Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 14
Examination of Connection
When you see a tree, three things seem to come together: you who see, the seeing, and the tree that is seen. They meet, and there is the experience. Desire seems to work the same way: someone who desires, the desiring, and the thing desired. Meeting, contact, combination (saṃsarga): our whole picture of experience is built on separate things coming into contact.
This chapter asks whether separate things can meet at all. Its answer goes to the root of the picture. Two things can meet only if they are different. But being different is itself something that depends on the other, so nothing is different from its own side, and nothing is found that meets. The chapter extends Chapter 3, on seeing, and the main book, The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World, uses its last verse to explain how things interact without being either one or two.
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).
sarvaśaś ca na saṃsargam anyonyena vrajanty uta ||
What is seen, seeing and the seer: these three do not come into contact with one another, whether two at a time or all together.
traidhena śeṣāḥ kleśāś ca śeṣāṇy āyatanāni ca ||
In the same way see desire, the desirous and the desired; and in the same threefold way the other afflictions and the other sense fields.
draṣṭavyaprabhṛtīnāṃ yan na saṃsargaṃ vrajanty ataḥ ||
Contact is of one thing with another. But what is seen and the rest have no otherness; so they do not come into contact.
kasyacit kenacit sārdhaṃ nānyatvam upapadyate ||
And not only do what is seen and the rest lack otherness. No otherness of anything from anything makes sense.
yat pratītya ca yat tasmāt tad anyan nopapadyate ||
A thing is other in dependence on another; it is not other without the other. Whatever depends on something cannot be other than that thing.
tad anyad anyad anyasmād ṛte nāsti ca nāsty ataḥ ||
Suppose one thing were other than another even apart from that other. But nothing is other than another apart from that other; and so there is no such other.
avidyamāne cānyatve nāsty anyad vā tad eva vā ||
Otherness is not found in what is other, nor in what is not other. And where there is no otherness, there is neither something other nor the very same.
saṃsṛjyamānaṃ saṃsṛṣṭaṃ saṃsraṣṭā ca na vidyate ||
A thing does not come into contact with itself, and different things do not come into contact either. Coming into contact, having come into contact, and the one who brings them into contact are not found.
Seer, seeing and seen
The chapter opens with the three parts of a moment of seeing (14.1): the seen, the seeing and the seer. The Abhidharma explained perception as their contact (sparśa): when eye, object and consciousness meet, there is contact, and from contact, feeling. Nāgārjuna says the three do not come into contact, either in pairs or all together.
Why not? Chapter 3 has already shown that none of the three stands on its own. An eye that sees nothing is not a seeing eye; an object no one sees is not 'the seen'; a seer apart from seeing is not found. Each is identified only with the others. So they are not three separate things lying in wait to bump into each other. Verse 14.2 extends this to every triad of the same shape: desire, the one who desires and the desired; and all the other afflictions and senses.
Contact needs difference
The next step is general (14.3). Contact is always of one thing with another. Your hand touches the table only if hand and table are two. A thing cannot touch itself in the way it touches something else. So contact requires otherness, difference (anyatva).
But do the seen, the seeing and the seer have otherness, each from the others? No. As we saw, each is what it is only in relation to the others. And, Nāgārjuna adds (14.4), this is not special to perception. Nothing is other than anything from its own side.
Difference depends on the other
This is the surprising centre of the chapter (14.5–7). We think of difference as a fact sitting in things: the cup is different from the plate, and would be different even if no one compared them. Nāgārjuna asks where the difference is.
A cup is 'other' only in relation to the plate (14.5). Take the plate away entirely, so that nothing else exists, and in what sense is the cup still 'other'? Other than what? Being other is not a property the cup carries by itself, like weight. It is a relation, and it needs the second thing. But then the cup's otherness depends on the plate. And whatever depends on something cannot be wholly other than it: the two are already tied together by the very difference that was meant to separate them.
Verse 14.6 states it as a test. If the cup were other than the plate from its own side, it would still be other with no plate at all. It is not; so otherness from its own side does not exist. And verse 14.7 closes the remaining doors. Otherness is not found in what is already other (it would add nothing), nor in what is not other (it would contradict it). Without otherness, there is neither 'something other' nor 'the very same', for 'the same' too is only said in contrast with 'other'.
Neither one nor two can meet
The last verse puts it together (14.8). A thing cannot come into contact with itself: one thing is not a meeting. Different things cannot come into contact either: if they were different from their own side, each complete and sealed off, there would be a gap that nothing could cross. So the process of meeting, the result of having met, and the agent who brings things together are not found.
The main book draws the positive lesson. Interaction is possible precisely because neither side has an edge of its own. Nothing crosses a gap, because no gap is found; and the two are not fused, because no single thing is found either. The cold of an ice cube in the hand is not a property passed from ice to hand across a boundary; it is designated with both, in their meeting.
What is left standing
You still see the tree. Hands still shake, and a friend's words still reach you. Doctors can still describe how light reaches the retina. 'Different' and 'same' still work: this is my cup, not yours. What goes is the picture of experience as sealed units bumping into each other, each with its own fixed outline, needing some mysterious bridge to connect them.
That picture is behind many puzzles: how mind touches matter, how a subject reaches an object, how the self meets the world. The chapter does not answer these puzzles on their own terms. It removes the separateness that made them seem unavoidable.
In the books
The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.
- Chapter 4, Mutual Dependency and the Non-Hierarchy of Relation, the section 'How Things Meet: Neither One Nor Two': verse 14.8, and 14.5–7 on difference itself being dependent; interaction without a gap or a fusion.
- Chapter 5, The Non-Dimensional Two Truths: the cold of the ice, found neither in the ice nor in the hand nor between them.
- Chapter 10, Perceptual Co-Arising: perception as a relational event, perceiver and perceived identified together rather than two isolated things passing a signal.
- Chapter 12, Dissolution of Internal vs. External Worlds: no sealed inner subject meeting an outer world.
Talks on YouTube:
Words to know
- Contact, combination (saṃsarga): two things coming together; also sparśa, the contact of sense, object and consciousness.
- Otherness, difference (anyatva): being other than something. Here shown to depend on the other.
- Seer, seeing, seen (draṣṭṛ, darśana, draṣṭavya): the three parts of a moment of seeing.
- Afflictions (kleśa): desire, anger, confusion and the like.
- Sense fields (āyatana): the senses and their objects.