Examination of Essence

What is a thing really, underneath? We feel that each thing has a core that makes it what it is: gold is gold because of its gold-nature, I am I because of something essentially me. Change the surface, and the core stays. This core is what the Abhidharma called svabhāva: own-nature, essence, a nature a thing has from its own side.

Every chapter so far has been testing svabhāva in one case or another: in conditions, motion, the senses, fire and fuel. This chapter examines it directly. It defines what own-nature would have to be, shows that nothing arising from causes could have it, and then follows the consequences all the way to existence and non-existence themselves. It is the chapter where Madhyamaka states its central claim most plainly, and the owner's books rely on it throughout. It also explains why the Middle Way is neither 'things exist' nor 'things do not exist'.

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).

What own-nature would have to be

Nāgārjuna begins by defining his target, and the definition is the key to the whole of Madhyamaka (15.1–2). Own-nature (svabhāva) is the nature a thing has in itself. If it is really its own, two things follow.

It is not made (akṛtrima). A nature that came about through causes and conditions would be produced, borrowed from those causes. It would be like the heat of water on a stove: real, but lent by the flame. Own-nature would have to be like the heat of the fire itself. The example is Candrakīrti's, and he adds at once that even the fire's heat arises from causes and conditions, so in the end it fails the test too.

It does not depend on anything else (nirapekṣa paratra). A nature that depended on other things, on contrasts, on parts, on someone picking it out, would not be the thing's own. It would come and go with what it depends on.

Now compare this with anything we meet. A tree came from a seed, soil and rain: made. It is a tree in relation to its roots, its leaves and the forest around it: dependent. The same holds for every thing that has been examined in the earlier chapters. So the conclusion is almost immediate. Whatever arises from causes and conditions cannot have own-nature. And nothing that can be found or posited fails to arise from causes and conditions.

This is why the books call the conclusion a logical necessity. The point is not that we have looked everywhere and found no essences. It is that anything we could find would already be dependent: to be found at all, it must be picked out by contrast and designation, and so it fails the definition before the search begins.

Without own-nature, the rest falls

Verses 15.3–5 follow a chain. Each idea in it is defined by the one before, so when the first goes, all go.

Other-nature (15.3). Someone might say: a thing may lack its own nature, but it has the nature of something else, a borrowed nature. But 'other-nature' is just the own-nature of that other thing. If nothing has own-nature, there is nothing for a thing to borrow from.

Existence (15.4). An existing thing (bhāva), in the strong sense, is something that has a nature, its own or borrowed. Without own-nature or other-nature, there is no 'existing thing' in that sense left.

Non-existence (15.5). And non-existence is not a separate reality. People call it the alteration of an existing thing: the vase that was and is now broken, the fire that burned and has gone out. Non-existence is defined as the absence of an existence. If no existing thing in the strong sense is established, its absence is not established either.

Verse 15.6 draws the conclusion. Whoever sees things in terms of own-nature and other-nature, existence and non-existence, has not seen the truth of the Buddha's teaching. This does not mean the right answer is somewhere between existence and non-existence, like a halfway house. It means the whole frame that makes 'exists' and 'does not exist' the only choices has been taken away.

The teaching to Kātyāyana

Verse 15.7 is the only place in the whole work where Nāgārjuna names a discourse. In the Kaccānagotta Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 12.15), Kātyāyana asks the Buddha what right view is. The Buddha answers that the world mostly leans on two ideas, 'it is' and 'it is not'. But for one who sees with right wisdom the arising of the world, the idea 'it is not' does not occur; and for one who sees the ceasing of the world, the idea 'it is' does not occur. Avoiding both extremes, the Buddha teaches by the middle: dependent arising.

Nāgārjuna's point is that he is not inventing anything. The rejection of both 'it is' and 'it is not' comes from the Buddha himself. Madhyamaka is a careful reading of that one teaching.

Why a nature could never change

Verses 15.8–9 show what would follow if things did have own-nature. Suppose something existed by its nature (prakṛti). Then it could never come to not exist. A nature that could turn into something else would not be a nature. Water that was essentially hot could never cool; a self that was essentially me could never end, or change, or learn.

Verse 15.9 gives the dilemma also met in Chapter 13. If there is no nature, what is it that changes? If there is a nature, how can it change? So own-nature, far from explaining a living world, would freeze it. The books return to this often: a world of essences could not move. Only because things lack own-nature can seeds grow, minds learn and suffering end.

The two extremes

The chapter ends by naming the two great errors (15.10–11). To say 'it is', in the strong sense, is to grasp at permanence (śāśvata). To say 'it is not', in the strong sense, is the view of annihilation (uccheda). The wise take their stand on neither.

Verse 15.11 shows how each extreme comes from own-nature. If something exists by its own nature, it can never stop existing: that is permanence. If someone then admits that it existed and now does not, they have a real thing falling into real nothing: that is annihilation. Both extremes share the same root. Both start from a thing with a nature of its own, and differ only in what they say happens to it.

This is the pattern the books call a refused presupposition. 'Does the self last for ever, or is it destroyed at death?' sounds as if one answer must be right. But both answers assume a self with a nature of its own, something there to last or be destroyed. When no such self is found, neither answer is true, and nothing has been left unexplained. Logic has not been suspended; the question had nothing to be about.

What is left standing

Everything that works still works. Gold is still gold for the jeweller, and you are still you for your friends and your bank. Things still come into being and pass away, as conventions that track what reliably happens. 'This exists' and 'that no longer exists' are still true, said within a framework, the way the world uses them. What the chapter denies is existence and non-existence by own-nature: a core that would make a thing what it is regardless of everything else, and a real nothing it could fall into.

The result is not a thinner world but a freer one. A world of essences would be fixed: no growth, no healing, no path. Because nothing has own-nature, everything can change. That is the sense in which emptiness and dependent arising are one fact, and why the Middle Way is not a midpoint but a release from both extremes.

In the books

The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.

• Chapter 1, The Substantialist Misconception, the section 'A Short History of Substance': svabhāva as unmade and independent (15.1–2), set beside Aristotle's and Descartes' substance.
• Interlude: Same Words, Different Worlds (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section 'Existence and Non-Existence': the teaching to Kaccānagotta and the refusal of both 'is' and 'is not'; and 'Hearing the Words Anew': both extremes dropped, nothing found to bear either.
• Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes, the section 'Neither Permanent Nor Annihilated': 15.10–11 and the seed and sprout.
• Chapter 6, The Impossibility of Absolute Nothingness, the section 'The Thought of Nothing': non-being as the alteration of being (15.5).
• The Logic of Dependency (bonus article), the section 'What 'Logic' Means Here': 15.10 and SN 12.15; the refusals as refused presuppositions, not contradictions.

Talks on YouTube:

• MMK Non-Implicative Negation ironically shows: Dependent Arising = Spontaneous Presence.
• The Miracle of the Unfindable: Why You Must Be Empty to Function (Phase 6).
• To Function is to be Empty: Resolving the Paradox of Reality.

Words to know

• Own-nature, essence (svabhāva): a nature a thing would have from its own side, unmade and independent of anything else (15.2).
• Other-nature (parabhāva): a nature borrowed from something else; it collapses with own-nature.
• Existing thing, non-existence (bhāva, abhāva): existence and its absence, in the strong sense of things with natures.
• Nature (prakṛti): used in 15.8–9 as a synonym of own-nature.
• Permanence (śāśvata): the extreme of 'it is', a thing that never stops being what it is.
• Annihilation (uccheda): the extreme of 'it is not', a real thing falling into real nothing.
• Kātyāyana (Pāli Kaccānagotta): the monk to whom the Buddha taught the middle between 'is' and 'is not' (SN 12.15).