Madhyamaka Wiki

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Master catalogue of all wiki pages, organised by type.

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Primary Texts (17 total)

  • Mūlamadhyamakakārikā — Nāgārjuna’s root verses
  • Catuḥśataka — Āryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses; sixteen chapters, path and ethics in I–VIII and refutations in IX–XVI, which Candrakīrti and Gyel-tsap read by the Two Truths; Āryadeva’s own graded-teaching verses (vv. 189–194) and no-position verse (v. 400); commentary-and-supplement to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Vigrahavyāvartanī — Nāgārjuna’s Dispeller of Disputes; companion to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; locus classicus of the No-thesis view (v. 29) and the earliest Madhyamaka critique of Nyāya Pramāṇa theory
  • Śūnyatāsaptati — Nāgārjuna’s Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness; fourth member of the Yukti-corpus; its v. 44 says the Buddha speaks of existence and non-existence through his intention; the Two Truths reading of that verse is the commentators’
  • Vaidalyaprakaraṇa — Nāgārjuna’s Crushing the Categories; a chapter-length critique of the sixteen Naiyāyika categories; the probans-refuting partner of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Madhyamakāvatāra — Candrakīrti’s Entering the Middle Way
  • Prasannapadā — Candrakīrti’s Lucid Words commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Prajñāpradīpa — Bhāviveka’s Lamp of Wisdom commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
  • Madhyamakālaṅkāra — Śāntarakṣita’s Adornment of the Middle Way; section-by-section summary per Mipham’s commentary (two ultimates, two-step method, S–P as pedagogy)
  • Satyadvayāvatāra — Atiśa’s Entry to the Two Realities
  • Madhyama-upadeśa — Atiśa’s Key Instructions of the Middle Way; a short contemplative man ngag text
  • Lta ba’i shan ‘byed — Gorampa’s Distinguishing the Views; the principal fifteenth-century Sakya Madhyamaka polemical treatise
  • Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan — Gendün Chöpel’s Adornment for Nāgārjuna’s Thought (1953); the major twentieth-century Tibetan Madhyamaka treatise, critiquing Geluk Pramāṇa doctrine from within
  • Bodhicaryāvatāra — Śāntideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva (c. 8th century); the Ch 8 (meditation) / Ch 9 (wisdom) interlock central to the framework-as-pedagogy reading
  • Kaccāyanagotta Sutta — Pāli sutta (SN 12.15); the Buddha’s middle way between “all exists” and “all does not exist”; the sole sutta named by Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (15:7)
  • Ākāśagarbha Sūtra — Toh 260, a Mahāyāna sūtra of devotion and purification; canonical source of the bodhisattva root downfalls and, at 1.15 and 1.60, of the graded ordering of the emptiness teaching — stated by the Buddha, given a reason, and enforced with a sanction
  • Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā — Toh 12, the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines; the shortest of the six “mother” sūtras and the closest surviving witness to the earliest stratum of the literature Madhyamaka takes as its scriptural warrant. At 1.6 the content of the teaching is identified with a state of mind rather than a proposition; at 1.8–1.12 the ontological question is put and declined

Scholars (43 total)

  • Haribhadra — 8th c. Indian, Madhyamaka; the Āloka on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā; reads acitta as a non-affirming negation
  • Ratnākaraśānti — c. 10th–11th c. Indian, Yogācāra; the Sārottamā on the same sūtra; reads acitta as implicative, yet glosses the Śāriputra exchange as a negation transcending both existence and non-existence
  • Nāgārjuna — Indian (c. 2nd century CE), founder of Madhyamaka; the Two Truths as hermeneutical key, emptiness as dependent origination, rejection of Svabhāva and of the Nyāya Pramāṇa enterprise, the No-thesis stance
  • Āryadeva — Indian (c. 2nd–3rd century CE), Nāgārjuna’s direct disciple and entrusted successor; “model” (gzhung phyi mo) Mādhyamika accepted by all sub-schools; his Catuḥśataka organises a treatise by the Two Truths (eight conventional, eight ultimate) and supplements the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā with the conventional path and the critique of non-Buddhist systems
  • Walser — Joseph Walser, contemporary social-historian (Tufts); reads Nāgārjuna’s writings as strategies to secure institutional resources for early Mahāyāna; the strongest external-causal counterweight to framework-necessity
  • Buddhapālita — Indian (c. 470–540), earliest extant Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentator by a known author (the anonymous Akutobhayā appears earlier); prasaṅga-only method; retrospectively named founder of “Prāsaṅgika”
  • Bhāviveka — Indian (c. 500–578), Prajñāpradīpa and Madhyamakahṛdaya; autonomous-syllogism method; retrospectively named founder of “Svātantrika”
  • Candrakīrti — Indian (c. 600–650), Prasannapadā and Madhyamakāvatāra; defender of Buddhapālita against Bhāviveka; principal articulator of “no thesis of one’s own”
  • Westerhoff — Oxford, analytic + commentarial method, equilibrium principle
  • Garfield — American, analytic + cross-cultural; translator of Tsongkhapa; framework-internal Prāsaṅgika-Geluk reading of the MMK (grounded on his full commentary, garfield-fundamental-wisdom-1995, and dated back to the 1990 therapeutic statement, garfield-epoche-sunyata-1990); Madhyamaka as therapy; two-truths-as-greatest-contribution; emptiness-of-emptiness as architectural key
  • Gorampa — Sakya, freedom from extremes, fourfold negation, two-level ultimate truth; the principal critic of Tsongkhapa
  • Tsongkhapa — Geluk, systematic Prāsaṅgika; sixfold negation of intrinsic existence; phenomena posited through mere conceptualisation; the lone object-side Two Truths voice in the wiki
  • Dolpopa — Jonang, zhentong, ultimate as truly existent tathāgatagarbha
  • Tāranātha — Jonang, concise zhentong synthesis, Great Middle Way
  • Karunadasa — Y. Karunadasa, senior Sri-Lankan Theravāda Abhidhamma scholar; argues the sammuti/paramattha Two Truths are an Abhidhammic innovation drawn out of the suttas, very likely on the base of the canonical nītattha/neyyattha device; the convergent-evolution witness for framework-has-pali-canonical-antecedents
  • Kalupahana — Sri Lankan, anti-systematic; 1976 indicts Madhyamaka as a “transcendentalist revolution” away from early Buddhism, 1986 reverses to read the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā as a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta
  • Śāntarakṣita — Indian Yogācāra-Madhyamaka, “neither one nor many” argument, two-step method
  • Mipham — Nyingma; Svātantrika–Prāsaṅgika as pedagogical convergence; indivisibility of the Two Truths; the Norbu Ketaka reading of Bodhicaryāvatāra Ch 9
  • Khenpo Kunzang Pelden — Khenpo Kunpal (1862–1943), Nyingma/Rimé; compiler-transmitter of Patrul Rinpoche’s and Mipham’s commentaries; author of The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech on the Bodhicaryāvatāra
  • Ninth Karmapa — Kagyü, Prāsaṅgika, three stages of analysis, “partial emptiness” critique of Tsongkhapa, no thesis of one’s own
  • Eighth Karmapa — Kagyü, principal Kagyü Madhyamaka commentator, Chariot of the Takpo Kagyü Siddhas
  • Ruegg — European academic, Indo-Tibetan philology and philosophy, multi-criterial analysis of the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction
  • Burton — Western analytic / Buddhist practitioner; Nāgārjuna’s emptiness entails nihilism; prajñaptimātra requires an unconstructed basis
  • Shakya Chokden — Sakya (heterodox), grand unity of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, Alīkākāravāda = Madhyamaka, self-emptiness AND other-emptiness
  • Komarovski — Academic, foremost modern scholar of Shakya Chokden
  • Atiśa — Indian, “pure” undifferentiated Madhyamaka (“Great Madhyamaka”), Candrakīrti lineage, contemplative over scholastic
  • Mabja — Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü (?–1185), early Tibetan Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentator (Ornament of Reason), student of Chapa and Patsab; Candrakīrti-following, already drawing the Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika line by the own-characteristic criterion; frames the text by the Three Turnings and Two Truths from the outset
  • Apple — Academic (Calgary), recovery of Kadampa manuscripts, Atiśa’s Madhyamaka
  • Jinpa — Geluk-trained academic (Cambridge), translator of Tsongkhapa, sympathetic historical reconstruction
  • Thuken — Mongolian-Geluk Amdo doxographer (1737–1802); author of the synoptic Crystal Mirror, the most comprehensive late-Geluk doxography; names Gorampa only as an opponent already answered by others (see geluk-erasure-of-gorampa)
  • Sprung — Canadian comparative philosopher (1916–2002); Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian deflationary reading; translator of seventeen chapters of the Prasannapadā; predecessor to the Kalupahana/Burton deflationary line
  • Murti — T. R. V. Murti (1902–1986), Indian comparative philosopher (Banaras); the absolutist reading of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the one row in Matrix D whose verdict is neither nihilism nor a deflation; Madhyamaka as advaya (epistemological) against Vedānta as advaita (ontological); the Two Truths read subject-side and as means-to-end, with a terminus described as self-evident and self-existent
  • Dzongsar Khyentse — contemporary Khyentse-lineage master (b. 1961); transmits Gorampa’s reading to a Western audience; strongest articulation of subjective-side Two Truths; “Buddha-nature must be beyond the four extremes”
  • Chowdhury — Sanjoy Barua Chowdhury, Theravāda-academic (Bangladeshi-Thai); survey-level four-schools doxography with śūnyatā anchored in Pāli precedent; a low-tier exhibit of contemporary Theravāda survey work
  • Siderits — Mark Siderits, American analytic philosopher; programme of Buddhist Reductionism with Madhyamaka as the self-applied step that empties the dharmas; “semantic non-dualism” reading; defends Madhyamaka coherence without the Mahāyāna framework
  • Williams — Paul Williams, British Buddhologist (Bristol); Altruism and Reality (1998) presses that universal niḥsvabhāva is “equivalent to metaphysical nihilism”; the partial-framework defection case; doctoral supervisor of Burton
  • Della Santina — Peter Della Santina, Indo-Tibetan-trained scholar; 1986 critique of Murti’s Kantian “absolutism” reading; emptiness as soteriological therapy, the Two Truths as pedagogical device; the framework-overlay interpretive pitfall
  • Gendün Chöpel — Tibetan (1903–1951), Geluk-trained; the only modern Tibetan to produce a sustained Madhyamaka treatise from inside the Geluk apparatus and turn it against the Geluk; anti-Pramāṇa polemic, yogin-in-equipoise reading of VV 29, chasm-reading of the Two Truths
  • Oetke — Claus Oetke, German Indologist; central tenet “on the level of highest truth there is nothing of any kind”; structurally convergent with Burton; the half-framework-half-formalism interpretive pitfall
  • Wood — Thomas E. Wood, American academic philosopher; the most sustained 1990s defence of the nihilist interpretation; prasajya-consistent catuṣkoṭi terminates in “sheer, unqualified, absolute nothingness”; argumentatively rejects the Two Truths as a literal distinction and the pragmatic catuṣkoṭi
  • Gokhale — Pradeep P. Gokhale, Indian philosopher of logic (Pune; later CUTS Sarnath); the Two Truths retained without the pedagogy; emptiness as non-essential existence, never non-existence; the limiting-case negation read as non-truth-functional, which blocks Wood on his own ground; the framework-light reader who reaches none of the four distortions and ends in suspended judgement
  • Galloway — Brian Galloway, Western scholar of Buddhist logic; the Madhyamaka prasajya negation as a zero statement with no content at all, distinct from the prasajya of every other school; Nāgārjuna preserves the excluded middle and discards the bhāva (MMK 15.4); a further reading of VV 29 and a framework-external objection to the qualifier gloss of it
  • Hayes — Richard P. Hayes, Sanskritist and philosopher of Buddhist logic; the equivocation charge (svabhāva₁/₂, parabhāva₁/₂, “exists” vs “exists as”); Nāgārjuna’s logic standard but his arguments invalid, and he a metaphysician rather than an empiricist or a mystic; the purest specimen of full framework-removal in the wiki, and the reader who independently builds three of Matrix D’s distortion types

Arguments (17 total)

  • framework-necessity — core thesis; the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā requires the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework — Two Truths, nītārtha, Three Turnings — as pedagogy for coherent interpretation; challenged by Kalupahana, Burton, Walser, and Westerhoff
  • framework-absence-yields-nihilism — supporting; framework-removed readings predictably collapse into nihilism (Burton) or deflationary pragmatism (Kalupahana); Westerhoff is the principled counter-case
  • nihilism-charge-refuted — supporting; the rebuttal companion to the above: the nihilism charge (Burton, Wood) reads a non-affirming negation as an existential denial, and is defeated on three fields (ontological / bridge-pedagogy / genre); Nāgārjuna stages it himself as the pūrvapakṣa of MMK 24; canonical home of the nihilism₁ (metaphysical/paramārtha) vs nihilism₂ (methodological/saṃvṛti, conceded) distinction
  • madhyamaka-is-method-not-standalone-system — supporting; Madhyamaka is a definitive soteriological method applied to an already-received conventional truth, not a standalone system with its own conventional ontology — which defuses the ontological shoe-horn (Burton, Wood), explains the recurrent nihilism impression, accounts for the Svātantrikas’ swappable conventional layer, and is encoded in Candrakīrti’s title avatāra
  • sp-hierarchy-is-tibetan-construction — supporting; the Prāsaṅgika-over-Svātantrika hierarchy is a Tibetan codification, not an Indian given; convergent dissolution by Atiśa, Mipham, the Ninth Karmapa, and Shakya Chokden
  • framework-internal-debate-is-productive — supporting; framework-internal disagreement advances understanding rather than producing incoherence
  • grasping-emptiness-is-itself-a-form-of-nihilism — supporting; Gorampa’s inverted-nihilism charge against Tsongkhapa — reifying the med dgag of bden grub as the real ultimate has not negated enough
  • zhentong-is-refined-cittamatra-not-madhyamaka — supporting; Rongtön’s verdict that Dolpopa’s zhentong is the most refined Cittamātra, with its four reasons, beside Red mda’ ba’s harsher verdict (outside the Dharma), both recorded by Gorampa; Sakya/Geluk convergence on the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka-boundary
  • catushkoti-must-negate-all-four-extremes — supporting; Gorampa’s methodological core — a Madhyamaka negation must apply to all four koṭis without qualification; cross-school convergence with the Karmapa, Mipham, and Atiśa
  • atisha-tsongkhapa-pramana-divide — supporting; Atiśa’s anti-Pramāṇa line vs Tsongkhapa’s integration of it as a load-bearing divide within the Kadam–Geluk lineage
  • tathagatagarbha-and-four-extremes — supporting; three (not two) Tibetan positions on Tathāgatagarbha — truly-existent zhentong / freedom-from-extremes / deflationary med dgag
  • vv-29-three-readings — supporting; VV v. 29 read three ways by Tsongkhapa (content), Gorampa (kind of thesis) and Westerhoff (semantic register), with six further readings, including the Ninth Karmapa’s by perspective and the equipoise reading Gorampa rejects; load-bearing for the No-thesis and Pramāṇa questions
  • kalupahana-vs-buddhapalita-and-vv — supporting; Kalupahana’s Kaccāyanagotta-only reduction rebutted by the Buddhapālita commentary’s Mahāyāna reading (its two-truths passages and colophon) and Nāgārjuna’s own Vigrahavyāvartanī
  • glasenapp-westerhoff-vedanta-unification — supporting; Glasenapp 1950 and Westerhoff 2024 converge in locating the Vedānta-approaching tendency in Yogācāra — defeating Kalupahana’s charge that Candrakīrti led Madhyamaka toward Vedānta
  • framework-has-pali-canonical-antecedents — supporting; the Two Truths and nītārtha devices are Buddhist in origin — the Theravāda drew the same framework out of the suttas (Karunadasa); convergent-evolution corroboration
  • geluk-erasure-of-gorampa — supporting; Thuken’s Crystal Mirror names Gorampa five times as an opponent already answered but never engages Lta ba’i shan ‘byed; Geluk replies run into the nineteenth century, and the Ganden Potrang ban fell chiefly on the Sakya capacity to reply — dismissal and institutional pressure, not erasure
  • mis-sequenced-emptiness-teaching-is-a-downfall — supporting; teaching emptiness out of order is a root downfall in the Ākāśagarbha Sūtra, not a matter of pedagogical taste — the sharpest evidence that framework-as-pedagogy is an operative commitment of the tradition rather than a later exegetical gloss, and the hardest single point for Oetke-style framework-as-formalism

Concepts (14 total)

  • Emptiness — śūnyatā, the central Madhyamaka doctrine
  • Svabhāva — intrinsic nature, the object of Madhyamaka negation
  • Two Truths — satyadvaya, the pedagogical and ontological structure
  • Provisional and Definitive — neyārtha / nītārtha; the Mahāyāna device for classifying teachings by interpretive status, and the framework the MMK paper argues is necessary; nine-thinker comparison matrix; the Jonang inversion as the principal axis of Tibetan disagreement
  • Right View — samyag-dṛṣṭi; the correction of the mode of holding rather than the substitution of one held content for another; what Madhyamaka establishes in place of an ontology; the MMK 13:8 / 27:30 objection and its resolution
  • Three Turnings — tri-dharmacakra; the Mahāyāna framework organising the Buddha’s teaching into three turnings; ten-thinker comparison matrix
  • Non-affirming Negation — prasajyapratiṣedha / med dgag, the form of Madhyamaka negation
  • Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika — the two sub-schools of Indian/Tibetan Madhyamaka
  • Tathāgatagarbha — Buddha-nature, the matrix-of-One-Gone-Thus
  • Five Great Reasonings — gtan tshigs chen po lnga, the Tibetan scholastic toolkit of Madhyamaka analytic arguments
  • Pramāṇa — valid cognition (Diṅnāga–Dharmakīrti); the epistemology Tsongkhapa integrates and Atiśa, Gorampa, Mipham, and the Ninth Karmapa reject for realising the ultimate
  • Rangtong-Zhentong — self-emptiness vs other-emptiness; the Tibetan schism on whether the ultimate is itself empty; comparison matrix across nine thinkers
  • No-thesis — na me ‘sti pratijñā; the Prāsaṅgika denial of an autonomous thesis; locus classicus at Vigrahavyāvartanī v. 29; nine readings, among them Tsongkhapa (content), Gorampa (kind of thesis), the Ninth Karmapa (perspective), Gendün Chöpel (equipoise), Westerhoff and Oetke
  • Yogācāra-Madhyamaka-boundary — the doctrinal line between Mahāyāna’s two principal schools; load-bearing for Candrakīrti’s critique of vijñaptimātratā and the reduction of zhentong to “refined Cittamātra”; four Tibetan positions catalogued

Comparisons (4 total)

  • object-of-negation — Matrix A; dgag bya across Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, the Ninth Karmapa, Mipham, Shakya Chokden, and Gendün Chöpel, with Dolpopa added as an off-axis zhentong voice (affirming-negative ultimate, exempted from the negandum); five diagnostic axes; Tsongkhapa the outlier on the qualifier and four-koṭis columns
  • conventional-truth — Matrix B; saṃvṛtisatya across Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, the Ninth Karmapa, and Dolpopa; five diagnostic axes; the conventional-side question is more divergent than the dgag bya one
  • tathagatagarbha — Matrix C; tathāgatagarbha status across seven thinkers; three-position structure (truly-existent-zhentong / beyond-four-extremes / deflationary-med dgag)
  • framework-absence-readings - Matrix D; comparing the principal interpreters who have read Nāgārjuna’s MMK as collapsing into nihilism, absolutism, positivism, deflationary pragmatism, or invalidity (19 rows; 14 nihilism verdicts, 12 of them unqualified)

Sources (60 total)

  • aryadeva-four-hundred-sonam-2008 — Āryadeva’s Catuḥśataka (Four Hundred Verses) with Gyel-tsap’s Geluk commentary (trans. Ruth Sonam & Geshe Sonam Rinchen); Āryadeva’s graded-teaching verses (vv. 189–194) and the commentators’ two-truths reading of the two halves; commentary-and-supplement to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā; primary support for , ,
  • mabja-ornament-of-reason — rMa bya byang chub brtson ‘grus (?–1185), Ornament of Reason (Snow Lion 2011); an early Tibetan chapter-by-chapter Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentary; pre-Tsongkhapa witness for the framework-as-hermeneutic-from-the-outset claim
  • tsongkhapa-ocean-of-reasoning-1408 — Tsongkhapa’s Ocean of Reasoning (1407–08, trans. Samten & Garfield 2006), his direct Mūlamadhyamakakārikā commentary; object-side two-truths reading and the prasajya/paryudāsa doctrine
  • lopez-madmans-middle-way-2006 — Donald Lopez, The Madman’s Middle Way (2006); the English translation of and commentary on Gendün Chöpel’s Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan; reads GC as traditional, not a Buddhist modernist
  • kalupahana-buddhist-philosophy-1976 — David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (1976), Ch. 11; pre-reversal Kalupahana reading Madhyamaka itself as a “revolution” away from early Buddhism, with Bhāviveka rehabilitated
  • komito-seventy-stanzas-1987 — David Komito’s translation of Nāgārjuna’s Śūnyatāsaptati with Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s Geluk commentary (Snow Lion 1987); italics mark the Tibetan root and roman the translators’ interpolations, which carry v. 44’s Two Truths wording
  • walser-nagarjuna-2005 — Joseph Walser, Nāgārjuna in Context (Columbia 2005); social-historical reading of Nāgārjuna’s writings as resource-securing strategies; the strongest external-causal alternative to this wiki’s doctrinal reading
  • westerhoff-madhyamaka-2009 — Westerhoff’s systematic philosophical introduction to Nāgārjuna; threefold svabhāva analysis, anti-realism, cognitive dimension
  • westerhoff-nihilist-interpretation-2016 — Westerhoff’s defence of a sophisticated nihilist reading of Madhyamaka
  • gorampa-distinguishing-views-1469 — Gorampa’s threefold taxonomy and critique of Tsongkhapa and Dolpopa (Lta ba’i shan ‘byed)
  • gorampa-removal-wrong-views — Gorampa’s verse-by-verse spyi don on the Madhyamakāvatāra (Lta ngan sel, c. 1470s); sixty moot-points against the Tsongkhapa tradition; positive Sakya tathāgatagarbha at MA 11.34
  • taranatha-essence-other-emptiness-2007 — Tāranātha’s concise Jonang presentation of zhentong, with extensive Dolpopa citations
  • dolpopa-mountain-doctrine-1333 — Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s Mountain Doctrine (c. 1333; trans. Hopkins 2006); the foundational zhentong treatise — now grounds the wiki’s Dolpopa material directly rather than via Tāranātha; the ultimate as truly existent tathāgatagarbha and an affirming negative (ma yin dgag), the Jonang Three-Wheels inversion, and a zhentong reading of MMK itself (MMK 25 as two nirvāṇas)
  • tsongkhapa-illuminating-intent-1418 — Tsongkhapa’s mature commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra; object of negation, two truths, Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika
  • kalupahana-mmk-1986 — Kalupahana’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā translation and commentary; Nāgārjuna as empiricist pragmatist, MMK as commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta
  • shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara — Śāntarakṣita’s Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis with Mipham’s commentary; “neither one nor many” argument, two-step method
  • karmapa-feast-fortunate-1578 — the Ninth Karmapa’s abridgement of the Eighth Karmapa’s Madhyamakāvatāra commentary; Kagyü Prāsaṅgika, “partial emptiness” critique of Tsongkhapa
  • mipham-introduction-middle-way-2002 — Mipham’s Word of Chandra on the Madhyamakāvatāra (c. 1900); MA 6.23 as “epistemic, not ontological”; refutes Tsongkhapa’s bden grub qualifier; tathāgatagarbha as the ultimate-in-itself
  • kunzang-pelden-nectar-manjushri-2007 — Khenpo Kunzang Pelden, The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech on the Bodhicaryāvatāra (Padmakara 2007), Ch 9 following Mipham’s Norbu Ketaka; the framework-as-pedagogy keystone (BCA 9.106)
  • ruegg-svat-pras-2006 — Ruegg’s historical-critical analysis of the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction; six interrelated criteria; the distinction as dynamic, not a frozen dichotomy
  • burton-emptiness-appraised-1999 — Burton’s analytic appraisal of Nāgārjuna; universal niḥsvabhāva = prajñaptimātra entails nihilism; the paradigm case for framework-removal
  • komarovski-visions-unity-2011 — Komarovski’s study of Shakya Chokden’s grand unity of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka
  • apple-jewels-middle-way-2018 — Apple’s recovery of Atiśa’s “pure” Madhyamaka from Kadampa manuscripts; contemplative Candrakīrti lineage, rejection of pramāṇa
  • jinpa-tsongkhapa-qualms-1999 — Jinpa’s reconstruction of Tsongkhapa’s three qualms (nihilism, absolutism, quietism); dependent origination as the content of emptiness
  • candrakirti-prasannapada-mmk1-excerpt — Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā on MMK 1.1 (Appendix I of Dewar); the locus classicus of the Buddhapālita–Bhāviveka–Candrakīrti exchange
  • atisha-key-instructions — Atiśa’s Madhyama-upadeśa (Appendix II of Dewar); a short contemplative manual of his Madhyamaka practice
  • tenpa-personal-notes-2025 — the wiki author’s working notes on MMK interpretations across 2025; framework-defending against modern academic readings; Thai Forest convergent-evolution material; companion to tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes
  • tenpa-tibetan-battleground-notes — the wiki author’s working synthesis of MA 1.8 and 3.11 polemics (Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Eighth Karmapa, Mipham) and Dolpopa’s zhentong reading; quotations pending verification
  • ames-prajnapradipa-ch2-1995 — Ames’s translation of Bhāviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa Ch 2 (on motion); syllogistic method with the paramārthatas qualifier; Bhāviveka’s inconsistency with prasaṅga
  • coghlan-buddhapalita-2021 — Coghlan’s translation of Buddhapālita’s Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti (Wisdom 2021); the colophon’s “Great Vehicle Abhidharma” description of the MMK; Buddhapālita’s two-truths reading of 24:8–10; Tsongkhapa’s direct-insight locus at BP Ch 18
  • thuken-crystal-mirror-1802 — Thuken’s Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems (1802); synoptic late-Geluk doxography; Hindu-comparison reduction of gzhan stong; dismissal of Gorampa by reference to earlier Geluk replies
  • dzongsar-khyentse-madhyamakavatara-2003 — Dzongsar Khyentse’s oral commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra (2003), arranged by Gorampa’s sa bcad; subjective-side Two Truths; tathāgatagarbha beyond the four extremes
  • westerhoff-candrakirti-2024 — Westerhoff’s Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide (OUP 2024); first sustained analytic commentary on the Madhyamakāvatāra; “semantic insulation” between the truths
  • sprung-lucid-exposition-1979 — Sprung’s translation of seventeen chapters of the Prasannapadā (1979) with a Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian introduction; early Western predecessor of the deflationary line
  • westerhoff-vigrahavyavartani-2010 — Westerhoff’s translation and commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī (OUP 2010); the Indian root for the No-thesis doctrine and the anti-foundationalist alternative to Nyāya Pramāṇa theory
  • chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 — Chowdhury’s 5-page survey (2018); four-schools doxography and a catalogue of early Pāli suññatā loci; a tertiary survey with two factual lapses (see source page)
  • oetke-remarks-interpretation-1991 — Oetke’s programmatic article (1991); the central tenet “on the level of highest truth there is nothing of any kind” as a negative general existential; the half-framework-half-formalism interpretive pitfall
  • westerhoff-golden-age-madhyamaka-2018 — Westerhoff’s historical survey of Indian Madhyamaka (OUP 2018); the Prāsaṅgika–Svātantrika split as a “doxographic fiction”; warns against over-application of Tsongkhapa-style interpolation
  • westerhoff-vaidalyaprakarana-2018 — Westerhoff’s translation and commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Vaidalyaprakaraṇa (Wisdom 2018); reads the VP as constructive desubstantialisation; endorses Tsongkhapa’s MMK–VP–VV triad
  • siderits-buddhism-philosophy-2007 — Siderits’s textbook statement of Buddhist Reductionism (2007), Ch 9; three-options taxonomy with “semantic non-dualism” as the only coherent reading; two-senses-of-ultimate-truth disambiguation
  • siderits-causation-emptiness-2004 — Siderits, “Causation and Emptiness in Early Madhyamaka” (2004); technical reconstruction of MMK 1; the cleanest exhibit of defending Madhyamaka coherence without the Mahāyāna framework
  • siderits-reality-altruism-2000 — Siderits’s review of Williams’s Altruism and Reality (2000); exhibits Williams’s reading as the intermediate framework-removal failure; defends Śāntideva via the graded-teaching device (BCA 8/9)
  • della-santina-madhyamaka-western-1986 — Della Santina, “The Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy” (1986); critique of Murti’s Kantian “absolutism” reading; emptiness as soteriological therapy; the framework-overlay interpretive pitfall
  • glasenapp-vedanta-buddhism-1950 — Glasenapp’s Vedanta and Buddhism (1950); locates the Vedānta-approaching tendency in Yogācāra, used as a structural counter-witness against Kalupahana’s Candrakīrti-Vedānta charge
  • karunadasa-theravada-abhidhamma-2010 — Y. Karunadasa, The Theravāda Abhidhamma (2010); the cleanest Theravāda-internal witness that the Two Truths and nītattha/neyyattha framework is drawn out of the suttas; sabhāva glossed as emptiness
  • jamyang-khyentse-seed-reasoning-2018 — Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s The Seed of Reasoning (rigs pa’i sa bon; trans. Pearcey, Lotsawa House 2018); a short nineteenth-century Rimé zin bris on the Five Great Reasonings, each as a debate-syllogism; the wiki’s only source about the five-as-a-set (no scholar page per the wiki author’s brief)
  • wood-nagarjunian-disputations-1994 — Thomas E. Wood, Nāgārjunian Disputations (Hawai’i 1994); sustained late-twentieth-century defence of the nihilist interpretation via formal logic; argumentatively rejects the literal Two Truths distinction and the pragmatic catuṣkoṭi; fifth deflationary-nihilist sub-pattern alongside Sprung, Kalupahana, Oetke and Burton
  • garfield-fundamental-wisdom-1995 — Jay Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995); his complete Mūlamadhyamakakārikā translation-plus-commentary and fullest statement
  • garfield-dependent-arising-1994 — Jay Garfield, “Dependent Arising and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why Did Nāgārjuna Start with Causation?” (Philosophy East and West 1994); a dedicated “how to read the MMK”
  • garfield-causality-2001 — Jay Garfield, “Nāgārjuna’s Theory of Causality: Implications Sacred and Profane” (Philosophy East and West 2001); causation deflated to conventionalist regularism (MMK I and VII)
  • garfield-epoche-sunyata-1990 — Jay Garfield, “Epoche and Śūnyatā: Skepticism East and West” (Philosophy East and West 1990); his earliest piece, the seed of the later reading; Madhyamaka (with Sextus/Hume/Wittgenstein) as philosophical therapy, not nihilism
  • gokhale-ways-of-argumentation-2008 — Pradeep Gokhale, “Nāgārjuna’s Ways of Argumentation: Some Logical Issues” (2008); the limiting-case Madhyamaka negation read as non-truth-functional (performative, after Ruegg), which blocks Wood’s excluded-middle inference from outside the framework; the open-concept answer to Hayes’s equivocation charge
  • gokhale-madhyamika-dialectics-1992 — Pradeep Gokhale, “The Dialectics of Mādhyamika Buddhism” (1992); the eternalism/annihilationism derivation of niḥsvabhāva reached independently of Tsongkhapa; the Hegelian-absolutist reading refused; “primacy of the theoretical” as the sharpest modern statement of the case against framework-as-pedagogy
  • gokhale-essentialism-eternalism-1996 — Pradeep Gokhale, “Essentialism, Eternalism and Buddhism” (1996); svabhāvavāda as the problem Advaita, Vaiśeṣika, Nāgārjuna and Dharmakīrti each answer differently; the essence-implies-permanence inference run forwards by Gauḍapāda and backwards by Nāgārjuna; the middle path as ontological and “neither moral nor practical”; Russellian external negation as the method
  • gokhale-nagarjuna-skepticism — Pradeep Gokhale, “Nāgārjuna’s Skepticism vis-à-vis those of Jayarāśi and Śrīharṣa” (undated); Nāgārjuna as the one comprehensive cognitive sceptic of the three, and as a concerned sceptic after Sextus — a view is a disease, emptiness the cure; śūnya as non-essential existence rather than non-existence; an ultimate that refers to nothing beyond the conventional
  • galloway-logical-issues-1989 — Brian Galloway, “Some Logical Issues in Madhyamaka Thought” (JIP 17:1, 1989); the Madhyamaka prasajya negation as a contentless zero statement; the excluded middle preserved and the bhāva discarded at MMK 15.4 — the third and most direct framework-external block on Wood; Murti refuted on the excluded middle; a further reading of VV 29
  • hayes-nagarjunas-appeal-1994 — Richard P. Hayes, “Nāgārjuna’s Appeal” (JIP 22:4, 1994); the equivocation charge against MMK 1 and MMK 15, derived from Pāṇini; a fifth verdict for Matrix D (the arguments are invalid, not nihilist); the purest full-removal specimen; independently builds three of the four distortion types and diagnoses them as anachronistic projection
  • murti-samvrti-paramartha-1973 — T. R. V. Murti, “Saṃvṛti and Paramārtha in Mādhyamika and Advaita Vedānta”, in Sprung (ed.), The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedānta (Reidel 1973); Murti’s own statement of the absolutist reading, against Streng and against the Madhyamaka–Vedānta identification; the Two Truths retained in full as pedagogy and read subject-side, with an Absolute added at the terminus — one expectation of a positive remainder, running opposite to the nihilist’s
  • akasagarbha-sutra-84000-2014 — The Ākāśagarbha Sūtra (Toh 260), trans. Sakya Pandita Translation Group for 84000 (2014); the graded ordering of the emptiness teaching stated by the Buddha at 1.15 with the abandonment of both extremes as its purpose; the two truths as means and end at 1.30–1.31; mis-sequenced teaching of emptiness as the first root downfall at 1.60; and, cutting the other way, the naturally-pure-mind-plus-adventitious-stains formula at 1.103
  • astasahasrika-84000-2026 — The Transcendent State of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Toh 12), trans. Padmakara Translation Group for 84000 (2026); the first complete English translation, with roughly 1,450 notes from Haribhadra and Ratnākaraśānti, the latter in English for the first time. Carries the acitta passage and the Śāriputra exchange, the Haribhadra / Ratnākaraśānti division over the type of negation, and the translators’ account of why the literary method is not decoration

Summaries (4 total)

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