Madhyamaka

[4] Since the 4th century CE onwards, Mādhyamaka philosophy had a major influence on the subsequent development of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition,[5] especially following the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia.

[5][7] According to the classical Indian Mādhyamika thinkers, all phenomena (dharmas) are empty (śūnya) of "nature",[8] of any "substance" or "essence" (svabhāva) which could give them "solid and independent existence", because they are dependently co-arisen.

As Buddhapalita states: "unskilled persons whose eye of intelligence is obscured by the darkness of delusion conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them".

[62][63][note 8] This tenet is held to show that views of absolute or eternalist existence (such as the Hindu ideas of Brahman or sat-dravya) and nihilism are both equally untenable.

This remedial deconstruction does not replace false theories of existence with other ones, but simply dissolves all views, including the very fictional system of epistemic warrants (pramanas) used to establish them.

[90] In the Root verses on the Middle Way, Nāgārjuna illustrates this point: By the flaw of having views about emptiness, those of little understanding are ruined, just as when incorrectly seizing a snake or mistakenly practicing an awareness-mantra.

[93] Another allusion to an early Buddhist text noted by Walser occurs in Nāgārjuna's Ratnavali chapter 1, where he makes reference to a statement in the Kevaddha sutta.

According to Noa Ronkin, the idea of svabhava evolved towards ontological dimension in the Sarvāstivādin Vaibhasika school's interpretation, which began to also use the term dravya which means "real existence".

"[57] According to David Seyfort Ruegg, the main canonical Mahāyāna sutra sources of the Madhyamaka school are the Prajñāpāramitā, Ratnakūṭa and Avataṃsaka literature.

[104] Ruegg notes that in Candrakīrti's Prasannapadā and Madhyamakāvatāra, in addition to the Prajñāpāramitā, "we find the Akṣayamatinirdeśa, Anavataptahradāpasaṃkramaṇa, Upāliparipṛcchā, Kāśyapaparivarta, Gaganagañja, Tathāgataguhya, Daśabhūmika, Dṛḍhādhyāśaya, Dhāraṇīśvararāja, Pitāputrasamāgama, Mañjuśrīparipṛcchā, Ratnakūṭa, Ratnacūḍaparipṛcchā, Ratnamegha, Ratnākara, Laṅkāvatāra, Lalitavistara, Vimalakirtinirdesa, Śālistamba, Satyadvayāvatāra, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Samādhirāja (Candrapradīpa), and Hastikakṣya.

Within a specifically Mahāyāna context, Prajñā figures as the most prominent in a list of Six Pāramitās ('perfections' or 'perfect masteries') that a Bodhisattva needs to cultivate in order to eventually achieve Buddhahood.

The vast Prajñāpāramitā literature emphasizes the development of higher cognition in the context of the Bodhisattva path; thematically, its focus on the emptiness of all dharmas is closely related to the Madhyamaka approach.

[105]The first stanza of Nagarjuna's MMK meanwhile, state:I pay homage to the Fully Enlightened One whose true, venerable words teach dependent-origination to be the blissful pacification of all mental proliferation, neither production, nor stopping, neither cut off nor eternal, neither single nor manifold, neither coming, nor going away.

[105]Because of the high degree of similarity between Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism,[106] Thomas McEvilley[107] and Matthew Neale[108][109] suspect that Nāgārjuna was influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India.

These texts are the "Root verses on the Middle way" (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, MMK), the "Sixty Stanzas on Reasoning" (Yuktiṣāṣṭika), the "Dispeller of Objections" (Vigrahavyāvartanī), the "Treatise on Pulverization" (Vaidalyaprakaraṇa) and the "Precious Garland" (Ratnāvalī).

[113] In the MMK he used reductio ad absurdum arguments (prasanga) to show that any theory of substance or essence was unsustainable and therefore, phenomena (dharmas) such as change, causality, and sense perception were empty (sunya) of any essential existence.

[133] According to Ruegg, possibly the earliest figure to work with the two schools was Vimuktisena (early sixth century), a commentator on the Abhisamayalamkara and also is reported to have been a pupil of Bhāvaviveka as well as Vasubandhu.

The first was the camp which defended the Yogacara-Madhyamaka interpretation (and thus, svatantrika) centered on the works of the scholars of the Sangphu monastery founded by Ngog Loden Sherab (1059–1109) and also includes Chapa Chokyi Senge (1109–1169).

[146] Longchen Rabjam noted in the 14th century that Candrakirti favored the prasaṅga approach when specifically discussing the analysis for ultimacy, but otherwise he made positive assertions such as when describing the paths of Buddhist practice in his Madhyamakavatāra.

Not compounded by causes and conditions, the matrix-of-one-gone-thus is intrinsically endowed with ultimate buddha qualities of body, speech, and mind such as the ten powers; it is not something that did not exist before and is newly produced; it is self-arisen.

[157] Tsongkhapa's conception of emptiness draws mainly from the works of "prāsaṅgika" Indian thinkers like Buddhapalita, Candrakirti, and Shantideva and he argued that only their interpretation of Nagarjuna was ultimately correct.

[163] Following Candrakirti, Tsongkhapa also rejected the Yogacara view of mind only, and instead defended the conventional existence of external objects even though ultimately they are mere "thought constructions" (Tib.

"[187] It destroys false concepts, as does prasangika, but it also alerts the practitioner "to the presence of a dynamic, positive Reality that is to be experienced once the conceptual mind is defeated.

Another influential text in Chinese madhyamaka which was said to have been translated by Kumārajīva was the Ta-chih-tu lun, or *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa Śāstra ("Treatise which is a Teaching on the Great Perfection of Wisdom [Sūtra]").

He was influenced not just by Indian madhyamaka and Mahayana sutras like the Vimalakirti, but also by Taoist works and he widely quotes the Lao-tzu and the Chuang-tzu and uses terminology of the Neo-Daoist "Mystery Learning" (xuanxue 玄学) tradition while maintaining a uniquely Buddhist philosophical view.

According to Sengzhao, delusion arises through a dependent relationship between phenomenal things, naming, thought and reification and correct understanding lies outside of words and concepts.

[199] Yin Shun emphasized the study of Indian Buddhist sources as primary and his books on mādhyamaka had a profound influence on modern Chinese madhyamika scholarship.

[229] However, King adds that "from a Madhyamaka perspective, the Gaudapadiyakarika's acceptance of an unchanging Absolute supporting the world of appearances is a mistaken form of eternalism, despite Gaudapadian protestations to the contrary.

One particular school, the Chongxuan (重玄, "Twofold Mystery") founded by Cheng Xuanying (fl.632–650), was particularly involved in borrowing and adapting madhyamaka concepts like emptiness, the two truths and the catuskoti into their Taoist philosophical system.

[193] As noted by Ruegg, Western scholarship has given a broad variety of interpretations of madhyamaka, including: "nihilism, monism, irrationalism, misology, agnosticism, scepticism, criticism, dialectic, mysticism, acosmism, absolutism, relativism, nominalism, and linguistic analysis with therapeutic value".