Madhyamika

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Madhyamaka is a Buddhist Mahayana tradition, popularized by Nāgārjuna and Aśvaghoṣa. The school of thought and its subsidiaries are called "Madhyamaka"; those who follow it are called "Mādhyamikas."

According to the Mādhyamikas, all phenomena are empty of "self nature" or "essence" (Sanskrit: Svabhāva), that they have no intrinsic, independent reality apart from the causes and conditions from which they arise.

Madhyamaka is the rejection of two extreme philosophies, and therefore represents the "middle way" between eternalism (the view that something is eternal and unchanging) and nihilism (the assertion that all things are intrinsically already destroyed or rendered nonexistent. This is nihilism in the sense of Indian philosophy, and may differ somewhat from Western philosophical nihilism).

According to Tibetan sources, Indian Madhyamaka schools were eventually divided into

History

The Prasangika school has dominated Buddhism in Tibet since the Second Dissemination, and most surviving works of the principal exponents exist only in Tibetian translation.

Buddhapalita, a student of Shantarakshita, was one of the first Madhyamaka masters to fully adopt syllogistic methods in his teachings, although of a particularly limited form. While Candrakirti is generally credited with the founding of the Prasangika school, it was in fact Buddhapalita who first introduced the method of using logical consequence to refute the arguments of an opponent. It is this use of prasanga, also described as a proof reductio ad absurdum, that characterizes the Prasangika school of Madhyamaka Buddhism.

Svatantrika Debate

The Prasangika point of view originally developed in opposition to the Svatantrika school, founded by Bhavaviveka with his commentary and criticism of Buddhapalita's earlier work. It was Candrakirti's response to this criticism that became the foundation for Prasangika doctrine.

The Prasangika-Svatantrika debate included both a technical component and a set of metaphysical implications. On one level, the disagreement centered around the role of prasanga in formal debate. While the Prasangika held it to be the only valid method of demonstrating the Two Truths to the unenlightened, the Svatantrika felt that the Buddhist logician must not only use prasanga to show how an opponent's position leads to false conclusions, but that the Buddhist must also put forward a concrete thesis of his own.

The Prasangika rejection of the Svatantrika position was based on the belief that any Buddhist making positive assertions about the conventional world was committed to the existence of an illusion. The Svatantrika countered by arguing that there were different levels of existence, and that a conventional thing could self-exist, exist from its own side, and have inherent existence, but that it still would not exist absolutely, ultimately, or really.

• The Svātantrika Madhyamaka, who differed from the Prāsaṅgika in that they believed conventional phenomena could exist for themselves without existing ultimately. Thus they felt that positive assertions in logical debate served a useful purpose, and did not restrict themselves to using only prasaṅga methods.
• The Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka, whose sole avowed technique is to show by prasaṅga (or Reductio Ad Absurdum) that any positive assertion (such as "asti" or "nāsti", "it is", or "it is not") made about, or view proclaimed of, phenomena must be regarded as merely conventional (saṃvṛti or lokavyavahāra). Therefore there is no position that constitutes the ultimate truth (paramārtha), including the views and statements made by the Prāsaṅgikas themselves, which are held to be solely for the purpose of defeating all views. The Prāsaṅgikas also identify this to be the message of the Buddha who, as Nāgārjuna put it, taught the Dharma for the purpose of refuting all views.
• The Yogācāra Madhyamaka, which asserts that all phenomena are nothing but the 'play of mind', and that mind, thus, is the basis of everything.

See also

• Schools of Buddhism
  • Yogacara
  • Prasangika
  • Svatantrika
• Nagarjuna
  • Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
• Consciousness-only
• Two Truths Doctrine

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