NĀGĀRJUNA

Letter to a Friend

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With all its many risks, this life endures

No more than windblown bubbles in a stream.

How marvelous to breathe in and out again,

To fall asleep and then awake refreshed.

NĀGĀRJUNA

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Just as it is known

That an image of one's face is seen

Depending on a mirror

But does not really exist as a face,

So the conception of "I" exists

Dependent on mind and body,

But like the image of a face

The "I" does not at all exist as its own reality.

NĀGĀRJUNA
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)

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The pacification of all cognitive grasping and
The pacification of conceptual proliferation
Are peace.

NĀGĀRJUNA
“Body”
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I have no body apart
From parts which form it.
I know no parts
Apart from a “body.”

A body with no parts
Would be unformed,
A part of my body apart from my body
Would be absurd.

Were the body here or not,
It would need no parts.
Partless bodies are pointless.
Do not get stuck in the “body.”

I cannot say,
“My body is like its parts.”
I cannot say,
“It’s something else.”

Feelings, perceptions,
Drives, minds, things
Are like this body
In every way.

Conflict with emptiness
Is no conflict;
Objections to emptiness,
No objections.

NĀGĀRJUNA
“Change”

If something has an essence–
How can it ever change
Into anything else?

A thing doesn’t change into something else–
Youth does not age,
Age does not age.

If something changed into something else–
Milk would be butter
Or butter would not be milk.

Were there a trace of something,
There would be a trace of emptiness.
Were there no trace of anything,
There would be no trace of emptiness.

Buddhas say emptiness
Is relinquishing opinions.
Believers in emptiness
Are incurable.

NĀGĀRJUNA'S WISDOM - A PRACTITIONER'S GUIDE TO THE MIDDLE WAY

Barry Kerzin, MD
Watson Publications, 2019

NĀGĀRJUNA from Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)

10.
Without a foundation in the conventional truth,
The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,
Liberation is not achieved.

11.
By a misperception of emptiness
A person of little intelligence is destroyed.
Like a snake incorrectly seized
Or like a spell incorrectly cast.

12.
For that reason—
that the Dharma is
Deep and difficult to understand and to learn—
The Buddha’s mind despaired of
Being able to teach it.

NĀGĀRJUNA - "The Heart of Dependent Origination"

These different links, twelve in number,
Which Buddha taught as dependent origination,
Can be summarized in three categories:
Mental afflictions, karma and suffering.

The first, eighth and ninth are afflictions,
The second and tenth are karma,
The remaining seven are suffering.
Thus the twelve links are grouped in three.

From the three the two originate,
And from the two the seven come,
From seven the three come once again—
Thus the wheel of existence turns and turns.

All beings consist of causes and effects,
In which there is no ‘sentient being’ at all.
From phenomena which are exclusively empty,
There arise only empty phenomena.
All things are devoid of any ‘I’ or ‘mine’.

Like a recitation, a candle, a mirror, a seal,
A magnifying glass, a seed, sourness, or a sound,
So also with the continuation of the aggregates—
The wise should know they are not transferred.

Then, as for extremely subtle entities,
Those who regard them with nihilism,
Lacking precise and thorough knowledge,
Will not see the actuality of conditioned arising.

In this, there is not a thing to be removed,
Nor the slightest thing to be added.
It is looking perfectly into reality itself,
And when reality is seen, complete liberation.

NĀGĀRJUNA - “Space”

No trace of space
Is there before
The absence of obstruction
Which describes it.

With no obstruction,
How can there be
Absence of obstruction?
Who distinguishes between them?

Space is not obstruction
Or an absence of it,
Nor is it a description
Or something to describe.

Fluidity and heat,
Energy and gravity
Are just like space.

In seeing things
To be or not to be
Fools fail to see
A world at ease.

NĀGĀRJUNA - “Dedicatory Verse”

I prostrate to the Perfect Buddha,
The best of teachers, who taught that
Whatever is depedently arisen is
Unceasing, unborn,
Unannihilated, not permanent,
Not coming, not going,
Without distinction, without identity,
And free from conceptual construction.