As we have seen, Sunyata is only an Apophatic tool which can help to clear away all
views inorder to further a direct experience of the ultimate truth. In this context , the two
truths are no more than two different cognitive approaches to reality: the ordinary
approach, focused on the categories of substance, causality, and on other categories; and
the extraordinary epistemic approach, that of the Buddhas, which is beyond any
reasoning or discursive account, and which is instead, as MMK.18.9 reminds us, the
‘pacification’ of ‘mental proliferation’; of this, all that can be said is that it is ulterior
compared to ordinary truth.
Nagarjunas position with respect to ultimate truth could be defined a Radical
apophaticism. most of the religious and philosophical traditions contain this emphasis on
apophatisim , albeit in varying degrees. What distinguishes the apophatic method of
buddhism from that of other mere epistemological apophatisms, is its effectuation of this
negation on the ontological level too. For buddhism ,even the concept of Being is also
the product of conventional discourse in the mundane world, and it must also be negated
or emptied out. The moment the ultimate is transformed into an object of philosophical
reflection, no list of cautions will be adequate to prevent the reification, or at least the
objectification, of this subject. thus the basic thrust of Madhyamika is toward
understanding our experience in its immediacy and interpreting it without constructing
fixed positions that occlude and distort that experience.
the essentialistic thurst of most metaphysical systems, including most traditional
religions, investigates what things are, centering their whole philosophy on the quest for
Being. Naturally the essentialists, engaged as they are upon an investigation of Being,
will find it difficult to accept the the buddhist position, of how it would be possible to
indicate how the end is to be attained without first knowing what the end to be attained is.
Buddhism at this point provide the reply that the need for this antecedent knowing
certainly has no relevancy for the spiritual life, because knowing and saying anything of
the “goal” would be tantamount to reducing it to the limited parameters of the
conventional level, and hence converting it into something finite, limited, and imperfect.
As the whole conventional level is imbued with illusion, generated by the fabrication of
language, if we are to know the ultimate reality it will be through discourses in the
conventional level, this would mean that the ultimate truth enters into the fabricated
level. For the reason that ultimate reality is beyond any mental fabrications, there is no
way of knowing what it is, because one has never reached it to identify it. But when it is
reached, positive discourses are no longer of any importance. the ultimate end, by
definition, cannot be known before being reached.
3.3.4. . Transcending all conventional Discourse.
The Madhyamika thinkers held that illusive knowledge of conventional level is generated
by the fabrication of language in virtue of which words are taken to represent the reality
of things.(footnote) fabrication (praparica) indicates the construction of meaning in
concepts.48 It is conceptual, verbal expression based on the clinging to essences, as if
they could offer a stable source of true knowing. Therefore nagarjuna gave priority to
negation, because ultimate reality is not presented to us in its pristine immediacy. It
comes distorted through the lens of our language constructs and concepts. Caught in the
samarsa, humans constantly seek security in the illusions they themselves fabricate. The
goal of Madhyamika is to negate and undermine the ideas used to justify this illusions.
In nagarjunas writings we see the vacuity of any positive affirmations to queries
concerning the ultimate reality, because of the nullity of the entire question. his argument
for the superfluity of these questions is that their responses will be inevitably conditioned
by those question. Because all questions necessarily arises within the conventional level
by human beings and their intellects the answer can only be as limited and conventional
as the question. then it will scarcely be the ultimate answer that is asked for and expected.
What is being sought is precisely a response that will withdraw us from all delusive or
conventional level; whereas, nagarjuna point outs that, no answer to a conventional
question will ever rise above conventionality. Any answer we formulate will be based on
a particular sort of metaphysics. Even if the answers were found, those answer would
represent the absolutization of conventionality, the capture of the Absolute in the nets of
illusive discourses. Thus the only answer is a silence as transcending every answers.
pg 151
3.3.4. . Nothing can be uttered on Ultimate truth.
Nagarjuna in his works says nothing which is directly referable to the supreme epistemic
level. Ultimate Truth is never the subject of discursive judgments; so it is impossible to
establish for it any predicate. The peculiarity of Nagarjuna’s thought is precisely his
programmatic refusal to offer any kind of definition for the Ultimate and his attack
against any attempt at a conceptual approximation of it. It is precisely the fabricating of
views that prevents us from realizing ultimate, because no position or view can substitute
for the awareness of the ultimate through direct contact.
Religious meaning cannot be expressed in theoretical terms, for when things are empty of
essence, language has no valid objectifying function. Nagarjuna argues that “when the
object of thought is no more, there is nothing for language to refer to.” The inability of
language to make affirmative assertions is because it presupposes that words actually do
refer to essences. In the absence of words that can explain anything, Madhyamika
presents its teachings as pointers to direct experience. Thus any human affirmation is a
negation and a limitation on the Ultimate, and not a positive positing of anything.153in a
similar way regarding this ineffability of the ultimate st Gregory of Nyssa states : “That
which it is necessary to know of God consists in knowing that to know [God] is nothing
other than to discover that nothing of what the human mind can know is knowledge of
God.179
3.3.4. . Every thing is Buddha nature
in MMK.25.19-20.80, the equation between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is proposed by
Nagarjuna. this verse mean that the two truths should not be understood as relating to
two different realities, rather the object of the two visions is the same. Nirvāṇa, in other
words, is not equal to the attainment of another level of reality, of an ontological
dimension beyond ordinary vision: the reality of saṃsāra and of nirvāṇa is the same.
Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are only two different epistemic dimensions relating to the unique
reality: the first mode superimposes upon reality, primarily and fundamentally, the idea
of svabhāva; of the second mode, instead, it is not possible to say anything, except that it
is, precisely, a different and ulterior mode with respect to the ordinary. Candrakirti also
From a soteriological point of view, buddhism regard the human condition as rooted
essentially in an original purity whose primordial characteristic is not suffering, but joy or
peace.67 Suffering then presents itself as a kind of superstructure, which is adventitious
to the human race and from which the latter must be liberated. The groundwork is joy.68
And so when the Buddha says that human liberation is obtainable through the elimination
of the super Structure of suffering with which contingency is impregnated, though he
hesitates to call it “joy,”69 this is what he basically means. Later tradition has
corroborated this, and nirvana itself is called “supreme felicity” (paraman sukham):
Nirvana is the greatest joy.”70 When joy is regarded as the primordial, natural state, there
is no need either to know what it is, or to move toward it, or to add anything whatever to
our condition. All that need be “done” is to strip ourselves of the superstructure of
suffering . In a word, all that need be “done” is to negate these superimposed essences, so
that true nature of reality may blaze forth unimpeded. For this, we need no antecedent
knowledge about that reality, or any positive descriptions about it.
The practical way proposed by the Buddha is the one available in all of our experiences,
for it falls within our limits: the elimination of suffering and the destruction of the
contingency that we “are,” that thus the initial glory may shine.”71
