Madhyamaka

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Madhyamaka ( Sanskrit , m., मध्यमक, madhyamaka, " middle way " between affirmation and negation) is the name of a philosophy school of Mahāyāna Buddhism . It is a founding of the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna , who lived in the 2nd century .

At the center of the Madhyamaka philosophy is the doctrine of "emptiness" (skt. Śūnyatā ), i. H. the unreality inherent in all things as the only reality.

"Not from oneself, not from another, not from both, and not without a cause, some things have arisen somewhere and at some point," teaches Nāgārjuna in the 1st chapter of his "Fundamental Memorabilia of the Middle Way" (Mulamadhyamakakārikā).

The world and its appearances are not, since they always only emerge from causative and themselves insubstantial conditions ( pratītyasamutpādah ) or presuppositions and consequently do not have an independent being within them. Things are without inherent nature (without inherent existence) (svabhavata) ; they are ultimately empty (śūnya) . The emptiness (śūnyatā) is not nothing, because an assumed nothing would also be something and thus qualify as being. Thus there is neither being nor non-being, but only the emptiness underlying all phenomena.

The Madhyamaka school, together with the other great philosophy school of Vijñānavāda, became the basis of the Mahāyāna's philosophical thought . As a teaching direction it was also formed in China (here called Sānlùn ) and in Japan (here called Sanron ).

From the 9th century, with the transfer of the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna to Tibet, the Madhyamaka doctrine ( tib . : dbu ma ) and especially the Prasaṅgika Madhyamaka doctrine (tib .: dbu ma thal 'gyur ) became the philosophical basis of Tibetan Buddhism .

The followers of the Madhyamaka school are called Mādhyamikas .

literature

  • Kalupahana, David J. (1994), A History of Buddhist philosophy, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited
  • Ming-Wood Liu: Madhyamaka Thought in China (Sinica Leidensia, 30), Brill Academic Pub 1997. ISBN 9004099840
  • Ramanan, K. Venkata. 1966. Nāgārjuna's Philosophy. Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont and Tokyo. Reprint: Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. 1978
  • Ruegg, D. Seyfort (1981), The literature of the Madhyamaka school of philosophy in India ( A History of Indian Literature ), Harrassowitz, ISBN 978-3-447-02204-0
  • Westerhoff, Jan, 2009. Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka. A Philosophical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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