Text: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Overview
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, commonly translated as Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, is a concise but profound set of aphoristic poems attributed to the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna and traditionally dated to the second century CE. The text serves as the foundational exposition of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its central claim that all phenomena lack intrinsic, independent existence. Its terse verse form and systematic refutations make it both a compact philosophical treatise and a guide for meditative insight.

Core Teaching: Emptiness and Dependent Origination
The work advances the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) not as a nihilistic void but as the absence of "own-being" or inherent existence (svabhāva) in all things. Nāgārjuna links emptiness inseparably to dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), arguing that nothing can arise or persist independently of causes, conditions, parts, or conceptual designation. Emptiness is therefore a characterization of how things exist: dependently, conventionally, and contingently rather than autonomously or absolutely.

Method and Argumentation
Argument proceeds largely by rigorous negative analysis. Short, tightly constructed verses deploy reductio ad absurdum to show that any affirmation of inherent existence leads to contradictions when applied to causation, agency, identity, and conceptual distinctions. The text employs the tetralemma or fourfold logical schema to exhaust possibilities, existence, nonexistence, both, neither, revealing that none capture the true relational status of phenomena. This dialectical style dismantles reified metaphysical positions while steering away from simple negation by preserving a two-tiered epistemology of conventional and ultimate truth.

Ethical and Soteriological Implications
Emptiness in Nāgārjuna's presentation has direct ethical and soteriological consequences. Recognition of the lack of inherent selfhood undercuts clinging, aversion, and mistaken grasping that fuel suffering. At the same time, the affirmation of conventional causality preserves ethical responsibility and the efficacy of compassion and practice: actions have consequences and skillful means remain meaningful. The middle way thus avoids both nihilism and eternalism, offering a philosophical basis for liberation that aligns with meditative cultivation and the bodhisattva ideal.

Legacy and Influence
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā profoundly shaped later Buddhist philosophy across South, Central, and East Asia. It inspired an immense exegetical tradition, including Candrakīrti's classic commentary, and became central to Tibetan scholasticism and East Asian interpretations of emptiness. Beyond strictly religious contexts, the text has attracted philosophers for its rigorous method and subtle analysis of language, reference, and metaphysics, establishing Nāgārjuna as a pivotal thinker whose synthesis of logical critique and spiritual aim continues to challenge and enrich contemporary debates on reality and freedom.