Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 11
Examination of the Initial and Final Limits
Where did it all begin? Children ask it about the universe, and adults ask it about their own lives: the first mistake, the first habit, the first moment of being me. The question feels as if it must have an answer. If there is a story, it must have a first page.
The Buddha refused to name a first beginning of the round of birth and death (saṃsāra). This chapter shows that the refusal is not modesty about missing facts. If there is no first edge, the ideas of 'before' and 'after' stop working the way we picture them, and even birth and death cannot be lined up as two things in a row. It continues the work of Chapter 7 on arising, abiding and ceasing, and it prepares Chapter 19 on time.
The verses
The translation is new, made from the Sanskrit for this site. The Sanskrit is given above each verse; it follows the GRETIL e-text (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
saṃsāro 'navarāgro hi nāsyādir nāpi paścimam ||
The great sage said that no first limit is known. For the round of birth and death is without beginning or end; it has no start and no finish.
tasmān nātropapadyante pūrvāparasahakramāḥ ||
Where there is no beginning and no end, how could there be a middle? So here 'before', 'after' and 'at the same time' do not hold.
nirjarā maraṇā jātir bhavej jāyeta cāmṛtaḥ ||
If birth came first and ageing-and-death came after, there would be birth without ageing and death, and someone who never dies would be born.
ahetukam ajātasya syāj jarāmaraṇaṃ katham ||
If birth came after and ageing-and-death came first, how could there be ageing and death without a cause, for someone not yet born?
mriyeta jāyamānaś ca syāc cāhetukatobhayoḥ ||
Ageing-and-death and birth cannot be at the same time either. Then what is being born would be dying, and neither would have a cause.
prapañcayanti tāṃ jātiṃ taj jarāmaraṇaṃ ca kim ||
Where 'before', 'after' and 'at the same time' do not apply, why do people elaborate such a birth, and such an ageing and death?
vedanā vedakaś caiva santy arthā ye ca ke cana ||
Effect and cause, what is marked and its mark, feeling and the one who feels: whatever things there are, the same holds.
sarveṣām api bhāvānāṃ pūrvā koṭī na vidyate ||
It is not only the round of birth and death that has no first limit. No first limit is found for anything at all.
No first page
The chapter opens with a saying of the Buddha (11.1): no first limit of the round of birth and death is known. The early discourses repeat it often. Trace any life back through its causes, and each cause has causes before it. No point is reached where the chain starts from nothing.
Nāgārjuna draws out what this means (11.2). We usually picture a stretch of time as a line with two ends and a middle. But a middle is defined by its ends: it is the part between the start and the finish. Take away both ends and there is no middle to point to. So the familiar frame of 'before', 'after' and 'at the same time' cannot be laid over the round of birth and death as if it were a ruler with marks on it.
Birth and death cannot be lined up
To test the point, Nāgārjuna takes the most natural sequence there is: birth, then ageing and death (11.3–5). Surely birth comes first? Three orders are possible, and he checks each.
Birth first, death after (11.3). Then for a while there would be a birth that is not yet tied to ageing and death. Something would be born that is free of death. But birth is precisely the start of what ages and dies. A birth with no ageing and death built into it is not the birth of anything mortal.
Death first, birth after (11.4). Then ageing and death would happen to someone not yet born, with no cause. That is plainly absurd.
Both at once (11.5). Then what is being born would at that moment be dying. And since each would be there at the same time as the other, neither could be the cause of the other: causes are supposed to come before what they cause.
The reason all three fail is the same. Each order treats birth and death as two separate events, each complete in itself, which then have to be arranged on the time line. But birth is identified as the beginning of what will age and die, and death as the end of what was born. Each is defined by the other. They are not two beads on a string; they are two ends of one designation, a life.
Verse 11.6 draws the conclusion. If before, after and at the same time do not apply, why elaborate (prapañca) a birth here and an ageing and death there, as if they were things we could take hold of and arrange? The word is the same as in the homage of Chapter 1: elaboration, the mind spinning out positions around what it takes to be there.
Every pair, everywhere
The last two verses widen the result (11.7–8). It is not only birth and death. Cause and effect, a thing and the mark by which it is known, a feeling and the one who feels it: every such pair has the same structure. A cause is a cause only of an effect, and an effect only of a cause. A mark is a mark only of what it marks. Ask which came first and you meet the same three dead ends.
So, finally, no first limit is found for anything (11.8). This is a strong claim and it is easy to mishear. It does not say that the universe is infinitely old, as a fact of cosmology. It says that no beginning can be found from the side of the things themselves: no first moment that stands on its own, uncaused, before which there was nothing. The question 'what was first?' assumes things with their own place on a time line, and that assumption is what fails.
What is left standing
Birthdays are still celebrated and deaths are still mourned. A doctor can still say when a child was born and when an old man died, and be right. 'First' and 'last' work perfectly well within any framework we choose: the first page of a book, the first day of term. What the chapter removes is a first page of reality itself, standing on its own and needing nothing before it.
Practically, this frees the search for an origin of suffering from a false form. The Buddha did not teach that the round of birth and death ends by finding where it began. It ends by seeing how it is kept going now, by conditions that can change. Looking for a first cause is replaced by looking at present ones.
In the books
The two books do not cite this chapter by number, but take up its themes:
- Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes: arising and ceasing as places a thing would have to be, and why no edge is found when looked for.
- Interlude: Same Words, Different Worlds (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section 'Conditions and Causes': cause and effect designated in relation to each other.
- Chapter 8, States of Awareness, Deep Sleep, and Death and Chapter 9, The Reconceptualization of Continuity: birth, death and continuity without a traveller that starts and stops.
- Beyond the Extremes: Why Life and Death Were Never the Right Words (The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness).
Words to know
- The round of birth and death (saṃsāra): the ongoing cycle of lives driven by craving and ignorance.
- Without beginning or end (anavarāgra): having no first or last limit that can be found.
- First limit (pūrvā koṭi): a starting edge, with nothing before it.
- Before, after, at the same time (pūrva, apara, saha): the three ways two self-standing events could be ordered.
- Ageing-and-death (jarāmaraṇa): the last of the twelve links (see Chapter 26).
- Elaboration (prapañca): spinning out positions around what is taken to be there.