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Notes
Translators’ Preface
1. See Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Connected Discourses of the Budda: A New Translation of the “Samyutta Nikaya,” 709.
2. The Madhyamakashastrastuti ascribed to Chandrakirti refers to eight texts by Nagarjuna: the six mentioned followed by the Sutrasamuccaya and the Samstuti. Tibetan tradition occasionally lists the now-lost Vyavaharasiddhi instead of the Ratnavali. Since the Ratnavali contains important sections dealing more homiletically with the bodhisattva path, it is sometimes placed in the Parikatha-corpus.
3. See T. R. V. Murti, Central Philosophy, 166: “The Madhyamaka Karikas and other Madhyamika treatises open with a critique of causality. This is the central problem of Indian philosophy. The concept of causality a system advocates exhibits the logic of the entire system.”
4. This interpretation of the structure of the karikas is given by Chandrakirti in his Prasannapada. It should be noted that the titles of the chapters, and even the division of the text into chapters in the first place, may also be Chandrakirti’s invention: a pedagogical device to facilitate the understanding of what would otherwise be a single uninterrupted sequence of stanzas.
The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way
1. According to the Buddhist Abhidharma, the six senses include the five physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch (the objects of which are forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and the tangible respectively). The sixth sense is the “mind-sense,” which has mental phenomena as its object.
2. The reference in this line is to four of the twelve links of dependent arising: consciousness, contact, feeling, and craving.
3. That is, the following four links of dependent arising: grasping, becoming, birth, and age-and-death.
4. Form, feeling, perception, conditioning factors, and consciousness are the five psychophysical aggregates, or skandhas, into which the person may be analyzed without residue. When these aggregates come together, the illusion of self is produced. See Jigme Lingpa, Treasury of Precious Qualities, bk. 1, 377–85.
5. That is, the argument runs: if, before the agent of desire, there exists, without an agent of desire, desire, etc.
6. According to the commentarial tradition, this refers to the five sense faculties (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) together with their respective objects (forms, sounds, and so on) and the aggregate of form.
7. This refers to the remaining aggregates: feeling, perception, conditioning factors (such as contact and attention), and consciousness.
8. It is helpful to bear in mind that, in this context, fuel always means burning fuel.
9. In this context, the word “suffering” is understood to mean not pain in a general sense but the aggregates, which are the cause and seat of suffering.
10. “Intrinsic being” (rang bzhin) is that by which an object is regarded as having an independent, circumscribed, true existence. Nagarjuna denies that phenomena exist in this way because they arise dependently on causes and conditions. The things that appear to us (as truly existent, independent, and circumscribed) do not exist as they appear; they are like illusions.
11. An example of this fivefold analysis can be found in the “Examination of Fire and Fuel” (chapter 10, stanza 1): the burning fuel is not the fire; the fire is not separate from the fuel; the fire does not possess the fuel; the fuel is not in the fire; the fire is not in the fuel.
12. In his Abhidharmakosha, Vasubandhu speaks of three kinds of imperceptible forms (they are called “actions” in the present context): vows, nonvows, and others. “Vows” means the binding of oneself to virtuous actions, “nonvows” means a commitment to evil actions, while “others” refers to positive or negative actions unaccompanied by conscious intention. See Jigme Lingpa, Treasury of Precious Qualities, bk. 1, 377.
13. This means that conservation of karmic acts is not eliminated on the path of seeing, but only on the path of meditation.
14. That is, the four results (stream-enterer, once-returner, nonreturner, and arhat) of the Shravaka path. See Jigme Lingpa, Treasury of Precious Qualities, bk.1, 230–31.
15. “One’s own body” refers here to the gathering of the five aggregates, which produces the impression of a self or “I.” This is technically known as the “view of the transitory composite.”
16. That is, the rest of the twelve links of dependent origination (action is the second).
17. Aryas, or
Noble Beings, are those in the Hinayana who have attained the levels of stream-enterer and above, and those in the Mahayana who have attained the path of seeing and above.
18. That is, the perfect understanding of suffering, the forsaking of its causes, the meditations on the path, and the attainment of cessation.
19. The eight kinds of person are the four candidates for the four results of the Shravaka path (see note 14) and the four who “abide by these results.” Jigme Lingpa, Treasury of Precious Qualities, bk. 1, 230.
20. That is, positive acts, negative acts, and “unwavering” acts, such as profound states of absorption devoid of bodhichitta, whereby rebirth in the form or formless realms is produced.
21. That is, grasping at, or appropriation of, objects of desire, points of view, moral discipline, and the doctrine of self.
Bibliography
Source Texts
Khenpo Shenga (gZhan phan chos kyi snang ba). dBu ma rtsa ba’i tshig le’ur byas pa shes rab ces bya ba’i mchan ’grel. Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center 805: 1–145.
Mipham Rinpoche (’Jam mgon ’ju mi pham rgya mtsho). The Ornament for the Thought of Lord Nagarjuna (dBu ma rtsa ba’i mchan ’grel gnas lugs rab gsal klu dbang dgongs rgyan). Paro, Bhutan: Lama Ngodrup and Sherab Drimey, 1984.
Nagarjuna (Klu grub). Prajna nama mulamadhyamakakarika, dBu ma rtsa ba’i tshig le’ur byas pa shes rab ces bya ba. Varanasi: Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Press, 1974.
Translations and Suggested Reading
Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the “Samyutta Nikāya.” Translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2000.
Chandrakirti. Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the “Prasannapada.” Translated from the Sanskrit by M. Sprung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Della Santina, Peter. Madhyamaka Schools in India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995.
Jigme Lingpa. Treasury of Precious Qualities. Bk. 1, Sutra Teachings. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2010.
Murti, T. R. V. The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968.
Nagarjuna. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Translated from the Tibetan by J. L. Garfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Nagarjuna. Fundamentos de la vía media. Translated from the Sanskrit by Juan Arnau Navarro. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 2004.
Nagarjuna. Mulamadhyamakakarika: The Philosophy of the Middle Way. Translated from the Sanskrit by David J. Kalupahana. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991.
Nagarjuna. Stances du milieu par excellence. Translated from the Sanskrit by G. Bugault. Paris: Gallimard, 2002.
Nagarjuna. Traité du milieu. Translated from the Tibetan by G. Driessens. Paris: Seuil, 1995.
Nagarjuna. Versos sobre los fundamentos del camino medio. Translated from the Sanskrit by A. Velez de Cea. Barcelona: Kairos, 2002.
Ruegg, David Seyfort. The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981.
Tsultrim Gyamtso, Khenpo. The Sun of Wisdom. Translated by A. Goldfield. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003.
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