Madhyamaka & Yogacara on Buddhist Resources

Nagarjuna and the Middle Way School

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:14:28 +0200

Nagarjuna is the most important Buddhist thinker after the Buddha, and the only philosopher revered as a founder by every Mahayana tradition — Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese. His central work, the Mulamadhyamakakarika (“Root Verses on the Middle Way”), is 447 verses across twenty-seven chapters, and it is among the most demanding philosophical texts ever written.

Emptiness (Sunyata) Explained

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:15:33 +0200

Emptiness is the most misunderstood idea in Buddhism, and the misunderstandings are predictable enough to be listed. It does not mean that nothing exists. It does not mean that the world is an illusion in the sense of not being there. It does not mean that nothing matters. It is not a void, a blankness, or a mystical absence, and it is not the same as the experience of spaciousness some meditators report.

Yogacara: The Mind-Only School

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:16:40 +0200

Yogacara is the second great Mahayana philosophical system, and the one most often misdescribed. The standard summary — “Yogacara says only mind exists” — is at best a rough approximation and at worst the specific misreading the school spent centuries denying.

The Two Truths Doctrine

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:17:37 +0200

Buddhism makes two sets of claims that appear to contradict each other.

On one hand: there is no self; the person is a designation; nothing has intrinsic existence; in the Heart Sutra’s formulation there is no suffering, no origin, no cessation, and no path.