All-Embracing Emptiness

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 ties preceding discussions in metaphysics and epistemology to the ethical and soteriological mission undergirding Nāgārjuna’s Buddhist project in its entirety. The perplexing question of how a teaching understood as espousing universal emptiness and the abandonment of all views can nevertheless entail a distinctively Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics is directly addressed. It is argued that, for Nāgārjuna, views are acts, and therefore themselves already enactions of violence. Nāgārjuna’s eschewal of views and espousal of emptiness are thus seen as two paths along the same middle way, leading to an apophatic ethics theorized here as eirenics: the practice of peace. Ultimately, this concluding chapter proposes that the socio-ethical import of Nāgārjuna’s abelief or “position of no-position” undermines the very basis for prejudice, partisanship and, more broadly, rigid adherence to any of the sectarian positions implicated in conflict on the individual, communal, or geopolitical levels.