Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 22
Examination of the Tathāgata
If anything is real, surely the Buddha is. Buddhists take refuge in him; the whole path aims at what he found. So it is natural to think that whatever else turns out to be empty, the Tathāgata, 'the one thus gone', must exist in some deeper way: before he taught, while he lived and, above all, after his death. This chapter looks for the Tathāgata in the way the earlier chapters looked for a self, a mover or an agent. It does not find him there either, and it shows why that is not a loss.
The chapter uses the method of Chapter 18, on the self, and of the chariot that Candrakīrti made famous: search for the person in the five aggregates (skandha) and around them. It then asks how a Buddha can be named at all, whether calling him 'empty' is itself a view, and what becomes of the old questions about the Buddha after death. It ends with one of the most quoted verses of the work: the nature of the Tathāgata is the nature of this world (22.16).
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).
tathāgataḥ skandhavān na katamo 'tra tathāgataḥ ||
Not the aggregates, and not something other than them; they are not in him, and he is not in them; nor is the Tathāgata one who has them. Which one, then, is the Tathāgata here?
svabhāvataś ca yo nāsti kutaḥ sa parabhāvataḥ ||
If the Buddha depends on the aggregates, he does not exist by his own nature. And how could one who does not exist by his own nature exist by the nature of something else?
yaś cānātmā sa ca kathaṃ bhaviṣyati tathāgataḥ ||
Whatever exists in dependence on the nature of something else is rightly called selfless. And how could what is selfless be the Tathāgata?
svabhāvaparabhāvābhyām ṛte kaḥ sa tathāgataḥ ||
If there is no own-nature, how could there be other-nature? And apart from own-nature and other-nature, who is the Tathāgata?
sa idānīm upādadyād upādāya tato bhavet ||
If there were some Tathāgata who did not depend on the aggregates, he could now take them up, and by taking them up he would then come to be.
yaś ca nāsty anupādāya sa upādāsyate katham ||
But there is no Tathāgata at all who does not depend on the aggregates. And how could one who does not exist without taking them up take them up?
na cāsti nirupādānaḥ kathaṃ cana tathāgataḥ ||
Nothing is something taken up until it has been taken up. And there is no Tathāgata in any way without something taken up.
upādānena sa kathaṃ prajñapyate tathāgataḥ ||
One who, sought in the five ways, is not found as either identical with or different from the aggregates: how is that Tathāgata designated by what he takes up?
svabhāvataś ca yan nāsti kutas tat parabhāvataḥ ||
And what is taken up does not exist by its own nature either. How could what does not exist by its own nature exist by the nature of something else?
prajñapyate ca śūnyena kathaṃ śūnyas tathāgataḥ ||
So what is taken up and the one who takes it up are empty in every way. How could an empty Tathāgata be designated by what is empty?
ubhayaṃ nobhayaṃ ceti prajñaptyarthaṃ tu kathyate ||
One should not say 'empty', nor 'not empty', nor 'both', nor 'neither'. Yet they are spoken, for the sake of designation.
antānantādi cāpy atra kutaḥ śānte catuṣṭayam ||
In what is at peace, where are the four, permanent, impermanent and the rest? In what is at peace, where are the four, finite, infinite and the rest?
nāstīti sa vikalpayan nirvṛtasyāpi kalpayet ||
One who has taken the solid grasp that the Tathāgata exists will also imagine, of the one who has gone to nirvāṇa, that he does not exist.
paraṃ nirodhād bhavati buddho na bhavatīti vā ||
Since he is empty of own-nature, the thought does not arise that after his passing the Buddha exists, or that he does not.
te prapañcahatāḥ sarve na paśyanti tathāgatam ||
Those who elaborate about the Buddha, who is beyond elaboration and does not decay, are all struck down by elaboration. They do not see the Tathāgata.
tathāgato niḥsvabhāvo niḥsvabhāvam idaṃ jagat ||
Whatever is the nature of the Tathāgata, that is the nature of this world. The Tathāgata has no nature of his own; this world has no nature of its own.
The fivefold search
The first verse is a search. A person is spoken of in dependence on the five aggregates: body (form), feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. If the Tathāgata exists by his own nature, he must be findable in some relation to them. There are five candidates (22.1).
He is the aggregates. Then he would be many, since there are five aggregates and countless moments of each, and he would arise and perish with every moment of body and mind. Nor could he be said to take them up, since one does not take up oneself.
He is other than the aggregates. Then he should be findable apart from them: a Tathāgata with no body, no feeling, no perception, no will and no awareness. No such being is ever met.
The aggregates are in him; he is in the aggregates; he possesses them. These three are versions of the second. A bowl holding fruit, fruit lying in a bowl, a man owning a cow: each needs two separate things. Since he is not found apart, he cannot be their container, their content or their owner.
So: what, here, is the Tathāgata? This is the search Candrakīrti later made famous with the chariot, adding two more places to look: the mere collection and the shape. The chariot is not found in any of them. Yet it still carries passengers.
Neither own-nature nor other-nature
Verses 22.2–4 take the next step. If the Buddha is named in dependence on the aggregates, he does not exist by his own nature (22.2). Could he then exist by the nature of something else, borrowing his being from the aggregates the way the moon borrows light from the sun? No. To borrow from another, there must first be a someone to do the borrowing, and 'other' only makes sense in relation to a 'self' (as in Chapter 1, 1.3). One who has no own-nature has no other-nature either.
Verse 22.3 puts it sharply: whatever exists in dependence on something else is selfless (anātman). Here 'self' (ātman) means own-nature: something that is what it is by itself. And how could the Tathāgata, the supposed deeper reality, be selfless? Nāgārjuna is arguing from the opponent's own premise. For the opponent, a selfless Tathāgata is no Tathāgata at all. For Nāgārjuna, selflessness is exactly what the Buddha taught and realised. Apart from own-nature and other-nature, the opponent has no idea of who the Tathāgata could be (22.4). Nāgārjuna's answer comes at the end of the chapter.
The one who takes up and what is taken up
Verses 22.5–8 look at the word used for this dependence: upādāna, 'taking up', the same word used for the fuel a fire takes up (Chapter 10). The Tathāgata is said to exist by taking up the aggregates. So which comes first, the one who takes up or what is taken up?
If there were a Tathāgata before and apart from the aggregates, he could take them up and so come to be (22.5). But there is no such Tathāgata: no Buddha is ever found without body and mind. And one who does not exist before taking up cannot do the taking up (22.6). The other side fails too: nothing is 'taken up' until it has been taken up (22.7). So taker and taken are named together, neither before the other.
Verse 22.8 sums up. Sought in the five ways, the Tathāgata is found neither identical with the aggregates nor different from them. How then can he be designated by what he takes up, if 'designated by' means that a real Tathāgata is picked out by real aggregates? And the aggregates themselves are no firmer footing (22.9). They too lack own-nature, and so lack other-nature. Taker and taken up are empty through and through (22.10). The opponent wanted one solid thing, at least, to which 'Tathāgata' could refer. There is none.
Not even 'empty' as a view
Here a reader may think: then the truth about the Buddha is that he is empty. Verse 22.11 stops this at once. One should not say 'empty', nor 'not empty', nor 'both', nor 'neither'. Yet these words are still spoken, for the sake of designation (prajñapti).
This does not mean nothing can be said. Nāgārjuna says 'empty' all the time. It means that 'empty' is not a property the Tathāgata has, in the way a stone is hard. It is a word used to undo a grasp. Chapter 13 warns that those who turn emptiness into a view are beyond help (13.8), and Candrakīrti compares emptiness to a medicine that must leave the body along with the illness it cured. Taken as the final description of what he really is, 'empty' would turn emptiness into a new nature. Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa both stress this: Madhyamaka uses words like 'empty' conventionally, as designations that work, without positing an object they describe from its own side.
The questions that do not apply
Verse 22.12 recalls a famous list. The Buddha refused to answer certain questions: whether the world is permanent, impermanent, both or neither; whether it is finite, infinite, both or neither; whether the Tathāgata exists after death, does not, both or neither. These are the undeclared questions (avyākṛta). Nāgārjuna explains the refusal. In what is at peace, empty of own-nature, where are these four? There is nothing for them to be about.
Verse 22.13 shows where the questions come from. One who takes the solid grasp (ghanagrāha) that the Tathāgata exists will, on hearing of his passing, imagine that he no longer exists. Being and non-being come as a pair. The belief that he really exists now is what makes his death look like annihilation.
Verse 22.14 removes both. Since the Tathāgata is empty of own-nature, the thought that after his passing he exists, or does not, has nothing to grip. This is the Buddha's answer to Vacchagotta (Majjhima Nikāya 72). When a fire goes out, in which direction has it gone? The question does not apply. It asks for the whereabouts of a fire apart from its burning, and there never was such a fire.
Beyond elaboration
Verse 22.15 names the mistake behind all the questions: elaboration (prapañca). The Buddha is beyond elaboration and does not decay. Those who elaborate about him, spinning out 'he is', 'he is not', 'he is permanent', 'he has ended', are struck down by their own elaborations. They do not see the Tathāgata.
'Does not decay' (avyaya) can sound like the Buddha is a permanent being after all. It is not meant that way. What has no own-nature has nothing that could decay, just as it has nothing that could last. The phrase rules out decay without installing permanence. This is a non-implicative negation (prasajya-pratiṣedha), like every negation in the work. And 'seeing the Tathāgata' does not mean finding a hidden being behind the words. It means seeing as he saw: without the elaborations.
The nature of this world
The chapter ends with a single verse that turns the whole search around (22.16). Whatever is the nature of the Tathāgata, that is the nature of this world. The Tathāgata has no nature of his own; this world has no nature of its own.
This verse is easy to misread in two opposite ways. It does not say that the Buddha is just one more ordinary thing, so that awakening makes no difference. And it does not say that the world secretly contains a divine Buddha-substance. It says that the Buddha and the world are empty in exactly the same way. The emptiness found by searching for the Buddha is the same emptiness found by searching for a cup, a chariot or a self. There is no special ultimate reserved for him.
This is why the search did not lose anything. The opponent wanted the Tathāgata to stand outside the world as the one real thing. Nāgārjuna finds him not outside but here: the nature of what awakens is the nature of what is seen through. As Chapter 25 will put it, the limit of nirvāṇa is the limit of saṃsāra (25.19–20). To see that the world has no nature of its own is to see the Tathāgata.
What is left standing
The Buddha still taught; his words were heard; people still take refuge, follow the path and awaken. 'The Buddha was born at Lumbinī and passed away at Kuśinagara' remains a true sentence. The name 'Tathāgata' is designated in dependence on a body, a mind, a life and its effects, and as so designated it works fully.
What goes is the hope of a Buddha who exists from his own side: findable in or apart from the aggregates, surviving his death as a hidden someone or vanishing into nothing. Without that hope, the old questions about the Buddha after death are not answered but released. And reverence loses nothing. What is revered is not a solid being, but the way of seeing that he embodied, available wherever things are seen as they are.
In the books
The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.
- Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World): the section 'The Chariot: Candrakīrti's Sevenfold Analysis', the same search as 22.1, and 'No Whereabouts: Neither Coming Nor Going', Vacchagotta's question about the awakened person after death and the fire that went nowhere (22.12–14).
- The Chariot Comes Alive (The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness), the sections 'From Nāgasena to Candrakīrti: The Sevenfold Search' and 'Beyond the Search: Exhaustive Conditionality'.
- The Last Refuge of Ontology: Dependent Arising Dismantles Itself, the section 'The Exhaustion of Ontological Predication': freedom from elaboration (niṣprapañca) as the very nature of dependent arising, not a void opposed to appearance (22.15).
- Resonances and Open Questions, the section 'The Eight Extremes and Nirvāṇa': ordinary experience and nirvāṇa equally empty, the theme of 22.16.
Words to know
- Tathāgata: 'the one thus gone' or 'thus come', a title of the Buddha.
- Aggregates (skandha): body, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness, on which a person is designated.
- Taking up (upādāna): what a person depends on, as a fire takes up fuel; also 'appropriation'.
- Designation (prajñapti): naming in dependence, which works without picking out a thing that exists on its own.
- Undeclared questions (avyākṛta): questions the Buddha set aside, such as whether the Tathāgata exists after death.
- Elaboration (prapañca): the mind's spinning-out of 'is', 'is not' and the rest around something it takes to be there.
- Selfless (anātman): without a self, without own-nature.