 Neither of the four alternatives just examined allows a plausible understanding of cause and effect as existing with svabhāva. Nāgārjuna therefore argues that there must be something wrong with the assumption that cause and effect exist in this way. They are not independent but mutually dependent. The dependence of the effect on the cause is easy to understand: if there was no cause there would not have been any effect. But how can we make sense of the reverse? Even if the cause had not produced the effect if would still have existed (even though it would not have been called “cause”). There are three different ways in which we can make sense of Nāgārjuna’s assertion that the cause also depends existentially on the effect.