Was Ram real? A Nagarjuna's two truths perspective

One evening last week, I was enjoying chai-samosa with friends, and the mood was jovial. And suddenly the discussion turned to "Was Ram real?" Within no time, two camps got created, volumes increased, and the atmosphere grew tenser. To one group, Ram was a historical figure, while the other group believed he was a mythological figure. I tried unsuccessfully to divert the topic. Eventually, it subsided on its own. Perhaps because jalebi arrived. But the episode reminded me of how the second- to third-century Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna responded to a fictitious opponent who asked, "Was Buddha real?" in his famous work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (मूलमध्यमककारिका, MMK), translated as "The foundational verses on the middle way". For this article, I have used Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura's book, "Nagarjuna's Middle Way," as the primary source.

Before we explore Nagarjuna's response, which comes in chapter 22 of MMK, let's briefly look at what Nagarjuna says in the preceding chapters of MMK. The first thing to note is that Nagarjuna begins and ends MMK by saluting Buddha. In fact, in the last verse of the last chapter (27.30), Nagarjuna says, " I salute Gautama, who, based on compassion, taught the true Dharma.” (यः सद्धर्मम् अदेशयत् अनुकम्पाम् उपादाय तं नमस्यामि गौतमं, yaḥ saddharmam adeśayat anukampām upādāya taṃ namasyāmi gautamam).

Nagarjuna's key contribution in MMK is to bring out the significance of śūnyatā (शून्यता) or niḥsvabhāvatā (निःस्वभावता) or lack of intrinsic nature of all phenomena. He is particularly addressing a school of Buddhism called Sarvastivāda, which was a sub-branch of the Sthaviravāda school, which had branched off from the orthodox Sthavira school around the second-third century BCE. According to Sarvastivādins, the smallest irreducible constituents of reality, called dharmās (धर्म), are momentary but real. Each dharma has its own intrinsic nature (svabhāva), for example, a sensation, a feeling, or a momentary atom etc.

Nagarjuna begins with the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination (प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, pratītyasamutpāda) and shows that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic nature. Some of the things that he shows as sunya are five skandhās (स्कंध) (five aggregates: sensations, perceptions, feeling, volition, and consciousness), dhātus (धातु) (constituents of the process of cognition), kartā-karma (subject-object), dukha (unsatisfactoriness), bhāva-abhāva (existence-non-existence), dharma (things with intrinsic nature), kāla (time), self, nirvāna, and kleśa. In fact, Nagarjuna says even sunyatā (emptiness) is also sunya (13.8).

One can see that Nagarjuna has already laid the groundwork for addressing the question, “Was Buddha real?” by the time he comes to chapter 22. All the key attributes, five skandhas, are shown to be śūnya in chapter four.  And, dharmas and the self are also shown to be śūnya. In this chapter, Nagarjuna says that Tathāgata, another name for the Buddha, is just as empty as all the other things he has shown in the previous chapters to be śūnya. For example, in the first verse (22.1), Nagarjuna says:

 

स्कंधा न नान्यः स्कंधेभ्यो नास्मिन् स्कंधा न तेषु सः ।

तथागतः स्कन्धवान्न कतमो Sत्र तथागतः ॥ 22.1 ॥

skandhā na nānyaþ skandhebhyo nāsmin skandhā na teùu saþ .

tathāgataþ skandhavānna katamo ’tra tathāgatah (22.1)

The Tathāgata is neither identical with the skandhas nor distinct from the skandhas; the skandhas are not in him nor is he in them;

he does not exist possessing the skandhas. What Tathāgata, then, is there?

 

And in the last verse (22.16) says:

तथागतो यत् स्वभावस् तत् स्वभावम् इदम् जगत् ।

तथागतो निःस्वभावो निःस्वभावम् इदम् जगत् ॥ 22.16॥

tathāgato yatsvabhāvas tatsvabhāvam idaṃ jagat  

tathāgato niḥsvabhāvo niḥsvabhāvam idaṃ jagat (22.16)

 What is the intrinsic nature of the Tathāgata, that is the intrinsic nature of this world.

The Tathāgata is devoid of intrinsic nature; this world is devoid of intrinsic nature.

 

In all this process of proclaiming everything, including the Buddha empty of intrinsic nature, one verse from this chapter (22.11) stands out like an odd one. It says:

 

शून्यम् इति न वक्तव्यम् अशून्यम् इति वा भवेत् ।

उभयं नोभयं चेति प्रज्ञप्त्यर्थं तु कथ्यते  || 22.11 ||

śūnyam iti na vaktavyam aśūnyam iti vā bhavet  

ubhayaṃ nobhayaṃ ceti prajñaptyarthaṃ tu kathyate (22.11)

“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” 

nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction.

What is Nagarjuna up to? After writing twenty-two chapters where he is trying to show every phenomenon to be empty, he says we should not say, “It is empty, or it is not empty. I am saying it only for the sake of instruction.” What does he mean? The crux lies in understanding the two truths Nagarjuna introduces in chapter 24 in three verses 24.8-10. Let’s look at them:

 

द्वे सत्ये समुपाश्रित्य बुद्धानां धर्मदेशना ।

लोकसंवृतिसत्यं च सत्यं च परमार्थतः ॥ 24.8 ||

dve satye samupāśritya buddhānāṃ dharmadeśanā  

lokasaṃvṛtisatyaṃ ca satyaṃ ca paramārthataḥ (24.8)

The Dharma teaching of the Buddha rests on two truths:

conventional truth and ultimate truth.

 

ये Sनयोर् न विजानन्ति विभागं सत्ययोर् द्वयोः ।

ते तत्त्वं न विजानन्ति गन्भीरं बुद्धशासने ॥ 24.9 ||

ye ’nayor na vijānanti vibhāgaṃ satyayor dvayoḥ  

te tattvaṃ na vijānanti gambhīre buddhaśāsane (24.9)

 Who do not know the distinction between the two truths,

they do not understand reality in accordance with the profound teachings of the Buddha.

 

व्यवहारम् अनाश्रित्य परमार्थो न देश्यते ।

परमार्थम् अनागम्य निर्वाणं न अधिगम्यते ॥ 24.10 ||

vyavahāram anāśritya paramārtho na deśyate |

paramārtham anāgamya nirvāṇaṃ nādhigamyate (24.10)

The ultimate truth is not taught independently of customary ways of talking and thinking.

Not having acquired the ultimate truth, nirvāṇa is not attained.

Conventional truth, or customary ways of talking and thinking, is that knowledge which works while navigating the world. Conventional truth includes the embodied knowledge that enables us to breathe and walk, the recipes for our dishes, cultural beliefs that keep the society relatively friction-free, science and technology that create cars and computers, religious beliefs that support us in challenging situations, etc. One conventional truth is that a person such as the Buddha is a fiction constructed based on skandhas, and skandhas themselves are conceptual constructions, which are useful in realizing the ultimate truth. Ultimate truth cannot be acquired as a form of knowledge; it is the dissipation of all strongly held views about what is real. Nagarjuna says, “Sunyata is the dissipation of all views.” (13.8) (शून्यता सर्वदृष्टीनां निःसरणं, śūnyatā sarvadṛṣṭīnāṃ niḥsaraṇaṃ). Siderits & Katsura put this paradoxically as, “The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”

Was Lord Ram real? If you believe he was and if this belief helps you navigate life better, then that is as good as truth for you. On the contrary, if life works just fine for you with Ram as a mythological figure, then that is as good as truth for you. Alternatively, if you can have a productive discussion in the morning with archaeologists about the lack of evidence for the Rām-Rāvan war, and enjoy the evening singing devotional Tulasidās bhajans praising Lord Rām, why not?

Sources:

1. Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura, “Nagarjuna’s Middle Way,” Wisdom Publications, 2013. All the English translations in this article are from this book. For each verse, the book also gives key elaborations from the subsequent commentators of MMK like Buddhapālita (5^th-6^th century), Bhāviveka (6^th century), and Candrakīrti (7^th century).
2. Joseph Walser, “Nagarjuna in context: Mahayana Buddhism and Early Indian Culture,” Columbia University Press, 2004. This book goes into why Nagarjuna says what he says.
3. Dilip Loundo, “The ‘two truths’ doctrine (satyadvyaya) and the nature of Upāya in Nagarjuna,” Kriterion Revista de Filosofia, April 2016, 57(133):17-41. DOI: 10.1590/0100-512X2016n13301dl