Nāgārjuna
A figure from the books
#Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna · c. 150–250 CE
In the books · 2 chapters
Who this is
Philosophy — founder of Madhyamaka, the "Middle Way" school of Mahāyāna Buddhism; author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the most argued-over philosophical text India ever produced.
“The philosopher who argued that nothing has an essence — and, when told his argument refuted itself, replied "I have no thesis" — became the "second Buddha" of Tibet, the grandfather of Zen, and the only philosopher we know of with an excavated city bearing his name: a city drowned, with exquisite irony, by a dam that also bears his name.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Nothing whatever — no thing, no self, no category, not even nirvāṇa — possesses its own independent essence; everything exists only dependently, by relation and convention. And this emptiness is not the end of the world but the reason the world works.”
From the books
- The Great IndiansNāgārjuna is Chapter 50 of Vol 2, The Classical Age.
- The Great PhilosophersNāgārjuna is Chapter 47 of Vol 2, Late Antiquity & the Early Medieval World.
Read the chapters
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