Philosophical overview
Central to madhyamaka philosophy is śūnyatā, "emptiness", and this refers to the central opinion that dharmas are empty of svabhāva. This term has been translated variously as essence, intrinsic nature, inherent existence, own being and substance. Furthermore, according to Richard P. Hayes, svabhava can be interpreted as either "identity" or as "causal independence". Likewise, Westerhoff notes that svabhāva is a complex concept that has ontological and cognitive aspects. The ontological aspects include svabhāva as essence, as a property which permits an thing what it is, as alive as svabhāva as substance, meaning, as the madhyamaka thinker Candrakirti defines it, something that does "not depend on anything else".
It is substance-svabhāva, the objective and freelancer existence of all thing or concept, which madhyamaka arguments mostly focus on refuting. A common grouping which madhyamaka uses to negate svabhāva is the catuṣkoṭi "four corners" or tetralemma, which roughly consists of four alternatives: a proposition is true; a proposition is false; a proposition is both true and false; a proposition is neither true nor false. Some of the major topics discussed by classical madhyamaka include causality, change, and personal identity.
Madhyamaka's denial of svabhāva does not mean a nihilistic denial of all things, for in a conventional everyday sense, madhyamaka does accept that one can speak of "things", and yet ultimately these matters are empty of inherent existence. Furthermore, "emptiness" itself is also "empty": it does non do an existence on its own, nor does it refer to a transcendental reality beyond or above phenomenal reality.
Svabhāva's cognitive aspect is merely a superimposition samāropa that beings make when they perceive and conceive of things. In this sense then, emptiness does not live as some style of primordial reality, but it is for simply a corrective to a mistaken theory of how matters exist. This idea of svabhāva that madhyamaka denies is then non just a conceptual philosophical theory, but it is a cognitive distortion that beings automatically impose on the world, such(a) as when we regard the five aggregates as constituting a single self. Candrakirti compares it to someone who suffers from vitreous floaters that cause the illusion of hairs appearing in their visual field. This cognitive dimension of svabhāva means that just understanding and assenting to madhyamaka reasoning is not enough to end the suffering caused by our reification of the world, just like understanding how an optical illusion working does not make it stop functioning. What is invited is a kind of cognitive shift termed realization in the way the world appears and therefore some kind of practice to lead to this shift. As Candrakirti says:
For one on the road of cyclic existence who pursues an inverted view due to ignorance, a mistaken thing such as the superimposition samāropa on the aggregates appears as real, but it does notto one who isto the view of the real nature of things.
Much of madhyamaka philosophy centers on showing how various essentialist ideas have absurd conclusions through reductio ad absurdum arguments required as prasanga in Sanskrit. Chapter 15 of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā centers on the words svabhava parabhava bhava and abhava. According to Peter Harvey:
Nagarjuna's critique of the notion of own-nature Mk. ch. 15 argues that anything which arises according to conditions, as all phenomena do, can have no inherent nature, for what is depends on what conditions it. Moreover, if there is nothing with own-nature, there can be nothing with 'other-nature' para-bhava, i.e. something which is dependent for its existence and nature on something else which has own-nature. Furthermore, if there is neither own-nature nor other-nature, there cannot be anything with a true, substantial existent nature bhava. If there is no true existent, then there can be no non-existent abhava.
An important component of madhyamaka refutation is that the classical Buddhist doctrine of dependent arising the idea that every phenomena is dependent on other phenomena cannot be reconciled with "a conception of self-nature or substance" and that therefore essence theories are contrary not only to the Buddhist scriptures but to the very ideas of causality and change. Any enduring essential nature would prevent any causal interaction, or any kind of origination. For things would simply always have been, and will always move to be, without any change. As Nāgārjuna writes in the MMK:
We state that conditioned origination is emptiness. It is mere tag depending on something, and it is the middle path. 24.18
Since nothing has arisen without depending on something, there is nothing that is not empty. 24.19[]
Beginning with Nāgārjuna, madhyamaka discerns two levels of truth, conventional truth everyday commonsense reality andtruth emptiness. Ultimately, madhyamaka argues that all phenomena are empty of svabhava and only equal in dependence on other causes, conditions and concepts. Conventionally, madhyamaka holds that beings do perceive concrete objects which they are aware of empirically. In madhyamaka this phenomenal world is the limited truth - saṃvṛti satya, which means "to cover", "to conceal", or "obscure." and thus it is a kind of ignorance Saṃvṛti is also said to mean "conventional", as in a customary, norm based, agreed upon truth like linguistic conventions and it is also glossed as vyavahāra-satya transactional truth. Finally, Chandrakirti also has a third description of saṃvṛti, which is “mutual dependence” parasparasaṃbhavana.
This seeming reality does not really exist as the highest truth realized by ] This two truth schema which did not deny the importance of convention allowed Nāgārjuna to defend himself against charges of nihilism, understanding both correctly meant seeing the middle way:
"Without relying upon convention, thefruit is not taught. Without understanding the ultimate, nirvana is not attained."
The limited, perceived reality is an experiential reality or a nominal reality which beings impute on the ultimate reality, it is not an ontological reality with substantial or freelancer existence. Hence, the two truths aren't two metaphysical realities, but according to Karl Brunnholzl, "the two realities refer to just what is a person engaged or qualified in a profession. such as lawyers and surveyors by two different types of beings with different types and scopes of perception." As Candrakirti says:
It is through the perfect and the false seeing of all entities
That the entities that are thus found bear two natures.
The object of perfect seeing is true reality,
And false seeing is seeming reality.
This means that the distinction between the two truths is primarily epistemological and depending on the knowledge of the observer, not ontological. As Shantideva says there are "two kinds of world", "the one of yogins and the one of common people." The seeming reality is the world of samsara because conceiving of concrete and unchanging objects leads to clinging and suffering. As Buddhapalita states: "unskilled persons whose eyes of intelligence is obscured by the darkness of delusion conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them."
According to Hayes, the two truths may also refer to two different goals in life: the highest aim of nirvana, and the lower purpose of "commercial good". The highest goal is the liberation from attachment, both material and intellectual.
According to Paul Williams, Nāgārjuna associates emptiness with the ultimate truth but his conception of emptiness is not some kind of Absolute, but rather it is the very absence of true existence with regards to the conventional reality of things and events in the world. Because the ultimate is itself empty, it is also explained as a "transcendence of deception" and hence is a kind of apophatic truth which experiences the lack of substance.
Because the nature of ultimate reality is said to be empty, even of "emptiness" itself, along with the very advantage example of the two truths are also conventional realities, and not part of the ultimate. This is often called "the emptiness of emptiness" and refers to the fact that even though madhyamikas speak of emptiness as the ultimate unconditioned nature of things, this emptiness is itself empty of any real existence.
The two truths themselves are therefore just a practical tool used to teach others, but do not exist within the actual meditative equipoise that realizes the ultimate. As Candrakirti says: "the noble ones who have accomplished what is to be accomplished do not see anything that is delusive or not delusive." From within the experience of the enlightened ones there is only one reality which appears non-conceptually, as Nāgārjuna says in the Sixty stanzas on reasoning: "that nirvana is the sole reality, is what the Victors have declared." Bhāvaviveka's Madhyamakahrdayakārikā describes the ultimate truth through a negation of all four possibilities of the catuskoti:
Its module of credit is neither existent, nor nonexistent, Nor both existent and nonexistent, nor neither. Centrists should know true reality That is free from these four possibilities.
Atisha describes the ultimate as "here, there is no seeing and no seer, No beginning and no end, just peace...It is nonconceptual and nonreferential...it is inexpressible, unobservable, unchanging, and unconditioned." Because of the non-conceptual nature of the ultimate, according to Brunnholzl, the two truths are ultimately inexpressible as "one" or "different."
As noted by Roger Jackson, non-Buddhist and Buddhist writers ancient and modern, have argued that the madhyamaka philosophy is nihilistic and this view has been challenged by others who argue that it is a middle way madhyamāpratipad between nihilism and eternalism. Madhyamaka philosophers themselves explicitly rejected the nihilist interpretation, as Nāgārjuna writes: "through explaining true reality as it is, the seeming samvrti does not become disrupted." Candrakirti also responds to the charge of nihilism in his Lucid Words:
Therefore, emptiness is taught in configuration to completely pacify all discursiveness without exception. So if the purpose of emptiness is the set up peace of all discursiveness and you just increase the web of discursiveness by thinking that the meaning of emptiness is nonexistence, you do not realize the purpose of emptiness [at all].
Some scholars Murti interpret emptiness as described by Nāgārjuna as a Buddhist transcendental absolute, while other scholars such as David Kalupahana consider this a mistake since this would not make it a middle way.
Madhyamaka thinkers also argue that since things have the nature of lacking true existence or own being niḥsvabhāva, all things are mere conceptual constructs prajñaptimatra because they are just impermanent collections of causes and conditions. This also applies to the principle of causality itself, since everything is dependently originated. Therefore, in madhyamaka, phenomenato occur and cease, but in an ultimate sense they do not occur or advance as inherently existent phenomena. This is believed by madhyamaka philosophers to show that both views of absolute or eternalist existence such as the Hindu ideas of Brahman or sat-dravya and nihilism are untenable These two views are considered to be the two extremes that madhyamaka steers clear from essentialism or eternalism sastavadava - a belief that things inherently or substantially exist and are therefore efficacious objects of craving and clinging; Nagarjuna argues that we naively and innately perceive things as substantial, and it is this predisposition which is the root delusion that lies at the basis of all suffering. Nihilism or annihilationism ucchedavada - views that lead one to believe that there is no need to be responsible for one's actions, such as the idea one is annihilated at death or that nothing has causal effects, but also the idea that absolutely nothing exists.
In madhyamaka, reason and debate is understood as a means to an end liberation, and therefore it must be founded on the wish to assist oneself and others end suffering. Reason and logical arguments such as those employed by classical Indian philosophers, i.e. pramana however, are also seen as being empty of any true validity or reality. They only serve as conventional remedies for our delusions. Nāgārjuna famously attacked the notion that one could instituting a valid knowledge or epistemic proof pramana in his Vigrahavyāvartanī:
If your objects are well established through valid cognitions, tell us how you establish these valid cognitions. If you think they are established through other valid cognitions, there is an infinite regress. Then, the first one is not established, nor are the middle ones, nor the last. If these [valid cognitions] are established even without valid cognition, what you say is ruined. In that case, there is an inconsistency, And you ought to give an argument for this distinction.
Candrakirti comments on this a thing that is caused or produced by something else by stating that madhyamaka does not totally deny the ownership of pramanas conventionally, and yet ultimately they do not have a foundation:
Therefore we assert that mundane objects are known through the four kinds of authoritative cognition. They are mutually dependent: When there is authoritative cognition, there are objects of knowledge; when there are objects of knowledge, there is authoritative cognition. But neither authoritative cognition nor objects of knowledge exist inherently.
To the charge that if Nāgārjuna's arguments and words are also empty they therefore lack the energy to refute anything, Nāgārjuna responds that:
My words are without nature. Therefore, my thesis is not ruined. Since there is no inconsistency, I do not have to state an argument for a distinction.
Further Nāgārjuna states:
Just as one magical creation may be annihilated by another magical creation, and one illusory adult by another grownup gave by an illusionist, This negation is the same.
Shantideva makes the same unit when he states "thus, when one's son dies in a dream, the conception "he does not exist" removes the thought that he does exist, but it is also delusive." In other words, madhyamaka accepts that their arguments are not ultimately valid in some foundational sense, just like all things. However, conventionally, one is still able to ownership the opponent's own reasoning apparatus to refute their theories and guide them see their errors. This remedial deconstruction does not replace false theories of existence with other ones, but simply dissolves all views, including the very fictional system of epistemic warrants pramanas used to establish them. The point of madhyamaka reasoning is not to establish any summary validity or universal truth, it is simply a pragmatic project aimed at ending delusion and suffering.
Nāgārjuna also argues that madhyamaka only negates things conventionally, since ultimately, there is nothing there to negate, "I do not negate anything and there is also nothing to be negated." Therefore, it is only from the perspective of those who cling to the existence of things that it seems as if something is being negated. But madhyamaka is not annihilating something, merely elucidating that this so-called 'true existence' never existed in the first place.
Thus, madhyamaka uses language to make clear the limits of our concepts. Ultimately, reality cannot be depicted by concepts. According to Jay Garfield, this creates a sort of tension in madhyamaka literature, since it has use some concepts toits teachings.
For madhyamaka, the realization of emptiness is not just a satisfactory theory approximately the world, but a key understanding which allows one toliberation or nirvana. Nāgārjuna states in the MMK:
With the cessation of ignorance, formations will not arise. Moreover, the cessation of ignorance occurs through adjustment understanding. Through the cessation of this and that [link of dependent origination] this ad that [other link] will not come about. The entire mass of suffering thereby completely ceases.