Tag Archives: Fyodor Shcherbatskoy

Nāgārjuna’s Nirvana

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Vajragoni

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

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Coming in November: Nirvana

Posted on October 31, 2020 by Vajragoni

Nirvana is more often than not misconstrued within Buddhist circles. It is merely discernable as “marking the end of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of rebirth going.” This has much to do with the early Prakrit language translation as: ṇivvāṇa, literally “blown out”, as in an oil lamp. Hence the ongoing connotation of coming to a point of extinction. It needs to be stated unequivocally that the Mahayanists deny the reality of Nirvana as a separate element that transcends the living world. More specifically, a Lankavatarian would state that one does not vanish in Nirvana, nor is Nirvana abiding in you; for it transcends the duality of knowing and known and of being and non-being. In other words, the Nirvanic Mind is not in a symbiotic-relationship with the apparent you. No, IT is not in you but transcends all categorical imperatives of here or there, being and non-being. IT is a Transcendent Kingdom unto Itself. This series will explore the ongoing evolution of the term within various Buddhist schools as expertly articulated by the renowned Russian Indologist Fyodor Shcherbatskoy (1866-1942) in his seminal work, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana. We will then consider the definition as presented in the Lankavatara Sutra, Tozen’s Dharmakaya Sutra, and then through the lens of Nāgārjuna. read more

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