Concept
8 readings
Intrinsic nature
Concept · 8 readings
Intrinsic nature would be a nature something has independently of conditions. Nāgārjuna challenges it, and an account of change puts it under pressure.
All readings
8 readings · Title A–Z
Guided course · Module 7 · Lesson 36
Debate, commentary and liberation in Tibet
Tsongkhapa and Gorampa disagree about what emptiness denies. What does their disagreement mean for ordinary objects, and what remains disputed about conventional and ultimate understanding?
Guided course · Module 3 · Lesson 12
Does emptiness mean that nothing exists?
Nāgārjuna replies to the objection that emptiness would make change impossible: intrinsic nature, he argues, is what would rule change out. Denying intrinsic nature leaves ordinary distinctions, actions and their consequences in place.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 7 of 8
Is emptiness empty too?
Is emptiness the true nature behind things, or is it empty too? The lesson follows the image of emptiness as a medicine that must leave the body with the illness, and explains how “neither empty nor non-empty” can be read without contradiction.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 4 of 8
Is the self its parts, or their owner?
Is the self the changing body and mind, or something other than them? Nāgārjuna rejects both, models the person on fire and its fuel, and still refuses to conclude that there is no self.
Guided course · Module 12 · Lesson 72
Self, world and nothingness in modern Japan
Nishida’s accounts of pure experience, place and absolute nothingness change over time. The lesson compares them with the earlier Buddhist idea of emptiness and examines the political implications proposed for his metaphysics.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 2 of 8
What makes a condition a cause?
Nāgārjuna examines the four ways something might be thought to arise and argues that nothing with intrinsic nature could be produced. The lesson names the assumptions the argument relies on and compares two readings of causal connection.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 1 of 8
What would it mean to exist on one’s own?
Nāgārjuna argues that nothing has intrinsic nature, a nature it would have independently of everything else. The lesson states the Abhidharma view he opposes as a serious theory, then reads chapter 15’s middle path between “it exists” and “it does not exist”.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 3 of 8
Where does the going happen?
Going cannot be found on the path already traversed, the path not yet traversed or the path being traversed, Nāgārjuna argues. The lesson compares two readings of the argument and explains why “ultimately, there is no going” does not say that nothing moves.
Study this in sequence
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths
Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?