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The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Ngrjuna's Mlamadhyamakakrik

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This is a translation and commentary of the central philosophical writing of Nagarjuna, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, or The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Nagarjuna, an Indian Buddhist master who lived in the First Century A.D., was the first to clearly articulate the Madhyamika philosophy, the most profound view of reality to be found among the various schools of Buddhism, and the philosophy that permeates the Prajnaparamita, the various Perfection of Wisdom Sutras that form the foundation for Mahayana Buddhism. Nagarjuna's writings were elaborated upon by his disciples Aryadeva and Chandrakirti, and by later Tibetan masters such as Je Tsongkhapa. In fact, it is a Tibetan translation of Nagarjuna's original Sanskrit text that Mr. Garfield has translated here, and since his own practice follows the Tibetan tradition, this allows him to bring a more sympathetic understanding to the text and its insights.

This is a marvelous book, the likes of which I never thought I would find. You will understand something of my despair, and hopefully likewise appreciate the many fine qualities this book embodies if you have also spent years as a Buddhist practitioner trying to understand the profundities of Eastern and Buddhist philosophies by reading the currently extant English translations and commentaries to the great scriptures. Most such books suffer from one or more of a number of serious flaws, such as writing and thinking that is sloppy, imprecise, or hopelessly fuzzy and full of vaguely defined mystical jargon that clouds understanding, or interpretations and conclusions that are idiosyncratic and out of sync with other major scriptural sources. None of that here! Mr. Garfield has done a masterful job of presenting in English one of the most difficult of all scriptures, and he has done so in a way that is both pleasurable and understandable.

This is challenging material. Nagarjuna's philosophy is both very subtle and very profound. To gain liberation or enlightenment a Buddhist practitioner must (among other practices) first gain an intellectual understanding of this philosophy, and then thoroughly deepen that understanding through skillful meditation under the guidance of a master until it intuitively informs every level of being. Mr. Garfield expressly states in his preface that this book is "meant to be a presentation of a philosophical text to philosophers, and not an edition of the text for Buddhologists", so it is clear that he does not intend the text to help at all with the second phase of this process, but his book adds masterfully to the preliminary intellectual understanding.

The book is in two parts. The first part is simply an English translation of Nagarjuna's text. The translation is extremely well thought out, and the directness and clarity of the language, seldom found in this sort of translation, makes it as easy to follow as possible. But such is the depth and subtlety of the arguments, and the writing is so condensed in the original text that few could follow it without a commentary. The second section, then, provides a verse by verse commentary, and herein lies the real brilliance of Mr. Garfield's book, for he leads us with all the confidence and assuredness of a master through the mental gymnastics of Nagarjuna's arguments. He is invariably on top of every argument and counter-argument, and presents all in absolute clarity. He writes with philosophical authority, and yet without being overly dogmatic or arrogant. But more than this: He involved me in the arguments and the flow of Nagarjuna's reasoning, such that I felt more a participant than a mere spectator. As I was led along, I was often reminded of a great mystery writer, or of a skillful naturalist leading students on a nature hike. It was at times exhilarating. And yet more than this too: He also wrote beautifully, with elegance and erudition. His use of language is clear, precise and well-informed, a pleasure to read.

But there's even more than this here: He not only wrote persuasively and beautifully, but also accurately. He has truly done this scripture justice. At no point did I detect any views not completely in accord with what I have gleaned and struggled hard to learn from my own teacher and my own readings of the scriptures. Indeed, my own understanding was clarified and expanded greatly and provided with solid logical underpinning, and for that I am most grateful.

I might also add that this is a handsome book, with quietly elegant binding, paper and typesetting. I encountered no typos. The preface, references and index were truly helpful, and the overall organization flowed smoothly.

The only two problems I encountered reading the book were problems of my own. First, I was surprised to learn that despite two decades studying Eastern philosophy, I know very little about Western philosophy. Someone reading this text with as little knowledge as I had about the ideas of Kant, Hume, Berkeley, Descartes and Wiggenstein, and with only non-formal training in philosophical vocabulary and logic may be a bit lost at times. I found the Oxford Companion to Philosophy helpful, but plan to further fill this glaring gap in my education later. Second, Mr. Garfield's command of vocabulary was extensive enough to finally propel me to fulfill a long held wish to purchase a truly fine dictionary. I went to the book store with a vocabulary list from the first several chapters of the commentary, and quickly realized that none of the many dictionaries there had more than half the words, with the exception of the two volume New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which had them all. I purchased it gladly.

It remains for someone with sophisticated philosophical training to review this book from that perspective, but I can recommend it highly to any Buddhist practitioners who long for a clear and deep presentation of these most profound truths.

The Mulamadhyamakakarika(MMK) by Nagarjuna is one of the most important scriptures within Mahayana Buddhism. It's the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Although other English translations exist already, Mr Garfield's rendition is the first that shows the Prasangika Madhyamika (Middle Way Consequence school) view on the MMK.

The MMK consists of 27 chapters which are examinations of fundamental theoretical elements in Buddhist ontology like Dependent origination, Impermanence, Perception, Aggregates (skandhas), Self, and relations between Substance and Attribute. The book is divided into two sections: 1. The translation of the 27 chapters, 2. The translation + commentaries.

It's noteworthy to mention that this book is based on the Tibetan dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab, the Tibetan translation of the original Sanskrit work of MMK.

Garfield asserts in this book that Nagarjuna's goal was to refute the view of extremism of the Sarvastidas (All exists) and the other side of Nihilism (Nothing exists), proposing a Middle Way position. Pointing out the Two Truths of reality; Absolute Truth and Conventional Truth, Nagarjuna uses the Emptiness (shunyata) doctrine to show the reader upon examination that phenomena (both mental and physical) are empty of inherent-exitestence, but also that they are NOT non-existent (they exist within the Absolute Truth). Through these Examination one will obtain insight into the relativity of concepts and phenomena.

As a side note: Nagarjuna's goal is not to bring about a philosophical debate on metaphysical elements. Garfield points this out perfectly in the Introduction to the Commentary section of this book.

I have not read other renditions in English on the MMK, but so far this one is a very bright shining jewel in my extensive collection on Buddhism.

For further reading I would suggest Candrakirti's Prasannapada (Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way), which is a commentary on the MMK and it's best companion in my opinion.

As Garfield states in the introduction, his analysis of the text is more from an analytical, Western philosophical perspective than from a "Buddhalogical" (his word) one. The result is authoritative, scholarly and a little dry. His presentation reminds me of David Brazier's presentation of the Abhidharma in his book "Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind." The experience of reading this book is very demanding, but also very satisfying. The benefits to be derived are probably directly proportional with the work one puts in to understanding it.

A more poetically compelling translation of the Mulamadhyamikakarika, along with a very thought-provoking introduction, is to be found in Stephen Batchelor's "Verses from the Center."

My copy fell apart after two years of reading and re-reading, underlining and study. I am ordering another copy today and it will probably wear out too! It is the best explanation of emptiness that I have encountered and it is my favorite Buddhist text of the more than 200 in my library. With each reading my understanding gets a little deeper and my appreciation of Nagarjuna as the Plato of the East is confirmed.

This book has been a treasure to those of us who had stared in consternation at K. Inada's translation or wrestled with the misprints in D. Kalupahana's edition. Here lucidity reigns. But there is something excessively dry and scholastic about Garfield's Nagarjuna. I think this is partly due to the fact that Garfield translates from the Tibetan, not the original Sanskrit. Compare his translation of Ch. 19, verse 1: "If the present and the future/Depend on the past,/Then the present and the future/Would have existed in the past", with Sprung's: "If what is arising here and now and what is not yet realized are dependent on what is past, what is arising here and now and what is not yet realized will be in past time" (which could be further improved by translating "atita" as "what has been"). So dry is Garfield's diction that his retention of a verse format seems pointless. The Gelug-pa Tibetan interpretation of Nagarjuna is a scholasticizing one, and loses some of the savor of emptiness and liberation which gives meditative point to Nagarjuna's laconic logic. Also, Garfield keeps referring to Hume and Wittgenstein in a way that further domesticates and scholasticizes Nagarjuna, making him a linguistic therapist who frees us from substantializations and reifications, but who also allows us to install ourselves comfortably in the conventional dependently co-arising world. It seems to me that in Buddhism this samsaric world is always painful, radically unsatisfactory, and that Nagarjuna is not just curing us of false theories about it, but is revealing it as radically self-contradictory even in its everyday pragmatic or conventional texture. To say that emptiness "is not a self-existent void standing behind a veil of illusion comprising conventional reality, but merely a characteristic of conventional reality" (p. 91) sounds very bland. Emptiness is not just any characteristic, but a radically subversive quality of our world, which it is by no means easy to realize. "The actuality of the entire phenomenal world, persons and all, is recovered within that emptiness" (p. 95) is again too bland. Only a Buddha can grasp the world in its ultimate emptiness and its conventional texture at once. The recovery of the conventional from the point of view of ultimate emptiness is not a comfortable restoration or even a disillusioned Humean resignation to conventions. It means realizing that the apparently solid world of experience is only a flimsy, provisional raft or skillful means, surpassed by the empty ultimacy which it can serve to indicate. "The eventual equation of the phenomenal world with emptiness, of samsara with nirvana, and of the conventional and the ultimate" (p. 101) is very, very eventual, so that only a Buddha can perceive it correctly. Asserted too early, too sweepingly, it can short-circuit the path to liberation.

I spent the better part of year getting into this book. Having begun to understand Nagarjuna's project, however, I have fond that this book has completely changed the way I think.

Basically, Nagarjuna works against two types of philosophical view: the view of the naive realist, which assumes, for example, that motion, perception, and causal force are inherently existing things, and the view of the nihilist, who would say that all these things are nonexistent or illusory.

Take causality. It seems that one event must surely cause another because of some sort of inherently existing causal force, right? The problem is that this causal power, if it exists, must either (1) appear as an essential property of certain events under certain conditions, or (2) it must appear as a property of those events mysteriously, for no particular reason. In the first case, causality itself requires a causal explanation--an infinite regress. In the second case, the explanation of causality, which is supposed to explain all regularities which we perceive in the universe, rests upon an ineffable mystery. So events do occur in a particular order with a certain degree of regularity. However, there is no need to posit some additional, basic force in order to explain this causal regularity.

A good way to appreciate Nagarjuna's perspective is to look at certain recent ideas from science and the humanities according to its light. For example, the theory of evolution tells us that the idea of "species" does not refer to some inherently existing type of essence, but rather that "species" is a handy designation for organisms which are of a certain degree of similarity to one another at this particular point in time. As organisms of a given "species" give birth to offspring, the very definition of this "species" changes, since it was never a monolithic, stable, inherently existing thing to start with.

I strongly recommend this book, difficult though it is. I would also suggest the Dalai Lama's commentary on the Heart Sutra (Essence of the Heart Sutra) and Chogyam Trungpa's book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism as partners to this text.

Beautifully translated (and thereby interpreted). Garfield's work will provide future students of Nagarjuna's MMK with one of the best English interpretations till date. MMK is a very difficult work to explicate, but Garfield is equal to the task. It is also a fabulous read for anyone who wishes to delve deep into "emptiness" and has the determination to apply his mind and heart to it. MMK changes the way we view the world, and in case of the wise it provides a cure to the disease called "clinging to views".

This book utterly changed my view of life. It requires much of the reader . . . but gives much in return. I draw parallels between it and post-modern thought but it is really quite a bit more. It is written for someone with a decent understanding of western philosophy, but I would encourage anyone who is brave enough to try to tackle it.

Before you stare at a wall to practice suchness, you may want to spend some time acquainting yourself with this philosophical presentation that justifies your practice.

It will be no easy task. Both Nagarjuna's text and Garfield's commentary are challenging: I'm sure that would be true for the Western philosophers Garfield's commentary is targeted to and it certainly was for me as a lay person. But I persisted in what often seemed repetitious and tedious to find enough interspersed wisdom to make my patient reading worthwhile. This is not a book I could comfortably have browsed. Without Garfield's commentary, I might have quickly read over Nagarjuna's verses and believed I had understood much of it. Despite much that seemed cryptic, I'd have thought myself well educated in dependent origination, impermanence, emptiness, the self and other key Buddhist concepts. But, if I did that, I may have missed about 99% of what Garfield found therein.

A Sanskrit text by Nagarjuna translated into Tibetan and then into English by Garfield. A commentary informed by a tradition of Tibetan teachings. Understandings which may enrich one's meditation ... on emptiness. It is humbling to consider that Nagarjuna composed his verses in India about the 2nd century A.D. Such a thorough and penetrating analysis must have resulted from many challenges from others. That it holds up is something worth ... experiencing as one reads Nagarjuna and Garfield.

Nagarjuna's text is presented by itself, then again interspersed wihin Garfield's commentary. Garfield proceeds very precisely, keeping his interpretations closely tied to the verses at hand. Together they offer a tour de force in Buddhist philosophy. If you read this book and later hear someone say, as if it were a complete thought, that the self is an illusion, you should understand much better what the too often unstated context for such a statement is.

There are many valuable lessons: about the lack of inherent existence, interdependence, conventional and ultimate truth, dependent origination of all phenomena, the emptiness of even emptiness, even dependent origination as dependently originated, reification, of the self as a conventional designation. There are conclusions I found profound such as that "the conventional nature of conventional entities and their emptiness are one and the same". That "to say of a thing that is dependently arisen is to say that its identity as a single entity is nothing more than being the reference of a word", i.e. that its identity "depends upon verbal convention". Do I follow that? One problem may be that at the time I read such lines I may think I do but a short while later, I've lost it. This is not a book I would want to be tested on anytime soon after finishing it. I don't know when I will be ready for such a test. The answers may not be found through further study of the text and commentary but through meditation ... or perhaps some of both.

I recommend going back over after a first reading and making notes. Even then, it may take ... years ... lifetimes? ... for everything taught in here to sink in, but the intent is to enable you to internalize the teachings presented here through meditation so that it becomes more than philosophy but a way to live. A tall order but that is what Buddhist meditative practice, properly understand, seems to be.

I do feel I understand better from this reading, if only a little better, why meditation seems warranted. Being a less confused about that seems worthwhile.

Nagarjuna: Theory and Practice

Nagarjuna was a philosopher of unparalleled excellence, both in the East and the West, and Garfield has presented his Mulamadhyamakakarika with clarity, competence and coherence. If you like philosophy, and are a serious spiritual seeker with an inclination for The Perennial Philosophy, then this book is for you. However, you will need determination and perseverance to finish this book, for it will take you six months to a year to master its contents.

Here is a sample of Nagarjuna's tactics. He begins by attacking causality. He dissects causality down to its root premises (a thing is caused by itself, by another, by both, or has no cause) and then he closely scrutinizes those root premises and demonstrates that none of them possess any "potency", or power, to force, stimulate, compel, oblige, constrain, drive, make or cause anything to come into existence. Therefore, they are "empty". That is, they have no inherent self-nature or essence to affect anything else. They are like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, there is nothing there. Therefore, if the causes are "empty", the thing created is "empty". But all that is theory.

But what about in practice?. Reading this book will change your thinking. You will unconsciously become a Skeptic, and will not be aware of the state of your own mind until you ponder an issue found in Nagarjuna's treatise. Only then will you realize that you are stuck between three equally unsatisfactory propositions "Things exist", "Things do not exist" and "Things both do and do not exist." Not to worry though. You will be experiencing precisely what Nagarjuna intended.

Garfield specifically declares Nagarjuna's intention, page 314, "This, of course, is the key to the soteriological character of the text: reification is the root of grasping and craving and hence of all suffering. And it is perfectly natural, despite its incoherence. By understanding emptiness, Nagarjuna intends one to break this habit and extirpate the root of suffering."