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Nāgārjuna's Seventy Stanzas

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“Nāgārjuna’s Seventy Stanzas: A Buddhist Psychology of Emptiness” — Komito, David Ross; Sonam Rinchen, Geshe, 1987.

Thesis / main argument

A complete English translation of Nāgārjuna’s Śūnyatāsaptati (Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness; sTong pa nyid bdun cu pa) with a verse-by-verse Geluk-school commentary by Geshe Sonam Rinchen (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala), framed editorially by David Ross Komito as a “Buddhist psychology of emptiness.” The translation is made from the Tibetan (Peking #5227 and sDe dge #3827, amended against Candrakīrti’s Śūnyatāsaptativṛtti) — the Sanskrit is not extant. Komito’s editorial frame situates the Śūnyatāsaptati within a broader Geluk pedagogical structure that treats object (the Seventy Stanzas itself), subject (Asaṅga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya-derived treatises and Geluk meditation manuals) and perception (Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika-derived treatises) as the three divisions of a single explanatory project. The doctrinal payload of the text itself is a sustained working-out, in 73 short verses, of the implications of dependent origination for the question of how things exist — concentrated on the same arising-enduring-disintegrating problematic that opens the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and explicit, at v. 44, about the Two Truths as the hermeneutical key to the entire Buddhist canon.

The text is the fourth member of the Tibetan Yukti-corpus (rigs pa’i tshogs drug) — alongside MMK, VV, VP, Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, and Ratnāvalī — and supplies primary-text grounding for the Śūnyatāsaptati node that the wiki has previously held only as a reference in the VV Yukti-corpus list and the Nāgārjuna scholar page.

Key claims

  • Stanza 44 — the explicit Two Truths hermeneutical declaration. “Whatever is said by the Buddha has the two truths as its chief underlying thought; it is hard to understand and must be interpreted in this light. When the Buddha says ‘existence’ his chief underlying thought is conventional existence; when he says ‘non-existence’ his chief underlying thought is non-inherent existence; when he says ‘existence-and-non-existence’ his chief underlying thought is conventional-existence-and-non-inherent-existence as a mere object of examination” (p. ~894). This is Nāgārjuna stating in his own voice — outside MMK, in a Yukti-corpus text — that the Two Truths is the framework within which the Buddha’s teachings must be interpreted. Direct disambiguation of the apparent contradiction between the Buddha’s “exists” / “does not exist” sayings: “exists” tracks conventional existence, “does not exist” tracks non-inherent existence. Closes off the Williams / Burton charge that universal niḥsvabhāva equals nihilism by pre-emptively distinguishing the two registers in which existence-claims are made.

  • Stanza 1 — Buddha’s own conventional usage. “‘Arising,’ ‘enduring,’ and ‘disintegrating;’ ‘existing’ and ‘non-existing;’ ‘inferior,’ ‘middling,’ and ‘superior’ do not have true existence. These terms are used by the Buddha in accordance with worldly conventions” (p. 854). The opening stanza already invokes the Two Truths structure: the Buddha’s own categorial vocabulary is saṃvṛti-level usage, not paramārtha-level metaphysics. Direct precursor to the v. 44 generalisation.

  • Stanzas 15–22 — the Vaibhāṣika / Hīnayāna nihilism objection answered head-on. The śrāvaka opponent at v. 15 raises the explicit nihilism charge: “If you assert that phenomena don’t exist inherently then you are asserting that they don’t exist at all” — and v. 18 (“Hīnayānist”) presses it further with the horns of a rabbit analogy. Nāgārjuna’s reply (vv. 16–17, 19–22) inverts the charge: it is the opponent who courts nihilism, since asserting inherent existence severs phenomena from causes and conditions and so empties them of any actual existence. V. 21 names the two extremes by name: “If a phenomenon were to disintegrate completely then you must accept the annihilationist view.” The text is doing in 73 verses what MMK Ch 15 does at length — and is doing so explicitly in the register of answering the nihilism charge.

  • Stanzas 40–42 — emanations as the model for conventional existence. “When we say that these two emanations [the Tathāgata’s emanation and the emanation’s emanation] do not exist inherently, that does not mean that they are completely non-existent but rather that both of them, just like actions and the one who performs actions, merely exist through terms because they are separated from the nature of inherent existence” (p. 893). The illusion-and-emanation simile (cf. MMK 17, MMK 23, BCA 9) is here used to articulate the positive conventional content of the niḥsvabhāva thesis. Things exist as imputations supported by terms and concepts, not nowhere.

  • Stanzas 67–71 — emptiness of emptiness, dependent arising, and fearlessness. V. 71 — “whatsoever arises dependently does not exist inherently, and how can that non-inherent existence itself have inherent existence? In fact, that non-inherent existence must definitely not exist inherently!” — is the Śūnyatāsaptati’s direct counterpart of MMK 13:8 (emptiness as itself empty). V. 68 makes the four-way identification central to MMK 24:18 in a different idiom: “the Peerless Tathāgata has shown the emptiness of inherent existence of dependent arising as the reality of all things.” V. 70 closes the metaphysical exposition with a remark on audience: “Those who do not understand what is explained by the Tathāgata to be conventionally existent and empty of the sign of true existence are frightened by this teaching” — the text’s own diagnosis of why the nihilism reading recurs.

  • Stanza 11 — pramāṇa explicitly invoked but in its non-foundationalist register. “Because ignorance and karmic formations are interrelated as cause and effect so these two are known by a valid cognizer not to exist inherently” (p. 864, emphasis added; Tib. tshad ma). The text uses pramāṇa terminology but applies it to establishing emptiness, not to founding ultimate truth in valid cognition. The grammar matches Tsong Khapa’s integrationist reading rather than Atiśa’s pramāṇa-rejection — a small but real Indian primary-text datum on the Atiśa-Tsongkhapa pramāṇa divide.

  • Stanzas 4–6 — the four-cornered cause-and-result analysis (cf. MMK 1). The text reproduces the standard MMK 1.1 four-corner negation in compressed form: results that already exist in the cause cannot arise, results that do not exist in the cause cannot arise, results both existing and not existing in the cause are contradictory. Bears directly on Buddhapālita’s prasaṅga-only method (coghlan-buddhapalita-2021).

  • Stanzas 33–43 — karman without svabhāva. A self-contained sequence on action, agent, and result: actions do not exist inherently, but precisely because of this they are not wasted and bear fruit. V. 38: “When actions do not have inherent existence there will be no person to perform actions. Because both of them do not exist, results do not exist. When there are no results there will be no person to experience those results physically and mentally” — read in conjunction with vv. 40–42 (the “they merely exist through imputation” qualifier), this is a direct rebuttal of the standard nihilism objection that emptiness destroys ethics.

  • The opponent identifications. The text names Vaibhāṣika (v. 15) and Hīnayāna (v. 18) opponents explicitly. There is no Naiyāyika engagement here (unlike VV vv. 30–51 and VP); the Śūnyatāsaptati sits squarely in the intra-Buddhist register. This complements rather than competes with the VV / VP datum: across the Yukti-corpus, Nāgārjuna’s interlocutors include both śrāvaka Abhidharma and non-Buddhist Indian philosophy.

  • The colophon. The text’s own colophon names three Tibetan translators (Gzhon nu mchog, Gnyan dharma grags, Khu) and an unnamed editor, but treats Nāgārjuna’s authorship as established. Authenticity is not internally disputed in this text.

Methodology

Komito 1987 is a translation-with-commentary book, not a stand-alone academic argument. Three layers are present: (i) Nāgārjuna’s root verses (rendered from the Tibetan, with Sanskrit reconstruction unavailable); (ii) Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s verse-by-verse Geluk-school commentary, transmitted orally and edited into prose by Komito; (iii) Komito’s editorial introduction situating the text within an Asaṅga/Dharmakīrti-framed Geluk pedagogical scheme.

The Geluk lens is explicit and unconcealed: the commentary identifies the object of negation as bden grub / inherent existence, integrates pramāṇa terminology into the exposition of emptiness (v. 11; cf. v. 47), and reads the Two Truths in Tsongkhapa’s “two natures of a single entity” register. Komito makes this transparent in the introduction (p. ~67–73, on Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s lineage). For the wiki’s purposes the commentary supplies a representative Geluk gloss; the primary-text grounding lies in the root verses, which are doctrinally robust enough to be read against multiple commentarial frameworks.

Notable quotes

“Whatever is said by the Buddha has the two truths as its chief underlying thought; it is hard to understand and must be interpreted in this light.” — Śūnyatāsaptati v. 44

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