Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (“Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way”)

About Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Nāgārjuna (c. 150- 250 CE) is a towering figure among Indian Buddhist philosophers and the founder of the Mādhyamaka Buddhism, one of the principal Mahayana Buddhist schools in India.  His work Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), often translated as “Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Path”, is considered one of the foundational texts in Mahayana Buddhist traditions. His greatest contribution to the Buddhist philosophy is his explicit, systematic analysis and development of a core tenet of Mahayana Buddhism “emptiness” (śūnyatā).

In MMK, Nāgārjuna extends the Buddha’s idea of no-self (anātman) to all phenomena: nothing arises, remains, or ceases as inherently existent; instead, all dharmas (“phenomena”) dependently originate upon all other dharmas. He directly refutes eternalism (the belief that things possess inherent, permanent nature, “svabhāva”: self-being or -becoming, or having its own nature); since things arise interdependently, they lack inherent nature/essence.  He also clarifies that emptiness is not nihilism (the belief that nothing really exists at all).  Emptiness is the middle way between existence and non-existence: all “things” exist yet they are empty of inherent, unchanging essence (svabhāva). He even applies emptiness to the core tenets in the Buddhist tradition: for example, Nagarjuna argues that nirvāṇa is empty, demonstrating that it is not an absolute reality but the cessation of conceptual proliferation (prapañca). (MMK 25) Thus, emptiness is in all and the phenomenal world is empty.

MMK is probably one of the most challenging philosophical texts in Buddhist literature— challenging to read and understand even for seasoned scholars and practitioners. Its difficulty lies not only in content, the idea of emptiness challenges our normal way of thinking about existence, identity and knowledge, but also in form: Nagarjuna uses a counterintuitive logic in his deconstruction of fixed views. Here is how his distinctive dialectical method—negative dialectics—is used. “Everything is real, or unreal, or both real and unreal, or neither. This is the Buddha’s provisional teaching.” (MMK 18:8)

There are four possible positions about a phenomenon:

1. It is real (“inherently exists”);

1. It is not real (“does not inherently exit”);

1. It is both real and not real; and

1. It is neither real nor not real.

Nagarjuna rejects all these positions by his analysis of their logical contradictions. For example, in MMK 1, he examines “causality”:

• If things inherently exist, they couldn’t depend on causes (since they have already been themselves).

• If they don’t inherently exist, “causation” is just a conventional label.

• Thus, “cause and effect” can’t be found under analysis—they’re empty.

Through this “four-cornered negation” reasoning, all possible categories—causality, time, motion, self, nirvāṇa, samsara, etc. are deconstructed. Nagarjuna’s dialectical analysis shows that any attempt to posit inherent existence leads to contradictions, reality cannot be captured by conceptual extremes and ultimately, all four positions are empty. Thus, śūnyatā is the nature of all phenomena.

Nāgārjuna’s madhyamaka philosophy dismantles all fixed views and reveals that nothing can ultimately sustain its own inherent existence. The true nature of reality is emptiness, and the true meaning of emptiness is that things lack inherent and independent existence. The goal of the idea of emptiness is not about establishing a new philosophy but about freeing the mind from clinging to extremes.