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This introductory chapter introduces Nāgārjuna as a philosophical thinker and gives a brief discussion of the difficulties faced when trying to establish his exact dates and location. This chapter justifies the choice of the six texts comprising the so-called ‘Yukti-corpus’ as the basis for the discussion in the book and adds some remarks on methodology. The chapter also provides a brief outline of the philosophical study of Nāgārjuna in the West. This is followed by a synopsis of the arguments presented in the following chapters.

This introductory chapter begins with a description of the history of the Vigrahavyāvartanī. It then considers arguments regarding the authenticity of the Vigrahavyāvartanī and discusses the structure of the Vigrahavyāvartanī.

This chapter discusses the theory of selfhood developed by the Mādhyamika philosophers, especially Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti, according to which becoming a self is an activity or performance. Various readings of the no-self thesis are distinguished. The problem of the individuation of minds is discussed.

This chapter deals with the theory of negation described in the non-Buddhist Nāgārjuna school of thought. Since many of Nāgārjuna’s arguments are formulated against the background of this theory and set out to refute it it is important to gain a clear understanding of the Nāgārjuna account in order to grasp the point of Nāgārjuna’s arguments. The chapter deals in particular with the problem of negating non-denoting terms (such as ‘unicorn’) and the problem of the temporal relation between the negation and the negated object.

This chapter attempts to analyze Nāgārjuna’s conception of language. Particular emphasis is placed on an investigation of Nāgārjuna’s famous statement that he does not have any philosophical thesis. The chapter considers several interpretations of this statement and a suggest a semantic one which entails that Nāgārjuna does not accept theses interpreted on the basis of a particular realist semantics. The chapter also considers the question what a ‘Madhyamakaa-compatible’ semantics would look like.

This chapter addresses a more specific and more pointed instance of paradox at the bounds of expression, considering Nāgārjuna's remarks in the Vigrahavyāvartanī and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā to the effect that neither he nor the Buddha asserts any thesis, has any view, takes any philosophical position. This, of course, sounds suspiciously like a thesis. Hence the paradox. It is argued that the resolution to the apparent paradox is achieved by the Mādhyamika through adopting a semantic distinction between assertions made with or without ontological import. Nāgārjuna and his Mādhyamika followers, on this account, endorse a theory of linguistic meaning according to which their assertions do not implicate the reality of referents of apparently referring expressions. Nāgārjuna denies making assertions with ontological import, having views about entities that exist on their own, etc., but is able to say these things without being self-refuting because of a view about language not shared by his non-Buddhist opponents.

The previous chapter raised questions about the two truths and their relation to one another, and uses arguments, devices, and the rhetoric of contemporary Western debates about reductionism to address problems about Buddhism's two truths. This chapter addresses problems connected to the two truths as well, and considers one standard Buddhist approach to resolving these problems, the use of the catuskoti, or four-cornered logic. It also adopts the techniques of contemporary logical theory to achieve greater clarity about ideas explored by Nāgārjuna and Zen thinkers such as Hakuin and Dōgen.

This chapter explores Jay Garfield and Graham Priest's willingness to read Nāgārjuna and other Mādhyamikas as deliberately, though cogently, inconsistent. While it rejects their view that Mādhyamika logic is paraconsistent in the strong sense that contradictions are literally acceptable, it endorses the view that at least early Mādhyamikas, and perhaps some of their commentators, accept a nonadjunctive logic in which assertions and their denials are each acceptable, but in which they do not conjoin. The chapter shows both nuanced textual scholarship and the judicious application of the techniques of modern logic in the reconstruction of a Buddhist philosophical position regarding the apparently inconsistent, but nonetheless true, conventional and ultimate truths.

This chapter focuses not on the exegetical accuracy of Jay Garfield and Graham Priest's reconstruction of Nāgārjuna, but on the implication that Garfield and Priest draw from this reconstruction. They argue that Western philosophers haven't seen an ontological paradox of the sort that Nāgārjuna is interpreted as presenting and, thus, that Western philosophers can learn an important lesson from Nāgārjuna. Their claim that Nāgārjuna can provide us with something new indicates the problematic nature of their overall project.

This chapter examines the possible relevance of philosopher Nāgārjuna's work on contradictions arising at the limits of thought. It states that Nāgārjuna has endorsed the possibility of true contradictions which confirms that he is indeed a rational thinker. It provides an interpretation of how Nāgārjuna may view logic or the limits of thought. This chapter demonstrates that Nāgārjuna's two linked limit paradoxes satisfy a schema common to a number of well-known paradoxes in Western philosophy.

Chapter 4 focuses on Chinese sources that depicted Nāgārjuna as a dhāraṇī master, alchemist, and Pure Land denizen, who personally appeared in Chinese oratories to provide his unique blend of ritual repertoires that reportedly derived from ancient India but were fully congruent with time-honored Chinese ritual traditions. These sources potentially engaged a broad range of medieval Chinese audiences and thus insinuated Nāgārjuna into the religious practice of Chinese devotees across social and sectarian divisions. In this context Nāgārjuna was deployed not as a model of emulation, but as an object of veneration for Chinese adepts with a taste for ostensibly Indian thaumaturgic and alchemical rituals. Though recognizably accordant with the liturgical conventions of local Chinese religions, Nāgārjuna’s ritual programs were expressly labeled Indian Buddhist and thus rendered the preserve of Chinese Buddhists.

Debates about the proper way to inquiry about what knowledge is, its sources or grounds, and criteria of reliability, form an integral part of the Indian philosophical tradition. This chapter reviews the important stages in this debate leading up to Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, and speculates on the course this debate might have taken had Buddhism endured in India after the 12^th century. The recognition that there are shared notions about what it is like to perceive, and what sort of testimony perceptual knowledge provides, is examined in relation to three other issues: (i) the relation between perception and conception; (ii) the relation between language and conceptual, with regard to the Buddhist semantic theory of exclusion (apoha); and (iii) the role of debate and positive argumentation for Buddhist philosophy in general and Buddhist epistemology in particular. The chapter also explores new ways of conceiving of the practice of philosophical debate, the role that positive argumentation plays in such debate, and the relevance of cognitive scientific models of cognition to understanding the operations of logical reasoning.

This chapter enters the realm of contemporary moral discourse. It discusses the origins of the 20th- and 21st- century Engaged Buddhist movement, which attempts to construct a new understanding of Buddhism and of Buddhist ethics in a political sphere. The chapter also addresses the degree to which such a modernist movement can be considered Buddhist, the degree of continuity between Engaged Buddhism and earlier Buddhist ethical thought, and the impact of modern Western ethical and political theory on Engaged Buddhism. Special attention is devoted to the work of the 14th Dalai Lama, of Thich Nhat Hanh, and of Sulak Sivaraksa.

Chapter 2 illustrates a seismic shift in Chinese representations of post-parinirvāṇa Indian Buddhism and thus conceptions of Buddhist sainthood in a world without a Buddha. While Kumārajīva’s associates advanced a cyclical model of Indian Buddhist history, the sources examined in this chapter instead depicted Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva standing in long lines of Indian patriarchs who together upheld the Dharma after Śākyamuni. Because this Indian lineage was reportedly severed before extending to China, I argue that it served to advance a soteriology of absence akin to that of the Lotus Sūtra. Then, in a sixth-century cave site that includes a sculpted representation of the Indian lineage, this message was both perpetuated and nullified. On the one hand, this cave depicted the Indian patriarchs as long-departed exemplars of Buddhist sainthood. And on the other hand, it rendered them as immanent presences that could be engaged directly through the cave’s ritual program.

Chapter 6 offers a more synoptic perspective on the Indian patriarchs as both models for emulation and objects of veneration in medieval China. Here I aim to articulate the unique sorts of power and authority that Chinese Buddhists invested in the Indian patriarchs, as opposed to other Indian holy beings and in relation to competing Chinese models of sainthood and divinity. On the one hand, the Indian patriarchs served as objects of veneration in medieval China, much like other Indian figures and Chinese deities and saints. On the other hand, the patriarchs were most often represented as “Goldilocks saints” of sorts, who lived neither too close to nor too far from either the Buddha or latter-day Chinese adepts. This made the Indian patriarchs both authoritative representatives of original Indian Buddhism and proximal exemplars of Buddhist sainthood for the generations after nirvāṇa.

The conclusion provides an overview of the main conclusions drawn in this study concerning how medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva. It further explains the approach taken in this study – situating the Chinese hagiographies of these Indian patriarchs firmly within the context of medieval China – vis-à-vis scholarship on Indian figures that either endeavors to locate them in ancient India or trace their imagery across Asian Buddhist cultures. In this light these hagiographies illustrate how Chinese Buddhists developed models of Buddhist sanctity as means of bridging the Sino-Indian divide, demonstrating that great Buddhist saints could be created in the centuries after nirvāṇa, whether in India or China; that ancient Indian holy beings had become immanent presences in China; and that the avowedly foreign religion of Buddhism actually represented – from its ancient Indian inception and through its greatest Indian saints – the most vaunted Chinese ideals of sanctity and salvation.