Vigrahavyāvartanī

Nagarjuna.

Vigrahavyāvartanī (T. rtsod pa bzlog pa རྩོད་པ་བཟློག་པ་; C. huizheng lun 廻諍論), or The Dispeller of Disputes, is a treatise by the Indian scholar-yogi Nagarjuna that belongs to his Collection of Middle Way Reasoning.

Jan Westerhoff writes:

"The Dispeller of Disputes", the Vigrahavyāvartanī, is an ideal companion piece to Nagarjuna's main philosophical treatise, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā or "Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way." It covers some important topics that do not play a big role in this larger work (such as epistemology and the philosophy of language), and it does so in an unusual question-and-answer format. In the Vigrahavyāvartanī, we find Nargarjuna replying to a series of specific objections against his theory of universal emptiness that are raised by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist scholars. As such, the text is obviously of historical interest, as he gives us an insight into the kind of philosophical debates conducted in ancient India in the early days of Madhyamaka thought during the first and second centuries CE. Moreover, and perhaps more important, the Vigrahavyāvartanī is also a tremendously interesting philosophical work. Many key questions and objections that occurred to the reader of Nagarjuna's philosophical texts are set out and discussed in this work, which allows us to gain a view of a variety of additional facets of the core theory of Madhayamka. For those who regard Nagarjuna's Madhayamka as a philosophical system that not only was historically very influential but also has considerable systematic appeal, the discussion contained in the Vigrahavyāvartanī is an invaluable resource.

The text is extant in Sanskrit as well as Tibetan and Chinese translations.

The title is also translated as "Deflection of Disputes", "Refutation of Objections", etc.

Translations

• K. Bhattacharya, The Dialectical Method of Nagarjuna, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978. (online version)
• Jan Westerhoff, The Dispeller of Disputes: Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani, Oxford University Press, 2010

Quotation

Whether in the causes, in the conditions, in the combination of the causes and the conditions, or in a different thing, nowhere does exist an intrinsic nature of things, whatever they may be. On this ground it is said that all things are empty.
 
For instance, the sprout is neither in the seed, its cause, nor in the things known as its conditions, viz., earth, water, fire, wind, etc., taken one by one, nor in the totality of the conditions, nor in the combination of the causes and the conditions, nor is it anything different from the causes and the conditions.

Since there is nowhere an intrinsic nature, the sprout is devoid of an intrinsic nature. Being devoid of an intrinsic nature, it is empty.

And just as this sprout is devoid of an intrinsic nature and hence empty, so also are all the things.

- translation by Bhattacharya

External links

• Vigrahavyāvartanī, Thesaurus Literaturae Buddhicae