Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 13
Examination of Compounded Phenomena
A mirage looks like water. Walk towards it and the water is not there, yet the shimmer is real enough to photograph. It deceives not by being nothing, but by seeming to be more than it is. The Buddha said that all conditioned things (saṃskāra) are like this: they have a deceptive nature, and so they are false.
This chapter asks what that saying means. Does it mean that things exist but keep changing their nature? Or that everything is empty, and emptiness is the true nature behind them? Nāgārjuna rejects both readings. Change, examined, does not need a nature that changes, and emptiness is not a new thing to believe in. The chapter ends with one of the most quoted verses of Madhyamaka: emptiness is the way out of all views, and whoever turns emptiness into a view is beyond help. It picks up the conditioned things of Chapter 7.
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).
sarve ca moṣadharmāṇaḥ saṃskārās tena te mṛṣā ||
The Blessed One said: whatever has a deceptive nature is false. All conditioned things have a deceptive nature; therefore they are false.
etat tūktaṃ bhagavatā śūnyatāparidīpakam ||
If whatever has a deceptive nature is false, what is it that deceives? The Blessed One said this to bring emptiness to light.
nāsvabhāvaś ca bhāvo 'sti bhāvānāṃ śūnyatā yataḥ ||
Things lack own-nature, because they are seen to become otherwise. Yet there is no thing without own-nature, since emptiness belongs to things.
kasya syād anyathābhāvaḥ svabhāvo yadi vidyate ||
If there is no own-nature, what is it that becomes otherwise? If there is own-nature, how could it become otherwise?
yuvā na jīryate yasmād yasmāj jīrṇo na jīryate ||
Becoming otherwise makes no sense for the thing itself, nor for something else. For the young do not age, and the aged do not age either.
kṣīrād anyasya kasyacid dadhibhāvo bhaviṣyati ||
If the thing itself became otherwise, milk itself would be curd. And as for something other than milk, what could ever become curd?
na kiṃcid asty aśūnyaṃ ca kutaḥ śūnyaṃ bhaviṣyati ||
If there were anything that is not empty, there might be something called empty. But there is nothing that is not empty; how then could there be anything empty?
yeṣāṃ tu śūnyatādṛṣṭis tān asādhyān babhāṣire ||
The victorious ones taught emptiness as the way out of all views. But those for whom emptiness is a view, they called incurable.
What does 'deceptive' mean?
The chapter starts from a saying in the discourses (13.1): whatever has a deceptive nature (moṣadharma) is false, and all conditioned things have that nature. Verse 13.2 then raises a fair question. If everything deceptive is false, what is it that deceives? A deception seems to need something real behind it, as a trick needs a magician.
The same verse gives the answer: the Buddha said this to bring emptiness to light. Conditioned things deceive by appearing to stand on their own, when they arise only in dependence. The deception is not a hidden deceiver; it is the gap between how things appear and how they are found when looked for. Nothing behind the scenes is needed, just as a mirage needs no secret lake.
Change without a nature that changes
Verse 13.3 gives the opponent's next position, and it is subtle. Things lack own-nature, he agrees, because they are seen to change. But, he adds, there is no thing without own-nature at all, since emptiness belongs to things, and a property needs something to belong to. So for him, emptiness becomes a quality of things, and those things must really be there to have it. Commentators read the second line in slightly different ways, but this is its point: emptiness is being turned into a property, with a real bearer underneath.
Nāgārjuna answers with a dilemma (13.4). If there is no own-nature, what is it that changes? There is no fixed something to go from one state to another. And if there is an own-nature, how could it change? A nature that could become something else would not be its own nature. So change does not prove a substrate of any kind, not even a substrate called emptiness.
Verses 13.5–6 make this concrete. Does the young person age? While young, no: youth is not old age. Does the old person age? No: already old. Does milk become curd? If the milk itself became curd, milk and curd would be the same, and you could pour curd into your tea. If something other than milk became curd, why not water?
This is not a denial that milk turns sour. It is a denial that a milk-thing persists through the souring, carrying a nature from one state to the next. The books call this change without a changer.
Empty of what?
Verse 13.7 removes the last foothold. 'Empty' only makes sense in contrast with 'not empty'. If there were something not empty, something with a nature of its own, then other things could be called empty by comparison. But nothing is found that is not empty. So emptiness is not a special quality some things have and others lack, and it is not a stuff that all things are made of. It is the absence of own-nature, nothing more. Without anything non-empty, there is no empty thing standing in its place either.
Emptiness is not a view
That leads to the famous last verse (13.8). The Buddhas taught emptiness as the way out of all views (dṛṣṭi). But those who make emptiness itself into a view are incurable.
The traditional image, used by Candrakīrti, is a purgative medicine. A doctor gives it to clear a blockage. If it works, it clears the blockage and then leaves the body too. If the medicine stays in the body, it becomes a new illness, and there is no further medicine to remove it. Emptiness clears away views that grasp at own-nature: 'it is', 'it is not'. If it is then grasped as the final truth, the true nature of reality, the last remedy has itself become the disease.
This is why the books keep warning against a 'substrate of emptiness': a hidden openness, potential or awareness behind appearances, to which emptiness is quietly promoted. The view of emptiness is the most refined form of the habit the whole text is dismantling. Emptiness is itself empty.
What is left standing
Milk still turns to curd, and children still grow old. 'It has changed' is still true and useful. Things are still called empty, correctly, as a way of saying that nothing has own-nature. What goes is a fixed something that changes, and a fixed emptiness that is true of things the way colour is true of them.
The teaching of emptiness is still taught, studied and practised. It works exactly as a medicine works: by being used, not by being held. The test of having understood it is not having a new view, but being freed from the need to hold one.
In the books
The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.
- Interlude: Same Words, Different Worlds (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section 'Emptiness': whoever makes emptiness a view is incurable (13.8); emptiness does not lie behind the cup.
- Conclusion: The Freedom of a Substrateless World, the section 'What Has Not Been Claimed': the book's own conclusion, offered under the warning of 13.8.
- The Logic of Dependency (bonus article), the section 'A Different Path: Conditions and Openness': openness and non-holding turned into new things to hold, and 13.8 applied with full force. The section 'Change Without a Changer' takes up the theme of 13.4–6, though without citing the verses.
- The Disease of Relentless Negation & The Principle of Formation (The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness): what happens when negation itself is held on to.
Talks on YouTube:
- Curing the Disease of Relentless Negation - 1.
- The Paradox of the Phantom Vase: Mipham vs. Gelug on Emptiness & the Negandum.
Words to know
- Conditioned things (saṃskāra): everything that arises from causes and conditions.
- Deceptive nature (moṣadharma): appearing to be more than it is, as a mirage appears to be water.
- Becoming otherwise (anyathābhāva): change, the alteration of a thing.
- Emptiness (śūnyatā): the absence of own-nature in anything; not a stuff, not a ground.
- View (dṛṣṭi): a position held as true, especially about what things are in themselves.
- Incurable (asādhya): beyond remedy, because the remedy itself has been made a view.