Nagarjuna and Aryadeva

Nagarjuna, the founder of Madhyamika, elucidated the sutras of ultimate meaning through the sheer strength of his own genius, without recourse to other commentaries.^^- His work marks a new departure in the history of Buddhism. His name is inseparably linked with the teachings of the Mahayana and especially with the Prajnaparamita sutras, which, according to tradition, he recovered from the land of the Nagas where they had been preserved from decline until a time more propitious for their effective propagation. The Prajnaparamita literature is enormous; Madhyamika may be regarded as its essential and systematic expression.

Nagarjuna is said to have been a prolific writer, and his total output was no doubt far greater than the works that have survived and can be attributed to him with certainty. Following the conventions of Tibetan scholarship, his writings are collected into three main groups: the texts on reasoning (rigs tshogs), the collection of hymns (bstod tshogs), and the collection of discourses (gtam tshogs). Of these, the most important in the present context are the six texts of reasoning. These are the Mulamadhyamaka-karikas, or The Root Stanzas on the Middle Way; the Yuktishastika, sixty stanzas dealing with the principles of logic; the Shunyatasaptati, seventy stanzas on the doctrine of emptiness; the Vigrahavyavartani, a defense in verse of the Madhyamika method and a refutation of objections; the Vaidafya-sutra, a prose work delimiting the use of logical categories; and the Vyavaharasiddhi, which is a discussion of the conventional truth.

Nagarjuna5s masterpiece, the work in which he laid the foundations of his system, is of course the Mulamadhyamaka-karikas. Here, his principal task is to analyze and undermine the categories and assumptions implicit in the earlier Buddhist tenet systems. By this is meant the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika schools, which, although they differ in certain important respects, display, from Nagarjuna5s point of view, the same kinds of faults and may in the present context be grouped together as the Abhidharmika system. In brief, Nagarjuna represents these earlier schools as having misunderstood, or only partially understood, the meaning of the Buddha's teaching.

When, as we have seen, the Buddha heeded the entreaty of Brahma and began to teach, he did not, of course, immediately set forth the truth in all its purity according to the level of his own understanding. He realized that this would have been far beyond the capacity of his hearers. Out of compassion, he

set forth a doctrine suited to their powers, which was designed to draw them onto the path and foster their spiritual growth. His first task was to wean them away from the gross, naive understanding of worldly beings: their unquestioning belief in the personal self and the reality of substances一physical objects extended in space and psychic experiences extended in time. He therefore spoke about the five aggregates, the six senses, and their objects and

associated consciousnesses, showing, for example, how the human person can be analyzed without residue into form, feelings, perceptions, conditioning factors, and consciousness. Despite the ingrained tendency of all sentient beings to assume the existence of a self and to cling to it, analysis shows

that, no matter how hard one searches, no self can ever be found. In the same way, by observing the impermanence of physical things and mental events, one can come to an understanding that phenomena, however solid and unchanging they may appear, are in a state of constant, momentary flux. On the basis of this insight, one can begin to dissolve the attachment one has to things and loosen the fetters that bind one in the round of suffering.

In creating the first synthesis of the Buddha's teaching, the Abhidharmika schools took his teaching about the aggregates and so on at its face value. Of course, they correctly grasped his primary message, namely, the denial of the personal self, but insofar as the Buddha had indeed spoken of the aggregates,

ayatanas, and so forth, they understood him to imply that these were real. On this basis, incorporating the ideas of gross and subtle impermanence, but overlooking the Buddha's admittedly less frequent but nevertheless significant statements that the aggregates and so forth are themselves illusory, they elaborated a theory of really existing, partless particles of matter and instants of consciousness. And it was within this framework that they understood

the doctrine of the two truths. Broadly speaking, the relative or conventional truth refers to the gross, physical objects, together with the thoughts and emotional states that we encounter in waking life, while the ultimate truth consists of the momentary but irreducible particles of matter and instants of consciousness. As a method for undermining naive commonsense assumptions, the Abhidharmika embodies a profound and sophisticated tool.

Nevertheless, Nagarjuna5s primary objective in the karikas is to show that the Abhidharmika synthesis is fatally flawed and in fact misrepresents the Buddha's meaning. Step by step, the various categories (production, movement, the sense powers, aggregates, elements, and so on), so crucial to the

coherent structure of the Abhidharmika tenets, are relentlessly dismantled and shown to be empty of real existence, while the arguments adduced to support belief in them are refuted as untenable absurdities. Chandrakirti comments that the twenty-seven chapters of the karikas are in fact a continuous, ongoing debate. Each successive chapter embodies an answer to a possible objection that could be raised in defense of the position demolished in the preceding section

It is obviously not possible to discuss the karikas in any great detail here, but it is of some interest to review, however cursorily, a few of the text's most salient features, since this throws light on the work of Chandrakirti and the later tradition generally. In what was to become the standard procedure in Madhyamika literature, the work begins with a discussion about causation. It is, however, important to bear in mind that, in this context, causes are

understood exclusively in a substantial or material sense.- The discussion, in other words, is about how things come into being and evolve. Nagarjuna begins by showing that, appearances to the contrary, the everyday notion that real effects are produced by real causes is mistaken; it cannot

possibly be true. Causes and effects, so much a feature of existence, are, he says, essentially definable only in terms of mutual dependence; they are not real things in themselves. To say that something has real existence in itself is to say that it is an autonomous, circumscribed entity, separate in all respects from other things. This is, as a matter of fact, how we habitually view things in the ordinary transactions of everyday life. We feel that we are

self-contained individuals and relate to other self-contained individuals. We encounter objects, some pleasant, some unpleasant, which we try to acquire or avoid accordingly. More or less complicated situations arise, which themselves seem individual and real. We are happy and we suffer. To the uncritical observer, life consists of blocks; it is a collection of individual, discrete realities. But this is an illusion. In its anxiety for reassurance and

security, the mind reifies situations and things, which it clings to and manipulates in its hopeless quest for lasting satisfaction. In order to expose this procedure as the false trail that it is, Nagarjuna relentlessly demonstrates the inconsistencies inherent in what ordinarily passes for common sense; he shows that the normal "worldview" is in fact riddled with contradiction. It is important to understand, however, that he is not trying to deny our

experience of production and change, or of anything else in the phenomenal world. That would be absurd; the world-process is all around us constantly,

undeniably. The objects of his critique are not the empirical facts of existence that inescapably appear to us but the assumptions that we make about these facts. We think that real things give rise to real things; that real things come into being and pass away. But this notion of real, individual, self-contained entity is something that we impose on the raw material of experience. It is a figment of

our imagination; in fact there are no real things in this sense. Self-contained entities can never change and can never enter into relation with other entities. The notions of coming into being or passing away cannot be meaningfully applied to them. Thus the first stanza announces: uNo things are produced

anywhere at any time, either from themselves, from something else, from both, or from neither.55 The mere fact of "coming into being55 excludes real entity and vice versa. The true status of the phenomena that we experience is not, therefore, to be found in their supposed real entity, but in their relatedness, their interdependence with all other phenomena. This is Nagarjuna5s interpretation of the doctrine of dependent arising, understood not in the sense of a

temporal sequence (as in the Hinayana interpretation of the doctrine of the twelvefold chain of dependent production), but in the essential dependence of phenomena. This interdependence undermines the notion of individual, intrinsic reality in things; it is the very antithesis of "thingness." Phenomena, being the interplay of interdependent factors, are unreal. Their interdependence (pratityasamutpada) is their emptiness (shunyata) of inherent existence.

Production or change, in the sense of the inner transformation of things, gives way, in the second chapter, to a consideration of change in the sense of movement. Compared with the more or less subtle processes involved in physical change, one might have thought that so obvious a fact as physical movement would be easy enough to describe. And yet, by a process of ingenious arguments, Nagarjuna shows that this too is beyond rational explanation. By a minute examination of the categories of space traversed, space yet to be traversed, moving body, and so forth 一understood as real according to the common view of things一he demonstrates that reason is powerless to account for even the simplest of events, the displacement of a thing from one location to another. The

whole of the second chapter of the karikas is an astonishing and disconcerting performance, and the reader is forced to acknowledge that what had previously been taken as the straightforward certainties of existence is nothing but a tissue of naive and ultimately untenable assumptions. The entire worldview of common sense is shown to be completely incoherent.

If we follow Nagarjuna5s arguments carefully, we can see一we are unable to deny—that they make sense. Nagarjuna is saying that if we think that the things of the world (ourselves included) are as they appear, self-existent and solid, we are not in touch with reality; we are living in a world of mirages. Phenomena appear to be real, but they are insubstantial, dreamlike. Given, however, that our perceptions are commonly shared, we might be tempted to dismiss Nagarjuna5s ideas as no more than a curious paradox with little relevance to the facts of experience. Life, after all, goes on regardless of the theories of philosophers. Nagarjuna could be right, we may say, but since we all concur in our dreamlike experiences, why question them? What, finally, is wrong with the way we perceive things?

The answer is that there is nothing "wrong" with it; the issue is not a moral one. We are not condemned for being in samsara. To believe that phenomena are solid, real entities is not a "sin"; it is only a mistake. But it is a mistake with unfortunate consequences. In his first teaching following his enlightenment, the Buddha did not speak, though he could have done so, about the dreamlike nature of samsaric existence. Instead, he referred to a more pressing, less deniable problem, namely, that existence一the samsaric dream一is, as a matter of fact,

painful. Beings suffer; they are not satisfied. Whatever may be the true nature of phenomena, we cannot deny that our lives are plagued by the ills of birth, sickness, old age, and death, the inescapable accompaniments of existence. It is true that suffering may be suspended by moments of happiness. But

these turn out to be fragile and are marked by a transience so intrinsic as to render them, in the larger view, meaningless. Caught in the dream, unaware that they are dreaming, ordinary worldly beings endlessly try to manipulate phenomena in the interests of security and fulfillment. They do this by trying

to create the conditions of material and emotional satisfaction and, if they are religious, by striving to create the causes of happiness in the hereafter, whether in terms of "going to heaven" or of securing a favorable rebirth in their future existences. Undoubtedly, the happiness thus produced is both good and necessary, but it is still samsara. It is still part of the dream; it is not the final answer, not liberation. For samsara to disappear, its cause must be identified and arrested. The Buddha is saying that a lasting solution cannot possibly lie in the reorganization of the dream, in a mere rearrangement of the furniture. A better plan is to recognize our state of deception一the fact that we are dreaming一and to wake up. And to wake from the dream, it is necessary to understand the nature of phenomena.

Throughout the karikas, Nagarjuna5s critique is directed at the categories adopted by the Abhidharmika schools: the sense powers, aggregates, ayatanas, and so on. These too are shown to be hollow and dreamlike. To the non-Madhyamika, this is highly disturbing, for Nagarjuna seems to be undermining the doctrine

itself. Everything is denied. Nothing is real; nothing makes sense. It is not surprising that in both ancient and modern times, Madhyamika has been stigmatized as philosophical and moral nihilism. The twenty-fourth chapter (perhaps the most important of the karikas) therefore opens with an expression of these qualms. If everything is empty, there is neither arising nor destruction. It follows that there is no such thing as the Four Noble Truths. Without

the Four Noble Truths, there can be no wisdom, and the qualities of elimination and realization are impossible. Therefore the spiritual path is fruitless and meaningless. Attainment is out of the question. There is no such thing as liberation and enlightenment. There are no enlightened beings. There is no Doctrine and no Spiritual Community. The teaching on emptiness is therefore a rejection of the Three Jewels. Emptiness is the destruction of the Dharma. Good and evil and all the conventions of ordinary life are utterly negated and without significance.

These are the objections that Nagarjuna has been expecting and wanting. The whole gist of the karikas in the previous chapters in fact leads to this and is the cue for Nagarjuna to turn the objection on its head and show not only that emptiness is compatible with the spiritual path, but that it is precisely

the factor that makes spiritual growth possible. In order to do this, he must expound his own teaching on the two truths, the single most important element in the Madhyamika. It is impossible, he says, to grasp the teaching of the Buddha without a correct understanding of the way the two truths are differentiated. There is no liberation without the realization of emptiness, the ultimate truth; there is no

approach to the ultimate without correctly relying on the conventional. The doctrine of emptiness, however, is a double-edged sword, and Nagarjuna is the first to speak of its dangers. Understood correctly, it leads to liberation; understood wrongly, it can be a source of spiritual and moral degeneration一as dangerous as a poisonous snake badly handled or a powerful spell ineptly applied. The teaching on the two truths is indeed profound and subtle, and it is important for the reader to reflect upon the explanations of an authoritative source.- For the purpose of this introduction, it will perhaps be helpful to advert to the following important point.

We have seen already how, in the Abhidharmika system, the awareness of the impermanence of extended phenomena and mental events had implied a theory of indivisible particles of matter and instants of consciousness. This involved a distinction between two levels of reality: the gross, extended objects that

populate our perceptions and constitute the phenomenal world, and the "real" entities that underlie appearance but are not experienced. All philosophy of any degree of sophistication is obliged to make a distinction between fact and appearance; intelligent reflection necessarily leads to the awareness that

phenomena cannot actually be the way they seem.- From the Madhyamika point of view, conventional truth comprises the things and transactions of everyday life一or, to use an expression more in line with Sanskrit and Tibetan usage, the things and events of the phenomenal world are themselves "conventional

truths.55 When analyzed, these same phenomena are found to be empty of unitary, intrinsic being. This is their ultimate truth. We have seen that emptiness, the ultimate status of things, the middle position beyond the categories of "is" and "is not," is by definition inexpressible in thought and word. uThe ultimate,55 as Shantideva said, "lies not within the reach of intellect, for intellect is grounded in the relative.5-This does not mean, however, that the

ultimate is somehow remote from phenomena, floating free, as it were, in an absolute dimension of its own. The ultimate is said to be beyond the world only because it is veiled by the appearances of the world一and for ordinary beings, appearances are the world. In fact, the ultimate is not separate from

phenomena; it is the very nature of phenomena. The ultimate is what the conventional really is; the conventional is the way the ultimate appears. The two truths are never separate; they merge and coincide in phenomena. The difference is not ontological but epistemic. According to Madhyamika, the distinction is not in the object; it is a matter of recognition within the cognizing subject. The objective distinction of the two truths corresponds to the views of

other systems, which by a process of reasoning, beyond the possibility of experience, arrive at some putative entity considered to be ultimately real (prakriti, for instance, or the indivisible particle, the alaya, atman, God, the first cause, and so on). For these systems, the two truths are two separate entities.

Thus far, we have been considering Nagarjuna. We have seen that the focus of his attention had been mainly the tenets of the Abhidharmika schools. It was left

to his foremost disciple and successor, Aryadeva, to apply the same dialectic to the refutation of the Samkhya and Vaisheshika schools of Hinduism, which he does in his chief work The Four Hundred Stanzas.- Aryadeva was formidable in debate, and it was in large measure thanks to him that the position of the

Madhyamika system was consolidated in the face of opposition both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Chandrakirti remarks that in their view, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva agree in all respects. Tibetan scholarship refers to them as "Madhyamikas of the founding texts,5 - for it is in relation to their writings that the later Madhyamika subschools defined themselves.