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Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy
Madhyamaka and Yogācāra are the two main philosophical trajectories associated with the Mahāyāna stream of Buddhist thought. According to Tibetan doxographical literature, Madhyamaka represents the philosophically definitive expression of Buddhist doctrine. Stemming from the second-century writings of Nāgārjuna, Madhyamaka developed in the form of commentaries on his works. This style of development is characteristic of the basically scholastic character of the Indian philosophical tradition. The commentaries elaborated not only varying interpretations of Nāgārjuna's philosophy but also different understandings of the philosophical tools that are appropriate to its advancement. Tibetan interpreters generally claim to take the seventh-century commentaries of Candrakīrti as authoritative, but Indian commentators subsequent to him were in fact more influential in the course of Indian philosophy. Madhyamaka also had considerable influence (though by way of a rather different set of texts) in East Asian Buddhism, where a characteristic interpretive concern has been to harmonize Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. Although perhaps most frequently characterized by modern interpreters as a Buddhist version of skepticism, Madhyamaka arguably develops metaphysical concerns. The logically elusive character of Madhyamaka arguments has fascinated and perplexed generations of scholars. This is surely appropriate with regard to a school whose principal term of art, "emptiness" (śūnyatā), reflects developments in Buddhist thought from the high scholasticism of Tibet to the enigmatic discourse of East Asian Zen.
Nāgārjuna and the Paradoxical "Perfection of Wisdom" Literature
The Basic Philosophical Impulse
The "Two Truths" in Buddhist Abhidharma
The Interminability of Dependent Origination
Ethics and the Charge of Nihilism
The Question of Self-contradiction and the Possible Truth of Mādhyamika Claims
Historical Development of Indian Schools of Interpretation
More on the Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika Difference: Madhyamaka and Buddhist Epistemology
Madhyamaka in Tibet
Madhyamaka in East Asia
1. Nāgārjuna and the Paradoxical "Perfection of Wisdom" Literature
"Madhyamaka" is a Sanskrit word that simply means "middle way." (The derivative form "Mādhyamika" literally means "of or relating to the middle," and conventionally designates an adherent of the school, or qualifies some aspect of its thought.) Madhyamaka refers to the Indian Buddhist school of thought that develops in the form of commentaries on the works of Nāgārjuna, who flourished around 150 C.E. Nāgārjuna figures in the traditional accounts developed to authenticate the literature of the self-styled "Mahāyāna" stream of Buddhist thought. Arguing that sūtras known to have begun circulating only at the beginning of the first millennium could nevertheless represent the authentic teaching of the Buddha (buddhavacana), proponents of Mahāyāna invoked the characteristically Buddhist idea of "skill in means" (upāyakauśalya); they thus claimed that the Mahāyāna sūtras promulgate an advanced stage of the Buddha's teaching such as would not have been appropriately taught to the earliest auditors of the Buddha, who, unprepared by the necessarily preparatory earlier teachings, might draw nihilistic conclusions from the sūtras. It is Nāgārjuna who is said first to have recovered and promulgated these sūtras, having retrieved the Prajñāpāramitā ("Perfection of Wisdom") literature from the underwater kingdom of the "Nāgas," or serpent kings.
Two texts generally represent the criteria for attributing authorship of a text to Nāgārjuna. So, this name conventionally refers to the person who wrote the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās (MMK, "Verses on the Firmly Fixed Middle Way") and the Vigrahavyāvartanī (VV, "Turning Back Objections"). Both of these texts, but particularly the former, have occasioned a great deal of interest among Indologists and philosophers. This is not surprising, since the MMK is indeed a rich text. Stylistically lucid yet logically enigmatic, Nāgārjuna's major work shares with the Prajñāpāramitā literature a characteristic air of paradox, which Madhyamaka's critics see as evidence of nihilism if not of incoherence. We read in this text, for example, that "there is, on the part of saṃsāra, no difference at all from nirvāṇa" (MMK 25.19). The text's first verse says "There do not exist, anywhere at all, any existents whatsoever, arisen either from themselves or from something else, either from both or altogether without cause." (MMK 1.1)
2. The Basic Philosophical Impulse
a. The "Two Truths" in Buddhist Abhidharma
In styling the school that develops from Nāgārjuna's works the "middle way" (an expression used by Nāgārjuna himself), proponents of Madhyamaka exploited a long-invoked Buddhist trope. Traditional accounts of the life of the Buddha typically characterize him as striking a "middle way" between the extravagance of the courtly life that had been available to him as a prince and the extreme asceticism he is said initially to have tried in his pursuit of transformative insight. Philosophically, the relevant extremes between which any Buddhist account of the person must steer are "eternalism" and "nihilism." Eternalism (śāśvatavāda) is the view that there are enduring existents of which the self is an example. Nihilism (ucchedavāda) might be termed "eliminativism," and denotes, for Buddhists, the view that actions (karma) have no ethical consequences, insofar as the agents of actions cannot be said to endure as the subjects who will experience their effects.
Given their characteristically Buddhist concern to refuse the existence of an ultimately existent "self," it is the nihilism pole that Mādhyamikas must work hardest to avoid. Indeed, the concern to avoid charges of nihilism represents one of the most significant preoccupations of Mādhyamika philosophers. This concern has to be understood in terms of the traditionally Buddhist idea of "two truths," or two levels of explanation or description: the familiar level of discourse that includes reference to the "conventionally existent" (saṃvṛtisat), and the level which makes reference only to what is "ultimately existent" (parmārthasat). Most schools of Buddhist philosophy can be understood in terms of the sense in which they deny the "ultimate" existence of the self, while affirming its "conventional" existence.
In its basically Ābhidharmika iterations (that is, in the ways elaborated in the earliest scholastic literature of Indian Buddhism, the so-called "Abhidharma") this denial of the ultimate existence of the self is an idea that can be understood as comparable to a great deal of contemporary philosophical discussion. Philosophical projects in cognitive science can be said, for example, to turn on questions of how (or perhaps whether) to relate two levels of description: (1) the broadly intentional level of description that generally reflects the first-person, phenomenological perspective (and that is also reflected in ordinary language and interactions), and (2) the scientific level of description at which the real explanatory work is done. Similarly, the broadly Ābhidharmika trajectory of Buddhist philosophy has it that the two truths basically consist in two sets of existing things: the set of conventionally existent (saṃvṛtisat) things and the set of ultimately existent (parmārthasat) things. The "conventionally existent" comprises all reducible or supervenient phenomena (basically, all temporally enduring macro-objects); the "ultimately existent" represents the set of ontological primitives, which the Abhidharma literature calls "dharmas." It is ultimately the case, then, that causal interactions among the dharmas exhaustively explain all conventional events.
The works of Nāgārjuna and his philosophical heirs are best understood as constitutively opposed to this understanding of the two truths. The foundational idea of Madhyamaka is that the set of ultimately existent things is an empty set – a point that Mādhyamikas characteristically promote by insisting on the emptiness (śūnyatā) not only of wholes such as persons, but also of the analytic categories (dharmas) to which these are reduced in Abhidharma literature. The works of Nāgārjuna and his commentators, then, typically comprise arguments to the effect that none of the analytic categories (dharmas) and concepts used to explain anything can be coherently formulated. More precisely, the argument is that no such categories can intrinsically provide any explanatory purchase on the phenomena they purportedly explain.
b. The Interminability of Dependent Origination
In proceeding this way, Mādhyamikas can be understood to think that the ontologizing impulse of Abhidharma compromises the most important insight of the Buddhist tradition – which is, on the Mādhyamika reading, that all existents are "dependently originated" (pratītyasamutpanna). (The cardinal doctrine of the "dependent origination" of all existents represents the flip-side of the Buddhist denial of a "self"; that is, the reason we do not have unitary and enduring selves just is that any moment of experience can be explained as having originated from innumerable causes, none of which can be specified as what we "really" are.) More precisely, Mādhyamikas can be said to have recognized that the ontological primitives posited by Abhidharma could have explanatory purchase only if they are posited as an exception to the rule that everything is dependently originated; that is, dependently originated existents could only be ultimately explained by something that does not itself require the same kind of explanation. But it is precisely the Mādhyamika point to emphasize that there is no exception to this rule; phenomena are dependently originated all the way down, and it is therefore impossible to specify precisely what it is upon which anything finally depends. Hence, there can be no set of "ultimately existent" things.
Mādhyamika arguments to this effect typically work by showing that all explanatory categories turn out to be constitutively dependent upon the phenomena they purportedly explain – as, for example, notions such as "fire" and "fuel," "action" and "agent," or "cause" and "effect" are intelligible only relative to one another. To show the constitutively relative (that is, dependent) character of all such explanatory categories and phenomena is effectively to make the one point that Mādhyamikas are most concerned to make: that insofar as there is nothing that is not dependently originated, there is therefore nothing that is not "empty" (śūnya). (This paraphrases MMK 24.19, which says: "Since there is no dharma whatsoever that is not dependently originated, therefore there is no dharma whatsoever that is not empty.")
In thus characterizing all categories and all existents as finally "empty," what Mādhyamikas mean is that they are empty of what we may translate as "essence" (svabhāva). This is true just insofar as they exist not "essentially" (svabhāvena), but only relatively – that is, only in relation to other existents and categories. In arguing thus, Mādhyamikas – typifying characteristically Sanskritic styles of argumentation, in which the terms and analyses of the Sanskrit grammarians figure prominently – exploit the etymology of the word svabhāva. Although the semantic range of this Sanskrit word typically comprises ideas like "defining characteristic" or "identity," the word can etymologically be read as referring to something "existent" (bhāva) "by itself" (sva-). Among the recently debated exegetical questions concerning Madhyamaka has been whether important Mādhyamika arguments centrally involve an equivocation on this term, unwarrantedly equating "identity" with "causally independent existence."
c. Ethics and the Charge of Nihilism
It is not only in their characteristically Buddhist denial of a really existent "self," but also in their more radical (and rhetorically charged) emphasis on the universally obtaining character of emptiness that Mādhyamikas recurrently elicited charges of nihilism – a charge as often issuing from proponents of other Buddhist schools as from the various Brahmanical schools of Indian philosophy. One of the most prominently recurrent sorts of exchange in Nāgārjuna's MMK involves an interlocutor's presupposing that by 'emptiness' Mādhyamikas must mean non-existence. For example, the twenty-fourth chapter of the MMK begins with the challenge of an imagined interlocutor (this one clearly another Buddhist): "If all this is empty, then there's neither production nor destruction; it follows, for you, that the Four Noble Truths don't exist." (MMK 24.1) The rejoinder (at MMK 24.20): it is in fact only because everything is empty – which just is to say, dependently originated – that the Four Noble Truths can obtain. That is, the fact that existents only come into being in mutual dependence upon one another (and are therefore "empty" of an essence) is all that makes it possible for (what is the first Noble Truth) suffering to arise – and thus having arisen as a contingent and dependent phenomenon, to be caused to cease (the third Noble Truth). If, in contrast, suffering were the "natural" or "essential" state of affairs (svabhāva), this would (as Nāgārjuna sees it) mean that it could not be interrupted, and the cultivation of the entire Buddhist path would be impossible.
It is particularly important for the proponent of Madhyamaka to foreclose the possibility of a nihilist reading of claims regarding emptiness insofar as it is finally the ethical and soteriological project of Buddhist practice that is thought to be at stake. In this regard, the characteristically Mādhyamika conviction is that it is in fact the Ābhidharmika iteration of the Buddhist project (and not Mādhyamika claims regarding emptiness) that is "nihilist." This is because on the characteristically Ābhidharmika understanding of the "two truths," the world as "conventionally" described – as consisting, for example, in suffering persons whose plight should elicit compassionate dedication to the Buddhist path – is finally altogether superseded by the privileged level of description constitutively developed in the Abhidharma literature. The characteristically Ābhidharmika enumeration of the dharmas that putatively constitute the set of "ultimately existent" things amounts to the specification of what "really" exists instead of the self. If, in contrast, it is recognized that no such privileged level of description can coherently be elaborated – that, in other words, there is no set of ontological primitives in terms of which the only real explanatory work can be done, and that in that sense there is nothing "more real" than the world as conventionally described – then the world is finally to be accepted as irreducibly "conventional," and the persons therein can hence be regarded as ethical agents who are not finally eliminable in terms of the analytic categories of Abhidharma.
3. The Question of Self-contradiction and the Possible Truth of Mādhyamika Claims
But this understanding also raises what are surely the most philosophically complex and interesting problems in understanding Madhyamaka: if the constitutive claim of Madhyamaka is to be taken as one to the effect that the ultimate truth is that there is (in the sense described) no "ultimate truth," it is easy to ask: What is the status of this claim itself? It would seem open to the Mādhyamika only to allow that it is itself conventionally true – but is that not just to say that one may as well choose not to adopt this particular "convention"? The problem, then, is whether characteristically Mādhyamika claims are, to the extent they are true, performatively self-contradictory or self-referentially incoherent. This problem was well understood (if not always clearly addressed) by proponents of Madhyamaka, and is very much in play in characteristically Mādhyamika claims to the effect that "emptiness" itself is empty – that, in other words, the Mādhyamika analysis is to be applied not only to all existents, but also to this analysis thereof.
To say as much is the only way consistently to affirm the universal scope of claims regarding emptiness; for there would clearly be a performative self-contradiction in claiming that "all existents are empty-cum-dependently-originated," while yet allowing that claim itself to stand as an exception – as itself having, that is, the kind of "ultimately" privileged explanatory purchase that is denied with respect to all other analyses. But it is a complex matter whether the Mādhyamika can, in avoiding this route to self-contradiction, affirm the "emptiness of emptiness" without thereby depriving his own claim of any purchase. It is particularly at this point, then, that there is an air of paradox going to the heart of Mādhyamika discourse, finding expression in, for example, apparent claims to the effect that no claim is being made; hence, such quintessentially Mādhyamika tropes as the claim that Madhyamaka advances no philosophical "thesis" (pratijñā), and that "emptiness" does not reflect any specific "view" (dṛṣṭi).
Such rhetoric characteristically expresses what is surely the central interpretive and philosophical issue at stake in understanding Madhyamaka, and it is not surprising, in this regard, that Madhyamaka should often have been interpreted by modern scholars as having affinities with Hellenistic skepticism. Another line of interpretation (often inflected in recent years by appeal to Wittgenstein, or to various poststructuralist thinkers) has it that Mādhyamika claims not to be making any claim should be taken seriously as expressing a basically "therapeutic" sort of stance – one meant performatively to undermine (in something like the same way, perhaps, as in the Zen discourse of koans) soteriologically counter-productive profusions of discursive thought. This line of interpretation can be warranted by characteristically Mādhyamika talk about the elimination of prapañca (often translated as conceptual "proliferation"), and by paeans to the "ultimate truth" as something finally ineffable.
Such readings are, however, difficult to reconcile with what many Tibetan interpreters (perhaps notwithstanding such rhetoric) took to be the constitutively Mādhyamika claim: namely, that "emptiness" just means (and is the only way consistently to describe) "dependent origination." If it is said, for example, that there is nothing "non-empty" just insofar as there is nothing that is not dependently originated (here again, paraphrasing MMK 24.19), that would seem to preclude, at least, the truth of statements (made, e.g., by certain theists) to the effect that there is something (e.g., God) that is necessarily (or otherwise not dependently) existent. If the Mādhyamika statement does not rule out the truth of such statements, then it would be difficult to understand it as meaning anything (although perhaps the radically "therapeutic" interpreter of Madhyamaka will here bite the bullet and, well, argue that it is the very idea of "meaning" anything that is to be jettisoned); but to say that the Mādhyamika claim contradicts a truth-claim proffered by some theists just is to say that the former claim, too, is proposed as true. Recognizing that, one might urge that the universal scope of the Mādhyamika claim entails that there is an important sense in which Madhyamaka is constitutively anti-skeptical – that, indeed, Mādhyamika arguments advance a finally metaphysical point. For example, one could argue that what is at stake here is the properly transcendental fact that emptiness (understood as the fact that things exist only interdependently) is a condition of the possibility of any existents and of any analysis thereof.
The question for the proponent of such a line of interpretation then becomes: If "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth," is it possible to think of this claim as itself ultimately true? It is important to note, in this regard, that while Mādhyamikas characteristically (indeed, constitutively) eschew the Ābhidharmika idea that "ultimate truth" involves a domain of enumerable existents regarding which claims are to be judged for their adequacy, Madhyamaka nevertheless makes abundant reference to the "ultimate truth." One way to make sense of this is to attribute to Madhyamaka a basically deflationist account of truth – that is, one according to which calling a claim "true" is to be explained not as predicating a metaphysical property (such as "correspondence" with "ultimately existent" things) of it, but simply as committing oneself to it. On such a view, to the extent that the (Ābhidharmika) idea of "ultimate truth" has been shown incoherent, all that remains is the level of "truth" that is characterized by common-sense realism.
This interpretation has the advantage of fitting quite well with the kind of traditional doxographical accounts (influentially developed, early on, by the Indian Mādhyamika Bhāvaviveka) that figure prominently in the Tibetan monastic curriculum. These represent the schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy in an ascending hierarchy of progressively more refined views, the understanding of each of which requires having rightly understood its predecessors. On such an account, Madhyamaka, though framed as an uncompromising critique of Ābhidharmika Buddhism, nevertheless depends on the latter: if the naive realism of non-Buddhas consists in thinking there is something more real (paradigmatically, selves) underlying our experience of the world, the realization of the "deflated" realism of Madhyamaka differs from that (and is therefore transformative) only insofar as one has first pursued to its limits the kind of reductionist exercise that shows how unstable is our naive self-grasping. If one has not first entertained the Ābhidharmika's reductionist approach, then there would be no difference between the common-sense realism of the Mādhyamika, and that of ordinary ignorant persons. But if one realizes the necessary failure of the reductionist's privileged level of description only after having entertained it, the resultant "realism" will be inflected by the transformative understanding that our selves are "real" in the only sense in which anything (even the purportedly "ultimate" existents that are dharmas) can be real – that is, relatively, dependently.
Another strategy (perhaps not mutually exclusive of the foregoing) is to emphasize that what Mādhyamikas refute, under the heading of "ultimate truth," is simply the idea of a privileged level of description (in the form of a set of enumerable ontological primitives) – but that the abstract fact of there being no such set is itself really (indeed metaphysically) true. In that case, the salient point is just that the truth of the Mādhyamika claim does not consist in its reference to – its correspondence with – a specifiable domain of objects. This reconstruction can be coupled with an understanding of Mādhyamika arguments as basically transcendental arguments. Such an interpretation makes good sense, at least, of what is surely one of the most prominently recurrent rhetorical strategies of Nāgārjuna; so, Nāgārjuna can be understood to argue that his various interlocutors' objections are incoherent just insofar as these very objections presuppose the truth of Nāgārjuna's claims. Emptiness is not only not mutually exclusive of the Four Noble Truths – it is a condition of the possibility thereof. Emptiness is, moreover, a condition of the possibility even of an opponent's denying this; for any analysis or denial at all (indeed, any cognitive act) consists, in the first instance, in some relation.
Perhaps more suggestively, such an interpretation can also help map the finally ethical concerns of Madhyamaka onto some contemporary arguments concerning reductionist accounts of the person. In this regard, it was noted that the Ābhidharmika trajectory of Buddhist philosophy can be understood as analogous to various projects in cognitive science. In the idiom of the latter, then, it could be said that the Ābhidharmika idea is that there is, "conventionally," an intentional level of description (variously characterized as the "common-sense" view, "folk psychology," etc.); and, "ultimately," a scientific level of description, comprising the ontological primitives that alone are said "really" to exist, and exhaustively to explain the former level. One line of critique developed against such approaches is to argue that anyone offering an exhaustively "impersonal," non-intentional description of (what we think of as) persons can be shown necessarily to presuppose precisely the personal, intentional level of description that is purportedly explained. Similarly, the upshot of the Mādhyamika argument that the world is (as expressed above) "irreducibly conventional" is that the level of description at which "persons" are in play cannot coherently be thought to be eliminable. Many of the commentator Candrakīrti's arguments can be said, without too great a stretch, to make something like this point, recurrently urging against various interlocutors that any purported attempt to explain the conventional world (in terms that, if the proposed account is to have any explanatory purchase, must not themselves be conventional) inevitably founders on the unavoidability of presupposing the conventional senses of words.
Suffice it to say that the philosophical and exegetical issues in play here are highly complex, and that almost any attempt at understanding the texts of Nāgārjuna and his commentators is likely to require a considerable effort of rational reconstruction – which perhaps explains the enduring appeal of this trajectory of thought.
4. Historical Development of Indian Schools of Interpretation
The Indian Buddhist tradition attests two broad streams in the interpretation of Nāgārjuna's thought, corresponding roughly to what later Tibetan interpreters would refer to as the "Prāsaṅgika" and "Svātantrika" accounts of Madhyamaka. Interpreters of the former sort are so-called because of their view that Madhyamaka should be advanced only by reducing an opponent's arguments to absurdity. Nāgārjuna is, on this view, to be interpreted as showing only the unwanted consequences ("prasaṅga") entailed by his opponents' claims, and not as defending any philosophical "thesis" (pratijñā) of his own. Svātantrikas, in contrast, are so-called because of their characteristic view that Nāgārjuna's verses require restatement as formally valid inferences (svatantra-anumāna) whose conclusions are to be affirmed. Much contemporary debate has concerned whether these divergent lines of interpretation reflect only differing dialectical strategies, or whether (as influential Tibetan proponents of the distinction claim) they involve significantly different ontological presuppositions. Although the characterizations of these two trajectories of interpretation are not without basis in the antecedent Indian texts, this doxographic lens is of interest partly for what it can tell us about some characteristically Tibetan preoccupations (and about the influence of certain schools of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy on the contemporary interpretation of Indian Buddhist thought).
Names traditionally associated with the "Prāsaṅgika" stream of interpretation include Āryadeva, who is traditionally regarded as Nāgārjuna's direct disciple (making his date close to Nāgārjuna's), and who wrote the Catuḥśataka ("400 Verses") – a text that is particularly important insofar as the divergent interpretations of it by the commentators Dharmapāla (530-561) and Candrakīrti are sometimes taken to herald a decisive split between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra (see Tillemans 1990); Buddhapālita (fl. c. 500), the author of a complete commentary (now extant only in Tibetan translation) on the MMK; and Candrakīrti (c. 600-650), whose Prasannapadā ("Clear Words") – the only commentary on the MMK known to be extant in Sanskrit – preserves the Sanskrit text of Nāgārjuna's verse text.
Candrakīrti is also the author of, among other works, the Madhyamakāvatāra ("Introduction to Madhyamaka"), an independent work (with auto-commentary) that represents the principal text for the "Madhyamaka" component of many Tibetan monastic curricula. This work is structured on the model of texts like the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, with chapters corresponding to that text's progression in a bodhisattva's mastery of ten "perfections" (pāramitā). The sixth chapter (fittingly corresponding to prajñāpāramitā, the "perfection of wisdom") is by far the longest and the most philosophically rich, comprising, inter alia, important Mādhyamika critiques of Yogācāra.
Significant later Prāsaṅgikas include Śāntideva (fl. early eighth century), the author of the Bodhicaryāvatāra ("Introduction to the Conduct of Awakening"), an eloquent and popular text whose difficult ninth chapter (helpfully elaborated by the commentary of Prajñākaramati, who likely flourished in the tenth century) comprises important Mādhyamika arguments; and Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982-1054; more popularly known as "Atiśa"), who figured prominently in the transmission of Indian Buddhism to Tibet, where he lived when he wrote the Bodhipathapradīpa ("A Lamp for the Path to Awakening").
The "Svātantrika" line of interpretation originates with Bhāvaviveka (c. 500-570; his name is also reported as "Bhāviveka," and he is often referred to as "Bhavya"), the author not only of a commentary on the MMK – the Prajñāpradīpa, now extant only in Tibetan and Chinese translations – but also of an independent work, the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikās, "Verses on the Heart of Madhyamaka," with an auto-commentary entitled Tarkajvāla ("Blaze of Logic"). Other significant exponents of this line of thought include Jñānagarbha (fl. early eighth century), who is traditionally regarded as the teacher of Śāntarakṣita (725-788). The latter is the author of the Madhyamakālaṃkāra ("Ornament of Madhyamaka"), a relatively concise text elaborating Śāntarakṣita's characteristic synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. Śāntarakṣita is perhaps more widely known for the Tattvasaṃgraha ("Summa of Quiddities"), a massive treatise that takes on a huge range of Indian philosophical doctrines – and that quotes extensively from Brahmanical and other Buddhist philosophers, making it an important source of fragments from Indian works that do not, like the Tattvasaṃgraha, survive in Sanskrit.
The latter text is (like the Madhyamakālaṃkāra) helpfully illuminated by a commentary (the Tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā) by Śāntarakṣita's student and disciple Kamalaśīla (c.740-795). The latter traveled with his teacher to Tibet, where both thinkers figure prominently in the founding events of Tibetan Buddhist thought. Kamalaśīla is, for example, traditionally regarded by Tibetans as having advocated the "gradualist" position in a famous debate at the bSam-yas monastery with a Chinese exponent of the Ch'an ("Zen") understanding of "sudden enlightenment." It was Kamalaśīla's victory in this debate that established the "gradualist" understanding as at least officially normative for most schools of Tibetan Buddhism; while the occurrence of the debate itself may be apocryphal, such a position is surely reflected in Kamalaśīla's three Bhāvanākrama ("stages of cultivation") texts, written in Tibet.
5. More on the Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika Difference: Madhyamaka and Buddhist Epistemology
As indicated, the so-called Svātantrika trajectory of Madhyamaka constitutively involves recourse to the tools of formal logic and inference, evincing a characteristic concern to restate Nāgārjuna's arguments as formally valid inferences. More generally, it can be said that this approach is informed by Bhāvaviveka's use of the logic and epistemology of Dignāga (c. 480-540), who influentially appealed to the idiom of pramāṇavidyā (the "discipline of logic and epistemology") in advancing the Buddhist position – and who was, indeed, among the most important figures in developing the broadly Sanskritic conceptual vocabulary that would predominate in the subsequent course of Indian philosophy. Similarly, such later Svātantrikas as Śāntarakṣita were informed by the project of Dignāga's influential expositor Dharmakīrti (c. 600-660), and figures such as Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita would be of decisive importance for the remaining course of the Indian Buddhist philosophical tradition's life. (Candrakīrti, in contrast, would exercise little influence in India, though he re-emerges with the Tibetan tradition's interest in him.)
The dispute between these lines of interpretation crystallizes around the figures of Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka, and Candrakīrti – and can be seen, in particular, in their respective elaborations of Nāgārjuna's MMK 1.1 ("There do not exist, anywhere at all, any existents whatsoever, arisen either from themselves or from something else, either from both or altogether without cause"). This verse basically deploys a standard tool in the Mādhyamika arsenal: the "tetralemma" (catuṣkoṭi), a four-fold statement that is meant to identify all possible relations between any category and its putative explananda (e.g., "the same," "different," "both the same and different," "neither the same nor different") – with the standard Mādhyamika denial of all four horns of the tetralemma meant as an exhaustive refutation of the efficacy and coherence of the category in question. (One modern interpretive discussion concerns whether or not this apparent violation of bivalent logic shows Mādhyamikas to have presupposed a non-standard sort of logic.)
Buddhapālita's "prāsaṅgika" commentary on this verse does nothing more than make clear (what he takes to be) the absurd consequences that would be entailed by affirming any one of the positions here rejected. For example, the view that existents originate intrinsically – a position traditionally understood to express the Indian Sāṃkhya school's characteristic view that effects are always latent within their causes – is to be denied "since there would be no point in the arising of already existent things." That is, an affirmation of the causation of something from itself entails that the thing in question already exists, in which case, its coming-into-being could not be thought to require causal explanation.
In his commentary on the MMK, Bhāvaviveka then specifically took Buddhapālita to task, urging that Buddhapālita's elaboration of the argument was unreasonable "because no reason and no example are given and because faults stated by the opponent are not answered" – which is to say, because the recognized terms of a formally stated inference (as that had been thematized by Sanskritic philosophers such as Dignāga) were not present. In contrast, then, to Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka offers a formally valid statement of the reasoning behind Nāgārjuna's denial of the first horn of the verse's tetralemma: "[Thesis:] It is certain that the inner sense fields (āyatanas) do not ultimately originate from themselves; [Reason:] because they exist [already], [Example:] like consciousness." Among the characteristic features of Bhāvaviveka's restatement here is his making explicit the qualifier "ultimately" (or "essentially," svabhāvataḥ); that is, Nāgārjuna is here said to deny only that something is the case essentially or ultimately. While the first horn of this tetralemma ("existents are arisen from themselves") perhaps requires no such qualification in order for its denial to be intelligible, many interpreters would agree that such a qualification must be added particularly in order for the denial of the second (which concerns that origination of things from other existents) to make any sense; for it is surely counter-intuitive to think that we cannot even conventionally speak of the origination of existents from one another. A great many of Nāgārjuna's prima facie counter-intuitive refutations can be understood to make more sense if they are qualified as concerning what is "ultimately" or "essentially" the case (and not taken simpliciter).
A considerable portion of the first chapter of Candrakīrti's Prasannapadā is then given over to defending Buddhapālita's as the right way to proceed, and to criticizing Bhāvaviveka's interpretive procedure as misguided. How, then, are we to make sense, without Bhāvaviveka's characteristic qualification, of Nāgārjuna's denial of the second horn of the tetralemma – of his denial, that is, that things originate from other existents? On Candrakīrti's reading (which follows Buddhapālita's), the absurdity that would be entailed by thinking otherwise would be that a sprout could just as well be produced from the coals of a fire as from a seed; and, conversely, if a sprout cannot be produced from the coals of a fire, it cannot be said to be produced from a seed, either. Candrakīrti's argument here is usefully understood as involving a priori (as contra a posteriori) analysis; that is, the argument short-circuits any appeal to what we experience to be the case, instead analyzing only the concepts presupposed in how we explain experience – and the point is to reduce to absurdity any argument that presupposes the independence of such concepts (that presupposes, in other words, that any such concepts might afford a privileged perspective on what there is). Read this way, the argument turns simply on the definition of "other," and the point is that the general concept of "otherness" leaves us with no principled way to know which other things are relevantly connected to the thing whose arising we seek to explain, and we are left to suppose that anything that is "other" than the latter (even the coals of a fire) could give rise to it.
Although many Tibetan exegetes were (as noted) inclined to see the dispute here as turning on subtle ontological presuppositions, this can be hard to glean from the Indian texts upon which the dispute is based. The characteristically Svātantrika appeal to the idiom of logic and epistemology can, however, be understood as meant to address what are real philosophical problems in the Mādhyamika project as that is understood by Candrakīrti – just as Candrakīrti, for his part, can be understood as having philosophically principled reasons for refusing the epistemological tools characteristically deployed by Bhāvaviveka and his heirs. What is at issue here is, once again, the question of how we are to regard the "conventionally" described world once the idea that there can be an "ultimately" true description thereof has been jettisoned. Nāgārjuna himself had emphasized the importance of some kind of relation in this regard, saying, for example, that "without relying on convention, the ultimate is not taught; without having understood the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not apprehended" (MMK 24.10). In other words, the (relative) reality of the conventionally described world is a condition of the possibility of our coming to understand what is ultimately the case; but if what is understood thereby is in fact that there is nothing "more real" than the conventionally described world – that, e.g., there are no ontological primitives that are not themselves subject to the conditions that obtain in the world – then it might be thought that, as it were, "anything goes."
The philosophical worry, then, is that if Mādhyamika arguments are not understood in something like the way that Svātantrikas propose, Madhyamaka could degenerate into a thoroughgoing and pernicious conventionalism. The broadly Svātantrika line of interpretation attempts to address this worry by arguing that even if all discourse (including that of the Mādhyamika) perforce takes place at the "conventional" level, it is nevertheless the case that some "conventions" are more nearly true than others – and that the epistemological tools developed by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti give us the resources to sort these out. The Svātantrika Jñānagarbha (followed, in this regard, by his student Śāntarakṣita) emphasized that we can distinguish between "true convention" (tathya-saṃvṛti) and "false convention" (mithyā-saṃvṛti).
In his refusal of the characteristically "Svātantrika" use of the conceptual tools of Buddhist epistemology, Candrakīrti need not be understood as conceding simply that anything goes. Candrakīrti's point, rather, would seem to be to emphasize that there can be no explanatory categories that do not themselves exhibit the same characteristics (chiefly, the fact of being dependently originated) already on display in the conventionally described world; and any constitutively analytic sort of reasoning (such as that exemplified by the discourse of epistemology) just is a search for something beyond what is already given in conventional discourse. What is "conventionally" true, then, is (by definition) just our conventions – and any demand for some account or explanation of these could be thought to provide some purchase only to the extent that what is demanded is something that is not itself "conventional." But there cannot be any such discourse, any more than there can be an existent that is not dependently originated; the two claims are related insofar as all that could count as a discursively exhaustive explanation would be one that adduces something that is not itself subject to the constraints that it explains – which is to say, something not dependently originated. Although this may represent an adequate reconstruction of his position, Candrakīrti's emphasis on the definitively "non-analytic" character of conventional discourse can, nevertheless, reasonably be thought to leave his project vulnerable to charges of incoherence, and it can be seen that the issues in dispute between Svātantrikas and Prāsaṅgika are the same paradoxes that bedevil Madhyamaka more generally.
6. Madhyamaka in Tibet
Indian Madhyamaka figures decisively in most of the Tibetan schools of Buddhist philosophy, which tend to agree in judging Madhyamaka to represent the pinnacle of Buddhist thought. There are, however, interesting historical and philosophical developments that greatly complicate this picture. For example, while the scholastic traditions of Indian Buddhist philosophy were first introduced to Tibet by the "Svātantrika" Mādhyamikas Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, many schools of Tibetan Buddhism nevertheless claim Candrakīrti's ("Prāsaṅgika") interpretation as authoritative – a fact partly owing, perhaps, to the influence of Atiśa in the so-called "second dissemination" of Indian Buddhism to Tibet (that is, the period during which Indian Buddhism was decisively established in Tibet, and during which the systematic translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan was brought to fruition). However, the characteristically Tibetan emphasis on "Vajrayāna" (that is, tantric) forms of practice arguably promotes greater recourse to the idiom of Yogācāra than would be encouraged by Candrakīrti. In addition, there are, as noted, philosophical reasons for qualifying some of Candrakīrti's positions. Hence, even those Tibetan schools (such as the dGe-lugs) that most forcefully assert the authoritative character of "Prāsaṅgika" Madhyamaka tend, for example, to support their interpretation with significant studies in the Buddhist epistemological tradition – a move, as noted, definitively characteristic of the "Svātantrika" approach.
The attempt thus to wed Madhyamaka to the philosophical project of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti is worth appreciating not only because it is intrinsically interesting, but because, particularly in the United States in the latter part of the 20th century, a great many modern interpreters of Indian Madhyamaka have been influenced by characteristically Tibetan appropriations of this tradition. While this has arguably led to some distortions in the exegesis particularly of Candrakīrti's texts, there is much to recommend the Tibetans' systematic (as opposed to historical) presentation of Madhyamaka in relation to the other schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy. As indicated, a distinctive feature of characteristically Tibetan presentations of Buddhist philosophy is the use of doxographical digests elaborating what are called "established conclusions" (grub mtha'; this translates the Sanskrit siddhānta).
On this model, the various schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy (principally consisting, according to such presentations, in the two "Ābhidharmika" schools of the Vaibhāṣikas and Sautrāntikas, and the two "Mahāyāna" schools of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka) are represented in an ascending hierarchy of progressively more refined positions, the proper understanding of each of which requires understanding its predecessors. Ascent through the hierarchy is characterized, most basically, by the progressive elimination of ontological commitments: the two Ābhidharmika schools divide over the question of what are to be admitted as "dharmas" qualifying for inclusion in a final ontology; Yogācāra further pares down this list to nothing but mental events; the "Svātantrika" Mādhyamikas are represented as retaining only the vestigial ontological commitments that are thought to be entailed by their characteristic deference to the dialectical tools of epistemology; until, with the "Prāsaṅgika" iteration of Madhyamaka, we arrive at the school of thought for which the set of "ultimately existent" (paramārthasat) phenomena is an empty set.
The effect of this is to throw our attention back to the only "set" of existents with any remaining content: the conventionally described world, now understood as ineliminable. Hence, on this view, there is the avoidance of (what Mādhyamikas are always trying to eschew) the extreme of nihilism or "eliminativism" (ucchedavāda); but there is also the (constitutively Buddhist) avoidance of the extreme of "eternalism," insofar as the effect of cultivating the Mādhyamika insight only as the culminating stage in a progression is (it is claimed) to have driven home the realization that the self exists (like everything "conventional") only relatively or dependently. Once the project of a privileged level of description has been abandoned, the "common-sense realism" that remains can be seen to differ from that of the unenlightened "by virtue of its being adopted in full cognizance of the progression through the intervening stages" (Siderits 2003, 185).
The same insight is reflected in the basic monastic curriculum of dGe-lugs-pa monasteries, which is structured around five topics defined by representative Indian texts: The Vinaya, or Buddhist monastic code, as represented by the Vinaya Sūtra of Guṇaprabha; Abhidharma, as represented by the Abhidharmakośa of Vasubandhu; logic and epistemology, as represented by the Pramāṇavārttika of Dharmakīrti; Madhyamaka, as represented by Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra; and the stages on the path to enlightenment, as represented by the Abhisamayālaṃkāra attributed to Maitreya. In this way, the study of the Madhyamaka tradition of Buddhist philosophy comes only in the context of an overarching education in a complete Buddhist world-view, such that characteristically Mādhyamika teachings concerning "emptiness" are – like the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras whose retrieval by Nāgārjuna was thought to introduce Mahāyāna as representing the Buddha's definitive teaching – made intelligible by the necessarily propaedeutic earlier teachings. Above all, it is the finally ethical character of Mādhyamika thought that is encouraged by this pedagogical system; for the characteristically Mādhyamika claim that "all dharmas are empty" – that, in other words, Abhidharma's reductionist account of the person cannot finally be made coherent – cannot be understood as nihilistic if it has been made clear that the upshot of it is to return our attention to the irreducibly conventional world in which persons live and suffer.
Tibetan tradition preserves, however, not only a model for the integration of Madhyamaka philosophy into a structured set of transformative religious practices, but also a great deal of innovative and sophisticated philosophical elaboration of Mādhyamika thought. For example, the prolific scholar Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419) – originator of the influential reformist school that would style itself the "dGe-lugs" ("virtuous way") – did much to integrate the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka of Candrakīrti with the understanding and teaching of Buddhist epistemology stemming from Dharmakīrti. Tsong-kha-pa's works (such as the massive Lam rim chen mo, "Great [treatise on] the Stages of the Path") also bring considerable sophistication to bear on the question of how Madhyamaka ought to be understood in relation to Yogācāra. Critics of Tsong-kha-pa – such as, notably, the Sa-skya-pa scholar Go-ram-pa bSod-nams seng-ge (1429-1489) – stridently condemned his confidence that the discourse of epistemology could bring Mādhyamika analysis into contact with ultimate reality. On Go-ram-pa's reading, such confidence amounts to the claim that the discursive thought that understands "ultimate truth" is itself ultimately true – which is to confuse the (necessarily conventional) activity of thinking about ultimate truth with what it is that such thought is about. Go-ram-pa claims that Tsong-kha-pa's account of Madhyamaka entails the nihilistic conclusion that what is ultimately true is simply what is conventionally true. This Tibetan debate, then, recognizably addresses the perennially vexed issues that go to the heart of Madhyamaka: those concerning how we are to understand the relation between ultimate and conventional truth, in the context of a claim to the effect that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth."
7. Madhyamaka in East Asia
It is frequently observed that while Indo-Tibetan schools of Buddhist philosophy characteristically developed around the systematic treatises (śāstras) of historical thinkers like Nāgārjuna and Dignāga, Chinese Buddhist philosophy instead centers on (and its schools are largely defined by) the interpretation of particular Buddhist sūtras. Whatever truth there may be in this, it is certainly the case that a great deal of systematic Indian Buddhist philosophy from the mature scholastic phase of the tradition (roughly, from the sixth century on) was never translated into Chinese. Although the texts of (say) Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, and Dignāga are available in Chinese translation, the Chinese canon does not include the works of such thinkers as Candrakīrti, Dharmakīrti, or Śāntarakṣita – the later Mādhyamikas and epistemologists whose works decisively shaped Indo-Tibetan traditions of interpretation. Accordingly, the development of Madhyamaka in China centers on a somewhat different group of texts – all of them translated by the great translator Kumārajīva (350-409), whose efforts figure prominently in the Chinese reception of Madhyamaka. So, the Chinese analogue of the Indian Madhyamaka school was originally styled San-lun, the "Three Śāstra" school, so called for its reliance upon three of Kumārajīva's translations. Only one of these (the MMK, here called Chung lun, "Madhyamakaśāstra"; Taishō 1564) has an extant Sanskrit antecedent. The other two – the Dvādaśanikāyaśāstra (Shih erh men lun, Taishō 1568), attributed to Nāgārjuna, and the Śata[ka]śāstra (Pai lun, Taishō 1569), attributed to Āryadeva – are extant neither in Sanskrit nor in Tibetan translation.
It was, however, arguably another treatise attributed to Nāgārjuna (and also "translated" by Kumārajīva) that was ultimately to have greater influence on East Asian interpretations of Madhyamaka: the Ta-chih-tu lun, or *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa Śāstra ("Treatise which is a Teaching on the Great Perfection of Wisdom [Sūtra]"). This text – a massive summa of Buddhist doctrine, comparable in scope to the *Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi (which is ostensibly a digest and compilation of several Indian commentaries on one of the works by Vasubandhu that is foundational for Yogācāra) – is extant in no other translation than Kumārajīva's, and comprises a great deal of material that is not easily reconciled with what is taught in Nāgārjuna's MMK. However, despite the scholarly consensus to the effect that this text is not authentically attributed to Nāgārjuna, East Asian authors citing Nāgārjuna tend most frequently to cite Kumārajīva's text (and not the MMK). The reasons for this are, along with one of the salient features of characteristically East Asian interpretations of Nāgārjuna, reflected in a comment by the Japanese scholar Junjirō Takakusu, who observed that while such Mādhyamika texts as the MMK are "much inclined to be negativistic idealism," in the Ta-chih-tu lun "we see that [Nāgārjuna] establishes his monistic view much more affirmatively than in any other text" (Takakusu 1949: 100).
Takakusu's assessment of the MMK as "negativistic" arguably relates to the ways in which characteristically East Asian interpretations of Madhyamaka have been (not surprisingly) influenced by the vicissitudes of Chinese translations from Sanskrit. For example, it has been noted (by, e.g., Swanson 1989: 14) that Chinese terms centrally associated with the two truths – yu ("existence" or "being") and wu ("non-existence" or non-being"), identified, respectively, with saṃvṛtisatya (conventional truth) and paramārthasatya (ultimate truth) – had strongly ontological implications that can alter the sense of characteristically Mādhyamika claims (originally stated in Sanskrit) when those were translated into Chinese. In particular, the ontologically "negative" sense of the term wu has arguably had the effect of recommending that Mādhyamika claims regarding emptiness be taken (notwithstanding Nāgārjuna's repeated cautions in this regard) as rather more nihilistic than was intended.
We can consider, in this regard, chapter 24, verse 18 of Nāgārjuna's MMK – a pivotal verse that may be rendered: "We call that which is dependent origination [pratītyasamutpāda] emptiness [śūnyatā]. That [emptiness,] a relative indication [upādāya prajñapti], is itself the middle path [madhyamā pratipad]." This often cited (and variously translated) verse is significant chiefly for its asserting that the authentic "middle path" – and hence (given the centrality of the middle way trope in Buddhist thought) the authentically Buddhist doctrine – lies in realizing the identity of three terms: dependent origination, emptiness, and "dependent designation" or "relative indication" (upādāya prajñapti). The semantic range of the latter term is such as to suggest that emptiness-cum-dependent origination is itself "conventional," and one upshot of the verse is therefore to express, in effect, the idea of the "emptiness of emptiness." More straightforwardly, though, this verse clearly represents one of the countless occasions on which Nāgārjuna is concerned to emphasize that by "emptiness" he means simply "dependent origination."
On one characteristically East Asian interpretation of this verse (that of the modern Japanese scholar Gadjin Nagao), however, we are to understand here that the verse's initial predication ("we call that which is dependent origination emptiness") amounts to a negation of (the ontologically "positive" phenomenon which is) dependent origination. As Nagao states this idea, "This pratītya-samutpāda dies in the second [quarter verse]." The second predication – which characterizes this "emptiness" as a "relative indication" – then amounts to a return to the ontologically "positive." On this reading, then, the verse "is dialectical, moving from affirmation to negation and again to affirmation." (Nagao 1991: 193-94) This "dialectical" reading of a quintessentially Mādhyamika claim is frequently encountered in modern Japanese scholarship – a fact that arguably reflects the extent to which many Japanese scholars (even those who have developed deep acquaintance with the Sanskrit texts of Indian Buddhism) have their initial grounding in the characteristically East Asian traditions of interpretation in which the Ta-chih-tu lun of Kumārajīva is paramount.
Another characteristic preoccupation of East Asian interpreters of Madhyamaka is one also evident in some of the Indo-Tibetan traditions of interpretation: that of attempting to harmonize Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. In the East Asian case, the fact that so many Buddhist interpreters of Madhyamaka should attempt – notwithstanding the extent to which many Indian Mādhyamika and Yogācāra texts are framed as mutually polemical – to develop a synthesis of these two great schools of Mahāyāna philosophy partly reflects the predominance of Yogācāra in East Asian Buddhist thought. If, however, Madhyamaka philosophy was largely eclipsed by Yogācāra (and more importantly, by other indigenous developments) in the East Asian context, it nevertheless arguably lives on in the enigmatic discourse of Ch'an/Zen Buddhism that many take to be quintessentially East Asian. While any Mādhyamika influence on Zen is surely indirect, the latter tradition's particular debt to the Prajñāpāramitā literature (the Vajracchedikā, or "Diamond," Sūtra figures most importantly here) perhaps explains why many modern observers are inclined to see affinities with Madhyamaka.
Ames, William L. 1986. "Buddhapālita's Exposition of the Madhyamaka." Journal of Indian Philosophy 14: 313-348.
Ames, William L. 1993-94. "Bhāvaviveka's Prajñāpradīpa: A Translation of Chapter One: 'Examination of Causal Conditions' (Pratyaya)," [in two parts], Journal of Indian Philosophy 21: 209-259; 22: 93-135.
These articles provide a good point of access to the interpretations of Nāgārjuna ventured by two of his earliest commentators (the two discussed at length in the commentary of Candrakīrti).
Arnold, Dan. 2005. Buddhists, Brahmins, and Belief: Epistemology in South Asian Philosophy of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press.
Part 3 of this work makes a case (based on an engagement with Candrakīrti's critique of the Buddhist epistemologist Dignāga) for the interpretation of Madhyamaka as involving transcendental arguments.
Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar. 1990. The Dialectical Method of Nāgārjuna: Vigrahavyāvartanī. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Contains (along with an edition of the Sanskrit text) a reliable translation of one of Nāgārjuna's major works.
Blumenthal, James. 2004. The Ornament of the Middle Way: A Study of the Madhyamaka Thought of Śāntarakṣita. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.
A translation and extensive study (together with a translated dGe-lugs-pa commentary) of Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṃkāra.
Burton, David F. 1999. Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nāgārjuna's Philosophy. London: Curzon.
Argues that despite Nāgārjuna's expressed intentions, his arguments entail nihilistic conclusions.
Cabezón, José Ignacio. 1992. A Dose of Emptiness: An Annotated Translation of the sTong thun chen mo of mKhas grub dGe legs dpal bzang. Albany: SUNY Press.
This extensively annotated and reliable translation makes available a representative example of a Tibetan dGe-lugs-pa interpretation of Madhyamaka (this one by one of Tsong-kha-pa's two major disciples).
Chimpa, Lama, and Alaka Chattopadhyaya, trans. 1970. Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
A useful translation of a traditional history of the Indian Buddhist tradition, containing representative accounts of the careers and works of important Indian thinkers.
Conze, Edward, trans. 1975. The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, with the divisions of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra. Berkeley: University of California Press.
A useful point of access to the paradoxical style of discourse that is characteristic of the "Prajñāpāramitā" literature that figures in Nāgārjuna's background.
Crosby, Kate, and Andrew Skilton, trans. 1995. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. New York: Oxford University Press.
A translation of the major work of Śāntideva, with an introduction and annotations.
Dreyfus, Georges. 2003. The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. Berkeley: University of California Press.
An insightful study of the pedagogical context for the Tibetan interpretation and transmission of Madhyamaka.
Dreyfus, Georges, and Sara McClintock, eds. 2003. The Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika Distinction: What Difference Does a Difference Make? Boston: Wisdom Publications.
A collection of scholarly essays representative of the current state of debate on this division of Madhyamaka, with attention both to this as a Tibetan doxographical category, and to matters of interpretation regarding the antecedent Indian texts.
Garfield, Jay L., trans. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. New York: Oxford University Press.
Though translated from the Tibetan (and not from the extant Sanskrit), this is the most accessible of the available translations of Nāgārjuna's foundational text – and far and away the most philosophically sophisticated and illuminating.
Hayes, Richard P. 1994. "Nāgārjuna's Appeal." Journal of Indian Philosophy 22: 299-378.
Argues that Nāgārjuna's works centrally involve an equivocation on the word svabhāva.
Huntington, C. W., with Geshe Namgyal Wangchen. 1989. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
An annotated translation of Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra, with a lengthy introduction that makes a case for the interpretation of Madhyamaka along lines suggested by poststructuralist philosophy.
Iida Shotaro. 1980. Reason and Emptiness: A Study in Logic and Mysticism. Tokyo: Hokuseido.
A study, with texts and translations, of major works of Bhāvaviveka.
Jha, Ganganath, trans. 1986. The Tattvasaṁgraha of Shāntarakṣita with the Commentary of Kamalashīla. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. (Reprint; first published in Gaekwad's Oriental Series, 1937-1939.)
A relatively inaccessible (but nonetheless complete) translation of this major work by Śāntarakṣita.
La Vallée Poussin, Louis de, ed. 1970. Mūlamadhyamakakārikās (Mādhyamikasūtras) de Nāgārjuna, avec la Prasannapadā Commentaire de Candrakīrti. Bibliotheca Buddhica, Vol. IV. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag. (Reprint; originally published 1903-1913.)
This work warrants mention as the standard edition of the foundational text of Madhyamaka.
Lamotte, Etienne, trans. 1944-1980. Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse. 5 volumes. Louvain: Insitut orientaliste, Bibliothèque de l'Université de Louvain.
The characteristically extensive annotations alone make this monumental work a treasure trove. Despite its vastness, this represents only a partial translation of the Ta-chih-tu Lun (*Mahāprajñāpārmitāśāstra) of Nāgārjuna/Kumārajīva.
Lang, Karen. 1986. Āryadeva's Catuḥśataka: On the Bodhisattva's Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
A reliable translation of the major work of Āryadeva.
Lindtner, Chr. 1987. Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of Nāgārjuna. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. (Reprint; first published in Copenhagen, Institute for indisk filologi, 1982.)
A study of the works that are (and are not) appropriately attributed to Nāgārjuna, with editions and translations of several.
Murti, T. R. V. 1960. The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyamika System. Second edition. London: George Allen and Unwin.
An important early study of Madhyamaka, representing one of a few influential neo-Kantian interpretations thereof.
Nagao Gadjin. 1991. Mādhyamika and Yogācāra: A Study of Mahāyāna Philosophies. Trans. Leslie S. Kawamura. Albany: SUNY Press.
A selection of translated essays representative of the approach and legacy of this important Japanese scholar.
Ramanan, K. Venkata. 1975. Nāgārjuna's Philosophy as presented in the Mahā-Prajñāpāramitā-Śāstra. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. (Reprint; first published Charles Tuttle, 1966.)
This work is useful for its making accessible the contents and style of the text (extant only in Kumārajīva's Chinese translation) that most influenced the East Asian reception of Madhyamaka. (Ramanan is in the scholarly minority in accepting the Chinese tradition's attribution of the text to Nāgārjuna.)
Ruegg, David Seyfort. 1981. The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India. A History of Indian Literature (ed. Jan Gonda), Vol. VII, Fasc. 1. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
This authoritative work on the history and texts of Indian Madhyamaka is the standard reference work on the subject.
Siderits, Mark. 2003. Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Chapters 6-9 develop a sophisticated philosophical reconstruction of Madhyamaka (here characterized as a philosophically "anti-realist" position), which is represented as constitutively related to the reductionism of Ābhidharmika Buddhism (treated in the first half of the book). A difficult work that can seem to owe more to analytic philosophy than to Indian Buddhism, but an exceptionally sensitive account of the issue of truth vis-à-vis Madhyamaka. In particular, Siderits argues for a version of Madhyamaka as involving a "deflationist" account of truth (here called "semantic non-dualism").
Sopa, Geshe Lhundup, and Jeffrey Hopkins, trans., Cutting Through Appearances: The Practice and Theory of Tibetan Buddhism. 2nd ed. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1989.
Includes a somewhat inaccessible translation of a standard Tibetan doxographical text, which is useful for a sense of how Madhyamaka is represented by Tibetans in relation to other Buddhist schools of thought.
Sprung, Mervyn, trans. 1979. Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapadā of Candrakīrti. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Currently the closest thing to a complete Western-language translation of Candrakīrti's text (hence, the translation also comprises most of Nāgārjuna's MMK). While not an altogether reliable translation, this provides some access to the discourse of Candrakīrti.
Stcherbatsky, Th. 1927. The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989. (Reprint.)
This early work includes a dated and eccentric (but nonetheless useful) translation of the first chapter of Candrakīrti's Prasannapadā. Stcherbatsky influentially advanced a broadly neo-Kantian interpretation of Madhyamaka.
Swanson, Paul L. 1989. Foundations of T'ien-T'ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press.
An accessible study of the East Asian reception and interpretation of Madhyamaka.
Takakusu Junjirō. 1949. The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975. (Reprint; first published by the University of Hawaii.)
A concise presentation of the various schools of Buddhist philosophy as they are reckoned in East Asian traditions. The presentation of Madhyamaka ("Sanron," the "Three Treatise" school) is at pp.99-111.
Thurman, Robert. 1991. The Central Philosophy of Tibet: A Study and Translation of Jey Tsong Khapa's Essence of True Eloquence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
A translation of part of an important work by Tsong-kha-pa, representing a Tibetan Mādhyamika engagement with Yogācāra. The author's lengthy introduction advances a broadly Wittgensteinian understanding of Madhyamaka.
Tillemans, Tom J. F. 1990. Materials for the Study of Āryadeva, Dharmapāla and Candrakīrti. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 24, 1-2. Wien: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien.
Annotated translations (with a philosophically sophisticated introduction and annotations) of parts of the divergent commentaries on Āryadeva by the Mādhyamika Candrakīrti and the Yogācārin Dharmapāla.
Tuck, Andrew. 1990. Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nāgārjuna. New York: Oxford University Press.
An illuminating study of the philosophical presuppositions informing important modern interpretations of Nāgārjuna.
Walser, Joseph. 2005. Nāgārjuna in Context: Mahāyāna Buddhism and Early Indian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
An attempt to locate the figure of Nāgārjuna in socio-historical context (and particularly in relation to the then nascent Mahāyāna movement).
Williams, Paul. 1989. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. London: Routledge.
An accessible and lucid survey of Mahāyāna Buddhist thought. Chapter 3 treats Madhyamaka, with some attention to Tibetan and East Asian developments therein.
Email: d-arnold@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago Divinity School


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text:
Formel 3000 1992 vanns av Luca Badoer, vilket var hans största merit i karriären.

Delsegrare

Slutställning

Formel 3000-säsonger
Motorsportevenemang 1992

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text:
News 2012 March Mountain Climber Who Survived Two Disasters on Mount Everest Succumbs to Mesothelioma at Age 56
Mountain Climber Who Survived Two Disasters on Mount Everest Succumbs to Mesothelioma at Age 56
Lincoln Hall, a world renowned mountain climber, adventurer, author and philanthropist lost his battle with malignant mesothelioma last Tuesday, March 20, 2012. He was 56. Lincoln developed the rare disease from exposure to asbestos as a child when he and his dad built cubby houses using asbestos cement flat sheet.
In 1984, Mr. Hall was part of the first Australian expedition to ascend Everest as it traced a new path for climbers not carrying oxygen. The expedition survived an avalanche, and two of his companions achieved the summit, but Lincoln did not, turning back a few hours short of the top when it became clear that to continue would have put him in grave physical danger.
In 2006 Lincoln did reach the summit, but collapsed from altitude sickness and was believed to have died, his companions in a Russian-led expedition were forced to leave him on the mountain. The following morning a group of climbers found him alive and were able to help him down to rescue and safety.
Lincoln helped found and was also director for the Australian Himalayan Foundation, whose aim is to help impoverished communities and set up schools in the Himalayas. He was committed to that work until his death.
Lincoln is survived by his wife Barbara and their two sons Dylan and Dorje. Friends will remember him for his intellect and his determination.
As a mountain climber who had summited the world's tallest peaks without supplemental oxygen, Lincoln clearly possessed an extraordinary level of cardiovascular fitness. Lincoln's story reminds us that, without much-needed advancements treatment and prevention strategies, no one is immune from the ravages of asbestos-related disease.
Categories: Client Stories, Fight Mesothelioma
Client Stories (17)
Fight Mesothelioma (92)
Hot Topics (72)
Lung Sparing Surgery (2)
Mesothelioma (106)
Mesothelioma Awareness (72)
Mesothelioma Research (46)
Mesothelioma Verdicts (9)
Pacific Meso Center (12)
Seminars (5)
Talcum Powder (29)
Treatment Options (22)
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New Immunotherapy Clinical Trial for Unresectable Meso
Revolutionary Blood Test Can Detect 50 Types of Cancer Including Mesothelioma
New California Law Aims to Protect Surviving Families in Mesothelioma Cases
Ramucirumab combined with Gemcitabine significantly improved overall survival
Worthington & Caron Are Once Again Lead Sponsors of the 10th Annual Walk for Mesothelioma
Novel Breath Test Predicts Clinical Response in Mesothelioma Immunotherapy Patients
EPP vs P/D: Conclusions are Reached in the Ongoing Debate
The Sounds of Summer with Voices of Classic Soul!
Donald Trump Thinks Asbestos is "100% Safe"
"Asbestos" Referenced in Provocative Basquiat Painting at L.A.'s Broad Museum
WR Grace Exits Bankruptcy After 13 Years, Was it Worth the Wait? You Decide
Recent Study Assessing Asbestos Fiber Burden in Human Lungs Provides New Insights into the Chrysotile Debate
Donald Trump Thinks Asbestos is Great

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The dawn of Jerusalem: from the earliest evidence of the existence of a city in Jerusalem dating as far back as the second millennium BCE, when the Pharaohs ruled the region and the Kings of Israel ruled under their patronage, up to Egypt's withdrawal from the Land of Israel in the mid 12th century BCE.
The name Rusalimum appears on 4,000-year-old figurines uncovered in Egypt, alongside the names of other Canaanite cities. It was customary to inscribe the figurines with the name of the enemy, add a curse and smash them in a magical ceremony in the belief that the enemy's power would thus be destroyed.
Some 350 letters written by the governor of Urusalim (Jerusalem) to the Pharaonic kings were uncovered in the Egyptian royal archive of Tel Al Amarna. Jerusalem is mentioned four times in a letter in which Pharaoh is requested to send an army to the city which was in danger.


text:
The Autumn months are rolling in, what a great excuse to hibernate and read a book. For November's giveaway the winner will be able to choose a book from those listed below. I just want to say a quick thank you to all my followers!!
So here are the details:
There will be 1 winner - The winner will choose a book from those I've listed
Open to International Followers
You must fill out the rafflecopter form below to enter
The more entries you put in, the more likely you are to win
Giveaway will end November 30th
Dearly Departed by Lia Habel.
Love can never die.
Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid's arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?
The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country's political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she's nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.
But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she's suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting "The Laz," a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there's no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.
In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.
A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
It should have been a short suspended-animation sleep. But this time Rose wakes up to find her past is long gone— and her future full of peril.
Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss. Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten subbasement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long gone, and Rose— hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire— is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat. Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes— or be left without any future at all.
Arizona (Beautiful Dead #2) by Eden Maguire
There's been no sign of the Beautiful Dead for weeks. Darina achingly misses Phoenix all over again. But surely he will return with the rest of the Beautiful Dead as so much still remains unresolved. It's been ten months since Arizona drowned in Hartmann Lake. Suicide, it would seem. But something doesn't add up.
Drowning herself in a hidden - away lake does not sound like strong, confident, Arizona: Ellerton High School's high-maintenance drama queen. Darina needs to help Arizona the way she helped Jonas. But time is running out...
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
Some riders live.
Others die.
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.
Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn't given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.
Grab my giveaway button:

Fantastic giveaway Jenny, thanks!
It definitely feels like the right time to hibernate and read a book :)
Toni D. said...
crossing my fingers, toes, eyes, and everything else I can cross that I win! heehee! :)
kara-karina@Nocturnal Book Reviews said...
What a wonderful giveaway! Thank you so much! :)
Melliane said...
Thanks for the giveaway !
Hi Jenny, just thought I'd let you know when I clicked on the 'tweet' button it says "Spooktacular Book Giveaway..." instead of November Giveaway. And me being me (doh.) I hit 'tweet'. What a goofball. I promise to correct it tomorrow if it still says 'Spooktacular'. Serves me right for being lazy! =P
Chocolate Chunky Munkie said...
Whoops thanks Toni for letting me know. All sorted now :D I've still got the Spooktacular one still going, but the link would have taken it back to here. It's not you being lazy at all, it's me being in a day dream and not noticing lol.
Thanks for the international giveaway!
Nylez said...
Thanks for this giveaway!
Awesome covers, awesome books, thanks so much!
Fabulous thank you!!
Sorry I just pressed "i did it" for following by twitter. But hit enter accidently before entering my twitter name. It's @jlkalman26
gfc jennifer
jennifer.kalman at gmail dot com
miki said...
thanks you for this international giveaway
Vicky @ A Backpack Full of Adventures said...
Great book choice!! Thank you so much hun <3 :) xxx
Sana said...
The books are all awesome!=D
The Norwegian BookGirl said...
Thank you for making this international :)


The Regional Junior Cadet Circuit (RJCC) is designed to promote and develop strong regional tournaments for Junior/Cadet aged fencers who seeks competitive opportunities beyond the local and division levels but below the NAC Junior/Cadet levels. Please check the events calendar for more tournament dates.
RJCC tournaments are open to current USA Fencing competitive members eligible to fence in Open competitions and to foreign fencers with current FIE licenses.
Format: The format for all RJCC events is one round of pools (of sizes in accord with the Operations Manual maximized to 6 and 7 fencers as possible), with 100% promoted to a direct elimination table.
RJCC points for the 2018-2019 season appear after results have been received and processed by the National Office.


The central panel combines a large eye, (with a crescent moon as its' base), and an ancient Egyptian image filled with symbols of the archetypal passage of life between lives: boat, stairway, gateway, and birds. The Eye provides protection during the journey. On either side are the trays of a balancing scale, one holding a feather, the other a heart. In ancient Egypt, upon the death of a person, their heart was weighed against that of the feather; if balanced, the person showed a high level of consciousness in this lifetime. The scale pans are within a square, looking like a contemporary 'purse', denoting the baggage we must transform during the current lifetime. The central symbolic eye provides protection, thus sanctuary during the delicate passageway between lifetimes. The side panels of birds, akin to the sacred Ibis of ancient Egypt relates to the wise Ibis-headed god, Thoth, a messenger and record-keeper; a record of our evolution through our life is being acknowledged and aids in our inspiration to live a life founded on compassion, clarity and wisdom. Our inner work to create wisdom becomes our true sanctuary.


Muharram is the first month of the Islamic Hijri Lunar Calendar. It is the Islamic New Year, marking the important event of Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu 'Alayhi wa Sallam) move from Makkah to Madinatul Munawera. Muharram is also one of the four sacred months of the year, in which fighting is forbidden.
Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) went to the Cave in the way to Madina with his companion Abubakr Siddiq in Muharram. This event is mentioned in Holy Quran, Surat at Tawbah (9:40).
Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) arrived in Madinatul Munawera on the Day of 'Ashura.
Muharram is also a month of great importance to Naqshbandis. Our Master and Imam of the Tariqah [Master of Naqshbandi Sufi Path] Shah Bahauddin Naqshband (qaddas Allahu sirrah) was born on the 14th of Muharram. It is thus important and most desired that his followers congregate on the eve of this holy day for Khatm and Dhikr, read the Mawlid un Nabi (Praises on Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) in dedication to Mawlana Shah Naqshband, and read excerpts from his saintly life.
It is a tradition and practice of Sultan al Awliya Shaykh 'Abdullah al Daghistani (qaddasallahu sirrah) to make Qurban (sacrifice) two sheeps on the day of 'Ashura and distribute the meat to the poor and needy. He also did this on the birthday of Shah Naqshband (qaddasallahu sirrah).
'Ashura is the 10th day of holy month of Muharram. It is a day of great historical significance in which many Prophets and their nations were saved.
Sayyidina Nuh (as) and his companions in the ark were saved by Allah (aj).
Allah extinguished the fire in which Sayyidina Ibrahim (as) was thrown by Nimrod.
Allah (swt) spoke directly to Sayyidina Musa (Moses) (as) and gave him the Commandments. Also on this day, the sea was departed for Sayyidina Musa (as) and the nation of israel was saved from captivity, and Pharoah's army was destroyed.
Sayyidina 'Isa (Jesus) (as) was raised to Jannah on the day of 'Ashura.
It was on this day that the Skies earth and the Lauw-e-Qalam came into existence.
On this day Sayyidina Adam (AS) and Sayyidatina Hawa (Eve) were created.
Sayyidina Ayyub (as) 's health was restored (from leprosy).
Sayyidina Yusuf (as) was reunited with his father Ya'qub (as) after 40 years.
Sayyidina Yunus (Jonah) (as) was taken out from the belly of the fish.
Sayyidina Dawud (as) was forgiven.
The kingdom of Sulaiman (as) was restored.
Sayyidina Muhammad (ﷺ) married Sayyidatina Khadija (ra).
Sayyidina al Hussain(as) [the Holy Prophet's (ﷺ), grandson] achieved the honor of Martyrdom in the battle of Karbala 61 AH(Oct 10, 680 AD).
The best of fasts besides the month of Ramadan is the fast during Allah's month of Muharram and the best of Salaats besides the Fardh (obligatory Salaat) is the Tahajjud Salaah (performed after midnight). (Sahih Muslim).
And you will not suffer sickness in that year except the illness of death.
Hasbun Allahu wa ni'mal wakeel, ni'mal Mawlaa wa ni'man Naseer.
SubhanAllahu mil al Mizan wa muntaha 'ilma, Wa mablaghal rida, Wa zinatul 'arsh. La malja-a wa la manja minAllahi illa ilayhi. SubhanAllahi 'adada shaf'i wal 'arshi, Wa 'adada kalimati Rabbina taammati kulliha.
As alukas Salamata, bi Rahmatika Ya Arhamar Rahimeen. Wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahil 'Aliyyil 'Azheem. Wa huwa hasbun Allahu wa ni'mal wakil, Ni'mal Mawla wa ni'man Naseer. Wa Sallallahu 'ala Sayyidena Muhammadin wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Glorious is Allah, as much as what is in His great scale, and as far as His knowledge extends, and to such a degree as it attains His pleasure, and to whatever weight may be His Throne; there is no refuge and no safety from Allah except in Him. Glorious is Allah, (He is declared so) as many as there be even (numbers) and as many as there be odd, and as many as there be perfect words of His; glory be to Him for them all.
We ask of You (our Lord) for safety, by Your mercy, O You who is the most merciful of all those who show mercy. Sufficient for us is Allah, and [He is] the best Disposer of affairs. The very best master and the very best help! And there is no power and no strength except in Allah, the High, the Great! May the grace of Allah, the Exalted, be upon our Master Muhammad and upon his family and his companions. And upon the believers men and women, and upon those who submit (in Islam), as much as there be atoms in existence and as much as there be things known to Allah; and all praise is due to Him, Lord of the Worlds.
7. Make Tawassul with Sayyidina Hussain (as) and the martyrs of Karbala, where on that day they were martyred (Shahid) with Sayyidena Hussain and those who were with him; may Allah's favours be upon them.
8. Ihda (Gift) – After breaking your fast dedicate the blessings and rewards of your fast and daily Awrad upon the Prophet (saw) for the oceans secrets that open on the 14th of Muharram, which is Mawlana Shah Bahauddin Naqshband's Birthday.


Home Birds Main Page Injured or Sick Bird?
What To Do If You Find A Bird?
Juvenile Great-horned Owl rehabbed by the Humane Indiana Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
It's not too uncommon to find an injured bird that may need medical attention. This information is to help you identify the problem, not necessarily resolve it. It is always our goal to avoid separating a bird from its family and/or native habitat. In many cases, the mother may be feeding away from a nest and the bird is better left where it is found. But in some cases this cannot be avoided. If the bird is sick or injured (bleeding, broken wing, etc.) it will always be necessary to bring the bird to a wild bird rehabber for treatment.
Indiana maintains a list of wildlife rehabbers by county, through the DNR. Click here to download the latest PDF list of licensed rehabbers. If you are interested in becoming a wildlife rehabber, the DNR has an application process.
Many folks contact Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary each year to accept in injured and pet birds. Mary Gray provides a wild haven for birds, but does not perform rehabilitation efforts for wild birds. Please contact a local rehabber for injured birds.
If you need to transport a bird to a rehabber.
What used to be wide-open habitat for wildlife has now become our backyards. It is important that we know how to co-exist with wild animals, and how to determine the proper care for any that become orphaned or injured.
Many times you will come across a baby bird, rabbit, squirrel or deer that you think may be orphaned and in need of help. This is not always the case! Rabbits, for instance feed their young only once or twice a day, then the mother stays away from the nest so she is not calling anyone's attention to it.
1. Leave the animal alone if the parent is nearby.
2. Leave the animal alone if it appears fat, bright-eyed and healthy.
3. Rescue the animal if you see that its parent is dead.
4. Rescue the animal if it appears weak, sick or cold.
5. Rescue the animal if it appears to be visibly injured.
6. Rescue the animal if it is in danger from traffic or other animals.
Until you can get advice from your humane society or wildlife rehabber, place the animal in a box with holes and a clean ravel-free cloth. DO NOT use grass for bedding, as it is usually damp enough to cause a chill. DO NOT attempt to feed or water the animal. Inexperience with the animal's needs can be fatal. Avoid unnecessary stress by not over-handling any bird you might find that is need of a licensed rehabber. Any bird heading to a rehabber should be placed in a dark box and away from stimulation.
Indiana Audubon Society and the Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary receives many calls and emails every year to assist in injured or sick wildlife. IAS does not have the licenses or experience to assist with sick or injured wildlife.
Please visit the Wildlife Rehabilitation page on the Indiana DNR website to locate a wildlife rehabilitator and locate additional information.


text:
Sridhar
You build an app.
Users visit the app store.
They search for an app based on their needs.
Your app appears in the search results as it matches their need.
They download and install your app.
And you start making money.
We really wish it was that simple! Building an app may have indeed become easy-peasy today, thanks to low-code/no-code platforms like Vajro, but your job doesn't end there for sure.
According to recent data, there are 1.85 million different apps in Apple App Store and 2.56 million in Google Play Store. What are the odds of your app making it to the top of this infinite list when they search for your category???
And if you're an app store owner, you might have noticed that many of your competitor's apps are ranking higher than yours despite being not as good as yours. So what are they doing right, and what are you missing out on?
The answer is App Store Optimization. It is your key to unlock the car, start the engine, rev it up, and zoom past your competitors in the app war.
So what exactly is App Store Optimization (ASO)?
In very, very simple words, it is the process of increasing your app's visibility in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and improve its conversion rates. Now though your destination is 'better visibility' in searches, the route to achieve it is quite different in both these ecosystems.
Not only do they use unique algorithms to rank your app, but they also use different techniques to showcase your apps.
On that note, let's find out the key differences in ASO between Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
ASO in Google Play Store vs. Apple App Store: The Key Differences
App Title
When it comes to the length of the title, the Apple App Store allows up to 30 characters. Google Play Store earlier supported 50 characters, which was shortened to 30 following the app policy changes in April 2021.
The purpose of the app title is quite different on both platforms. In the Google Play Store, your app only has an icon and a title. This means the app title is totally responsible for explaining what the app is all about to the users. However, apps in Apple App Store also have subtitles, screenshots, and videos of the app, thus reducing the burden on the title.
Pro Tip: The name of your app is one of the biggest contributors to determining your search rank on both these platforms. The title of your app should include all the relevant and important keywords to show up at the top.
Similar to your app title, the keywords you use in your app description/subtitle play a vital role in improving your app's visibility and rankings. Both the platforms use the keywords located in the description section of your app to index it based on certain search terms.
Now it's natural to wonder - Is repeating keywords a good idea on both platforms? The answer is Yes and No. Repeating keywords in your app title and short description can indeed help in boosting your app's search ranking in the Google Play Store as it greatly values keyword density for determining the rank.
However, in Apple App Store, repeating keywords is a misspent effort as the keyword density is not valued to determine the rank.
You can add up to 10 screenshots for your app in the Apple App Store. In the Google Play Store, you have the liberty to upload only 8 screenshots.
On Apple App Store, the first three screenshots of your app are displayed for every search. However, in Google Play Store, the screenshots are hidden on the app listing page and do not appear until the user clicks and navigates to the app's detail page.
Although your app screenshots do not directly influence your search ranking, good screenshots can impact your Click-Through Rates(CTR), leading to better conversion.
The primary purpose of a long description is to explain your app's use cases. However, when it comes to ASO, the long descriptions have multiple hats to wear.
On Apple App Store, long descriptions do not influence the search results. However, you can use long descriptions to explain the goal of your app creatively, encouraging users to download it.
In contrast, long descriptions significantly influence the search ranking in the Google Play Store. Hence, writing long descriptions that adhere to best SEO practices is important in this platform. Don't forget to maintain a good keyword density(about 2%-3%) for relevant keywords.
Google takes into account the number of backlinks to your app page and considers it a good ranking signal. The formula is simple - More the backlinks, the worthier the content, the better the app, and the higher the rank.
Apple App Store does not emphasize too much on backlinks and does not use them to rank your app in the search results.
Pro Tip: Use tools like Ahrefs and SemRush to check the number of backlinks to your app's page. Emphasize on getting backlinks from quality websites.
Other factors playing an important role in ASO
Apart from the above, some more factors influence ASO on both platforms. Unfortunately, they are almost impossible to control and entirely depend on the audience's response to your app. Here are they -
No. of Downloads - The download volume on both platforms helps to climb the ranking ladder. Apple App Store does not show this data, but Google Play Store shows the number of downloads.
Reviews and Ratings - Reviews and ratings generally impact both platforms' conversion rates. However, Google's algorithm even considers the keywords in the reviews to determine the rank of the app. Now that's almost impossible to take control of.
Installs speed - If your app was downloaded multiple times in a shorter time span, it has higher chances of going to the top of search results on both platforms.
And that's a wrap…
ASO should never be lightly taken when you are publishing your app on any of the two platforms. When you do not adhere to the rules set by these platforms, your ranking will be significantly impacted, taking a toll on your app's visibility. In the end, your target audience will not even know that your app exists.
More importantly, these ASO policies are updated regularly, and it is important to keep track of them if you are an app owner or a developer to always stay at the top of the search results.
And If you are exploring options to set up your own mobile app store, be it in Android or iOS, Vajro can help bridge the gap in a jiffy. Drop us a line, and we'll figure out what works best for you.
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