Vajrayana · Mahayana · 2nd–3rd century
Nagarjuna
Mahayana · Madhyamaka · The middle way · Mulamadhyamakakarika
The one who took apart the very notion of "existence" – and saved Mahayana both from solid things and from an empty nothing.
The essence of the teaching: No single thing exists on its own and forever, because everything arises dependently, holding on to causes and conditions. To see this is to walk the middle way, which frees one from suffering and from the needless quarrels of the mind.
Transmission
Nagarjuna did not build a new theory of the world – he took apart any that the mind tried to hold. Take any thing, he said, and search within it for an unchanging core that would be itself on its own. You will not find it: everything holds on to something else, arises together, as a bank holds on to a river. This is emptiness – not a hole, but the absence of a separate selfhood. Yet do not cling even to emptiness: if it becomes one more conviction, it will poison. Emptiness is a medicine to be swallowed, not carried in the pocket. And so he steered the vehicle between two cliffs: the belief that things are finally real, and the belief that there is nothing at all.
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