For whom emptiness works, everything works. For whom emptiness does not work, nothing works.
sarvaM ca yujyate tasya shuunyataa yasya yujyate / sarvaM na yujyate tasya shuunyaM yasya na yujyate
Philosophers
Nagarjuna
A second-century South Indian monk who founded the Madhyamaka school by systematizing the doctrine of emptiness. His Mulamadhyamakakarika is among Buddhism's key texts. Tibetans call him the Second Buddha.
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Nagarjuna's Other Quotes
Neither ceasing nor arising, neither annihilated nor eternal, neither one nor many, neither coming nor going.
What is dependently originated, that we declare to be emptiness. It is a dependent designation; it is itself the middle way.
Emptiness is declared by the Buddhas to be the exit from all views. But those who hold emptiness as a view are called incurable.
Emptiness wrongly grasped destroys the slow-witted, like a snake wrongly seized or a spell wrongly cast.
Those who understand that things arise dependently know them to be empty.
Related Quotes
For Being is, and non-Being is not.
-- Parmenides
All things flow.
-- Heraclitus
Neither ceasing nor arising, neither annihilated nor eternal, neither one nor many, neither coming nor going.
-- Nagarjuna
What is dependently originated, that we declare to be emptiness. It is a dependent designation; it is itself the middle way.
-- Nagarjuna
Emptiness is declared by the Buddhas to be the exit from all views. But those who hold emptiness as a view are called incurable.
-- Nagarjuna
Emptiness wrongly grasped destroys the slow-witted, like a snake wrongly seized or a spell wrongly cast.
-- Nagarjuna