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Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

OPEN THE BOOK WITH A QUESTION

If nothing has an independent essence, are things unreal or real only through relations?

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People who carry this work into the voyage

Read the argument as a story

Story 1What is real, and what remains through change?

Nāgārjuna — Emptiness is dependence, not disappearance

The question that opens it

If nothing has an independent essence, are things unreal or real only through relations?

What changes as you read the work
  1. 1

    In Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka, emptiness means that phenomena lack an independent, unchanging intrinsic nature (svabhāva).

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    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Nāgārjuna

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.1 Svabhāva and §2.2 Emptiness

      Open source
  2. 2

    Emptiness is read together with dependent origination, and emptiness itself must not be reified as another ultimate substance.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Nāgārjuna

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.2 Emptiness; §3 The Two Truths

      Open source
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How the work moved through time

  1. Around the second or third century

    The Fundamental Verses re-examine intrinsic nature and causation through dependence and emptiness.

    PerspectiveOpen in question

Continue with the questions it unsettles