88 CHAPTER FOURIt is easy to imagine that this type of presentation would have been a great
hit with those already disillusioned with Abhidharma scholasticism, but the
Abhidharmists themselves-like Queen Victoria on seeing Nijinski perform-
ing ballet in tights-were not amused. Thus some proponents of the Sunyavilda
(emptiness-teaching) used Abhidharma methods to dismantle the Abhidharma
systems from within. The most notable example was Nagaljuna (circa 150-250
c.E.), who founded the Madhyamika school, so called because it claimed to
maintain emptiness as the madhyamil pratipad (Middle Path) between being and
non-being. Nagarjuna's best-known work is the Mulamadhyamaka-kilrikil-
Middle Stanzas (Strong EB, sec. 4.3.1), a polemical treatise of 448 verses in
which he uses four basic methods drawn from the Abhidharma enterprise-
the assertion of two levels of truth, quotations from the Siitra Pi taka, appeals
to experience, and a logical method (called prilsangika) in which he demon-
strates the internal inconsistencies of his opponents' positions-to refute a
wide range of wrong views based on the svabhava thesis.
Nagaljuna's primary text is a passage from the Siitra Pitaka defining right
view: "When one sees the arising of the world [sensory phenomena] as it ac-
tually is with right wisdom, 'non-being' with reference to the world does not
occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with
right wisdom, 'being' with reference to the world does not occur to one"
(S.XII.15). Although this passage, in its original context, seems to refer to the
phenomenology of the mind-state on the Path, Nagarjuna cites it to prove
that neither being nor non-being can apply to conditioned phenomena. Accord-
ing to him, the svabhava thesis-as it deals with discrete essences-is in-
escapably entwined in concepts of being and non-being. Thus it is an
inaccurate description of sarp..sara.
Furthermore, Nagaljuna uses mostly prasangika arguments to demonstrate
that the svabhava thesis reduces to logical absurdities when it tries to account
for causality, time, motion, and many other basic facts of existence. For instance,
he maintains that dharmas with their own inherent nature could not be caused,
for if they were caused, their nature would neither be inherent nor theirs. Thus
the only alternative is to accept that dharmas are empty of own-being, for only
then can causality, and so on, possibly occur. If this is the case, such basic cate-
gories as "same" and "separate," "exists," "does not exist;' "both exists and does
not exist," and "neither exists nor does not exist," cannot apply, for all is empty.
There are in ultimate terms no "own-natures" to which these categories could
apply. This is true both for sarp.sara and for nirval).a. Nagaljuna equates empti-
ness in its mode as an attribute with dependent co-arising, the causal pattern
underlying the events of sarp.sara; he equates emptiness as a perceptual mode
with nirval).a. Thus all views, even right views, can have only a provisional use.
Right view has the advantage of helping one loosen one's attachments to views,
but once it ·has been used to perform its task it must be abandoned as well, for it
too is empty. In ultimate terms, the basic categories from which views are con-
structed are inadequate to explain the true nature of anything at all.
This last point is a major departure from the position of the Siitra Pi taka,
for which language is adequate to describe conditioned experience and breaks