Madhyamaka

The Madhyamaka (Sanskrit; Chinese: Zhong-kuan, Tibetan: dbu my) or median Way of the medium or , constitute one of the two principal schools specific to the Bouddhisme mahāyāna. A mādhyamikā is one holding of these doctrines. Finally mādhyamika is the adjective indicating the doctrines.

Origin of the way of the medium

This concept of center gate was exposed as of the first sermon of the Bouddha, like intermediary between sensual kindness and mortification.

Theoretically, Madhyamaka is also inspired by the idea of intermediary between eternalism and Nihilisme. Vacuity is to be brought closer to the fourteen questions that Gautama Bouddha left without answer.

Foundation

The school is founded in India at the 2nd century; its founder is Nāgārjuna, author of the Stances of the medium, work which attempts to refute many opinions by the systematic use of the Logique tétralemme (logical which gives up the Principe of the third excluded):

Neither X
Neither not X
Neither X and not X
Neither X nor not X

This logic applies finally to the Being. > It there a:

Neither “To be”
Neither “Non-being”
Neither “To be and Non-being”
Neither “Neither To be nor Non-being”

This logic of refutation, which makes it possible to contradict any intellectual attitude, is included/understood like ultimate consequence and “relentless” of the Vacuité. It is thus about a radically negative Ontologie, also called: non-implicative negation , of another assertion. This is why the majority of the interpreters of Nagarjuna consider that the school of the medium defends any sight, no thesis, no system, or that it is satisfied to use this dialectical negative to refute seen and systems. The quotations which go in this direction do not miss:

“The Winner said that vacuity is the complete evacuation of all the opinions. As for those which believe in vacuity, these, I declare them incurable. ” (Nāgārjuna)

Or:

“If I had a thesis, I would be in fault. But I do not have any thesis. This is why it is not fault for me. ” ( to draw aside vain the discussion, n°29 ).

However, as well as the fact of noticing Georges Driessens in his Introduction to the Treaty of the Medium: “one can legitimately think that the assertion of the dependant production, the doctrines of vacuity to be in oneself, the compatibility of conventions, or the functionality of relative reality, in the clean vacuum of nature, the presentation of the two truths - relative and ultimate true assertions constitute and not only refutations. ”

Schisms

From these two possible attitudes two principal divisions rise from the school:

the madhyamaka prasangika or consequentialist , inspired by Buddhapālita (5th century) and founded by Chandrakirti at the 6th century makes a systematic refutative use of dialectical negative to reduce to the absurdity the theses other schools bouddists or not Buddhist.
the autonomous madhyamaka svatantrika or , founded by Bhāvaviveka at the 6th century makes a positive use of dialectical and uses logic at conclusive and constructive ends which take as a starting point the methods of the logician Dignaga of the Yogacara.

This modified and synthetic form of Madhyamaka/Yogacara is introduced and developed with the Tibet at the 8th century by Shantirakshita and its disciple Kamalashila (fine VIIIe). The school knows new divisions.

Madhyamaka svatantrika

Sautrāntika
Yogācāra

Madhyamaka prasangika

Guélougpa
Sakyapa/Nyingmapa

Madhyamaka teaching

Base, way and fruit

Conventional reality and ultimate reality (vacuity) were both described with the oigine of the boudhdism. If the madhyamika takes again on its account this distinction between conventional and ultimate, it réenvisage completely under the angle of the illusion (see low). The mādhyamikā considers that two realities, conventional and absolute:

is opposite: appearance is not reality
are inseparable - the phenomena are indeed perceived and yet indeed empty of
existence are of the same gasoline : the ultimate nature of the conventional phenomena is them Vacuité.

Madhyamaka thus gathers these two realities, it is the sight there that it exposes, its base.

The way consists

with the méditative practice and the reasoning in order to be solved with wisdom,
like with obtaining merits (culture of the six Pāramitā S).

The required fruit is thus obtaining the perfect awakening of a Bouddha.

Illusionism

Contrary to the schools showing, under a conventional reality, the illusion of one oneself, an ultimate reality, teaching Madhyamaka " refuses to release a real layer under the fictitious layer " (Stephan Arguillère). The production of the phenomena is only appearance; rather than to hide other hidden phenomena, these illusions prove to be imperceptible.

Madhyamaka proposes a critical analysis of the production of the phenomena which brings to read again the conditioned Coproduction. The starting point is the consideration of the Tétralemme according to, which poses that any produced phenomenon is:

Either from itself
Or from one or several other phenomena
starting from a combination of itself and other phenomena
Spontaneously, from nothing

These four possibilities posed, all the branches of Buddhism eliminate three from them. The car-production (1) is refuted, because corollary eternalism. If the phenomenon already exists, there is not production. If the phenomenon does not exist yet, it cannot be its own cause. The possibility (3) thus is also refuted, at least according to the logic of these schools.

The production from nothing (4) is refuted since the world is not chaotic.

It is thus in general the possibility (2) which is accepted: any phenomenon is produced from one or several other phenomena. But it is not there the teaching of Mādhyamikās.

Like the near total of the branches of Buddhism, this one postulates a time " atomiste" , i.e. a made time of indivisible moments. According to Madhyamaka, any phenomenon exists one and single moment. But the consequence which of it is drawn is that the production is impossible: if the cause exists, then the production will be contemporary - on the contrary, if the cause does not exist any more, if the cause is passed , then it could not be worth. The production is presented like impossible, and the conditioned Coproduction proves to be fictitious.

Nāgārjuna writes in the Madhyamakakārikā :
" Where that it is, whatever they, neither of oneself neither of others, neither of neither other, nor independently of the one and other, things are never produced " (translation L. Biton)

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