Annihilation Is an Inherent View

Annihilation sounds like letting go of things. It holds on to the same thing eternalism holds on to: something can be cut off only if it was there from its own side first.

Annihilation sounds like the opposite of holding on to things. It is not. It holds on to the same thing eternalism holds on to, and only tells a different story about what happens to it.

The reason in one line: something can be annihilated only if it was there from its own side first.

How it works

To say "it is gone, cut off, now nothing", you first need an "it": a thing that stood on its own, and is now wiped out.

So annihilation keeps the same inherent thing that eternalism keeps. Eternalism says the thing stays. Annihilation says it is destroyed. Both start from a thing with a being of its own. They differ only in what they say happens to it.

Nāgārjuna puts the two side by side:

'It is' is the grasping of permanence. 'It is not' is the view of annihilation. So the wise should not take their stand on existence or on non-existence. (MMK 15.10)

And he shows where annihilation comes from:

'What exists by its own nature does not cease to exist': that is permanence. 'It existed before and does not exist now': that brings annihilation. (MMK 15.11)

The word that gives it away is "before". The thing is pictured as fully there, with its own nature, and then gone. A thing with its own nature falls into a nothing that is just as solid.

"It is not" leans on "it is"

Non-existence is not a second, independent fact. It is borrowed from existence:

If an existing thing is not established, a non-existing thing is not established either. For people call the alteration of an existing thing its non-existence. (MMK 15.5)

"Gone" only means something as the going of something. Take away the self-standing thing, and the self-standing nothing has nothing to be the absence of. This is why the two extremes cannot be fought one at a time. Refute eternalism while keeping the thing, and you land in annihilation. Nāgārjuna says so directly:

Whoever accepts that things really exist falls into the view of permanence or of annihilation, for such a thing would have to be either permanent or impermanent. (MMK 21.14)

The fork opens only for a thing that exists from its own side. It must either last for ever or be cut off. There is no third way for it.

Seen with dependency

A candle flame goes out when the wick, the wax and the air no longer come together. No flame that stood on its own is destroyed. There never was a flame apart from the burning.

So the ending is not the loss of something that stood by itself. It is conditions parting, just as the arising was conditions coming together. Nothing self-standing comes, so nothing self-standing goes.

That is why the homage reads the two together:

Without ceasing, without arising, without annihilation, without permanence, not one thing and not many, without coming and without going: so the fully awakened one taught dependent arising… (MMK, Homage)

Remove inherent existence, and both extremes fall at once. Not because a middle object is found between them, but because the object they were both about is never found.

None of this denies that the flame goes out. "The flame went out" is true, said the way the world says it, and it is validly functioning: you can no longer read by it. What is denied is a flame with its own nature, falling into a nothing with its own nature.

Where it hides

Annihilation rarely announces itself. It hides in three places.

At death. The fear "I will be wiped out" assumes an I that was there from its own side. The search never finds that I, in the body, in the mind, or apart from them. So nothing of that kind can be wiped out. The flow of conditions goes on, as one flame lights another, neither carried nor cut.

In emptiness itself. "Everything is empty, so nothing exists" reads emptiness as the destruction of things that were there from their own side. That is annihilation dressed as insight. Emptiness never removes anything that was there. It shows that nothing was ever there in that way. Nāgārjuna warns about exactly this:

Emptiness wrongly seen ruins the slow-witted, like a snake grasped the wrong way or a spell cast the wrong way. (MMK 24.11)

The faults charged against emptiness are faults of the nothingness it was mistaken for.

In practice. "After awakening, causes and ethics no longer apply" makes the same mistake. It treats insight as the cutting off of conditions that once held. But conditions still work: an unkind word still hurts, care still heals. Only the inherent version of them was never there. Seeing that does not cancel what works. It is what lets it work.

"No phenomenon at all" is the same view

There is one more place annihilation hides, and it is the subtlest: an absolute in which there is no phenomenon at all. A pure void, a total cessation, a state beyond every appearance, pictured as what is left when all phenomena have been seen through.

In the Middle Way, everything is a phenomenon. Nāgārjuna says it in so many words:

Since there is no phenomenon that has not arisen in dependence, there is no phenomenon that is not empty. (MMK 24.19)

Nothing is left over outside dependent arising. Not even emptiness: it is itself "a dependent designation" (MMK 24.18). Gelug, the most orthodox reading of Nāgārjuna in Tibet, makes this a definition: what exists, what is a phenomenon (chos) and what can be known are the same thing. Emptiness and nirvāṇa are counted as phenomena too, phenomena that are not made of parts. Vivid and Nowhere says the same: a phenomenon is whatever can be known, "the conditioned and the unconditioned, and the knowing itself. Nothing knows from outside the list."

So "no phenomenon at all" has nowhere to stand. It is an inherent view in either of two ways.

As an absence. For the end of all phenomena to be a true ending, the phenomena must have been there from their own side first, so that their absence is a solid absence. That is annihilation exactly: "it is not" leaning on "it is" (MMK 15.5).

As a something. Or the absence is made into a thing of its own: a void with its own nature, standing apart, beneath or beyond appearances. That is the inherent view turned inside out. It is a non-thing that stands by itself.

Nāgārjuna closes both doors in the chapter on nirvāṇa itself:

If nirvāṇa is not an existing thing, will it then be an absence? Where there is no existing thing, no absence is found either. (MMK 25.7)

And he leaves no gap for a realm of "no phenomenon" to hide in:

The limit of nirvāṇa and the limit of the round of saṃsāra: between these two, not even the finest gap is found. (MMK 25.20)

Nirvāṇa is not a nothing waiting beyond appearances. It is the emptiness of the very appearances it seemed to stand apart from.

Felt directly. Think of deep sleep. It seems to be the plainest case of "no phenomenon at all": a blank, between falling asleep and waking. But where is that blank found? Not during the night: nothing was there to meet it. It is known only in the morning, when the mind says "I was out", and sets a blank between two lines of waking. The blank is designated afterwards, from the side of what appears. It was never found as a nothing standing on its own. The body breathed, the heart beat, the conditions ran all night (Neither Carried Nor Cut).

Under anaesthesia. A general anaesthetic makes it plainer still. You count backwards from ten, reach seven, and then a nurse is saying your name in another room. Three hours have passed on the clock. In experience, none have: there was no darkness to sit through, no waiting. The before and the after simply touch (Substrateless World, Chapter 8).

So is there no phenomenon, and no clarity, under anaesthesia? For you, there is no seeing, hearing, feeling or thinking. Their conditions are not met, so they do not arise. That is plain, and nothing in the Middle Way denies it. But two stories rush in, and both are the inherent view.

• Carried. "A pure awareness stays lit through it, unseen." This is clarity abstracted and made into a thing that goes on by itself: Sāti's one consciousness that runs on, with no conditions. No such awareness is found.
• Cut. "The mind switched off into an absolute void." This void is never met. It is a blank set down afterwards, from the waking side, and it leans on the "something" it negates.

What does happen is neither. The conditions for the six streams are not met, so they do not arise. Other conditions keep running: the breathing, the heartbeat, the monitor, the surgeons, the clock. These are phenomena too, known by others at the time and by you afterwards. "I was unconscious for three hours" is true, said the way the world says it, and fully valid. What is denied is an absolute nothing with a nature of its own.

"Clarity is never absent" is easy to mishear here. It does not mean an awareness that is always on, shining in the dark when nothing appears. It means that wherever there is an appearing, it is clear: clarity is the appearing's own clearness, not a second thing that could stay when the appearing is gone, or go while the appearing stays. So under anaesthesia nothing clear is lost, because no clarity was standing there by itself to lose.

Waking shows the same thing from the other side. For a moment there is light through the curtain, the weight of the blanket, a sound from the street, with no one yet to whom they are happening. Then the familiar self comes back in a rush. It was not waiting somewhere through the hours. It is put together again.

The one guard. "Everything is a phenomenon" does not make phenomena the bottom layer, as if appearances now stood by themselves. It means that nothing stands outside dependent designation: not a thing, not a void, not an Absolute. Clarity is never absent; the error is abstracting it, whether into a Self that witnesses or into a nothing that remains.

Two places this meets pushback. States such as deep sleep, the cessation attainment and nirvāṇa without remainder seem to have no appearance at all. The Middle Way answers that they too are designated, not a nothing found from its own side. Buddhist schools have argued over how mind starts again after the cessation attainment: seeds kept in the body (Sautrāntika), a storehouse consciousness that never stops (Yogācāra), a life-continuum mind running through dreamless sleep (Theravāda's bhavaṅga), a very subtle mind (the Tibetan tantras). Madhyamaka needs no storehouse: what comes next depends on what came before, without a carrier to bridge the gap. Where a subtle mind is taught, it is read as conditioned and designated, never as a ground. And Theravāda calls nibbāna the unconditioned dhamma. It is still a dhamma, so even there it is not "no phenomenon".

Try it

Think of something that has ended: a sound, a day, a friendship. Notice the picture that comes with "it is gone": a thing that was fully there, and is now a blank where it stood.

Now look for that thing at the time it was there. Was the sound found apart from the striking, the air and the hearing? Was the day found apart from the light, the turning and the counting?

If it was never found standing by itself, what is it that has been annihilated? The ending is still an ending. It is just not the destruction of anything that stood on its own.

In brief

Annihilation is the inherent view looking backwards. It needs something to have been there from its own side, in order to lose it.

Read more

• Nāgārjuna's Middle Way, Chapter 15 ("The two extremes", 15.10–11) and Chapter 21 ("Permanence and annihilation", 21.14–17).
• Nāgārjuna's Middle Way, Chapter 24: emptiness wrongly seen (24.11–13).
• Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section "Neither Permanent Nor Annihilated".
• Chapter 9, The Reconceptualization of Continuity, "Freedom from Permanence and Annihilation".
• Neither Carried Nor Cut: no carrier, and nothing cut off; the six streams, and death.
• One Flame Lights Another: rebirth without a self that travels.
• Nāgārjuna's Middle Way, Chapter 25: nirvāṇa neither an existing thing nor an absence (25.7), and no gap between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra (25.19–20).
• Vivid and Nowhere and What Is a Phenomenon?: a phenomenon is whatever can be known.

Words to know

• Annihilation (uccheda): the view that something with its own nature is cut off and becomes nothing.
• Permanence (śāśvata): the view that something with its own nature lasts for ever.
• Phenomenon (dharma, chos): whatever can be known. In the Middle Way, everything is a phenomenon, emptiness and nirvāṇa included; nothing is found outside dependent designation.
• Own nature (svabhāva): being what it is from its own side, apart from conditions and designation. Never found.