Has anyone read Nagarjuna as claiming only that an effect is never its cause? Has anyone read Nagarjuna as claiming only that an effect can never be conceived of as its cause?

I'm asking because it would neatly fit my own views on how to understand science, as well as I think rendering annihilation a conceptual impossibilty (for reasons other than that thesis assuming a person).
See "Mula-madhyamaka-karika" by Nagarjuna:


  Neither from itself nor from another,
  
  Nor from both,
  
  Nor without a cause,
  
  Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.


Later Chandrakirti wrote detailed explanations of these ideas.

The purpose was to demonstrate the middle way between extremes of eternalism and nihilism regarding causes.

Otherwise causes could be viewed as "substance of self" of phenomena.

For practical purposes, we can meditate thusly:




Realize that all things depend on causes,


and therefore they lack independent existence.

For example, my feelings depend on causes. All my thoughts depend on causes. Also my wishes and my actions all depend on causes.

Therefore, is there anything in "me" this moment, not dependent on something else?


Then realize also that causality itself is illusory.


For example, we can contemplate that causality is rather our assumption than reliably known truth.

We guess that this is the cause of that. But it's just our guess, conventional truth. In the absolute sense, we can not ultimately know it.

"Absolute truth" is understood here as something that appears directly (phenomena, dharmas). Any judgments - e.g. views about causality - are just guesses.

For practical purposes, we take such guesses to be "true", but we should realize that's just a convention in our mind.



This understanding helps to see the selflessness of phenomena, and thus to liberate from samsara.