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The She-rab Dong-bu (Tree of Wisdom) is a metrical translation in
Tibetan of a Sanscrit ethical work entitled Prajnya Danda, written by
Nagarjuna who flourished in the fourth century of the Buddhist era.
Nagarjuna's primary contribution to Buddhist philosophy is in the use of
the concept of sunyata, or "emptiness," which brings together other key
Buddhist doctrines, particularly anatman "not-self" and
pratityasamutpada "dependent origination", to refute the metaphysics of
the Sarvastivada and Sautrantika (extinct non-Mahayana schools). For
Nagarjuna, as for the Buddha in the early texts, it is not merely
sentient beings that are "selfless" or non-substantial; all phenomena
are without any svabhava, literally "own-being", "self-nature", or
"inherent existence" and thus without any underlying essence. They are
empty of being independently existent; thus the heterodox theories of
svabhava circulating at the time were refuted on the basis of the
doctrines of early Buddhism. This is so because all things arise always
dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions
leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being. As part of
his analysis of the emptiness of phenomena in the Mulamadhyamakakarika,
Nagarjuna critiques svabhava in several different concepts. He discusses
the problems of positing any sort of inherent essence to causation,
movement, change and personal identity. Nagarjuna makes use of the
Indian logical tool of the tetralemma to attack any essentialist
conceptions.
Translated by: W. L. Campbell (1919)
The Tree Of Wisdom: She-Rab Dong-Bu, Lu-Trub Nagarjuna, Paperback, 43 pages, $7.95
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