Nagarjuna’s response was to “catch” this metaphysical position of Buddhist practice in the coils of the “four

errors,” demonstrating that the change Buddhism was after was only really possible if people did not have fixed
essences. For if one really examines change, one finds that, according to the catuskoti, change cannot produce
itself, nor can it be introduced by an extrinsic influence, nor can it result from both itself and an extrinsic
influence, nor from no influence at all. All the logical alternatives of a given position are tested and flunked by
the “four error” method. There are basic logical reasons why all these positions fail. It would first of all be
incoherent (no papadyate) to assume that anything with a fixed nature or essence (svabhava) could change, for
that change would violate its fixed nature and so destroy the original premise. In addition, we do not experience
anything empirically which does not change, and so never know of (na vidyate) fixed essences in the world
about us. Once again, the proponent’s method has been taken up in an ingenious way to undermine his
conclusions. The rules of the philosophical game have been observed, but not in this case for earning victory,
but for the purpose of showing all the players that the game had all along had been just that, merely a game
which had no tenable real-life consequences.
And so, Nagarjuna has rightly merited the label of skeptic, for he undertakes the dismantling of theoretical
positions wherever he finds them, and does so in a methodically logical manner. Like the skeptics of the
classical Greek tradition, who thought that resolved doubt about dogmatic assertions in both philosophy and
social life could lead the individual to peace of mind, however, it is not the case that for Nagarjuna skepticism
leads nowhere. On the contrary, it is the very key to insight. For in the process of dismantling all metaphysical
and epistemological positions, one is led to the only viable conclusion for Nagarjuna, namely that all things,
concepts and persons lack a fixed essence, and this lack of a fixed essence is precisely why and how they can be
amenable to change, transformation and evolution. Change is precisely why people live, die, are reborn, suffer
and can be enlightened and liberated. And change is only possible if entities and the way in which we
conceptualize them are void or empty (sunya) of any eternal, fixed and immutable essence. Indeed, Nagarjuna
even on occasion refers to his special use of the “four error” approach as the “refuting and explaining with the
method of emptying” (vigraheca vyakhyane krte sunyataya vadet) concepts and things of essence. And like all
properly Buddhist methods, once this logical foil has served its purpose, it can be discarded, traded in as it were
for the wisdom it has conferred. Pretense of knowledge leads to ruin, while genuine skepsis can lead human
being to ultimate knowledge. Only the method of skepticism has to conform to the rules of conventional
knowing, for as Nagarjuna famously asserts: “Without depending on convention, the ultimate truth cannot be
taught, and if the ultimate truth is not attained, nirvana will not be attained.”

3. Against Worldly and Ultimate Substantialism

By Nagarjuna’s lifetime, scholastic Buddhism had become much more than merely an institution which charged
itself with the handing on of received scripture, tradition and council-established orthodoxy; it had grown into a
highly variegated, inwardly and outwardly engaged set of philosophical positions. These schools took it upon
themselves not merely to represent Buddhist teaching or make the benefits of its practice available, but also to
explain Buddhism, to make it not only a reasonable philosophical discourse, but the most supremely reasonable
of them all. The ultimate goal of life, liberation from rebirth, though in general shared by all soteriologies in
Brahmanism, Jainism and Buddhism, was represented uniquely by Buddhists as the pacification of all
psychological attachments through the extinguishing (nirvana) of desires, which would lead to a consequent
extinguishing of karma and the prevention of rebirth. One particularly unique doctrine of Buddhism in its
attempt to thematize these issues was the theory of no-self or no-soul (anatman) and what implications it
carried. In the empirical sense, the idea of no-self meant that not only persons, but also what are normally
considered the stable substances of nature are not in fact fixed and continuous, that everything from one’s sense
of personal identity to the forms of objects could be analyzed away, as it were, into the atomic parts which were
their bases. In the ultimate metaphysical sense, it meant that no one, upon release from rebirth, will live
eternally as a spiritual, self-conscious entity (atman), but that the series of births caused by inherited karma will
simply terminate, reducing, as its cash-value, the total amount of suffering in the world. These theories
prompted sharp and deep questions and criticisms, such as, “if the things and persons of the world are nothing
more than atoms in constant flux, how can a person have an orderly experience of a world of apparent
substances?”, “if there is no enduring identity or self, who is it that practices Buddhism and is liberated?”, and
“how should we account for the differences between enlightened beings like the Buddha and unenlightened
ones, like ourselves?” Answering such questions intelligibly for the inquiring minds of the philosophical
community were a number of distinct schools which came collectively to be known as schools involved with the
“analysis of elements” (abhidharma). Nagarjuna received his philosophical training in the texts, vocabulary and
debates of the Abhidharmikas.
The two most prevalent schools of Abhidharma were the school of “Universal Existence” (Sarvastivada) and the
“True Doctrine” school (Sautrantika). These schools held in common a theory of substantialism which served as
an explanation to both worldly and ultimate metaphysical questions. This theory of substantialism, formulated
in slightly different ways by each school, had two fundamental linchpins. The first was a theory of causality, or
the strict necessity of one event following from another event. The theory of causal necessity was essential for all
Buddhist thought, for Gautama Siddhartha himself had firmly asserted that all suffering or psychological pain
had a distinct cause, namely attachment or desire (tanha), and the key to removing suffering from one’s life and
attaining the “tranquility of mind” or contentment (upeksa) of nirvana was to cut out its causal condition.
Suffering was brought about by a definite cause, but that cause is contingent upon the human behaviors and
practices of any given individual, and if attachment could be exorcized from these behaviors and practices, then
the individual could live a life which would no longer experience impermanence and loss as painful, but accept
the world for what it in fact is. Buddhist theory and practice had always been based on the notion that, not just
psychological attachment, but all phenomena are causally interdependent, that all things and events which
come to pass in the world arise out of a causal chain (pratityasamutpada). Buddhism is inconceivable without
this causal theory, for it opens the door to the diagnosis and removal of suffering. For the Universal Existence
and True Doctrine schools however, the second linchpin was a theory of fundamental elements, a theory which
had to follow from any coherent causal theory. Causes, their philosophical exponents figured, are not merely
arbitrary, but are regular and predictable, and their regularity must be due to the fact the things or phenomena
have fixed natures of their own (svabhava), which determine and limit the kinds of causal powers they can and
cannot exert on other things. Water, for example, can quench thirst and fire can burn other things, but water
cannot cause a fire, just as fire cannot quench thirst. The pattern and limits of particular causal powers and
their effects are therefore rooted in what kind of a thing a thing happens to be; its nature defines what it can and
can’t do to other things. Now in their theoretical models, causal efficacy was contained not in any whole, unified
object, but rather in the parts, qualities and atomic elements of which any object happened to be constituted, so
in their formulation, it was not fire which burnt but the heat produced by its fire molecules, and it was not water
which quenched thirst but the correspondence of its molecules to the receptivity of molecules in the body.
Indeed, fire in these systems was only fire because of its molecular qualities, and the same with water. But these
qualities, molecules and elements had fixed natures, and thus could emit or receive certain causal powers and
not others.
The basic difference between the Universal Existence and True Doctrine schools in their advocacy of both
Buddhist causal and fundamental elements theories were their respective descriptions of how such causes
operated. For the Universal Existence school, the effect of a cause was already inherent in the nature of the
cause (satkaryavada). My thirst is quenched not by any fundamental change in my condition, but because the
water that I drank had the power to quench my thirst, and this power does not rest in me, but in what I am
trying to drink; this is why fire cannot quench thirst. Change here is only an apparent transformation already
potential in the actors who are interrelating. For the True Doctrine school, on the other hand, any effect by
definition must be a change in the condition of the receptor of the causal power, and as such, causal potential
only becomes actual where it can effect a real change in something else (asatkaryavada). Again, using water as
an illustration, the properties of water effect a change in the properties of my body, transforming my condition
from a condition of thirst to one of having my thirst quenched. Change is change of what is effected, otherwise it
would be silly to speak of change.
This seemingly abstract or inconsequential difference turns out in these two opposed systems however to be
quite relevant, for the substantialist ideas of fixed nature and essence provide the basis not only for
conceptualizing the material, empirical world, but also for conceiving the knowledge and attainment of ultimate
reality. For just as only metaphysical analysis could distinguish between phenomena and their ultimate causal
constituents, such analysis was also the only reliable guide for purifying experience of attachments. Those
causes which lead to enmeshment in the worldly cycle of rebirth ( samsara) cannot be the same as those which
lead to peace (nirvana). These states of existence are just as different as fire and water, samsara will quench
thirst just as little as nirvana will lead to the fires of passion. And so, it is the Buddha’s words, for those who
advocated the theory of the effect as pre-existent in the cause, which had the potential to purify consciousness,
as opposed to the words of any unorthodox teacher; it was the practices of Buddhists, for those who
championed the notion of external causal efficacy, which could liberate one from rebirth, and not the practices
of those who perpetuated the ambitions of the everyday, workaday world. These schools were, each in their
uniquely Buddhist turns, true exemplars of the age-old assumptions of the karma worldview in which a person
is what he or she does, and what one does proceeds from what type of fundamental makeup one has inherited
from previous lives of deeds, a worldview that is which intimately marries essence, existence and ethics. To be a
Buddhist means precisely to distinguish between Buddhist and non-Buddhist acts, between ignorance and
enlightenment, between the suffering world of samsara and the purified attainment of nirvana.
In his revolutionary tract of The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna abjectly throws this
elementary distinction between samsara and nirvana out the door, and does so in the very name of the Buddha.
“There is not the slightest distinction,” he declares in the work, “between samsara and nirvana. The limit of the
one is the limit of the other.” Now how can such a thing be posited, that is, the identity of samsara and nirvana,
without totally undermining the theoretical basis and practical goals of Buddhism as such? For if there is no
difference between the world of suffering and the attainment of peace, then what sort of work is a Buddhist to
do as one who seeks to end suffering? Nagarjuna counters by reminding the Buddhist philosophers that, just as
Gautama Sakyamuni had rejected both metaphysical and empirical substantialism through the teaching of “no-
soul” (anatman) and causal interdependence (pratityasamputpada), so Scholastic Buddhism had to remain
faithful to this non-substantialist stance through a rejection of the causal theories which necessitated notions of
fixed nature (svabhava), theories which metaphysically reified the difference between samsara and nirvana.
This later rejection could be based on Nagarjuna’s newly coined notion of the “emptiness,” “zeroness” or
“voidness” (sunyata) of all things.
Recapitulating a logical analysis of the causal theories of the Universal Existence and True Doctrine schools,
Nagarjuna rejects the premises of their theories. The basic claim these schools shared was that causal efficacy
could only be accounted for through the fundamental nature of an object; fire caused the burning of objects
because fire was made of fire elements and not water elements, the regularity and predictability of its causal
powers consistent with its essential material basis. Reviving and logically sharpening the early Buddhist “four
errors” (catuskoti) method, Nagarjuna attempts to dismantle this trenchant philosophical assumption. Contrary
to the Scholastic Buddhist views, Nagarjuna finds that, were objects to have a stable, fixed essence, the changes
brought about by causes would not be logically intelligible or materially possible. Let us say, along with the
school of Universal Existence, that the effect pre-exists in the cause, or for example, that the burning of fire and
the thirst-quenching of water are inherent in the kinds of substances fire and water are. But if the effects already
exist in the cause, then it would be nonsensical to speak of effects in the first place, because in their interaction
with other phenomena the pre-existent causes would not produce anything new, they would merely be
manifesting the potential powers already exhibited. That is, if the potential to burn is conceived to exist within
fire and the potential to quench thirst already inhered in water, then, Nagarjuna thinks, burning and thirst-
quenching would be but appearances of the causal powers of fire and water substances, and this would make
the notion of an effect, the production of a novel change, meaningless. If, on the other hand, we side with the
True Doctrine school in supposing that the effect does not pre-exist in the cause, but is a novel change in the
world, then the category of substance breaks down. Why? Because if fire and water are stable substances which
possess fixed natures or essences, then what sort of relation could they bear to other objects which have entirely
different fixed natures? How could fire be thought to effect a human being when the latter possesses a nature
and thus takes on a form that is entirely dissimilar to fire? For the person to be effected by fire, his nature would
have to change, would have to be destructible, and this vitiates the supposition that the person’s nature is fixed.
Stable, fixed essences (svabhava) which are conceived to be entirely heterogeneous could have no way of
relating without their initially supposed fixed essences being compromised. The conclusion is that neither of
these two proffered substantialist Buddhist explanations of causal efficacy can survive logical examination.
We may be tempted, faced with these failures, to adopt alternative theories of causality advocated outside the
Buddhist tradition in order to save the intelligibility of substance. We may suppose, along with Jaina
philosophers, the effects somehow proceed both from inherent powers of substances as well as the
vulnerabilities of objects with which these substances interact. This obviously will not do for Nagarjuna the
logician, for it would be tantamount to suggesting that things and events arise or come about due both to their
own causal powers and as effected by other things, that event A, such as burning or thirst-quenching is caused
both by itself and by other things. This violates the law of excluded middle outright, since a thing cannot be
characterized by both A and not-A, and so will not serve as an explanation. Exhausted by the search for a viable
substantialist principle of causality, we may wish to opt for the completely anti-metaphysical stance of the
Indian Materialist school, which denies both that events are brought about through the inherent causal powers
of their relata and are caused by extraneous powers. This thorough denial would have us believe that no cause-
and-effect relationship exists between phenomena, and Buddhists may not resort to this conclusion because it
militates against the basic teachings of the Buddha that all empirical phenomena arise out of interdependence.
This was the teaching of the Buddha himself, and so no Buddhist can allow that events are not caused.

What are we to draw from all this abstract logical critique? Are we to infer that Nagarjuna’s philosophy boils
down to some strange paradoxical mysticism in which there is some ambiguous sense in which things should be
considered causally interdependent but interdependent in some utterly unexplainable and inscrutable way? Not
at all! Nagarjuna has not refuted all available theories of cause and effect, he has only rejected all substantialist
theories of cause and effect. He thinks he has shown that, if we maintain the philosophical assumption that
things in the world derive from some unique material and essential basis, then we shall come away empty-
handed in a search to explain how things could possibly relate to one another, and so would have no way of
describing how changes happen. But since both our eminently common sense and the words of the Buddha
affirm unremittingly that changes do indeed happen, and happen constantly, we must assume that they
happen somehow, through some other fact or circumstance of existence. For his own part, Nagarjuna concludes
that, since things do not arise because phenomena relate through fixed essences, then they must arise because
phenomena lack fixed essences. Phenomena are malleable, they are susceptible to alteration, addition and
destruction. This lack of fixed nature (nihsvabhava), this alterability of things then means that their physical
and empirical forms are built not upon essence, as both the Universal Existence and True Doctrine schools
posit, but upon the fact that nothing (sunya) ever defines and characterizes them eternally and unconditionally.
It is not that things are in themselves nothing, nor that things possess a positive absence ( abhava) of essence.
Change is possible because a radical indeterminancy (sunyata) permeates all forms. Burning happens because
conditions can arise where temperatures become incindiary and singe flesh, just as thirst can be quenched when
the process of ingestion transforms water into body. Beings relate to one another not because of their
heterogeneous forms, but because their interaction makes them susceptible to ongoing transformation.
The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way is a tour de force through the entire categorical system of the
Buddhist metaphysical analysis (abhidharma) which had given birth to its scholastic movements. Nagarjuna
attacks all the concepts of these traditions which were thematized according to substantialist, essentialist
metaphysics, using at every turn the logically revised “four errors” method. But perhaps most revolutionary was
Nagarjuna’s extension of this doctrine of the “emptiness” of all phenomena to the discussion of the relationship
between the Buddha and the world, between the cycle of pain-inflicted rebirth (samsara) and contented, desire-
less freedom (nirvana). The Buddha, colloquially known as “the one who came and went” (Tathagata), cannot
properly be thought of for Nagarjuna in the way the Buddhist scholastics have, that is, as the eternally pure seed
of the true teachings of peace which puts to rest the delusions of the otherwise defiled world. The name and
person of “Buddha” should not serve as the theoretical basis and justification of distinguishing between the
ordinary, ignorant world and perfected enlightenment. After all, Nagarjuna reminds his readers, all change in
the world, including the transformations which lead to enlightenment, are only possible because of
interdependent causality (pratityasamutpada), and interdependent causality in turn is only possible because
things, phenomena, lack any fixed nature and so are open (sunya) to being transformed. The Buddha himself
was only transformed because of interdependence and emptiness, and so, Nagarjuna infers, “the nature
of Tathagata is the very nature of the world/” It stands to reason then that no essential delimitations can be
made between the world of suffering and the practices which can lead to peace, for both are merely alternative
outcomes in the nexus of worldly interdependence. The words and labels which attach to both the world and the
experience of nirvana are not the means of separating the wheat of life from its chaff, nor true cultivators of the
soil of experience from the over-ambitious “everyday” rabble. Rather, samsara and nirvana signify nothing but
the lack of guarantees in a life of desire and the possibility of change and hope. “We assert,” Nagarjuna proffers
to say on behalf of the Buddhists, “that whatever arises dependently is as such empty. This manner of
designating things is exactly the middle path.” A Buddhist oath to avoid suffering cannot be taken as a
denunciation of the world, but only as a commitment to harness the possibilities which already are entailed
within it for peace. Talk about the Buddha and practices inspired by the Buddha are not tantamount to the
raising of a religious or ideological flag which marks off one country from another; rather, the world of suffering
and the world of peace have the same extension and boundary, and talk about suffering and the Buddha is only
there to make us aware of the possibilities of the world, and how our realization of these possibilities depends
precisely on what we do and how we interact.

4. Against Proof
The apparently anti-theoretical stance occupied by Nagarjuna did not win him many philosophical friends
either among his contemporary Buddhist readers or the circles of Brahminical thought. While it was certainly
the case that, over the next seven centuries of Buddhist scholastic thought, the concept of emptiness was more
forcefully articulated, it was also hermeneutically appropriated into other systems in ways of which Nagarjuna
would not necessarily have approved. Sunyata was soon made to carry theoretical meanings unrelated to causal
theory in various Buddhists sects, serving as the support of a philosophy of consciousness for the later
illustrious Vijnanavada or Cognition School and as the explication of the nature of both epistemology and
ontology in the precise school of Buddhist Logic (Yogacara-Sautrantika). These schools, deriding Nagarjuna’s
skepticism, retained their commitment to a style of philosophizing in India which allowed intellectual stands to
be taken only on the basis of commitments to thesis, counter-thesis, rules of argument and standards of proof,
that is, schools which equated philosophical reflection with competing doctrines of knowledge and metaphysics.
This is all the more ironic given the overt attempt Nagarjuna made to head off the possibility that the idea of
emptiness would be refuted or co-opted by this style of philosophizing, an attempt still preserved in the pages of
his work The End of Disputes (Vigrahavyavartani).
The End of Disputes was in large measure a reactionary work, written only when philosophical objections were
brought against Nagarjuna’s non-essentialist, anti-metaphysical approach to philosophy. The work was
addressed to a relatively new school of Brahminical thought, the school of Logic (Nyaya) Philosophical debate,
conducted in formalized fashions in generally court settings, had persisted in India for perhaps as much as eight
hundred years before the time of the first literary systematizer of the school of logic, Gautama Aksapada.
Several attempts had been made by Buddhist and Jaina schools before Nyaya to compose handbooks for formal
debate. But Nyaya brought to the Indian philosophical scene a full-blown doctrine not only of the rules and
etiquette of the debate process, but also an entire system of inference which distinguished between logically
acceptable and unacceptable forms of argument. Finally, undergirding all forms of valid argument was a system
of epistemology, a theory of proof (pramanasastra), which distinguished between various kinds of mental
events which could be considered truth-revealing, or corresponding to real states of affairs and those which
could not be relied upon as mediators of objective reality. Direct sensory perception, valid logical argument,
tenable analogy and authoritative testimony were held by the Logicians to be the only kinds of cognitions which
could correspond to real things or events in the world. They could serve as proofs to the claims we make to
know. With some modifications, the approach of Nyaya came to be accepted as philosophical “first principles”
by almost all the other schools of thought in India for centuries, both Vedic and non-Vedic. Indeed, in many
philosophical quarters, before entering into the subtleties and agonism of advanced philosophical debate, a
student was expected to pass through the prerequisites of studying Sanskrit grammar and logic. All thought,
and so all positive sciences, from agriculture to Vedic study to statecraft, were at times even said to be
fundamentally based on and entirely specious without basic training in “critical analysis” ( anviksiki), which,
according to Gautama Aksapada, was precisely what Nyaya was.
The Logicians, upon becoming aware very early of Nagarjuna’s thought, brought against his position of
emptiness (sunyata) a sharp criticism. Certainly no claim, they insisted, should compel us to give it assent
unless it can be known to be true. Now Nagarjuna has told us that emptiness is the lack of a fixed, essential
nature which all things exhibit. But if all things are empty of a fixed nature, then that would include, would it
not, Nagarjuna’s own claim that all things are empty? For one to say that all things lack a fixed nature would be
also to say that no assertion, no thesis like Nagarjuna’s that all things are empty, could claim hold on a fixed
reference. And if such a basic and all-encompassing thesis must admit of having itself neither a fixed meaning
nor reference, then why should we believe it? Does not rather the thesis “all things lack a fixed essence, and are
thus empty,” since it is a universal quantifier and so covers all things including theses, refute itself? The
Logicians are not so much making the claim here that skepticism necessarily opts out of its own position, as
when a person in saying “I know nothing” witnesses unwittingly to at least a knowledge of two things, namely
how to use language and his own ignorance, as in the cases of the Socratic Irony and the Liar’s Paradox. It is
more the direct charge that a philosophy which refuses to admit universal essences must be flatly self-
contradictory, since a universal denial must itself be essentially true of all things. Should we not consider
Nagarjuna as a person who, setting out on what would otherwise be an ingenious and promising philosophical
journey, in a bit too much of a rush, tripped over his own feet on his way out the front door?
Nagarjuna, in The End of Disputes, responds in two ways. The first is an attempt to show the haughty Logicians
that, if they really critically examine this fundamental concept of proof which grounds their theory of
knowledge, they will find themselves in no better position than they claim Nagarjuna is in. How, Nagarjuna asks
in an extended argument, can anything be proven to a fixed certainty in the way the Naiyayikas posit? When
you get right down to it, a putative fact can be proven in only two ways; it is either self-evident or it is shown to
be true by something else, by some other fact or piece of knowledge already assumed to be true. But if we assent
to the very rules of logic and valid argument the Vedic Logicians espouse, we shall find, Nagarjuna thinks, that
both of these suppositions are flawed. Let us take the claim that something can be proven to be true on the basis
of other facts known to be true. Suppose, to use a favorite example from the Logician Gautama, I want to know
how much an object weighs. I put it on a scale to measure its weight. The scale gives me a result, and for a
moment that satisfies me; I can rely on the measurement because scales can measure weight. But hold on,
Nagarjuna flags, your reliance on the trustworthiness of the scale is itself an assumption, not a piece of
knowledge. Shouldn’t the scale be tested too? I measure the object on a second scale to test the accuracy of the
first scale, and the measurement agrees with the first scale. But how can I just assume, once again, that the
second scale is accurate? Both scales might be wrong. And the exercise goes on, there is nothing in principle
which would justify me in assuming that any one test I use to verify a piece of knowledge is itself reliable beyond
doubt. So, Nagarjuna concludes, the supposition that something can be proven through reference to some other
putative fact runs into the problem that the series of proofs will never reach an end, and leaves us with an
infinite regress. Should we commit ourselves to the opposite justification and propound that we know things to
be true which are self-evident, then Nagarjuna would counter that we would be making a vacuous claim. The
whole point of epistemology is to discover reliable methods of knowing, which implies that on the side of the
world there are facts and on the side of the knower there are proofs which make those facts transparent to
human consciousness. Were things just self-evident, proof would be superfluous, we should just know
straightaway whether something is such and such or not. The claim of self-evidence destroys, in an ironic
fashion which always pleased Nagarjuna, the very need for a theory of knowledge!
Having tested both criteria of evidence and come up short, the Logician might, and in fact historically did, try an
alternative theory of mutual corroboration. We may not know for certain that a block of stone weighs too much
to fit into a temple I am building, and we may not be certain that the scale being used to measure the stones is
one hundred percent accurate, but if as a result of testing the stones with the scale I put the stones in the
building and find that they work well, I have reason to rely on the knowledge I gain through the mutual
corroborations of measurement and practical success. This process, for Nagarjuna, however, should not pass for
an epistemologist who claims to be as strict as the Brahminical Logicians. In fact, this process should not even
be considered mutual corroboration; it is actually circular. I assume stones have a certain measurable mass, so I
design an instrument to confirm my assumption, and I assume scales measure weight so I assess objects by
them, but in terms of strict logic, I am only assuming that this corroborative process proves my suppositions,
but it in fact does nothing more than feed my preconceived assumptions rather than give me information about
the nature of objects. We may say that a certain person is a son because he has a father, Nagarjuna quips, and
we may say another person is a father because he has a son, but apart from this mutual definition, how do we
know which particular person is which? By extension, Nagarjuna claims, this is the problem with the project of
building a theory of knowledge as such. Epistemology and ontology are parasitic on one another.
Epistemologies are conveniently formulated to justify preferred views of the world, and ontologies are
presumed to be justified through systematic theories of proof, but apart from these projects being mutually
theoretically necessary, we really have no honest way of knowing whether they in fact lend credence to our
beliefs. Again, Nagarjuna has used tools from the bag of the logician, in this case, standard argumentational
fallacies, to show that it is Brahminical Logic, and not his philosophy of emptiness, which has tripped itself up
before having a chance to make a run in the world.

This, as said above, was Nagarjuna’s first response to the Logicians’ accusation that a philosophy of emptiness is
fundamentally incoherent. There is however, Nagarjuna famously asserts, another pettito principii in the Nyaya
charge that the thesis “all things are empty and lack a fixed nature” is incoherent. The statement “all things are
empty” is actually, Nagarjuna says, not a formal philosophical thesis in the first place! According to the Nyaya
rules of viable logical argument, the first step in proving an assertion true is the declared statement of the
putative fact as a thesis in the argument (pratijna). Now in order for something to qualify as a formal
philosophical thesis, a statement must be a fact about a particular object or state of knowable affairs in the
world, and it is a matter of doctrine for Nyaya that all particular objects or states of affairs are classifiable into
their categories of substances, qualities, and activities. Nagarjuna however does not buy into this set of
ontological categories in the first place, and so the Logician is being disingenuous in trying to covertly pull him
into the ontological game with this charge that the idea of emptiness is metaphysically unintelligible. The
Brahminical Logician is insisting that no person can engage in a philosophical discussion without buying, at
least minimally, into a theory of essences and issues surrounding how to categorize essences. It is exactly this
very point, Nagarjuna demurs, that is eminently debatable! But since the Logician will not pay Nagarjuna the
courtesy of discussion on Nagarjuna’s terms, the Buddhist replies to them on their terms: “If my statement
(about emptiness) were a philosophical thesis, then it would indeed be flawed; but I assert no thesis, and so the
flaw is not mine.”
With the exception of his two major commentators four centuries later, this stance of Nagarjuna satisfied no
one in the Indian philosophical tradition, neither Brahmanas nor fellow Buddhists. It was the stance of the kind
of debater who styled himself a vaitandika, a person who refutes rival philosophical positions while advocating
no thesis themselves. Despite all their other disagreements, Brahmanas and Buddhists in following centuries
did not consider such a stance to be truly philosophical, for while a person who occupied it may be able to
expose dubious theories, one could never hope to learn the truth about the world and life from them. Such a
person, it was suspected is more likely a charlatan than a sage. Despite the title of his work then, Nagarjuna’s
attempt to call into “first question” theories of proof fell far short of ending all disputes. However, Nagarjuna
closes this controversial and much-discussed work by reminding his readers of who he is. Paying reverence to
the Buddha, the teacher, he says, of interdependent causality and emptiness, Nagarjuna tells his audience that
“nothing will prevail for those in whom emptiness will not prevail, while everything will prevail for whom
emptiness prevails.” This is a reiteration of Nagarjuna’s commitment that theory and praxis are not a
partnership in which only through the former’s justification is the latter redeemed. The goal of practice is after
all transformation, not fixity, and so if one insists on marrying philosophy to practice, philosophical reflection
cannot be beholden to the unchanging, eternal essences of customary epistemology and metaphysics
5. The New Buddhist Space and Mission
There may be some extent to which the age-old debate as to whether Nagarjuna was a devotee of the traditional
Theravada or Classical Buddhism or the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) sect turns on the authorship of the two
letters attributed to him. Very little can be gleaned from the other works in Nagarjuna’s philosophical corpus
that would lend much support to the supposition that the second-century scholar was even much aware of Great
Vehicle doctrines or personages, even though the ground-breaking notion of emptiness was the one which
Mahayana fixed on as its central idea. The two “ethical epistles” addressed to the historical Satvahana liege
Gautamiputra Satkarni (r. ca. 166-196) would certainly give Nagarjuna a plausible historical locus. With their
abundant references to the supremacy of the Great Vehicle teachings, they would also depict Nagarjuna as
unequivocally within this movement. However, the non-existence of original Sanskrit versions of
the Suhrllekha (To a Good Friend) and Ratnavali (Precious Garland), as well as their obviously heavy redactions
in the Tibetan and Chinese editions, make any definitely reliable attribution of them to Nagarjuna practically
impossible.
The familiar distinctions between the Classical and Great Vehicles are well-worn; the conservative scriptural
and historical literalism of the former pitted against the mythological revisionism of the latter, the idealization
of the reclusive ascetic pursuing his own perfection in the former as opposed to the angelic and socially
engaged bodhisattva of the latter. Nagarjuna’s other works are filled with honorific passages dedicated only to
the Buddha himself, while the two epistles abound in praise of the virtues of angelic bodhisattva-hood, though
even these are found amidst passages extolling the perfections of the eightfold path and the nobility of the four
truths. Whatever Nagarjuna’s precise sectarian identification, he never loses sight of the understanding that the
practice of Buddhism is a new sort of human vehicle, a vehicle meant not to carry people from one realm to
another realm, but a vehicle which could make people anew in the only realm where they have always lived.
Nagarjuna’s letters to the war-mongering Gautamiputra are somewhat conspicuous for the relative paucity of
advice on the actual art of statecraft. Long sermons in To a Good Friend on the correct interpretation of subtle
Mahayana teachings are intermingled with catechism-like presentations of the excellence of monastic virtues,
and these are so numerous that even the author concedes toward the end of the correspondence that the king
should keep as many of the enumerated precepts as he can, since keeping all of them would tax the fortitude of
the most seasoned monk. But with all of these somewhat disconnected sections of the letter which even
internally are wont to jump from one topic to another, a motif emerges which does seem to cohere with the
more thematic approaches to the idea of emptiness in the other works, and that motif is the primacy of virtuous
conduct and practice, which takes on even a higher and more relevant role than the achievements of wisdom.
This motif is surely significant, given the fact that the Classical and Great Vehicles, while both submitting that
ultimate wisdom (prajna) and compassion (karuna) were the two paramount virtues, argued over which one was
highest, the Theravada opting for wisdom and Mahayana for compassion. In these epistles, while Nagarjuna
warns that the intentions behind moral acts must be informed by wisdom lest the benefits of the deed be
spoiled, he stresses repeatedly the importance of steadfastly ethical conduct. Dharma or behavior upright in the
eyes of the Buddha’s law of existence has two aspects, one which is characterized by meditative non-action and
the other through positive action, and the road to Buddhahood, he says, passes through the positive action of
the bodhisattva. For even though dharma is subtle and hard to comprehend, particularly where the notion of
emptiness is involved and so easily misunderstood, its practice through the cultivation of moral intentions and
attitudes will lead unerringly through the tangle of doctrinal debates. Beyond this general advice, which would
apply to any monk or nun, counsel is given to the king that dharma as positive ethical conduct is also “the best
policy,” for when one socially promotes adherence to ethical conduct, justice will prevail in the kingdom and
benefits will accrue to all, benefits which rivals will envy beyond any transient material wealth and false senses
of power.
In the worlds of the present and the future, it is after all only actions which matter. It is indeed the very
physicality of deeds which leads to the accumulation of either meritorious or detrimental karma, and so one’s
fate lies squarely in ones own hands. But through acts performed in the field of samsara, all conceivable
changes are possible. A prince can become a pauper, either willingly, like the Buddha, or unwillingly. Young
men become old, beauty morphs into decrepitude, friendship descends into enmity. It is this piercing
 contingency of samsara which is so often experienced with such anguish. But, Nagarjuna quickly reminds his
readers, all these transformations can just as easily go in the opposite direction, with material poverty
blossoming into spiritual riches, fathers reborn as sons and mothers as young wives, and the wounds of conflict
sutured with the threads of reconciliation. Interdependent causality and the emptiness which change depends
on mean that things can always go either way, and so which way they in fact go depends intimately on one’s own
deeds. And this leads one to grasp that the proper site of practice for the Buddhist cannot be just the monastery,
removed as it tries to be from the machinations of state, economy, social class and the other tumultuous and
sundry affairs of suffering beings. As there is no difference between samsara and nirvana owing to the
emptiness and constantly changing nature of both, so the change which a Buddhist effects upon herself and
those around her is a change in the world, and this constant and purposeful change is the rightful mission of
Buddhism. With his own peculiar and visionary interpretation of the concept of the emptiness of all things then,
Nagarjuna has woven an anti-metaphysical and epistemological stance together with an ethics of action which
was, true to its own implications, to transform the self-understanding of the Buddhist tradition for millennia to
come.

6. References and Further Reading

Nagarjuna’s Works Addressed to Buddhists
• Mulamadhyamakakarika, (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way) translated as The Philosophy of the Middle Way by David
J. Kalapuhana, SUNY Press, Albany, 1986.
• Sunyatasaptati, (Seventy Verses on Emptiness) translated by Cristian Lindtner, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and
Philosophy of Nagarjuna, Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen, 1987, 35-69.
• Yuktisastika, (Sixty Verses on Reasoning) translated by Christian Lindtner, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and
Philosophy of Nagarjuna, Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen, 1987, 103-19.
• Pratityasamutpadahrdaya, (The Constituents of Dependent Arising) translated by L. Jamspal and Peter Della Santina
in Journal of the Department of Buddhist Studies, University of Delhi, 2:1, 1974, 29-32.
• Bodhisambharaka, (Preparation for Enlightenment) translated by Christian Lindtner, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and
Philosophy of Nagarjuna, Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen, 1987, 228-48.
Nagarjuna’s Works Addressed to Brahminical Systems
• Vigrahavyavartani, (The End of Disputes) translated as The Dialectical Method of Nagarjuna by Kamaleswar Bhattacharya,
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1978.
• Vaidalyaprakarana, (Pulverizing the Categories) translated as Madhyamika Dialectics by Ole Holten Pind, Akademisk Forlag,
Copenhagen, 1987.
Nagarjuna’s Ethical Epistles
• Suhrllekha, (To a Good Friend) translated as Nagarjuna’s Letter to King Gautamiputra by L. Jamspal, N.S. Chophel and Peter
Della Santina, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1978.
• Ratnavali, (Precious Garland) translated as The Precious Garland and the Song of the Four Mindfulnesses by Jeffrey Hopkins,
Lati Rimpoche and Anne Klein, Vikas Publishing, Delhi, 1975.