 In Nāgārjuna’s discussion of causation we usually find him investigating a set of alternative ways in which cause and effect could be related. Each of these is subsequently found to be unsatisfactory. As a result Nāgārjuna does not conclude that causation is impossible, but that our understanding of the causal relation must be based on some faulty premiss. This premiss is the presupposition that cause and effect exist with their own svabhāva. What this means is that they are qualitatively distinct, independent objects: first the cause exists without the effect, later the effect can exist without the cause, once the cause has passed out of existence. Apart from being independent of each other, cause and effect are also independent of the cognizing mind. The chain of causes and conditions is something that exists out there in the world, independent of human interests and concerns. Nāgārjuna intends to show that because there is something wrong with all the understandings of causation usually encountered, the difficulty is likely to lie in a mistaken supposition that underlies all of them.