MULAMADHYAMAKAKARIKA

(Sanskrit: Fundamentals of the Middle Way), Buddhist text by Nagarjuna, the exponent of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism. It is a work that combines stringent logic and religious vision in a lucid presentation of the doctrine of ultimate emptiness. Nagarjuna, who was apparently a southern Indian Brahman, makes use of the classifications and analyses of the Theravada Abhidhamma, or scholastic, literature; he takes them to their logical extremes and thus reduces to ontological nothingness the various elements, states, and faculties dealt with in Abhidhamma texts. Nagarjuna's basic philosophy, on the other hand, comes out of the Prajaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) tradition, and the Mulamadhyamakakarika systematically sets forth the vision of the void that informs the Prajaparamita-sutras. In some 450 verses, the Mulamadhyamakakarika develops the doctrine that nothing, not even the Buddha or Nirvana, is real in itself. It ends by commending to spiritual realization the ultimate identity of the transitory phenomenal world and Nirvana itself.