Along with his disciple Aryadeva, the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 ce) is recognized as the founder and principal exponent of the Madhyamika system. Nagarjuna is the presumed author of the voluminous Mahaprajnaparamita-shastra (“The Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom”), preserved in its Chinese translation (402–405) by Kumarajiva, and the Mulamadhyamakakarika (more commonly known as Madhyamika Karika; “Fundamentals of the Middle Way”), which is considered by many to be the Madhyamika work par excellence. The main work of Aryadeva, the Chatushataka, criticizes other forms of Buddhism and the classical Sanskrit philosophical systems.
Nagarjuna and his followers sought a middle position, devoid of name and character and beyond all thought and words. They used rigorous logic to demonstrate the absurdity of various philosophical positions, including those of Hindus and other Buddhists. Assuming that contradiction is proof of error, Nagarjuna took any point of view that would reveal the error of his opponents. He did not, however, accept the opposing point of view but used it only as a means to expose the relativity of the system he was attacking. Because he was willing to refute his first position, he could claim adherence to no doctrine. Moreover, Nagarjuna attempted to prove that all worldly thought is empty (shunya) or relative and that the true path is that of the middle, the path that is between or, more correctly, above extremes. This belief has been called the doctrine of emptiness of all things, which posits that all things lack essential characteristics and exist only in relation to conditions surrounding them.
Nagarjuna presented this middle path above extremes in his statement of the Eightfold Path of Buddhism:
Nothing comes into being, nor does anything disappear. Nothing is eternal, nor has anything an end. Nothing is identical, nor is anything differentiated. Nothing moves here, nor does anything move there.
In presenting these pairs of opposites, Nagarjuna taught that anything that can be conceptualized or put into words is relative. This led to the Madhyamika identification of nirvana and samsara, which are empty concepts with the truth lying somewhere beyond.
After the world’s emptiness or relativity has been proved, the question arises of how one is to go beyond this position. Nagarjuna answered with the doctrine of the two truths, explaining that humans can gain salvation and are not irreconcilably caught in this world, which can be used as a ladder leading to the absolute. In his doctrine the relative truth is of this existence. This leads first to the realization that all things are empty of subhava (“own being”) and then to the intuition of an absolute truth beyond all conceptions. The link between these two truths—the relative and the absolute—is the Buddha. He experienced the absolute truth, which is nisprapancha—i.e., inexplicable in speech and unrealizable in ordinary thought—and yet he returned to point to this truth in the phenomenal world. By following this path, one can be saved. Thus, Nagarjuna taught that through the middle path of Madhyamika, which is identified as the Buddha’s true teachings, one is guided to an experience beyond affirmation and negation, being and nonbeing. Madhyamika is a philosophy that can rightly be called a doctrine of salvation, for it claims to present humans with a system that leads to rescue from their situation.
The Madhyamika school divided into two subtraditions in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Prasangika school, which emphasized a more negative form of argumentation, was founded by Buddhapalita (c. 470–540), who wrote many works, including a commentary on Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika Karika. The school was continued by Chandrakirti, a famous logician of the 7th century and author of a commentary on the Madhyamika Karika, and by Shantideva (c. 650–750), whose Shiksa-samuccaya (“Summary of Training”) and Bodhicharyavatara (“The Coming of the Bodhisattva Way of Life”) are among the most popular Mahayana literary works.
The Svatantrika school, which utilized a syllogistic mode of argumentation, was founded by Bhavaviveka, a contemporary of Buddhapalita and author of a commentary on the Madhyamika Karika. Santiraksita, a great scholar who wrote the Tattvasamgraha (“Summary of Essentials”) and the Madhyamikalankara Karika (“Verses on the Ornament of the Madhyamika Teaching”), continued the school. Both the Svatantrika tradition and the Prasangika tradition strongly influenced Buddhist philosophy in Tibet.
The missionary translator Kumarajiva took the Madhyamika school to China from India in the 5th century. Three of the texts that he translated from Sanskrit into Chinese—the Madhyamika Karika and the Dvadashamukha-shastra or Dvadasha-dvara-shastra (“The Twelve Topics or Gates Treatise”) of Nagarjuna and the Shata-shastra (“One Hundred Verses Treatise”) of Aryadeva—became the basic texts of the Chinese Sanlun (Japanese: Sanron), or “Three Treatise,” school of Madhyamika. Although this school was challenged by the Silun, or “Four Treatise,” school, which also accepted the Mahaprajnaparamita-shastra as a basic text, Sanlun regained preeminence as a result of the teachings of Sengzhao, Kumarajiva’s disciple, and later of Jizang. Both of these Chinese Madhyamika masters commented on Nagarjuna’s thesis in numerous influential works.
A Korean disciple of Jizang, Ekwan (Huiguan), then spread Sanlun (Korean: Samnon) to Japan in 625. This school was never popular among the masses and rarely formed an independent sect, though it remained the basis of logical and philosophical thought among the learned. Yogachara/Vijnanavada (Faxiang/Hossō)
The Yogachara (or Vijnanavada) school was founded, according to tradition, by the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu (4th/5th century ce) and by Sthiramati (6th century), who systematized doctrines found in the Lankavatara-sutra and the Mahayana-shraddhotpada-shastra (attributed to Ashvaghosha but probably written in Central Asia or in China). Later Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism include doctrines that were to be influenced by Yogachara teaching.
The special characteristics of Yogachara are its emphasis on meditation and a broadly psychological analysis, which contrasts with the other great Mahayana system, Madhyamika, where the emphasis is on logical analysis and dialectic. Its central doctrine, however, is that only consciousness (vijnanamatra; hence the name Vijnanavada) is real and that external things do not exist. Thought or mind is the ultimate reality, and nothing exists outside the mind, according to this school. The common view that external things exist is due to an error that can be removed by a meditative or yogic process that brings an inner concentration and tranquility and a complete withdrawal or “revulsion” from fictitious externalities.
Alaya-vijnana" class="md-crosslink">Alaya-vijnana (“storehouse consciousness”) is postulated as the receptacle of the imprint of thoughts and deeds, the vasana (literally, “dwelling”) of various karmic seeds (bijas). The “seeds” develop into touch, mental activity, feeling, perception, and will, corresponding to the five skandhas (“aggregates”; parts of an individual personality). This is followed first by the emergence of ideation (manas), which sets off the self or mind from the world, and then by the realization that objects exist only through the sense perceptions and thought of subject. The store consciousness must be purged of its subject-object duality and restored to its pure state. This pure state is equivalent to the absolute “suchness” (tathata), to Buddhahood, to the undifferentiated.