Examination of the Four Noble Truths

Here is the worry that anyone meeting emptiness has sooner or later. If nothing has a nature of its own, does anything matter? If suffering is empty, why end it? If the path is empty, why walk it? If the Buddha is empty, who taught? It sounds as if emptiness, taken seriously, would dissolve the very teaching that teaches it, and leave us with nothing to stand on.

Chapter 24 meets this worry head on, and it is the turning point of the whole work. Up to here Nāgārjuna has taken apart conditions, motion, self, time and much else (Chapter 1 onward). Now an opponent from his own tradition says: you have gone too far, you have destroyed Buddhism. Nāgārjuna's answer turns the charge around completely. It is not emptiness that would destroy the four noble truths. It is the opposite of emptiness. Only in a world without own-nature can anything arise, change, be practised or be attained.

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).

The objection: emptiness destroys everything

The chapter opens with the opponent's case, stated fairly and in full (24.1–6). It runs like a row of dominoes. If everything is empty, nothing arises and nothing passes away. Then there are no four noble truths, because the truths are about the arising of suffering and its ending (24.1). Without the truths, there is nothing to understand, abandon, cultivate or realise: no practice (24.2). Without practice, no one reaches the four stages of the noble path, and no one is on the way to them (24.3). Without those noble persons, there is no Sangha, the community; and without the truths, no Dharma, the teaching (24.4). Without Dharma and Sangha, how could there be a Buddha? So emptiness undermines all three jewels (24.5). And it undermines more besides: the fruits of action, right and wrong, and all the ordinary dealings of the world (24.6).

The opponent is not a straw man. He is a serious Buddhist, probably of the Abhidharma schools, for whom the elements of experience had to have natures of their own in order to function. To him, 'empty' means 'non-existent', and a non-existent suffering cannot arise or end.

The reply: you have misunderstood emptiness

Nāgārjuna does not deny that the chain would follow if emptiness meant what the opponent thinks. He says the opponent has misunderstood three things: the purpose of emptiness, emptiness itself, and the meaning of emptiness (24.7). Candrakīrti spells them out. The purpose of emptiness is to quiet elaborations (prapañca), the mind's spinning-out of 'it is' and 'it is not' around things it takes to be there. Emptiness itself is not a thing, not a void and not a hidden absolute; it is the absence of own-nature. And the meaning of emptiness is dependent arising (24.18). The opponent has heard 'empty' and pictured nothing at all. That picture is what troubles him, not emptiness.

The two truths

To explain, Nāgārjuna introduces the two truths (24.8). The Buddhas teach by relying on two: the conventional truth of the world (saṃvṛti-satya), and the truth in the ultimate sense (paramārtha-satya). Conventional truth is the world as it appears and works: tables hold cups, medicine heals, people suffer and are kind. Candrakīrti notes three senses of the word saṃvṛti: what conceals (ignorance hides how things are), what exists in mutual dependence, and worldly convention, the naming and agreement we live by. Ultimate truth is what analysis finds when it looks for the table's own nature, apart from its parts, causes and name: no such nature is found. Not finding it is the ultimate truth, emptiness.

The two truths are not two worlds, one false and one real, stacked on top of each other. They are one appearance, taken in two ways. The same table is the cup-holder of convention and the empty of analysis. Its working and its emptiness are not two facts about it; they are one fact seen from two sides. A thing works because it depends, and because it depends it has no nature of its own.

Whoever misses this distinction misses the depth of the Buddha's teaching (24.9). And the two truths need each other in a definite order. Without relying on convention, the ultimate cannot be taught: emptiness is pointed out using words, examples and reasoning, all of which belong to convention (24.10). And without coming to the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not reached: liberation comes from seeing through the grasping at own-nature, not from rearranging conventions. Convention is the ladder; the ultimate is where it leads; and the ladder is not thrown away, because the ultimate is only ever the emptiness of conventional things.

A snake grasped the wrong way

Emptiness is powerful, and like anything powerful it can harm. Wrongly seen, it ruins the one who sees it, like a snake picked up by the wrong end or a spell said wrongly (24.11). Picked up behind the head, a snake is safe; picked up by the tail, it turns and bites. Emptiness has two wrong ends. Grasped as nothingness, it becomes nihilism: nothing matters, nothing has consequences. Grasped as a thing, an ultimate essence or cosmic ground, it becomes a new substance, the very reification it was meant to cure. Grasped correctly, it is simply the absence of own-nature in things that keep working.

This danger, the tradition says, is why the Buddha hesitated to teach after his awakening: the teaching is deep and easily misheld (24.12). The faults the opponent charges against emptiness are real faults, but they are not the faults of emptiness. They belong to the nothingness he has mistaken it for (24.13).

For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible

Then comes the verse at the centre of the chapter, and perhaps of the whole book: for whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible; for whom emptiness is not possible, nothing is possible (24.14). The verb, yujyate, means 'is possible', 'fits', 'makes sense', and so 'works'. The main book quotes the verse in these same words. If emptiness makes sense, then arising, ceasing, cause, effect, practice and awakening all make sense. If emptiness does not make sense, none of them does.

Why? Because to work is to depend. A seed works by turning into a sprout, which means it is not fixed as a seed. Medicine works by changing a body, which means the illness was not fixed as illness. Practice works by changing a mind, which means the mind was not fixed as it was. Everything that functions does so in dependence on conditions, and depending on conditions is exactly what being 'empty of own-nature' comes to. A thing with a nature truly its own would be sealed off from everything else. It could neither act nor be acted upon.

The opponent, Nāgārjuna says, is like a man riding a horse who accuses others of stealing it: he has forgotten the horse he is sitting on (24.15). He relies on dependent arising every moment, in every cause and effect he speaks of, and then charges the teaching of dependent arising with destroying cause and effect.

Dependent arising is emptiness

If you see things as existing by their own nature, you see them as needing no causes or conditions (24.16), for what is complete in itself needs nothing else. Then you undermine everything causal: effect and cause, agent, means and action, arising, ceasing and fruit (24.17).

Verse 24.18 gives Nāgārjuna's positive statement, as close as he comes to one: dependent arising is what we call emptiness; that is a designation in dependence; and that itself is the middle way. Four names for one fact. Dependent arising is how things exist: only in dependence. Emptiness is what that means: no own-nature. Designation in dependence says that even emptiness is a name given in relation to what it qualifies, not a thing in its own right. And the middle way is the result: free of the extreme of existence by own-nature and of the extreme of nothingness.

The middle clause of 24.18 carries two points, and Candrakīrti's commentary makes both. First, 'that' is emptiness: emptiness too is only a designation in dependence, not a thing in its own right. Second, dependent arising is itself designation in dependence: a chariot is designated in dependence on its wheels and other parts, and what is designated in this way has not arisen by its own nature. Tsongkhapa develops both. Either way, the point is that nothing, emptiness included, escapes dependence.

Verse 24.19 draws the conclusion. There is no phenomenon that has not arisen in dependence. So there is no phenomenon that is not empty. This is not a guess from checking things one by one. Anything put forward as existing apart from dependence would have to be picked out and told apart from other things, and that already places it in relation. Emptiness is not a special region of reality, reserved for the enlightened. It is the condition of every cup, thought and breath.

The objection turned around

Now Nāgārjuna repeats the opponent's first verse word for word, with one change: 'empty' becomes 'not empty' (24.20). If all this were not empty, there would be no arising and no passing away, and the four noble truths would not exist. Then he runs the whole chain again, link by link, and shows that own-nature, not emptiness, breaks every one.

Suffering (24.21–22). Suffering is taught as impermanent: it comes and goes. But what has its own nature cannot come and go, because coming and going are changes, and an own-nature does not change. So suffering with an own-nature would have no origin. It would simply be, always.

Cessation (24.23). For the same reason it could never end. Clinging to own-nature makes the third truth, the ending of suffering, impossible.

The path (24.24–25). A path with an own-nature could not be cultivated, because to cultivate is to bring about what was not there. And if it is cultivated, it is not the fixed thing the opponent claims. Without arising, origin and cessation, what would the path lead to?

Understanding and the fruits (24.26–30). If suffering is by its own nature not yet understood, it could never come to be understood, for an own-nature stays as it is. The same goes for abandoning, realising and cultivating, and for the four fruits of the path (24.27–28). Without them, the chain of the opponent's objection follows after all: no noble persons, no Sangha, no Dharma, no Buddha (24.29–30). But now it follows from his view, not from emptiness.

The Buddha (24.31–32). With own-nature, a Buddha would be a Buddha independently of awakening, and awakening would exist independently of any Buddha. And one who is by nature not a Buddha would never become one, however hard he practised the bodhisattva path.

Ethics (24.33–35). No one could ever act rightly or wrongly, for what is not empty cannot be done or made: an own-nature is not something produced. Fruits would come without actions, or actions would bear no fruit. And if a fruit does come from actions, then it arose dependently, and so it is empty.

The world (24.36–38). Undermining emptiness undermines all the conventions of the world. Nothing would need doing, action would never begin, and agents would do nothing (24.37). The world would be unborn, unceasing and fixed like an anvil (kūṭastha), empty of all its varied states (24.38). That is the real picture of a world with own-nature: not a solid, reliable world, but a frozen one, where nothing can move because everything already is what it is.

Reaching what was not yet reached, ending suffering, abandoning the afflictions: none of these would be possible if things were not empty (24.39). And so the chapter ends where it began, with the four truths, now secured: whoever sees dependent arising sees suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path (24.40).

Why own-nature freezes the world

The reversal can seem like a clever trick, so it is worth seeing why it works. Picture a thing with a nature truly its own. Its nature belongs to it independently of anything else. Then nothing else can change it, because if something could, its nature would depend on that thing not happening. And it cannot change itself, because a change would make it other than its own nature. So it is stuck. It cannot come into being from causes, because then its nature would come from them. It cannot pass away, because then its nature would depend on conditions continuing.

This is why the two books on this site keep returning to this chapter. Emptiness is not a loss of the world. The world we actually live in, where seeds sprout, wounds heal, minds learn and suffering can end, is only possible as an empty world. A substance would not be a firmer foundation. It would be a stopped clock.

What is left standing

Everything the opponent feared to lose is kept, and kept on firmer ground: the four noble truths, the path and its fruits, the Buddha, the teaching and the community, right and wrong, cause and effect, and the whole web of ordinary dealings. Conventional truth is not demoted. It is the truth by which we live, act and practise, and the only way the ultimate can be taught at all (24.10).

What goes is only own-nature, the idea that things are what they are from their own side, sealed off from conditions. You can test the verse at any moment. Think of a habit you have changed, a skill you have learned, a grief that has softened. Each change was possible only because the old state was not fixed. The old state was never fixed from its own side: that is its emptiness, seen at work in your own life.

In the books

This is the chapter the two books cite most often.

• Introduction: The Unravelling of the Substantialist Premise (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section 'Two Opponents': emptiness seized by the wrong end (24.11).
• Interlude: Same Words, Different Worlds, the sections 'Dependent Arising', 'The Conventional and the Ultimate' and 'Emptiness': dependent arising as a dependent designation (24.18), and the ultimate taught only through convention (24.10).
• Chapter 2, The Logical Impossibility of Intrinsic Nature, the section 'Why Nothing Escapes Dependence' (24.19).
• Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes, the section 'Objection: Is This Nihilism?': the opponent's charge (24.1–6), 24.14 and the horse (24.15).
• Chapter 4, Mutual Dependency and the Non-Hierarchy of Relation, the sections 'Relation as a Conventional Designation' (24.18) and 'The Problem of Interaction' (24.16–20, 24.38).
• Chapter 5, The Non-Dimensional Two Truths, the sections 'Conventional Truth: Vividness and Functional Efficacy' (Candrakīrti's three meanings of saṃvṛti, on 24.8; and 24.14) and 'Appearance Demonstrates Emptiness: The Coldness of Ice' (24.16–17).
• Chapter 6, The Impossibility of Absolute Nothingness, the section 'Objection: Isn't Emptiness Just Nothing by Another Name?' (24.18).
• Chapter 11, Alignment with 4E Cognition, the section 'Agency and Efficacy in an Enactive World' (24.14).
• Chapter 14, The Role of Function in Conventional Reality, the section 'Emptiness and Function' (24.14).
• Chapter 15, Science in a Substrateless World, the section 'Before Measurement: The Wavefunction and Hilbert Space': it is not emptiness that would freeze the world, but its opposite (24.1–6, 24.14, 24.16–20).
• Conclusion: The Freedom of a Substrateless World, the section 'Freedom, Concretely' (24.14).
• The Logic of Dependency (bonus article), the sections 'Objection: Potentiality and Plasticity' (24.14, on the word yujyate) and 'A Different Path: Conditions and Openness' (24.16–20: practice works because nothing is fixed).
• A Beginner's Companion to the Main Text (The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness), the section 'The Two Ways to Get This Wrong Even After Understanding It': emptiness misheld as a stand-in for essence, the danger of 24.11.

Talks on YouTube:

• Core Logic 5: Mutual Dependence, on this chapter.
• Mipham's 2 Models of 2 Truth, on the two truths of 24.8–10.

Words to know

• The four noble truths (ārya-satya): suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path to its cessation.
• Conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya): the world as it appears and works, named and agreed upon.
• Ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya): what analysis finds when it seeks a thing's own nature: emptiness.
• Emptiness (śūnyatā): the absence of own-nature; itself empty, never a thing or a ground.
• Dependent designation (prajñaptir upādāya): naming in dependence on a basis, as a chariot is named on its parts.
• The middle way (madhyamā pratipad): free of the extremes of existence by own-nature and of nothingness.
• Fixed like an anvil (kūṭastha): unchanging and inert; what a world with own-nature would be.
• The three jewels (triratna): the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.