January 1996 — Gudo Wafu Nishijima
Venue: Japan
Talks in this series
Mulamadhyamakakarika – A talk on the meaning of Nagarjuna's seminal work — Accepting this world as it is: Nishijima reads Nagarjuna as a philosophy of action that points to zazen and morals
Nishijima, who had recently translated Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika from Sanskrit into Japanese, reads its opening verses as saying that the fundamental basis of Buddhist thought is to accept this world as it is. From the first verse of the first chapter he draws the denial of subjectivity and objectivity: what we think and what we perceive are not reality but only superficial images on the surface of Dharma. What Nagarjuna finds more real is action at the present moment, and Nishijima says that for Nagarjuna action and Dharma may be the same.