[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy.

> The p-s was rarely ever mentioned or taught. And I guess my
> teachers' excuse was Nagarjuna. After all he did say that p-s was
> nothing else than emptiness and emptiness was initially a much cooler
> and apparently simpler concept.
>
> Be free of shame, let Nagarjuna take the blame.

If that is how your teacher misrepresented Nagarjuna, this is a different
sort of problem. Nagarjuna has a lot more to say about p-s than that. The
dedicatory verse opening the entire Madhyamaka-karikas extols, explicitly,
the Buddha who taught p-s -- not an insignificant statement, since
dedicatory verses are used in such literature as foundational staking of
orientation. Additionally, Nagarjuna devotes an entire chapter to p-s, its
most intriguing and unique feature being that it, unlike every other MMK
ch., does not negate, undermine, or modify its subject. On the contrary, it
repeats verbatim and apparently approvingly, the standard p-s formulas.

So Nagarjuna refuses to take the blame for this.

best,
Dan Lusthaus