Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka by Jan Westerhoff

Author:Jan Westerhoff [Westerhoff, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

Given the cyclical nature of saṃsāra, what is earlier and what is later is very much dependent on where we identify the starting point. The hands of a clock will reach “3” before “5” if we start at “2,” but they will reach “5” before “3” if we start at “4.” Since Nāgārjuna has argued that the starting point is not something “out there” but a boundary drawn by us in order to accord with our specific cognitive concerns, it becomes evident that we cannot ascribe any objectively existing referents to such concepts as “earlier” or “later,” “birth” or “death,” and “past life” and “future life.”66

The discussion of the identity and difference of mover and motion addresses another crucial issue which will be taken up again by Nāgārjuna,67 namely the question of the status of the subject transmigrating through a succession of rebirths. Clearly the mover (the person in cyclic existence) cannot be identical with each different rebirth, since it would then be identical with a number of things that are taken to be distinct at the conventional level. But it can also not be distinct from them, because anything resembling an ātman-like transmigrating substance is ruled out in the Buddhist view of persons. There is therefore something fundamentally mistaken with the view that the transmigrating person and his rebirths are two entities which could be related by identity and difference.

The relevance of the arguments in chapter 2 for refuting the idea of a transmigrating person is also stressed by Tsong kha pa:68

Then, when the notion of substance with regard to a person has been refuted, some think “Since there exists an agent who comes from the previous life to this one, and then goes to the next life, and who performs virtuous and non-virtuous actions, this does not make sense.” To refute this [Nāgārjuna presents] the two [chapters] “Examination of Motion” [MMK 2] and “Examination of the Agent” [MMK 8].

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