassapa: “Is suffering created by oneself?”
The Buddha: “Not so.”
Kassapa: “Is suffering created by another?”
Buddha: “Not so.”
Kassapa: “Is suffering created both by oneself and by another?”
Buddha: “Not so.”
Kassapa: “Has suffering arisen by chance, being created neither by oneself nor by another?”
Buddha: “Not so.”
Kassapa: “Is there no suffering?” […]
Buddha: “It is not that I do not know and see suffering, Kassapa, I know suffering, I see suffering…. Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘the one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result,’ then one asserts with reference to one existing from the beginning: ‘Suffering is created by oneself.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to eternalism. But, Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is one, the one who experiences the result is another,’ then one asserts with reference to one stricken by feeling: ‘Suffering is created by another.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to annihilationism. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle.” — Acelakassapa Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 12.17)
We see here that Nagarjuna’s tetralemma is actually the Buddha’s tetralemma! All Nagarjuna did was adopt the logical method of the Buddha and plug in different subjects of meditation or contemplation. He is analyzing different subjects with the same method in order to demonstrate that the Buddha’s arguments imply the emptiness of everything and not just of self, suffering, and the cycle of birth and death.
It is the Buddha’s teaching here in the Nikayas/Agamas that Nagarjuna is alluding to in his dedicatory verses to the MMK:
“I prostrate to the perfect Buddha,
The best of teachers, who taught that
whatever is dependently arisen is
Unceasing, unborn,
Unannihilated, not permanent,
Not coming, not going,
Without distinction, without identity,
And free from conceptual destruction.”
— Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Dedicatory Verses)
Nagarjuna only needs to demonstrate that all things are, in fact, “dependently arisen” in order to demonstrate that they are all like the self. Once he does that, he has established the emptiness of all things. He only needs to swap out the subject in the tetralemma in order to broaden the scope of the Buddha’s observations. The Buddha himself, in the Nikayas, does seem to reach Nagarjuna’s conclusion, though he does not dwell on it and quickly returns to the introspective matter of suffering, its cause, and the path to its cessation:
“This world, Kaccana, for the most part depends upon a duality — upon the notion of existence and the notion of nonexistence. But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world…. ‘All exist’: Kaccana, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition…Such is the origin of the whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance…Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.’”(Samyutta Nikaya, Nidanasamyutta)
