Vol. 2, Issue 3

FEATURED ARTICLE - NĀGĀRJUNA AND THE EASY PATH TO AWAKENING
The analysis of the reality
of things and beings
around us, as well as of our
own person, leads to the
realisation that nothing and
no one exists by itself.
major rules for determining textual authority, which had
already been developed before him. The first says that one
should refer to the texts of the scriptures rather than to
the authority of an individual, even the Buddha himself.
The second is to rely on meaning rather than on the letter.
The third enjoins reliance on wisdom, born from practice,
rather than mere intellectual and discursive knowledge.
Finally, the fourth advocates relying on the sūtras of
definitive meaning rather than the others. It was these
rules that enabled Buddhism to develop an extremely
diverse literature of commentaries. Shinran will certainly
make use of them.
Finally, there is one aspect of Nāgārjuna that cannot
be ignored: his philosophical dimension, which goes far
beyond the framework of Buddhism and makes him one
of the great thinkers of Humanity. In this respect, he is
considered the founder of Mādhyamika (“Medialism”),
one of the two main philosophical currents of the Greater
Vehicle, the second being that of Idealism (Yogācāra). In
this field, Nāgārjuna’s major work is certainly his famous
Fundamental Stanzas of the Middle (Mūla madhyamaka kārikā).
The whole of Buddhism can indeed be considered
as a “middle way”, following the example of Śākyamuni
himself, who, after having experienced the extreme of
pleasures during his youth as a prince, embarked on the
extreme of asceticism before finally renouncing it in order
to follow a balanced path between these two and become
a Buddha. However, Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way is more
philosophical. It consists in keeping an equal distance
between the real existence of things and beings, and their
fundamental non-existence. The analysis of the reality of
things and beings around us, as well as of our own person,
leads to the realisation that nothing and no one exists
by itself. Everything that exists is in fact a provisional
assembly of multiple elements joined together by various
causes and conditions, which disintegrate when the causes
that brought them together are exhausted. Thus, at the
moment of death, we see the decomposition of the physical
body by the disintegration of the physical elements that
constitute a person. The same is true of the mental
elements that make up the spirit, none of which can be
isolated in what would be called “a soul”. So that if beings
exist, it is only to a certain extent, that which constitutes
“relative truth”. But since they do not exist at all by
themselves, they do not exist in “absolute truth”. In short,
everything is devoid or empty of any self-substance, stable
and permanent. This is universal emptiness (śūnyatā),
which is at the heart of the Mādhyamika and which will
be one of the favourite topics of the Chinese Chan or
Japanese Zen traditions.
Shinran’s teaching is intended to be practical, so
that it does not offer long philosophical developments.
Nevertheless, all his thought is radically marked by
Mādhyamika, which deeply imbues the doctrine of the
Tendai school in which he was trained for twenty years. In
his Poem of the nembutsu of True Faith (Shōshinge), which is the
heart of his work, Shinran relates a prediction made by
the Buddha:
The Tathāgata Śākyamuni, on the Mount of Laṅkā,
Announced to the community: “In southern India,
The great hero Nāgārjuna will appear in this world
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