Overview
The Kaccāyanagotta Sutta (Pāli; Skt. Kātyāyanāvavāda-sūtra) is a short discourse in the Saṃyutta Nikāya (12.15) in which the Venerable Kaccāna asks the Blessed One what right view (sammādiṭṭhi) is. The Buddha answers by rejecting the two extremes of “all exists” (sabbam atthi) and “all does not exist” (sabbam natthi) and teaching the middle way through the twelve links of dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda). The sutta is short — under 400 words — and is given in full in the body below.
The sutta is doctrinally pivotal for the Madhyamaka tradition because it is the only sutta Nāgārjuna names by title in the whole of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (15:7): “In the Instruction of Kātyāyana both ‘it is’ and ‘it is not’ are denied by the Blessed One who clearly perceives existence and non-existence.” This single citation has become the textual anchor of an entire interpretive sub-debate. For Kalupahana (1986) it is the interpretive key to the whole of MMK — “a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta” — and the warrant for reading Nāgārjuna as continuous with early Buddhism and discontinuous with Mahāyāna scholasticism. For the Indian and Tibetan commentarial tradition the citation is one scriptural witness among many, and the neyārtha / nītārtha / Three Turnings framework determines how it is to be read.
Full text
At Sāvatthī. Then the Venerable Kaccāna gotta approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said to him: “Venerable sir, it is said, ‘right view, right view.’ In what way, venerable sir, is there right view?”
“This world, Kaccāna, for the most part depends upon a duality — upon the notion of existence and the notion of non-existence. But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of non-existence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.
“This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence. But this one with right view does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’ He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view.
“‘All exists’: Kaccāna, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness ….’ Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations, cessation of consciousness ….’ Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.”
Key passages
- The two-extremes formula (“‘All exists’: this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle”). The verbal anchor for the “middle way” as a via media between the two views atthi-vāda and natthi-vāda. Directly echoed at Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 15:7 (Nāgārjuna’s sole named sutta citation).
- Right view as freedom from “existence” and “non-existence” (“for one who sees the origin … there is no notion of non-existence; for one who sees the cessation … there is no notion of existence”). The grounding of right view in seeing arising and cessation — i.e. in dependent origination — rather than in either ontological commitment. Madhyamaka reads this as the canonical antecedent of the four-extremes (catuṣkoṭi) negation; Kalupahana reads it as the canonical antecedent of his empiricist pragmatism.
- Middle way as paṭiccasamuppāda (“the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘with ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be …’”). The middle way is named in the sutta as the twelve-link dependent origination formula, not as an abstract via media. This is the textual fact that anchors Kalupahana’s reading of paṭiccasamuppāda / pratītyasamutpāda as the substantive content of the middle way and forecloses, on his reading, any later metaphysical inflation.
Commentarial tradition
The sutta has no formal commentarial tradition within the Pāli atthakathā literature beyond the standard Saṃyutta-aṭṭhakathā gloss. Its commentarial weight comes almost entirely from Madhyamaka:
- Nāgārjuna at Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 15:7 — “In the Instruction of Kātyāyana both ‘it is’ and ‘it is not’ are denied by the Blessed One who clearly perceives existence and non-existence.” Nāgārjuna’s sole named sutta citation in MMK. The citation operates within MMK 15’s broader analysis of svabhāva: if entities had intrinsic nature they would be permanent; if they had no nature at all they could not arise at all; the Kātyāyana citation supplies scriptural warrant for the dual rejection of atthi-vāda and natthi-vāda.
- Mabja (12th c.) on MMK 15:7 — reads Kātyāyana as “a scripture accepted by all Buddhist schools” (‘thad pa’i rgyan Ch 15, “Refutation by Means of Scripture”). The twelfth-century Tibetan articulation of the appeal-to-commonly-accepted-authority reading: Nāgārjuna cites this sutta precisely because it is a Śrāvakayāna scripture his opponents already accept, not because his project is to recover its original meaning at the expense of later Mahāyāna scholasticism. This reading competes directly with Kalupahana’s. Primary-grounded via mabja-ornament-of-reason.
- Candrakīrti on MMK 15:7 — follows the Indian tradition in treating the citation as a scriptural anchor for the dual rejection rather than as the interpretive key to MMK. The Prasannapadā on MMK 15:7 is covered in sprung-lucid-exposition-1979 under the broader treatment of MMK 15.
- No major free-standing Indian or Tibetan commentary on the sutta itself. The Pāli sutta is embedded in the Madhyamaka tradition through MMK 15:7 rather than read independently.
Modern reception
- Kalupahana (1986), kalupahana-mmk-1986 — the most ambitious modern reading. Kalupahana’s signature claim is that MMK is a commentary on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta: Nāgārjuna’s project is to return Mahāyāna to Early Buddhism by restating the sutta’s two-extremes / middle-way / dependent-origination teaching in dialectical form. On Kalupahana’s reading, paramārtha in MMK 24:8–10 means “ultimate fruit” (pragmatic) rather than “ultimate reality” (metaphysical), and the entire commentarial apparatus from Buddhapālita onward is a “scholastic corruption” of this empiricist pragmatism. Crucially, the Kaccāyanagotta defence is absent in kalupahana-buddhist-philosophy-1976 — the signature 1986 claim is methodologically downstream of Kalupahana’s mid-career reversal, not a stable feature of his reading.
- The Pāli-canonical-reading line: Sprung 1979, Burton 1999, Chowdhury 2018. Each treats the sutta’s two-extremes / middle-way formula as the canonical antecedent of Madhyamaka in different registers — Sprung in a Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian register, Burton in an analytic-Buddhology register, Chowdhury in a Theravāda-academic survey register. The shared feature is that each reads the sutta’s authority as competing with rather than underlying the Mahāyāna commentarial frame.
- The framework-respecting line: Westerhoff, Garfield, Siderits, Della Santina. Each engages the Kātyāyana citation as one Śrāvakayāna anchor among many within MMK’s broader strategy of engaging multiple Abhidharma collections at once. Walser’s walser-nagarjuna-2005 strategic-publication thesis offers an orthogonal account: MMK’s Tripiṭaka-only citations (Kaccāyanagotta among them) are read as strategic minority-school positioning for institutional alliance, not as evidence that MMK is doctrinally reducible to its named sources.
- Padmakara introduction reading of Madhyamaka as “the systematic expression of the Buddha’s silence” (mipham-introduction-middle-way-2002) — pushes the structural root of the catuṣkoṭi back from MMK 22:11 to the Pāli canon’s avyākata set (Vacchagotta), making the Kaccāyanagotta a fellow canonical anchor rather than a unique one.