Madhyamaka

Sources of the Madhyamaka View of Karma Let us survey the Madhyamaka view of karma, starting with Nagarjuna (Klu-grub, Skt. Nāgārjuna) in the late second century CE. It follows the Sarvastivada abhidharma assertion, also found in the Mahayana sutras, that the karmic impulses...

The karmic impulses of the body, speech and mind can be further divided into seven types.  Nagarjuna’s Presentation Nagarjuna states in Root Verses on the Middle Way, Called Discriminating Awareness (dBu-ma rtsa-ba’i tshig-le’ur byas-pa shes-rab ces bya-ba, Skt....

Formulation of the Topic for Analysis We’ve seen that a temporal interval is what we’re speaking about in Buddhism when we speak about time, an interval between the occurrence of a cause and the occurrence of an effect. And what is most common that everybody accepts is that...

Both the Madhyamaka and the Vaibhashika presentations of karma derive from The Extensive Great Commentarial Treatise on Special Topics of Knowledge (Chos mngon-pa bye-brag bshad-pa chen-mo, Skt. Abhidharma Mahāvibhāṣā), compiled at the Fourth Buddhist Council from the Mahayana...

(1) The Sage has spoken about all these branches for the sake of discriminating awareness. Therefore, generate discriminating awareness with the wish to pacify sufferings. (2) Surface and deepest, these are accepted as being the two truths. The deepest aren't cognitive...

The Madhyamaka presentation derives from Nagarjuna and his Indian and Tibetan commentators.

Madhyamaka masters use the five great Madhyamaka lines of reasoning to establish the voidness of self-established true existence.

Meditation on emptiness as the way to develop deepest bodhichitta.

Grasping for truly established existence entails both projecting an appearance of such an impossible mode of existence and believing it corresponds to reality. Dormant grasping for it occurs when one or both aspects of grasping are not manifest.

An overview of the ninth chapter of “Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior” concerning the Prasangika Madhyamaka view of voidness.