[Uojeyak]

...and so Nagarjuna rejected it.

Yes. And instead of letting go of the whole mess, he turned around and embraced and clung to its opposite "no inherent existence".


Inherent existence/own-being (svabhava) was a notion cooked up by various Abhidhammic schools -- in particular, Sarvastivada -- which felt that it was needed in order to explain causality/conditionality. The abhidhammists claimed that phenomena are permanent and unchanging?

Nagurjuna was attacking this notion. He sought to demonstrate that it was both inconsistent logically and incompatible with the Buddha's teachings. And he came up with his own alternate absurdity that also is inconsistent logically and incompatible with the Buddha's teachings.


Emptiness, stated in positive terms, is this/that conditionality. If that were so, then we would have seen the Buddha saying this very thing, over and over, in his explanations of both emptiness and PS/IDP. he does not.

Stated in negative terms, it is the absence of the four mistaken views (exists, doesn't exist, both, neither). That is, abandon these and the result is realization of emptiness. "In negative terms" -- interesting. But the positive terms and negative terms contradict each other. And the negative term is exactly "doesn't exist", with the obscurative addition of meaningless word salad. The Buddha's approach was to point out that all of these assertions are irrelevant speculative view, and to point instead to his own teachings.


"Emptiness" itself is a provisional designation -- a signpost to the destination, not the destination itself. Nagarjuna's cargo-cult "emptiness" you have expounded here is just word salad.