Philosopher · Patristic
Nagarjuna
c. 150–250 · Madhyamaka (Middle Way school); founder
A Buddhist philosopher of the second century; Nostra Aetate 2 commends the Buddhist way of liberation, while Dominus Iesus (2000) excludes any equivalence of paths.
Nagarjuna founded the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism. His Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way) argues by reductio that nothing, not the self, not causes, not motion, not even nirvana, possesses svabhava, an intrinsic nature of its own; everything arises dependently and is therefore empty (shunya), and emptiness itself is empty, a corrective rather than a doctrine. He distinguished two truths, the conventional truth in which persons, karma and the Buddha's teaching hold, and the ultimate truth in which no view stands, and declared that there is not the slightest difference between samsara and nirvana. The Ratnavali (Precious Garland), addressed to a king, joins this dialectic to a bodhisattva ethic of compassion, generosity, mild punishment and care for the sick and poor.
Why he matters: He is the most rigorous dialectician Asia produced and the thinker Catholic theologians most often meet when they ask what Buddhist “emptiness” claims. Henri de Lubac studied his school in Aspects of Buddhism, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph O'Leary have asked whether emptiness is a cousin of the apophatic way of Dionysius or its denial, and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has made Madhyamaka a standing partner in Buddhist–Catholic dialogue.
Where to be careful
Emptiness denies that anything has a nature of its own, which leaves no room for a Creator who is subsistent being, for the real natures that the natural law presupposes, or for a person who endures to be judged and raised; the Church confesses creation from nothing and the immortal soul (Lateran IV; Lateran V). Nostra Aetate 2 nonetheless honors the Buddhist recognition of the insufficiency of this changing world, and his insistence that speech about the ultimate must negate what it affirms has a real echo in Lateran IV's “ever greater dissimilitude.”
Reading
-
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's MulamadhyamakakarikaNagarjuna (trans. Jay L. Garfield) · The verses with a commentary that makes the dialectic of emptiness followable.
-
Nagarjuna's Precious Garland: Buddhist Advice for Living and LiberationNagarjuna (trans. Jeffrey Hopkins) · His ethics and political counsel to a king, where emptiness meets compassion.
-
Buddhist Nonduality, Paschal Paradox: A Christian Commentary on The Teaching of VimalakirtiJoseph S. O'Leary · A Catholic theologian reads a Madhyamaka sutra and asks what emptiness can and cannot say to the Paschal mystery.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.