NAGARJUNA
The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (ca. second century
C.E.) is probably the single most important Buddhist
philosopher. Nothing reliable is known about his life;
modern scholars do not accept the traditional account
whereby Nagarjuna lived for some six hundred years
and became a Tantric wonderworker (siddha), al-
though it is believed that Nagarjuna was the teacher of
ARYADEVA(ca. 170–270 C.E.). There is moreover a de-
bate over which works can be attributed to this Nagar-
juna, with some agreement on:
Madhyamakakarika (Verses on Madhyamaka),
Nagarjuna’s main work, still extant in Sanskrit;
Vigrahavyavartanl(Countering Hostile Objections),
verses extant in Sanskrit together with an auto-
commentary, a reply by Nagarjuna to his critics.Save for a few fragments, the following works survive
only in Tibetan and, in some cases, Chinese translation:
Yuktisastika(Sixty Verses on Reasoning);
S ́unyatasaptati(Seventy Verses on Emptiness);
Vaidalyaprakarana(The Treatise That Grinds into
Little Pieces), an attack on the categories of the
Hindu epistemologists;
Ratnavall(The Jewel Garland), a long epistle ap-
parently to a king (a shorter royal epistle attrib-
uted to Nagarjuna is the Suhrllekha [Letter to a
Friend]);
Catuhstava(four hymns).Nagarjuna saw his philosophy as itself part of the
spiritual project of enlightenment, of “seeing things the
way they really are” (yathabhutadars ́ana). His argu-
ments should be placed in the context of Buddhist phi-
losophy (preceding ABHIDHARMAthought), which he
both presupposed and the ontology of which he tren-
chantly criticized. It was Nagarjuna who first explained
philosophically the concept of S ́UNYATA(EMPTINESS). Ac-
cording to Nagarjuna, emptiness is a property (a -ness)
possessed by each thing without exception. It is the
property of lacking intrinsic existence (nihsvabhavata)
as a result of being one way or another, the result of
causal processes. Existing is nothing more than an in-
tersecting point of causal factors. Nagarjuna sought to
demonstrate this by asserting that if something—say,
a table—weremore than just an intersecting point of
causal factors, it would prove resistant to analytical de-
construction. Absolutely nothing can resist the process
of analytical deconstruction, investigating its coherence
through reasoning. Thus Nagarjuna’s works embody
arguments in the style of a skeptic, debunking con-
cepts like existence and nonexistence, causation, per-
ception, time, motion, and even religious concepts
like the Buddha, or enlightenment itself. Nagarjuna
also offers methodological reflections on what he is do-
ing, why he is not a nihilist or even really a skeptic,
and how his practice fits into the overall Buddhist pro-
ject. For Nagarjuna this project is a deep “letting-go,”
which nevertheless also facilitates compassionate reen-
gagement.
Nagarjunawas enormously influential in India. The
MADHYAMAKA SCHOOLof philosophy, which he proba-
bly founded, was the earliest of the two great Indian
schools of MAHAYANAthought. In Tibet, Madhyamaka
is said to represent the highest philosophical standpoint,581