Madhyamaka and the perfection of wisdom

Overview

Recall questions on Nagarjuna and his method, the perfection of wisdom sutras and the Heart Sutra, sunyata and svabhava, why emptiness is not nihilism, dependent origination, the two truths, samsara and nirvana as not separate, and continuity with the Buddha's teaching.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Who was Nagarjuna, and what is his importance?

   Model answer

   Nagarjuna was an Indian Buddhist philosopher of roughly the second century of the common era, regarded as the founder of the Madhyamaka or middle way school. His importance lies in giving rigorous philosophical form to the emptiness taught in the perfection of wisdom literature, arguing it out rather than simply asserting it. His work shaped later Indian, Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist thought so thoroughly that Tibetan traditions treat Madhyamaka as the highest philosophical view.

2. 2

   What method of argument did Nagarjuna use?

   Model answer

   He argued largely by refutation. Taking an opponent's position, he would show that each possible way of holding it collapses into contradiction, often working through a fourfold scheme in which a thing is said to exist, not exist, both, or neither, and dismantling all four. He applied this to causation, motion, time, the self and even to nibbana. Notably he claimed to be advancing no thesis of his own, which he saw as consistent with emptiness, since a fixed position would be one more thing grasped at.

3. 3

   What are the perfection of wisdom sutras, and why are they important?

   Model answer

   They are a large body of Mahayana texts, composed over several centuries, which set out emptiness and the bodhisattva path, and which range from very long works to short and widely recited ones such as the Heart and Diamond texts. They are important because they supply the doctrinal basis for Mahayana: wisdom as the perfection that completes the others, emptiness as the nature of all things, and the bodhisattva rather than the arhat as the model. Nagarjuna's philosophy is best understood as their systematic defence.

4. 4

   What does the Heart Sutra teach about form and emptiness?

   Model answer

   It presents Avalokiteshvara addressing the disciple Sariputra and stating that form and emptiness are not two separate things: what appears as form is empty, and emptiness is not something other than form. The point is not that objects are illusions concealing a void, but that being empty of independent existence is simply what it is to be a dependently arisen thing. Mahayana Buddhists read this as ruling out both the view that things exist in their own right and the view that nothing exists at all.

5. 5

   What does the Heart Sutra do with the standard Buddhist categories, and why is that shocking?

   Model answer

   It runs through the familiar lists, the five khandhas, the senses and their objects, ignorance and its ending, the four truths, even attainment itself, and denies each of them as ultimately established. This is shocking because these are the tradition's own core teachings, and a hearer might conclude that Buddhism is being demolished from inside. Mahayana Buddhists answer that the negation applies to the categories as independently existing entities, not to their usefulness, so the teachings remain valid conventionally while being empty ultimately.

6. 6

   What is sunyata or sunnata?

   Model answer

   Emptiness: the claim that all things, without exception, lack independent, intrinsic existence. Everything arises in dependence on causes, parts and conceptual designation, and therefore has no self-contained nature of its own. Mahayana Buddhists apply this universally, to persons, to physical objects, to the constituents of experience, and to Buddhist doctrines and even to emptiness itself. It is presented as the fully general form of what anatta says about persons.

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