The Eight Extremes

Nāgārjuna's homage names eight extremes in four pairs: arising and ceasing, permanence and annihilation, coming and going, identity and difference. Under the logic of substance these are simply the questions one asks about anything. When did it start? When will it end? Does it last, or is it destroyed? Where did it come from, and where did it go? Is it the same as that, or different?

Each of these questions assumes the same thing: that there is something with whereabouts, a position in time, space or identity that belongs to it from its own side. Arising and ceasing place it at the two ends of a line. Permanence keeps it on the line, and annihilation removes it. Coming and going move it from one place to another. Identity and difference set it beside something else to be compared. The extremes are not eight separate errors. They are eight ways of asking where a thing is.

The logic of dependency does not answer these questions in a subtler way. It turns them over. It does not say that the thing arises in a hidden form, lasts beneath the change, or goes somewhere invisible. It says that what was supposed to have whereabouts is not found, and so the questions lose their object.

Extreme	The substantialist question	What dependency finds
Arising	When did it come into being?	No thing crossing an edge from absent to present. "It began at noon" holds as convention
Ceasing	When did it go out of being?	No thing falling into nothing. Ending is designated within before and after
Permanence	What stays the same underneath?	No carrier beneath the change
Annihilation	What was destroyed?	Nothing that stood on its own to be destroyed
Coming	Where did it come from?	No whereabouts before it appeared
Going	Where did it go?	No whereabouts after. The question does not apply
Identity	Is it the same as that?	Not identical: the sprout is not the seed
Difference	Is it something else entirely?	Not wholly other: rice yields rice

The decisive point is easy to miss. Dependent arising is not one thing and the eight negations another, as if what arises in dependence were then also, mysteriously, free of arising. The negations describe dependent arising itself. If a sprout could be found arising from its seed, it would have an arising of its own, and it would not need to depend. That it depends is exactly why no arising is found when it is sought. Dependence and unfindability are one fact, seen from the side of convention and from the side of analysis.

This turns ordinary experience upside down without removing any of it. Switch off a lamp, and the room is dark, and the light went nowhere. Switch it on, and the room fills, and the light came from nowhere. Both descriptions hold of every appearance, and both were true all along.