August 15, 2026

Between Being And Nonbeing

Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way.

Nagarjuna was a second-century Indian philosopher who founded the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school of Buddhism, writing at a time when Buddhist thinkers argued over whether things ultimately exist or do not exist at all. In the Mulamadhyamakakarika he cuts through both positions, showing that everything arises only in dependence on something else and so has no fixed, independent essence, which is what he means by emptiness. The line names emptiness itself as a useful label rather than an absolute truth, and calls seeing things this way the actual middle way between saying things exist inherently and saying they do not exist at all. Across the Eastern Wisdom tradition, the Middle Way starts as practical advice, neither starving nor overindulging, neither forcing effort nor collapsing into laziness, and Nagarjuna extends it into how the mind should hold any view at all, gripping nothing too tightly. Practiced daily, it looks like noticing when thinking swings toward an extreme, in food, in effort, in certainty, and returning to the workable middle.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: The Middle Way →