Thinking in Buddhism:
Nagarjuna's Middle Way

by Jonah Winters

1994

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chapter 1

Contents 1. Intro Preface Introduction Notes on the Methodology of this Thesis 2. The Buddha and His Teachings The Life of the Buddha The Thought of the Buddha 3. Early Buddhism and The Historical Context of Nagarjuna The Person of Nagarjuna Some Early Controversies Abhidharma and the Perfection of Wisdom Writings The Main Figures of Madhyamika 4. Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika Structure of the Karika A Presentation of the Treatise Section one — Causation, and some Initial roblems Section two — The Relationship between Nominal and Verbal Subjects Sections three through six — Factors of Personal Existence: Elements and Passions Section seven — Cohesion of Disparate Elements (Samskrta) Sections eight through eleven — The Ontological Status of the Individual Sections twelve and thirteen — Suffering and its Cause Sections fourteen and fifteen — Identity/Difference: Self-nature vs. Sections sixteen and seventeen — Bondage and its Cause Section eighteen — Self-hood and its Consequences Sections nineteen through twenty-one — Associative Composition of and Occurrence of Phenomena in Time Section twenty-two — The Meaning and Ontological Status of the Enlightened One Sections twenty-three and twenty-four — Error and Truth: the Perversions and the Four Noble Truths Section twenty-five — The Ultimate Goal: Enlightenment Section twenty-six — Dependent arising, the Buddha's Positive Ontology Section twenty-seven — Conclusion: Right and Wrong Views 5. The Philosophy of Madhyamika Nagarjuna's Motivation and Mission The Dedicatory Verses Self-Nature Theories Non-Buddhist Notions of Self-nature and the Soul The Buddha's Theory of Soullessness Nagarjuna's Response Dependent Arising, the Foundation of Madhyamika Dependent Arising as a Central Notion in Buddhism The Meaning of Dependent arising Madhyamika Interpretations and Re-interpretations Emptiness, the Ultimate Cosmology Pre-Madhyamika Use of the Concept Emptiness as a Via Negativa, a Way of Negation Emptiness is Perceived, not Invented Dependent Arising + No Self-nature = Emptiness Emptiness is a Theory of No-Theory Emptiness Is Freedom Itself 6. Conclusion Epilogue bibliography

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Notes: The most readable version of this thesis is the nicely-formatted PDF (created by Christopher Richardson in 2001). The 1994 original was written in the TEX publishing code, which did not allow for easy conversion to html. Some characters are missing. While I stripped 99% of the internal TEX formatting codes, some still remain, and the footnotes are in the body of the text. This thesis was, in print, 175 pages. In 2002 Gilles Therrien added formatting that was not included in the original. Emphases (underlining) are Therrien's.

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Preface

Any research into a school of thought whose texts are in a foreign language encounters certain difficulties in deciding which words to translate and which ones to leave in the original. It is all the more of an issue when the texts in question are from a language ancient and quite unlike our own. Most of the texts on which this thesis are based were written in two languages: the earliest texts of Buddhism were written in a simplified form of Sanskrit called Pali, and most Indian texts of Madhyamika were written in either classical or "hybrid" Sanskrit. Terms in these two languages are often different but recognizable, e.g. "dhamma" in Pali and "dharma" in Sanskrit. For the sake of coherency, all such terms are given in their Sanskrit form, even when that may entail changing a term when presenting a quote from Pali. Since this thesis is not intended to be a specialized research document for a select audience, terms have been translated whenever possible, even when the subtleties of the Sanskrit term are lost in translation. In a research paper as limited as this, those subtleties are often almost irrelevant. For example, it is sufficient to translate "dharma" as either "Law" or "elements" without delving into its multiplicity of meanings in Sanskrit. Only four terms have been left consistently untranslated. "Karma" and "nirvana" are now to be found in any English dictionary, and so their translation or italicization is unnecessary. Similarly, "Buddha," while literally a Sanskrit term meaning "awakened," is left untranslated and unitalicized due to its titular nature and its familiarity. Another appellation of Siddhartha Gautama, Tathagata, is the only unfamiliar term consistently used in the original. This has been done because translations of the term do not do justice to its mystic import and esotericism.

Finally, two processing errors must be explained. The occasional appearance of an extra space in hyphenated words, such as "self- nature," is due to an unavoidable conflict between two processing programs used in formatting this document. The extra spaces are not due to poor typing or incomplete proofreading. Second, the reversed opening quotation marks were not fixable.

"Misery only doth exist, none miserable,
No doer is there; naught save the deed is found.
Nirvana is, but not the man who seeks it.
The Path exists, but not the traveler on it."
- -The Visuddhimagga

single page

chapter 1