Monthly Archives: November 2020

Nāgārjuna’s stance on Nirvana is best illustrated in his Magnum Opus, The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. In Sanskrit it is translated as “Root Verses on the Middle Way”. The work is comprised of 448 verses in twenty-seven chapters. Chapter twenty-five is on Nirvana. As a whole this philosophic-wonder is an inexorable analysis of many of the most central categories of Buddhist thought, exposing them to a scrutiny that disclosures the absurd consequences that follow from envisioning any of them to be real in the sense of possessing an independent and intrinsic nature (Svabhāva). Nāgārjuna drives-home the realization that all these categories exist only relationally but do not exist in an Absolute sense. In the Twenty-fifth chapter, he subjects Nirvana to a similar critique, finding it to be neither existent, nonexistent, both existent and nonexistent, nor neither existent nor nonexistent. These, of course, are his “four alternatives” or tetralemma. Hence, Nirvana like Samsara is self-empty of that intrinsic nature. In this sense there is no-difference between them. This chapter consists of 24 aphorisms that concisely strips-down Nirvana bare and reveals for us what it is and is not. The rest of this blog will present each of these with accompanying commentary. read more