Nagarjuna

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born 150

died c. 250

Indian monk and philosopher, founder of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism.

Born into a Brahman family, he underwent a spiritual conversion when he studied the doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism. His Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way and The Dialectical Method are critical analyses of false views about how existence arises, the means of knowledge, and the nature of reality. He established the concept of sunyata—emptiness, or the lack of an absolute reality behind the changing forms of existence—as a fundamental tenet of the Madhyamika school.

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More on "Nagarjuna" from Britannica Concise:

Madhyamika - School in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.

More on "Nagarjuna" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

Nagarjuna - Indian Buddhist monk-philosopher and founder of the Madhyamika ("Middle Path") school whose clarification of the concept of sunyata ("emptiness") is regarded as an intellectual and spiritual achievement of the highest order. He is recognized as a patriarch by several later Buddhist schools. The two basic works that are substantially his and that have remained available in Sanskrit are ...

Indian philosophy - Though the beginnings of Mahayana are to be found in the Mahasangikas and many of their early sects, Nagarjuna gave it a philosophical basis. Not only is the individual person empty and lacking an eternal self, according to Nagarjuna, but the dharmas also are empty. He extended the concept of sunyata to cover all concepts and all entities. "Emptiness" thus means subjection to the law of causality ...

Candrakirti - principal representative of the Prasangika school of Buddhist logic. Candrakirti wrote the famous commentary the Prasannapada ("The Clear Worded") on the thought of the Buddhist sage Nagarjuna. Although there were several earlier commentaries explaining Nagarjuna, Candrakirti's became the most authoritative; it is the only one that has been preserved in its original Sanskrit (other commentaries ...

Nagarjuna - The earliest available biographical account of Nagarjuna is in Chinese, supplied about AD 405 by a renowned Buddhist translator, Kumarajiva. It agrees with other Chinese and Tibetan accounts that Nagarjuna was born in South India into a Brahman (Hindu priestly caste) family. The stories of his boyhood are contradictory in historical terms but indicate that he possessed an extraordinary ...

Mulamadhyamakakarika - (Sanskrit: "Fundamentals of the Middle Way"), Buddhist text by Nagarjuna, the exponent of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism. It is a work that combines stringent logic and religious vision in a lucid presentation of the doctrine of ultimate "emptiness."

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