Candrakīrti's Middle Way
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Description
The Middle Way, or Madhyamaka, school of Indian Buddhist philosophy is known for its explication of emptiness (śūnyatā), and after Nāgārjuna—the second-century founder of the school—its most well-known defender is Candrakīrti (seventh century). Until recently, the Madhyamakāvatāra, one of Candrakīrti’s major works, was known primarily through its Tibetan translation, but with the publication of the Sanskrit verses from a manuscript discovered at the Potala Palace in Lhasa, we can now access Candrakīrti’s words in their original language.
Chapter 6 of the Madhyamakāvatāra, “Turned Toward” (abhimukhī), is roughly two thirds of the entire work, and it explicates the perfection of wisdom. As such, it contains Candrakīrti’s most detailed discussions of distinctively Madhyamaka teachings, defending Madhyamaka against accusations of nihilism and maintaining it has no thesis of its own. Answering objections from other Indian schools, both within and outside the Buddhist fold, he denies the ultimate reality of any and all existents, whether external or internal, and even of emptiness itself. While denying ultimates, he leaves conventionalities, arising dependently free of any absolute, to the world to confirm or deny.
The three main sections of chapter 6 are on the selflessness of phenomena, the selflessness of persons, and the varieties of emptiness. The first section is organized around the fourfold refutation of origination—from self, other, both, and neither—that begins Nāgārjuna’s root treatise of the Madhyamaka school. Candrakīrti takes up, in turn, Abhidharma realism, assertions of God or of Ātman, and Cārvāka materialism, but his main opponent is the Yogācāra school, which he calls Vijñānavāda. In his second section, he addresses Buddhist personalists (pudgalavāda) of the Saṃmatīya school, deploying his distinctive sevenfold analysis of a chariot and its parts.
All 226 verses of Candrakīrti’s chapter appear here in Sanskrit and in translation, accompanied by the authors’ clear distillation of Candrakīrti’s own commentary. (Source: Wisdom Publications)
