This volume presents a new English translation of the founding text of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism, Nagarjuna's Root Stanzas of the Middle Way, and includes the Tibetan version of the text. The Root Stanzas holds an honored place in all branches of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in the Buddhist traditions found in China, Japan, and Korea, because of the way it develops the seminal view of emptiness (shunyata), which is crucial to understanding Mahayana Buddhism and central to its practice. It is prized for its pithy and pointed arguments that show that things lack intrinsic being and thus are "empty" (shunya). They abide in the Middle Way, free from the extremes of permanence and annihilation.

Root Stanzas of the Middle Way: The Mulamadhyamakakarika, Nagarjuna, Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 176 pages, 2016, $24.95

Nagarjuna, the South Indian Buddhist master who lived some six hundred years after the Buddha, founded the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Mahayana Buddhism. He is arguably the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher.

CONTENTS: Root Stanzas of the Middle Way
	Translator's Preface	xv
	The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way	1
	Homage	2
1.	An Examination of Conditions	3
2.	An Examination of Motion	7
3.	An Examination of the Sense Powers	13
4.	An Examination of the Aggregates	15
5.	An Examination of the Elements	17
6.	An Examination of Desire and the Desirous	19
7.	An Examination of Arising, Abiding, and Decay	21
8.	An Examination of Agent and Action	27
9.	An Examination of the Foregoing Entity	31
10.	An Examination of Fire and Fuel	35
11.	An Examination of Earlier and Later Limits	39
12.	An Examination of Self-Production and Other-Production	41
13.	An Examination of Compounded Things	43
14.	An Examination of Contact	45
15.	An Examination of Intrinsic Being	47
16.	An Examination of Bondage and Release from Bondage	51
17.	An Examination of Action	53
18.	An Examination of Self and Phenomena	59
19.	An Examination of Time	63
20.	An Examination of the Confluence of Causes and Conditions	65
21.	An Examination of Arising and Destruction	71
22.	An Examination of the Tathagata	75
23.	An Examination of Mistakes	79
24.	An Examination of the Truths of the Aryas	85
25.	An Examination of Nirvana	93
26.	An Examination of the Twelve Links of Existence	99
27.	An Examination of Views	103
	Concluding Homage	109
	Colophon	111
	The Tibetan Text	113
	Notes	171
	Bibliography	175