Then Mahakasyapa transmitted to him the Tathagata’s Mind Seal, making him the second Indian Patriarch. The transmission was handed down to following generations, and after the Patriarchs Asvaghosa and Nagarjuna, Chan Master Hui-wen of Tian-tai Mountain in the Bei-qi Dynasty (550-78) after reading (Nagarjuna’s) Madhyamika Shastra, succeeded in realizing his own mind and founded the Tian-tai School.269 At the time, our Chan Sect was very flourishing.
Tag: Nagarjuna
Buddhism: Hinayana and Mahayana Notions of Emptiness! (10.12.2014)
Through the work of Nagarjuna, the Mahayana movement developed the interpretation that physical matter is ‘empty’ of any substantiality. This is due to Nagarjuna applying his tetra lemma (catuskoti) formula to the assessment of the ‘Chain of Dependent Origination’ (Pratītyasamutpāda), and logically proving that just as the true enlightened state has no-self associated with it; then it is also equally true that physical matter has no substantiality associated with it. Everything is dependent upon everything else, conditioned by everything else, and contingent upon everything else.
Buddhist Dialectics, Logic and Emptiness
Enlightenment appears to be the realisation of the exact mid-point between these four positions of logic, but is not limited to any of the propositions. Things are ‘empty’ because they are not ‘full’, but it can equally be said that things are ‘full’ because they are not ‘empty’ – but these statements are relative positions for the interpretation of ‘truth’.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 