In Buddhism, various branches and schools have emerged over time, but the main division is between Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. Hinayana Buddhism is also known as Southern Buddhism because it is prevalent in Sri Lanka and Indochina. Hinayana, the small vehicle, is older than Mahayana and is more focused on monastic and ascetic practices.
Mahayana, the great vehicle, spread throughout northwest India, central Asia, Tibet, China, Japan, and so on. The characteristic of Mahayana is the ideal of the bodhisattvas, compassionate enlightened beings who help humanity on the difficult path of realizing their true nature out of compassion.
Nagarjuna, a Buddhist philosopher who lived in South India around the 2nd century BCE, is undoubtedly the most influential and studied philosopher of Mahayana Buddhism. He is the founder of the Madhyamika school (School of the Middle Way). Scholars of Nagarjuna’s philosophy encounter doubts and different interpretations of his teachings, even within the Buddhist tradition. Critics often raise objections to his Madhyamika teachings, questioning his methods and conclusions.
yamiki, as both Buddhist schools and Western philosophers, leave the impression that it is completely negative, nihilistic, skeptical.
In the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism, the central teaching is about the existence of relative truth and ultimate truth. Each level of reality corresponds to a relative truth (samvrti-satya), but there is only one absolute, unattainable, transcendent truth (paramartha-satya). Nagarjuna says that those who do not understand the difference between these two truths do not understand the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Everyday appearances can sometimes seem completely real and concrete, while at other times we are aware of their illusory, transparent, unreal, and transitory nature. Snow is white, grass is green, living beings are separate. There are relations existing between others and their interactions, but on the other hand, there are no individual objects nor their interactions, green grass nor white snow. How these two truths are connected and how to understand their simultaneous existence is the central problem of Madhyamika.
Whether the phenomena of the apparent world are considered to exist, not to exist, or conditionally exist depends solely on the level from which they are observed. Considering the phenomena of this world to be completely real and permanent is the root of suffering. If Nagarjuna were to see and touch the table in front of him, he wouldn’t say that it is a complete illusion and that the table doesn’t exist, but rather that he feels something in front of his eyes and under his hands that creates a perception of a table in his mind, but it is an empty table because it lacks being, essential reality. Emptiness, sunyata, is the Buddha’s term for the absence of true essence or essence in manifest phenomena, which is the cause of their impermanence. And what changes necessarily becomes something other than what it was. Just as a young man becomes an old man and milk becomes cheese. One commentator humorously noted that, although these changes are illusory, no one would want to put cheese instead of milk in black tea!
Nagarjuna emphasizes that these phenomena are neither existing nor non-existent, but rather have a relative, conditioned existence:
Everything is real and unreal,
Both real and unreal,
Neither real nor unreal,
That is the teaching of Lord Buddha.
Like a dream, like an illusion,
Like the city of Gandharva,
This is how the arising,
duration, and cessation are explained.
To say “it exists” is to reach for permanence.
To say “it does not exist” is to embrace a nihilistic view.
Therefore, a wise person
Does not say “it exists” or “it does not exist.”
This stance clearly shows that Nagarjuna is not a nihilist, but rather takes a middle way; between the offered extremes of the “things” of this world, existence or non-existence, he wisely states that they are neither existing nor non-existing, that they exist, but conditionally, relatively. His alleged skepticism and Pessimism must not be interpreted in the usual meaning of those words.
Both extreme attitudes – that the phenomena we observe are either absolutely existent or absolutely non-existent – can have dangerous consequences. If we simply accept that everything we can perceive is an illusion and that nothing actually exists (nihilism), then, according to Nagarjuna, there would be no Buddha, no sangha (spiritual community of disciples and teachers), no four noble truths, no Dharma, and no Path to liberation. On the other hand, the belief that the phenomena we perceive are completely real and permanent, and desirable objects of possession, leads to attachment to them and ultimately to suffering.
If things do not exist
Then what is non-existence?
Beyond existing and non-existing things
Who knows existence and non-existence?
In chapters of his work, Nagarjuna proves the illusory reality of the phenomenal world. Everything we perceive is in a constant process of growth and development, everything is in motion, and therefore, it is subject to change, which means that nothing in the world has an unchanging essence.
If there is no essence,
What is changing?
If there is an essence,
How could it be accurate that something changes?
Movement
In this work, Nagarjuna explores whether movement, which is a change in space and time, has real or illusory existence. We can observe movement everywhere around us as a universal phenomenon of the manifest world, from atoms to celestial bodies. It is connected both to space and time. Nagarjuna believes that things are not in motion in the present moment, but they were in motion in the past or will be in motion in the future. Based on this, he concludes that movement possesses relative existence – it does not exist absolutely “in itself,” but exists relatively, i.e., arises in relation, just like the relationship between the movement of the body and time. In his exploration of the phenomenon of time, Nagarjuna states that even time does not have independent existence and does not exist independently of the phenomena that occur within it. If the phenomena did not exist, neither would time. On the other hand, this means that It cannot exist permanently in time because what exists in it is necessarily temporary.
Nagarjuna further proves that the world we perceive is not the ultimate reality because nothing in it exists permanently, and whether something will continue to exist or disappear from the horizon of the visible world depends on the existence of conditions – when the conditions on which they depend exist, things exist, when they disappear, things vanish, which is not characteristic of something permanent and independent, absolute and enduring – ultimate reality. If the air disappears, the fire stops burning; if we stop eating, we cannot stay in this world anymore; for a plant to grow from a seed, soil, water, air, and sun are necessary – if these factors disappear, it dries up. This does not mean that everything is transient and empty because just as there is an “immovable mover” of movement that is absolute, there is also a permanent essence that is the ultimate cause of everything conditionally existing, its imperishable ontological root. We may wonder: if the seed is the essence and cause of the future tree, what is the essence of being? Or as Nagarjuna says, the lantern illuminates around itself, but what illuminates the lantern?
In the lantern and around it,
There is no darkness.
So what illuminates the lantern?
Because light is the removal of darkness.
Samsara
According to Buddhist philosophy, the entire manifest universe moves in a closed circle of causality (samsara). The concept of samsara includes not only the endless cycles of birth and death of sentient beings on planet Earth, but also the cyclical nature of all manifest phenomena, such as time (the teaching of time cycles present in Eastern philosophy confirms the claim that time is subject to movement and change, that it has no permanent essence), and movement (from atoms in which electrons move in circular motion around the nucleus, to the solar system where planets move circularly around themselves and the Sun, we see the principle of circular, cyclical movement). This cyclical movement to which all unenlightened beings are subject gives the illusion of development, but existence in this movement, according to Buddhist philosophy, is a constant state of suffering, dissatisfaction, and impermanence. I, suffering. The cyclical existence is actually the cyclical formation and destruction of causes and consequences, and it disappears in nirvana or true reality.
How can conditioned phenomena enter nirvana?
It is not possible.
How can sentient beings enter nirvana?
It is not possible.
Birth and death
The process of birth and death exists only at an empirical level, but when observed from a higher level, the ultimate reality is not created and cannot be destroyed, the ultimate reality is not born and cannot die. What is above cyclicality is the ultimate reality, and the cyclic appearance and disappearance indicate its relative existence.
Emptiness is the only way in which phenomena of the manifest world can exist. They are not real and the differences between them are only apparent. Nagarjuna says that diversity arises from comparison, relationships: If something is different from the different thing, without the different thing, the different thing could not exist, from which it follows that it does not exist. Knowledge of the relative reality In reality, a person obtains through their senses. Sensory organs (according to Buddhism, the five senses and the mind as the sixth sense) are the subjects of sensory perception and create the impression that sensory phenomena objectively exist. None of the objects of sensory perception are independent, as they assume a relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. Perception arises from this relationship. In order to see, we must see “something” (an external phenomenon), in order to hear, we must hear “something” (an external sound), in order to have the sense of taste, there must be something external with which taste receptors come into contact. Therefore, sensory cognition is relative and illusory, and through it, we communicate with the impermanent and ever-changing world of phenomena.
If the appearance of phenomena is illusory, is our attachment to the cycle of birth and death also an illusion? According to the Buddhist worldview, we are still bound by our illusory notions that things exist and by our craving for them, which is the source of suffering in samsara, because only within it can we “have” what we crave. We long for it. For Nagarjuna, suffering is also empty, not denying its reality on one level, and he asks: If man is the cause of his own suffering, who is it that causes suffering and is separated from suffering? Therefore, there is a part of us that does not suffer and a part that suffers, passing through and trapped in samsara.
Our true nature is not trapped in the wheel of samsara. If the consequences of actions can occur in the distant future, there must be something that will connect actions with reactions. Therefore, there must be something permanent, “another Truth” beyond samsara.