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Kalupahana

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Position summary

Kalupahana reads Nāgārjuna as a conservative restorer of the Buddha’s original empiricist philosophy against the substantialist distortions of the Sarvāstivādins and Sautrāntikas. For Kalupahana, the entire later Madhyamaka tradition — Candrakīrti’s commentarial framework, the Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika distinction, the hierarchical Two Truths, the reading of emptiness as a linguistically transcendent truth — represents a progressive departure from Nāgārjuna’s intent. The “real” Nāgārjuna is a pragmatic empiricist comparable to Hume and William James, whose sole concern was to eliminate metaphysical notions of substance (svabhāva) and restore the Buddha’s middle path of dependent arising.

This position evolved significantly over Kalupahana’s career. In earlier works (Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, 1975), he accepted aspects of the standard Madhyamaka interpretation. His 1986 MMK translation represents a reversal: he now argues that Candrakīrti led Nāgārjuna’s philosophy toward “Vedantic interpretation” and that reading MMK through the Nikāyas and Āgamas yields a radically different — and more authentic — Nāgārjuna.

Hermeneutical approach

Kalupahana explicitly rejects the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework. He does not read MMK through the Two Truths as a hierarchical structure, does not accept the provisional/definitive distinction as relevant to MMK’s interpretation, and does not situate MMK within the Three Turnings schema. Instead, he reads MMK through the early Buddhist discourses (Pāli Nikāyas, Chinese Āgamas) and the early Abhidharma, comparing the Sanskrit text with Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation as a check on Candrakīrti’s commentary.

Key hermeneutical moves:

  • The Kaccāyanagotta Sutta as the interpretive key to the entire MMK
  • Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation (Chung-lun) as more faithful than Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā
  • Paramārtha as “ultimate fruit/consequence” rather than “ultimate reality”
  • Saṃvṛti as “convention” (broadly) rather than “mere language”
  • Nirvikalpa as “non-polarised discrimination” rather than “non-conceptual”
  • Moggalīputta-tissa as the first Buddhist reformer; Nāgārjuna as the second

Key claims

  • MMK is a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, not a standalone philosophical treatise
  • Nāgārjuna was an empiricist; na vidyate (“not evident”) is an appeal to experience
  • The Two Truths are non-hierarchical; paramārtha does not sublate saṃvṛti
  • Nirvāṇa is transformation, not transcendence — the elimination of greed, hatred, and confusion
  • Candrakīrti’s interpretation moved Buddhist philosophy toward Vedāntic absolutism
  • Chapters XXVI–XXVII are integral to the Kārikā, not Hīnayānistic appendices
  • The Theravāda/Mahāyāna distinction is an “exaggeration” that should be eliminated

Tenpa’s assessment

Kalupahana is the paper’s primary example of what happens when MMK is read entirely outside the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework (Section 5.1). His reading is internally coherent within its own premises but produces a deeply deflationary Nāgārjuna — a commentator rather than a philosopher, an empiricist rather than a dialectician, a conservative rather than an innovator. The reading’s main weakness is that it cannot account for why MMK generated such a vast and sophisticated commentarial tradition if it was merely restating what the Buddha already said. The hermeneutical self-contradiction — confidently asserting what Nāgārjuna “really” meant while reading him as anti-assertoric — is the key vulnerability.

Kalupahana’s insistence on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta connection is valuable but overstated. The paper (Section 2.4 and 6.5) argues that this connection demonstrates continuity between early Buddhist and Madhyamaka thought but does not establish that MMK is “merely” a commentary on this single discourse.

  • Murti — Kalupahana explicitly rejects Murti’s dialectical, Kantian reading of Nāgārjuna
  • Warder — first raised the question whether Nāgārjuna was a Mahāyānist; Kalupahana builds on this
  • Inada — Kalupahana engages sympathetically but disagrees on the Mahāyāna framing
  • Stcherbatsky — criticised for equating Sarvāstivāda with early Buddhism
  • Candrakīrti — treated as the primary distorter of Nāgārjuna’s original intent

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