Nāgārjuna, Acharya (c. 150-c. 250 CE)

Mahayana Buddhist tradition attributes the founding of the Madhyamika School to Acharya Nāgārjuna (c. 150-c. 250 CE), but this attribution is probably incorrect, because there is no designation for such a school until the work of another monk named Candrakirti refers to it in the 7th century CE. Although he is credited with composing other works, Nāgārjuna's seminal text is Fundamentals on the Middle Way, in which he advocates a philosophy of the middle way between the extremes of being (eternalism) and nonbeing (nihilism).

This philosophical position means that nothing in the world exists absolutely and nothing perishes totally. Nāgārjuna's middle way is located beyond concepts or speech in the sense that it is transcendental. This philosophical position also means that no specific position is limitless or ultimate. In fact, the ultimate truth is that there is no correct view, final truth, or goal, because all views are flawed. Nāgārjuna's middle way implies rising above clinging to either existence or nonexistence. More precisely, the middle way is the practice of the perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita), or ultimate virtue for a bodhisattva (enlightened being). When one achieves wisdom, one does not arrive at a particular type of knowledge, but one rather reaches a point at which all knowing and theorizing are terminated.

Nāgārjuna makes a distinction between two kinds of truth: conventional and ultimate. The former is valid and useful for practical living, but it is illusory, because it becomes self-contradictory if we push it too far. This is evident with the concept of time. from a conventional perspective, the concept of time represents the past, present, and future that appear as a series of moments; this is associated with human perception and conceptual formulation. The conventional concept of time is formed by the assumption of a self-substantiated reality that binds persons to their own emotional and conceptual habits. In short, for Nāgārjuna this is the realm of ignorance, which involves mistaking things or concepts for what they are not in fact, because ignorance obscures [Page 901]the real nature of things and constructs a false appearance.

In contrast to conventional truth, Nāgārjuna defines ultimate truth as a nondual type of knowledge that involves a contentless intuition. By viewing time from this perspective, we observe it simultaneously much as we view a painting on a wall by seeing the whole of it. This intuitive type of knowledge is beyond ordinary objective knowledge and reason, because it represents dissolution of the conceptual function of the mind, although it does not represent a total rejection of conventional truth. It is the realization that all distinctions, such as the three moments of time, are empty (sunyata), which is true of everything in the world.

If time and everything else in the world is empty, there can be no essential distinction between existing things. Nāgārjuna denies the distinction between self-being (svabbava) and other-being (parabbava). If self-being is the essential nature by which something is what it is and not something else, and other-being owes its existence to something else, Nāgārjuna denies that there is anything that is not dependent or conditioned. The heat of fire, for instance, is never encountered apart from fire, making heat something created and not self-existent. If the true nature of everything is emptiness, there is nothing that is self-existent, because it would have to be necessarily noncontingent and unrelated to anything else, which means that lack of self-existence is the nature of things.

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