Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 5
Examination of the Elements
Clear a shelf and there is space on it. Take everything out of a room and the room is empty. It seems that space was there all along, a kind of invisible container that things are put into and taken out of, and that would remain if everything were taken away. The fifth chapter asks what this space is, and how we know it is there.
The chapter examines the six elements (dhātu): earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness. It takes space as its example, because space looked like the hardest case. Some Buddhist schools counted space as unconditioned, existing by its own nature and depending on nothing. If anything had its own nature, space would. The tool of the chapter is new: the relation between a thing and the mark by which it is known, its defining characteristic.
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).
alakṣaṇaṃ prasajyeta syāt pūrvaṃ yadi lakṣaṇāt ||
No space at all is found before the defining characteristic of space. If it were there before its characteristic, it would follow that it had no characteristic.
asaty alakṣaṇe bhāve kramatāṃ kuha lakṣaṇam ||
But no thing without a characteristic is found anywhere. And if there is no thing without a characteristic, where would the characteristic apply?
salakṣaṇālakṣaṇābhyāṃ nāpy anyatra pravartate ||
A characteristic does not apply to what has no characteristic, nor to what already has one. And it does not apply anywhere other than these two.
lakṣyasyānupapattau ca lakṣaṇasyāpy asaṃbhavaḥ ||
If the characteristic does not apply, what it characterises makes no sense. And if what it characterises makes no sense, the characteristic cannot occur either.
lakṣyalakṣaṇanirmukto naiva bhāvo 'pi vidyate ||
So the characterised is not found, and the characteristic is not found. And no thing is found apart from the characterised and the characteristic.
bhāvābhāvavidharmā ca bhāvābhāvāv avaiti kaḥ ||
And if there is no thing, of what will there be an absence? And who, standing apart from both thing and absence, knows a thing and its absence?
ākāśam ākāśasamā dhātavaḥ pañca ye 'pare ||
So space is not a thing, not an absence, not something characterised and not a characteristic. The other five elements are just like space.
bhāvānāṃ te na paśyanti draṣṭavyopaśamaṃ śivam ||
Those of little understanding who see things as existing or as not existing do not see the peaceful quieting of what is to be seen.
A thing and its mark
How do we know what anything is? By its marks. Fire is known by heat, water by wetness, earth by solidity. The Abhidharma called this a thing's defining characteristic (lakṣaṇa): the mark that makes it what it is and sets it apart from everything else. The thing that bears the mark is the characterised (lakṣya).
The defining characteristic of space is that it does not obstruct. Space is what makes room. Where there is a wall, you cannot put your hand; where there is space, you can. The chapter asks how this mark is related to the space that has it.
Space before its mark?
Is there space first, which then has the mark of making room (5.1)? If so, before the mark arrived, the space would have had no mark at all. It would be a thing with no characteristic. But no such thing is ever found (5.2). Space that does not make room, does not give way, does nothing to show itself, is not space. It is not anything we could point to or name.
Where does the mark land?
Turn it around (5.3). Where does the characteristic apply? Not to something that has no characteristic, because there is no such thing (5.2). Not to something that already has its characteristic, because then the mark would have nothing to add; it would be applying itself twice. And there is no third kind of thing, neither with a mark nor without one, for the mark to land on.
So the two cannot meet as separate items (5.4). If the mark does not apply, there is nothing marked. If there is nothing marked, there is nothing for the mark to be a mark of. Characteristic and characterised stand or fall together. Neither is found on its own, and no thing is found apart from both (5.5).
This is the same shape as condition and effect in Chapter 1, form and its cause in Chapter 4, and walker and walking in Chapter 2. Here it reaches the very way we identify anything at all. To know what something is, we pick it out by a mark; and the mark and the thing turn out to be designated together.
Not even an absence
Here the opponent might say: very well, space is not a thing. Then it is simply nothing, an absence, the lack of obstruction. Nāgārjuna closes that door too (5.6). An absence is always the absence of something. No milk in the fridge is an absence of milk. If there is no self-standing thing, there is no self-standing absence of it either. Absence depends on presence just as presence depends on its marks.
The second half of 5.6 asks a sharp question: who, standing outside both presence and absence, would know them? To call space a 'thing' or a 'nothing', one would need a viewpoint outside both, from which to inspect and classify. No such viewpoint is found. Knowing, too, is part of what depends.
So space is not a thing, not an absence, not something marked and not a mark (5.7). The other elements, earth, water, fire, air and consciousness, are just like it. Solidity is not found apart from what is solid, nor what is solid apart from solidity. The same for heat and wetness and motion, and for consciousness and its mark of knowing.
Neither existence nor non-existence
The chapter ends with a verse that sets the tone for the rest of the work (5.8). Those of little understanding see things as existing or as not existing. They miss the peaceful quieting of what is to be seen.
Seeing things as existing, standing there with their own nature, is the extreme of permanence. Seeing them as not existing, as nothing at all, is the extreme of annihilation. Both picture something with a definite status, either present or missing. When the thing with whereabouts is not found (the homage of Chapter 1), both views fall away together, and what is left is called 'quieting' (upaśama). It is not a blank. The room is still there to walk into; the shelf still holds the book. Only the frantic sorting of everything into 'is' and 'is not' quiets down.
What is left standing
You can still clear a shelf and put a vase on it. Architects still design rooms, and physicists still measure distances. The chapter does not take away room, distance or the ability to move. It takes away the picture of space as a self-standing container, existing before and apart from anything that could occupy it.
What remains is space as it is actually met: room for something, distance between things, the give that lets a hand pass. Characterised and characteristic are designated together, and so are presence and absence. Space is real as what it does, and nothing more is needed.
Look at the empty space in front of you. Look for space apart from the room it gives, apart from the distance to the wall, apart from the openness your hand could move through. What do you find? Openness, vivid and usable, and no container behind it.
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 'Space': space and its characteristic of non-obstruction designated together, and space as room for something; and 'Existence and Non-Existence', on refusing both answers.
- Chapter 13, Conceptual Designation vs. Mere Naming, the section 'A Buddhist Myth of the Given': a characteristic (lakṣaṇa) is always the characteristic of something (lakṣya), the analysis Nāgārjuna applied to space.
- The Logic of Dependency (bonus article), the section 'Do We Actually Think Substantially?': space pictured as a container that would remain if everything were removed.
- Space Is Also a Formation (The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness): space is not an empty grid waiting in advance for things to be put into it; it forms together with what appears in it.
Talks on YouTube:
Words to know
- Elements (dhātu): here the six: earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness.
- Space (ākāśa): known by its mark of not obstructing; some schools held it to be unconditioned.
- Defining characteristic (lakṣaṇa): the mark by which a thing is known and set apart.
- Characterised (lakṣya): the thing that bears the mark.
- Thing and absence (bhāva, abhāva): presence and lack. An absence is always the absence of something.
- Quieting (upaśama): the settling of 'is' and 'is not' when no thing with its own status is found.