Nāgārjuna (Sanskrit, from Nāga + Arjuna; Chn. Lóngshù 龍樹; Tib. Klu sgrub; c. 150 – c. 250 CE) was an Indian scholar-monk, philosopher, and teacher (acharya) of Mahayana Buddhism from south India. He is considered the founder of the Madhyamaka (Centrism, Middle Way) school. Nāgārjuna is widely considered to be the most important Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha himself. Indeed, in Tibetan Budd M… Finally, in this nirvana chapter, Nāgārjuna also applies the same logic to the realm of suffering itself, samsara, arguing that the ultimate ontological status of both samsara and nirvana are equal in a famous passage (ch. 22, verses 19-20):Thus one cannot say that samsara and nirvana exist in some ultimate sense. Likewise we cannot say they do not exist, nor can we affirm nor reject both positions either. At this point, we reach of apophatic peace in which nothing can be said and our need to conceptualise everything stops. Nāgārjuna closes with the following key verse:This stopping of cognising everything, of prapañca, is blissful. No dharma whatsoever was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone. Because of the high degree of similarity between Nāgārjuna's philosophy and Pyrrhonism, particularly the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, According to Thomas McEvilley this is because Nagarjuna was likely influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India. Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE), the founder of this school of sceptical philosophy, was himself influenced by Indian philosophy. Pyrrho travelled to India with Alexander the Great's army and studied with Indian sages he termed gymnosophists. According to Christopher I. Beckwith, Pyrrho's teachings are based on Buddhism, because the Greek terms adiaphora, astathmēta and anepikrita in the Aristocles Passage resemble the Buddhist three marks of existence. According to him, the key innovative tenets of Pyrrho's scepticism were only found in Indian philosophy at the time and not in Greece. However, other scholars, such as Stephen Batchelor and Charles Goodman question Beckwith's conclusions about the degree of Buddhist influence on Pyrrho. Westerhoff, Jan Christoph. "Nāgārjuna". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174. Rhys Davids, T. W. (1911). "Nāgārjuna" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 151. Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). "Nagarjuna". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658. Nāgārjuna – Sanskrit Buddhist texts: Acintyastava, Bodhicittavivaraṇa, Ratnāvalī,…

Dis- putes: Nagarjuna’s Vigrahavyavartani (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka: … interpret Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka is yet to be settled. What is indisputable, however, is Nagarjuna’s unambiguous … 444) denies that the intent of Nagarjuna’s use of a negative tetralemma here is to attribute non-existence

ABSTRACT This is an essay in comparative philosophy and philosophy of religion building on the ontological claims espoused by two major thinkers in the Buddhist and Christian philosophical traditions: Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250) and Hegel (1770–1831). I use Nāgārjuna’s fourfold tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) and Hegel’s threefold dialectic (Dialektik) to propose a novel understanding of the ontological status of the self in its relation to itself and to its other, the no-self. Thus, I apply the tetralemma to the self, arguing that, to attain ontic completion, the self must itself reflect the tetralemmic form in the totality of its being – nothing – both-being-and-nothing – neither-being-nor-nothing. These in turn correspond to the Hegelian in-itself, for-another, both-in-itself-and-for-another, and neither-in-itself-nor-for-another.

arguments found in verses 31–50 and in their accompanying commentary. Nāgārjuna’s aim in the verses 31 ... student of Nāgārjuna , entitled Śataka-śāstra (Treatise in one hundred verses), now extant only in its Chinese ... first case is addressed in verse 31 and its accompanying commentary, where Nāgārjuna argues that, if to establish ...

With the advent of COVID19, the attitude of health authorities around the world, led mainly by the West, demanded a level of proof as evidence for cheap, non-patented remedies while promoting expensive, patented, and untested remedies by using emergency use authorization and special provisions afforded to the status of a pandemic emergency. Western science has neither a tested nor a valid historical basis of a logical system that informs to authenticate scientific practices. Here we use a logical heuristic derived from ancient Buddhist logic, which is consistent with the conduct of modern science. We applied the heuristic to show that enough evidence was available for using cost-effective early therapies such as vitamin D supplementation as a public health measure during the first half of 2020. Strong supporting evidence has since accumulated. Apart from political and financial decisions incompatible with science and other conflicts of interest, a critical barrier to evaluating and approving early therapies appears to be the fallacy that the randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the superior proof method in medical hypotheses, including those for nutrients. Logically, no reason exists why properly designed retrospective, ecological, and naturalistic studies with adequate sample sizes and applied appropriate statistical methods would not be as valid as RCTs, especially when elucidating a causative factor instead of treatment. That assertion is particularly true for nutrient deficiencies, interventions, and other cost-effective therapies. Leading health authorities’ failure or refusal to consider other study types (because of either poor logic or vested interest) probably contributed to the spread of misinformation, symptomatic disease, complications, and deaths from COVID19. Partial immunity derived from vaccines and the later development of more contagious variants—and thus a sense of acceptance that SARS-CoV-2 had progressed from a pandemic to an endemic—shows the hollowness of the initial promotions and mandates of vaccines as a cure. Adequate knowledge was available in 2020 to advise that SARS-CoV-2 will continue to mutate, with variants emerging a few times per year, making the vaccine less effective. Emerging evidence confirms that natural immunity better protects against new variants than vaccination against the spike protein. Had vitamin D been adopted as part of the public health measure through a broader supplementation program in 2020 or even today (through sun exposure or as a prophylactic or adjunct therapy early on), the viral spread and symptomatic disease may have been suppressed, with minimal lockdowns and quarantine, and economic harm. The pandemic could have been halted with a significantly reduced need for hospitalization, complications, and deaths, potentially saving millions of lives.

Our final issue in the fourteenth volume is a treasure trove of thought, including two essays on Nāgārjuna, two essays on Heidegger, a major statement by the renowned Italian philosopher Paolo Diego Bubbio, an interface between Zhuangzi and Simone Weil, the premiere of our new Author Meets Readers feature, and some reviews of important new works. This issue kicks off with a special feature where the celebrated Italian philosopher Paolo Diego Bubbio responds to the article that we published earlier this year (14.1) by Daniele Fulvi on Bubbio’s conception of kenōsis. Bubbio’s defends himself against Fulvi’s charge of ontological anthropocentrism, which he contends is inevitable but not crippling. Bubbio’s defense is executed through an honest engagement with Fulvi’s remarks and takes care in laying out a detailed roadmap of his and Gianni Vattimo’s concept of kenōsis and its ethical implications. The article impressively concludes with an original discussion of the relationship between truth and nature. In the next piece, “Becoming and Negation, Protagoras and Nāgārjuna,” Robin Reames examines the “historical pairing of becoming and negation” as articulated by Protagoras and Nāgārjuna. The author argues that Protagoras’s account is speculative while Nāgārjuna’s is more comprehensive, given its deep analysis of the logic of becoming and negation. An examination of the resonances between these two thinkers illuminates their capacity to engage the problem of sophistry. Reames’s study is as enriching as it is informative as she engages with the intellectual history of both traditions without overshadowing the philosophical insights. Regarding comparing Buddhist and Western thought, especially regarding Nāgārjuna, we turn to Rafal Stepien’s “Tetralemma and Trinity: An Essay on Buddhist and Christian Ontologies.” The author brings Nāgārjuna’s fourfold tetralemma in relation to Hegel’s threefold dialectic in a rearticulation of the self and other. Stepien clarifies that his approach is not to read one thinker through the perspective of the other (which he warns can distort these two thinkers), but rather to “adapt”—not adopt—their ideas into Stepien’s own ontological philosophy. What such a project would look like we leave to readers to explore on their own. Given that our journal tries to engage more generously the world’s wisdom heritage, Ian Tan’s “Ereignis and the Grounding of Interpretation: Towards a Heideggerian Reading of Translation and Translatability as Appropriative Event” is of special interest. He turns to what has become one of Heidegger’s most provocative and contentious claims. In his lectures on Hölderlin’s “The Ister,” Heidegger pronounced that “Translation is never merely a technical issue but concerns the relation of human beings to the essence of the word and to the worthiness of language. Tell me what you think of translation, and I will tell you who you are.” Tan contextualizes this claim within Heidegger’s ontological project, thereby illuminating that translation is not a merely technical problem, but rather revelatory of one’s implicit or explicit ontological assumptions. If translation was an explosive issue for the reception of Heideggerian thinking, it is nothing compared to the problem of ethics. It has become fashionable to hold that Heidegger