Madhyamaka Vs Nirvana

Madhyamaka looks at everything through the lens of the Two Truths: the conventional or relative truth (vyavahara) and the ultimate or absolute truth (paramartha).

What is valid from the standpoint of the relative truth of our everyday world is not necessarily valid from the ultimate side.

In the final analysis, though, the relative and the ultimate are neither different, nor identical. Nor does one stand independently of the other.

The same can be said of samsara and nirvana.

In Madhyamaka, samsara represents the world of birth and death, the world of suffering, while nirvana represents realization of the ultimate truth, without which freedom from the bondage (bandhana) of suffering is not possible.

As noted above, one sense of

In the ultimate truth, if binding existed prior to the bondage of a sentient being, then it would have inherent existence.

Yet, ultimately, neither bondage nor anything else has inherent existence (Svabhava, own-being, self), and so release from bondage is not an inherently existent phenomenon either.

This is important because grasping onto the false idea of inherent existence is the primary cause for suffering.

Nagarjuna felt that the term “nirvana” was useful for indicating spiritual release, but only if the term did not refer to something that could be an object for clinging.

A few verses on, he says, “Those who grasp at the notion, ‘I will be free from grasping and Nirvana will be mine,’ have a great grasp on grasping.”

In The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay Garfield provides a good explanation of this:

It is [possible] to grasp after nirvana – to reify it as a state and to crave it as a phenomenon inherently different from samsara and as highly desirable since it is indeed characterized as liberation from suffering.

But this grasping onto the end of grasping is itself a grasping and so precludes the attainment of

By refusing to reify liberation, in virtue of seeing it as the correlative of bondage, which itself is not inherently existent, it is possible to pursue the path to liberation without creating at the same time a huge obstacle on that path – the root delusion with regard to nirvana itself.

If things do not exist in themselves, then from the ultimate truth they are unreal, illusions.

Nirvana, for Nagarjuna, if seen as something inherently existent, is only an illusion that will perpetuate more grasping, followed by more suffering.

There are no real distinctions in Madhyamaka philosophy because all things are considered empty of inherent existence or own-nature.

For samsara and nirvana to be distinct from one another, they would have to be inherently existent things. But they are empty, and within this emptiness, they are without distinction.

Samsara and nirvana are only different in the relative sense, because they designate entirely different things.

Again, in the ultimate sense, there is no difference, because of their