by Nagarjuna
Name-and-form occur.
3
When name-and-form occur,
The six Senses arise.
On the basis of six senses,
Genuine Contact then arises.
4
This is only born dependent
On the eye, on form, and on attention.
Dependent upon name-and-form
[Visual] consciousness occurs.
5
The gathering of these three
(Of eye and form and consciousness)
Is contact; and from contact,
Feeling comes to pass.
6
Through the circumstance of feeling,
Craving comes—craving for a feeling.
When craving has arisen, there is
Grasping And of this there are four kinds.21
7
With grasping, the Becoming
Of the grasper does indeed arise.
But if there is no grasping, there is freedom;
No becoming will there be.
8
Becoming presupposes the five aggregates,
And through becoming, Birth occurs,
Then Age-and-Death and misery,
Lamentation, and all sorrow.
9
Mental turmoil and unhappiness
Arise because of birth.
And therefrom there arises
What is but a mass, a heap of suffering.
10
Actions are samsara’s root.
And so the wise refrain from action.
The unwise are the ones who act—
Not the wise indeed, for they see suchness.
11
If ignorance is halted,
Actions also do not manifest.
And ignorance in turn is halted
Through discernment and through meditation upon suchness.
12
When one link has been stopped,
The link that follows does not manifest.
And thus the mass of suffering itself
Is brought completely to an end.
27
An Examination of Views
To think that in the ages past
One has existed or did not exist,
Or that the world is permanent and so forth—all these views
Depend upon an earlier limit.
2
To think that in the ages yet to come
One will exist or else will not exist,
To think this world will have an end—all these views
Depend upon a later limit.
3
The claim that “I existed in the past”
Is not acceptable.
For what existed in the past
Is not what is existing now.
4
Perhaps you think the former self became the self existing now.
But that which they appropriate is not the same.
Aside from such appropriation,
What is this self of yours?
5
You may say that there is no self
Apart from that which it appropriates,
And claim that what’s appropriated is the self.
If so, this self of yours does not exist.
6
The appropriated [aggregates] are not the self,
For these same aggregates arise and cease.
How could what’s appropriated
Be itself appropriator?
7
A self apart from the appropriated is not tenable.
For if it were distinct from them,
It should be apprehended separately,
And yet it is not apprehended.
8
Thus the self is not distinct from the appropriated,
And it is not that which it appropriates.
There is no self without the latter;
Neither can we certify that it does not exist.
9
To say that in the past
The self did not arise is inadmissible.
The self in this life is not alien
From what existed in a previous life.
10
For if this present self were alien,
It would exist in absence of the previous self.
And the past self would persist,
And here there would be birth without a perishing in the past.
11
This would entail annihilation; actions would not be conserved.
One would suffer the results of deeds
Another had performed:
This and other consequences follow.
12
The self is not arisen from a state of nonexistence:
Fallacies would be entailed thereby.
The self would be produced
Or its arising would occur without a cause.
13
Thus the views that, in the past,
One has existed or did not exist,
Or both or neither—
None of these are tenable.
14
The views that, in the future,
One will come to be
Or else will not exist—
These are like the view related to the past.
15
If the human were the god,
There would be permanence.
The god indeed would be unborn,
For in the permanent there is no birth.
16
If from the god the man were different,
Then there’d be impermanence.
If the god and man were different,
Then a continuity would be untenable.
17
If one part were divine
And one part human,
There would be impermanence and permanence,
And this is also unacceptable.
18
If impermanence and permanence
Were both established,
One could claim establishment
Of both nonpermanence and nonimpermanence.
19
If one came from somewhere
And then migrated elsewhere,
One’s wandering has no starting point.
But this is not the case.
20
If nothing permanent exists,
What is it that’s impermanent?
What is it that is both impermanent and permanent,
And what is neither of these two?
21
If this world had an end,
How could there be a further world?
And if this world had no end,
How could there be a further world?
22
Since the aggregates’ continuum
Is like the light shed by a lamp,
To say they have an end is incorrect—
As also that they are unending.
23
If the past ones were destroyed
And if, depending on the same,
The subsequent did not arise,
The world indeed would have an end.
24
If the past ones weren’t destroyed
And if, depending on the same,
The subsequent did not arise,
The world indeed would be unending.
25
If one part had an end
And one part were unending,
The world would have an end and yet be endless.
This indeed would be absurd.
26
How could what appropriates
Be partially destroyed
And partly undestroyed?
Such a thing would be absurd.
27
How could what’s appropriated
Be in part destroyed
And partly undestroyed?
Such a thing would also be absurd.
28
If the finite and the infinite
Were both established,
One could assert establishment
> Of both nonfinite and noninfinite.
29
And yet, since each and every thing is empty,
To whom and where,
And for what reason should the views
Of permanence and all the rest occur?
Concluding Homage
To him who in compassionate wisdom taught
the Sacred Dharma
For the shunning of all views,
To him, to Gautama, I bow.
Colophon
This concludes the Root Stanzas of the Middle Way Called Supreme Wisdom. This text, which presents the Abhidharma of the Great Vehicle and reveals the nature of the ultimate truth by throwing light upon the method of transcendent wisdom, was composed by the sublime master and great being, the noble Nagarjuna whose wisdom and compassion are beyond compare, inasmuch as, having explained the unsurpassed vehicle of the tathagatas, he attained the ground of Perfect Joy and departed for the buddhafield of Sukhavati, thence to become—in the world system called Shining Light—the buddha known as Wisdom-Granting Light.
At the behest of his glorious and divine majesty, the great king, the mighty and most holy sovereign [Trisong Detsen], this text was translated by the great Indian abbot Jnanagarbha, a master of the Middle Way, and the monk translator Chokro Lui Gyaltsen, who edited and finalized its meaning, in a text of 449 stanzas in twenty-seven chapters, thus equivalent to one and a half books.
Later, during the reign of King Aryadeva, in the monastery of Ratnagupta, the Hidden Jewel, in the incomparable city of Anuparna in Kashmir, the translation was revised according to Chandrakirti’s commentary, the Prasannapada, by the Kashmiri abbot Hasumati and the Tibetan translator Patsap Nyima Drak.
Finally, at the temple of Rasa Trulnang (in Lhasa), the definitive version of the text was established by the Indian abbot Kanaka and the same translator Patsap Nyima Drak.
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