Stephen Batchelor - Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime

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RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Published by The Berkley Publishing Group
A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014

Copyright 2000 by Stephen Batchelor

Book design by Chris Welch

Cover design Royce M. Becker

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

First Riverhead hardcover edition: April 2000

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: July 2001

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

Nagarjuna, 2nd cent.

[Madhyamakakarika. English]

Verses from the center : a Buddhist vision of the sublime / Stephen Batchelor.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66309-7

1. Mdhyamika (Buddhism)Early works to 1800. I. Batchelor, Stephen. II. Title.

BQ2792.E5 B38 2000 00-021123

294.385dc21

for Maurice Ash

The dharma taught by buddhas

Hinges on two truths:

Partial truths of the world

And truths which are sublime.

Without knowing how they differ,

You cannot know the deep;

Without relying on conventions,

You cannot disclose the sublime;

Without intuiting the sublime,

You cannot experience freedom.

Nagarjuna

I have written this book in order to elucidate the vision of the great Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna. Although Nagarjuna is arguably the most important figure in Buddhism after the Buddha himself, very little is known about him. All that can be said with any certainty is that he lived at some time around the second century C.E. in India and is the author of a Sanskrit work of 448 verses, divided into twenty-seven chapters, entitled Verses from the Center (Mlamadhyamakakrik). Yet while Nagarjuna continues to be revered today as a founding figure of many living Buddhist traditions, his seminal work is almost entirely ignored.

I have sought to translate Verses from the Center in such a way as to make Nagarjunas insights come alive for anyone concerned with the question of what it means to live a free and awake life today. Instead of regarding the text as a work of Buddhist doctrine or philosophyas is generally the case in studies of NagarjunaI treat it in the spirit of a Zen koan, which provokes intuitions of the sublime by forcibly challenging entrenched opinions about ourselves and the world.

The book begins with Intuitions of the Sublime, which locates Nagarjunas central and much-misunderstood idea of emptiness in the wider context of Buddhist, Taoist and Western traditions and offers a contemporary interpretation of Nagarjunas vision. This introductory essay is followed by a poetic translation of the Tibetan text of Verses from the Center. For a more literal, academic translation, the reader is referred to Jay L. Garfields The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Ngrjunas Mlamadhyamakakrik. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

In writing this book I am indebted to the Sharpham Trust, who have generously supported the project for the past four years. Thanks also to Paul Williams for providing a digital copy of the Tibetan text and promptly answering occasional technical questions on Sanskrit; to Gay Watson for keeping my classical Tibetan in working order; to Selima Hill for encouraging me to write poetry; to Helen Tworkov for unwavering support throughout; to Anne Edelstein for helping the book find its way into the world; to Amy Hertz for enabling the work to reach its final form; and to my wife, Mar tine, for everything.

Stephen Batchelor
December 1999

B EHIND THE GILDED S WAYAMBU STUPA , WHOSE PAINTED eyes gaze over the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, is a nondescript building with a single shabby room, empty save for a bronze door smeared with vermilion powder. Tibetans believe this door leads to a cave whence a passageway descends to the subterranean lake where the Indian sage Nagarjuna was taken by a species of sub-aquatic serpents called