Glossary of Key Terms

These short entries are for reference only. How each key term is heard differently by a substantialist mind and in Nāgārjuna's use is the subject of the Interlude after Chapter 1, 'Same Words, Different Worlds'.

Sanskrit (Skt.), Tibetan (Tib.) and Japanese (Jpn.) equivalents are given where the book uses them. Chapter references point to the fullest discussion.

Acquired grasping (Tib. kun brtags) — Learned belief in inherent existence, such as philosophical theories of substance. Contrast innate grasping (Ch. 1).

Basis of designation (Tib. gdags gzhi) — What a designation is made upon, as the parts are for the chariot or the aggregates for the person. It is itself designated, never an undesignated layer beneath labels (Ch. 13).

Co-definition — The identification of two or more terms only through each other, with neither prior, as with ice, coldness, feeler and felt (Chs. 4–5).

Concordant and discordant experience — Mipham's second model of the two truths: the same appearance met without reification (concordant, authentic) or with it (discordant, mistaken) (Ch. 5).

Condition (Skt. pratyaya) — What something is identified in dependence on. A condition is designated as such only in relation to its effect; it is not a producer standing on its own (Interlude; MMK 1, 10).

Conventional (Skt. saṃvṛti, vyavahāra) — The world as lived, spoken of and acted on. Valid and correctable, not arbitrary and not second-rate, yet concealing its own emptiness from ordinary perception (Interlude; Ch. 5).

Conventional truth (Skt. saṃvṛti-satya) — Appearance as it functions, with its own standards of correct and mistaken. One of the two truths; not a lower level of reality (Ch. 5).

Dependent arising (Skt. pratītyasamutpāda) — The identification of anything only in dependence on its parts, causes, contrasts and designation. It demonstrates emptiness; it is not interconnection between things, and not a ground (Interlude; Chs. 2, 4).

Designation (Skt. prajñapti) — The picking out of something as this rather than that, by perception, concept or language. Constrained by what holds up under further experience; mingled with vividness, not stuck on a pre-given object (Ch. 13).

Dharma position (Jpn. jū hōi) — Dōgen's term for each appearance abiding fully in its own position, with before and after cut off. The positions are designated, not found (Ch. 5).

Eight extremes — Arising and ceasing, permanence and annihilation, coming and going, identity and difference. Nāgārjuna's opening verses praise dependent arising as free of all eight (Ch. 3).

Emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā) — The absence of inherent existence. Not a void, not a hidden essence and not a view to be held; itself empty (Interlude; Chs. 2, 6).

Inherent existence, own-nature (Skt. svabhāva) — Existence from a thing's own side: what it would have if it were what it is independently of everything else, including the mind that picks it out. The object of negation; never found (Chs. 1–2).

Innate grasping (Tib. lhan skyes) — The unlearned habit of perceiving and thinking things as existing from their own side, shown in pictures such as space as a container and time as a stream (Ch. 1).

Mere I (Tib. nga tsam) — Tsongkhapa's term for the person as merely designated in dependence on body and mind: fully able to act, yet not found under analysis (Ch. 9).

Non-arising (Skt. anutpāda) — The recognition that, under ultimate analysis, nothing is found to arise. Not a denial of conventional causal regularity (Ch. 3).

Non-dimensional — This book's term for the absence of any deeper level beneath appearances, and of any higher level above them (Ch. 5).

Non-implicative negation (Skt. prasajya-pratiṣedha) — A negation that affirms nothing in place of what it negates. Contrast implicative negation (paryudāsa), which implies something else (Ch. 2).

Object of negation (Tib. dgag bya) — What analysis refutes: inherent existence, not appearances themselves. Identifying it correctly is the first step (Ch. 1).

Particular (Skt. svalakṣaṇa) — In Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, the momentary, self-characterized object of perception, held to be ultimately real because it alone is causally efficacious. Prāsaṅgika refuses it at every level: nothing is established by its own characteristic, not even conventionally (Chapter 13).

Prāsaṅgika — The Madhyamaka approach that proceeds by consequence (prasaṅga), drawing out the unwanted consequences of a position without asserting a thesis of its own (Introduction; Ch. 2).

Two truths — Conventional truth and ultimate truth: two aspects of one appearance, not two worlds or two levels (Ch. 5).

Ultimate truth (Skt. paramārtha-satya) — The emptiness of conventional appearance. Not another world behind it (Ch. 5).

Unfindability — What results when something is sought apart from its dependencies and nothing is found. Not non-existence (Ch. 3).

Unobstructed (Tib. ma 'gags pa) — Said of appearance: nothing blocks its showing. It does not mean a stream that lasts for ever (Chs. 3, 7).