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5.0 out of 5 stars
A precious resource, but I suspect it tames Nagarjuna, Jul 14 2002
This book has been a treasure to those of us who had stared in consternation at K. Inada's translation or wrestled with the misprints in D. Kalupahana's edition. Here lucidity reigns. But there is something excessively dry and scholastic about Garfield's Nagarjuna. I think this is partly due to the fact that Garfield translates from the Tibetan, not the original Sanskrit. Compare his translation of Ch. 19, verse 1: "If the present and the future/Depend on the past,/Then the present and the future/Would have existed in the past", with Sprung's: "If what is arising here and now and what is not yet realized are dependent on what is past, what is arising here and now and what is not yet realized will be in past time" (which could be further improved by translating "atita" as "what has been"). So dry is Garfield's diction that his retention of a verse format seems pointless. The Gelug-pa Tibetan interpretation of Nagarjuna is a scholasticizing one, and loses some of the savor of emptiness and liberation which gives meditative point to Nagarjuna's laconic logic. Also, Garfield keeps referring to Hume and Wittgenstein in a way that further domesticates and scholasticizes Nagarjuna, making him a linguistic therapist who frees us from substantializations and reifications, but who also allows us to install ourselves comfortably in the conventional dependently co-arising world. It seems to me that in Buddhism this samsaric world is always painful, radically unsatisfactory, and that Nagarjuna is not just curing us of false theories about it, but is revealing it as radically self-contradictory even in its everyday pragmatic or conventional texture. To say that emptiness "is not a self-existent void standing behind a veil of illusion comprising conventional reality, but merely a characteristic of conventional reality" (p. 91) sounds very bland. Emptiness is not just any characteristic, but a radically subversive quality of our world, which it is by no means easy to realize. "The actuality of the entire phenomenal world, persons and all, is recovered within that emptiness" (p. 95) is again too bland. Only a Buddha can grasp the world in its ultimate emptiness and its conventional texture at once. The recovery of the conventional from the point of view of ultimate emptiness is not a comfortable restoration or even a disillusioned Humean resignation to conventions. It means realizing that the apparently solid world of experience is only a flimsy, provisional raft or skillful means, surpassed by the empty ultimacy which it can serve to indicate. "The eventual equation of the phenomenal world with emptiness, of samsara with nirvana, and of the conventional and the ultimate" (p. 101) is very, very eventual, so that only a Buddha can perceive it correctly. Asserted too early, too sweepingly, it can short-circuit the path to liberation.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Demanding but satisfying, Nov 16 2001
As Garfield states in the introduction, his analysis of the text is more from an analytical, Western philosophical perspective than from a "Buddhalogical" (his word) one. The result is authoritative, scholarly and a little dry. His presentation reminds me of David Brazier's presentation of the Abhidharma in his book "Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind." The experience of reading this book is very demanding, but also very satisfying. The benefits to be derived are probably directly proportional with the work one puts in to understanding it. A more poetically compelling translation of the Mulamadhyamikakarika, along with a very thought-provoking introduction, is to be found in Stephen Batchelor's "Verses from the Center."
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Prasangika Madhyamika view on Nagarjuna's masterpiece, Mar 3 2001
The Mulamadhyamakakarika(MMK) by Nagarjuna is one of the most important scriptures within Mahayana Buddhism. It's the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Although other English translations exist already, Mr Garfield's rendition is the first that shows the Prasangika Madhyamika (Middle Way Consequence school) view on the MMK.The MMK consists of 27 chapters which are examinations of fundamental theoretical elements in Buddhist ontology like Dependent origination, Impermanence, Perception, Aggregates (skandhas), Self, and relations between Substance and Attribute. The book is divided into two sections: 1. The translation of the 27 chapters, 2. The translation + commentaries. It's noteworthy to mention that this book is based on the Tibetan dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab, the Tibetan translation of the original Sanskrit work of MMK. Garfield asserts in this book that Nagarjuna's goal was to refute the view of extremism of the Sarvastidas (All exists) and the other side of Nihilism (Nothing exists), proposing a Middle Way position. Pointing out the Two Truths of reality; Absolute Truth and Conventional Truth, Nagarjuna uses the Emptiness (shunyata) doctrine to show the reader upon examination that phenomena (both mental and physical) are empty of inherent-exitestence, but also that they are NOT non-existent (they exist within the Absolute Truth). Through these Examination one will obtain insight into the relativity of concepts and phenomena. As a side note: Nagarjuna's goal is not to bring about a philosophical debate on metaphysical elements. Garfield points this out perfectly in the Introduction to the Commentary section of this book. I have not read other renditions in English on the MMK, but so far this one is a very bright shining jewel in my extensive collection on Buddhism. For further reading I would suggest Candrakirti's Prasannapada (Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way), which is a commentary on the MMK and it's best companion in my opinion.
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by Paul Williams
by W. Somerset Maugham
