Nāgārjuna's Take on Cause and Effect...

Reading Nāgārjuna’s “Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way” #2

In my previous post on Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, I commented on the famous ‘Dedication Verses’. 

🔥 Nāgārjuna, Dependent Co-Arising, and Parenting!

In this post I would like to comment on the first verses of the first chapter of Nāgārjuna's most famous work. To illustrate his thought, I will present the idea that an expensive bottle of wine is not always a good bottle of wine.

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Sanskrit

na svato nāpi parato na dvābhyāṃ nāpy ahetutaḥ |
utpannā jātu vidyante bhāvāḥ kvacana kecana ||

Chinese (by Kumārajīva)

諸法不自生 亦不從他生
不共不無因 是故知無生

English (my tentative translation from the Sanskrit)

Not from itself, nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause,
Do beings ever, anywhere, in any way, arise.

Commentary

This short passage is certainly one of the most important for understanding how Nāgārjuna analyses things. He is trying to question the different ways in which a thing can be causally explained.

A literary translation from Chinese, which might be easier to understand, reads like this:

All entities do not arise out of themselves, nor out of another;
Neither of both, nor without cause — hence it is known that there is no arising.

According to Nāgārjuna, it is not possible to say that beings (bhāvāḥ, the plural of bhāva, rendered in Chinese by 諸法) arise (utpannā) from themselves. Nor is it possible to say that they come from anything other than themselves. Nor is it possible to say that they come from both. It is also impossible to say that they arise without a cause (a-hetu, 無因).

Nāgārjuna is famous for systematising the use of the tetralemma to deconstruct the way in which one can grasp something. A tetralemma is a sequence of four propositions: A, Ā, both A and Ā, neither A nor Ā; or affirmation, negation, both affirmation and negation, neither affirmation nor negation.

Some (famous) commentators have suggested that the sentence “[n]ot from itself, nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause” is a tetralemma. This is logically an approximation, since the sentence should be read as “[n]ot from A, nor from Ā, nor from both [A and Ā], nor without a B”. Saying “without a cause” is not per se identical with a proposition such as “both A and Ā” (both from itself or from another).

In any case, Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way uses similar reasoning many times, few of which lead to the full development of tetralemmas. He uses it in its fully developed form only when it is necessary for the good completion of the questioning he is conducting.

The deconstruction of what he presents in the dedicatory verses as mental construction (prapañca, 戲論) will even extend to some core Buddhist concepts such as that of nirvāṇa.

Philosophical Meaning