MAHAYANA BUDDHISM: Nagarjuna's Philosophy of Non-Identity

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Indian Buddhism has a thousand years of history and is divided into two main branches – Hinayana and Mahayana. Mahayana Buddhism, or the Greater Vehicle, arose from about the first or second century C.E. parallel to the older and traditional Hinayana or the Lesser Vehicle. According to one of the theories held by modern scholars, the origin of the former can be traced to the lay revolt against the religious privileges of the monks.

At the present stage of Buddhist studies, the earliest Mahayana treatises known to us are, perhaps, the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. They extend the Buddhist teaching of “no-self” in humans to non-essence in things and, therefore, deny the inherent existence of anything at all, including Nirvana.
The Madhyamaka school of thought, whose founder was the legendary Nagarjuna, also belongs to Mahayana Buddhism.

Nagarjuna was the first great teacher of the Buddhist religion since the Buddha, and he is sometimes called the "second Buddha." It is traditionally regarded that Nagarjuna, in his philosophy, attacked Abhidharma scholars who, based on the teachings of the Buddha, developed a concept of essence or self-existence as characteristic of dharmas.

In the Madhyamaka school, this concept generally meant inherent or independent existence. In accordance with the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination, Nagarjuna denies that dharmas exist independently by pointing out that everything, including dharmas, is empty.

The claim about emptiness as the absence of inherent existence in any object does not affirm an inherently existing emptiness in the sense of ultimate reality or truth. It is not a completely nihilistic rejection of any existence, either. In Nagarjuna’s philosophy, emptiness negates any dogmas regarding the inherent existence of anything at all.

In this presentation, I discuss Nagarjuna's philosophy of non-identity and whether his project deconstructs the claim that philosophy is a quest for identity. Is the philosophy of non-identity still a philosophy? I will illustrate my analysis based on chapters 15 and 18 of Nagarjuna's Karika.