Nor Is It Absent, and the Four Conditions
This page completes Gate Two and works through Gate Three. Having shown that a fruit cannot arise from already existing in its cause, Nāgārjuna turns on the opposite doctrine — that the fruit is genuinely absent beforehand — and finds it committed to fingertips producing carts and thread yielding food and drink. He answers the best evidence for it, the fact that oil comes from sesame and never from sand; dismisses the compromise position that the fruit is both present and absent; and then, in Gate Three, sets the entire Abhidharma apparatus of the four conditions in front of the same question and asks where in it the fruit is supposed to be.
1. If the Fruit Is Absent, Anything Could Come from Anything
The opposite doctrine — asatkāryavāda, that the effect does not exist before it is produced — was the position of the Vaiśeṣika school and, in a different form, of much Abhidharma. It looks like plain common sense: the pot was not there, then it was. Nāgārjuna's opening blow is to ask what constrains it. If the pot's absence from the clay is no obstacle to the pot's arising, then a pot's absence from a stone should be no obstacle either.
「若謂因中先無果而果生者，是亦不然。何以故？若無而生者，應有第二頭、第三手生。何以故？無而生故。」
問曰：「瓶等物有因緣，第二頭、第三手無因緣，云何得生？是故汝說不然。」
If you say the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause and yet the fruit arises, this too is not so. Why? Because if what does not exist can arise, then a second head and a third hand ought to arise. Why? Because they too do not exist, and arise.
Question: Pots and such things have causes and conditions; a second head and a third hand have none. How then should they arise? Your objection therefore fails.
答曰：「第二頭、第三手及瓶等果，因中俱無。如泥團中無瓶，石中亦無瓶，何故名泥團為瓶因，不名石為瓶因？何故名乳為酪因、縷為疊因，不名蒲為因？
Answer: A second head, a third hand, and fruits such as pots are all alike absent from their causes. There is no pot in a lump of clay, and no pot in a stone either — so why do you call the lump of clay the cause of the pot and not the stone? Why call milk the cause of curd and thread the cause of cloth, but not rushes?
「復次，若因中先無果而果生者，則一一物應生一切物，如指端應生車、馬、飲食等；如是縷不應但出疊，亦應出車、馬、飲食等物。何以故？若無而能生者，何故縷但能生疊，而不生車、馬、飲食等物？以俱無故。
Furthermore, if the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause and yet arises, then every single thing ought to produce all things whatever: a fingertip ought to produce carts, horses, food and drink. Thread, likewise, ought to yield not only cloth but carts, horses, food and drink as well. Why? If what does not exist can be produced, why should thread be able to produce only cloth, and not carts, horses, food and drink? — since all of them are equally absent from it.
The argument is the exact mirror of the one Part Two ran against pre-existence, and seeing the symmetry is the point of the gate. Against the doctrine that the fruit is already there, the objection was: then nothing is ever made, and every cause is a container. Against the doctrine that it is not there, the objection is: then nothing is ruled out, and every cause is arbitrary. The two doctrines fail for opposite reasons, and between them they exhaust what a cause could be.
The opponent's reply — pots have causes and conditions, third hands do not — is exactly right and exactly beside the point, which is why the answer to it is a question rather than a refutation. Why is clay a cause of pots and stone not, if the pot is equally absent from both? The opponent has helped himself to the notion of a specific causal power without having anything left to ground it in. Absence is featureless. It cannot be the thing that makes clay suited to pots and stone unsuited.
2. Sesame and Sand
Here is the best evidence the other side has, and it is empirical: press sesame and you get oil, press sand and you get nothing. Everyone knows this, and it seems to settle the matter — the difference must lie in the sesame. Nāgārjuna's reply refuses the appeal to past observation on the ground that observation of arising presupposes what is at issue, and then makes his method explicit, which is one of the most useful passages in the treatise for understanding what he thinks he is doing.
若因中先無果而果生者，則諸因不應各各有力能生果。如須油者要從麻取，不笮於沙；若俱無者，何故麻中求，而不笮沙？若謂曾見麻出油、不見從沙出，是故麻中求而不笮沙。
If the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause and yet arises, then the several causes ought not each to have their own power to produce their fruit. One who needs oil takes it from sesame and does not press sand; but if the oil is equally absent from both, why look in sesame and not press sand? Suppose you say: because we have seen oil come from sesame and have never seen it come from sand, we look in sesame and do not press sand.
是事不然。何以故？若生相成者，應言餘時見麻出油、不見沙出，是故於麻中求，不取沙；而一切法生相不成，故不得言餘時見麻出油，故麻中求，不取於沙。
This is not so. Why? If the mark of arising were established, then you could say: on another occasion we saw oil come from sesame and not from sand, and so we look in sesame and do not take up sand. But the mark of arising is not established for anything whatever — and so you cannot say that on another occasion you saw oil come from sesame, and therefore look for it in sesame and not in sand.
「復次，我今不但破一事，皆總破一切因果。若因中先有果生、先無果生、先有果無果生，是三生皆不成；是故汝言餘時見麻出油，則墮同疑因。
Furthermore, I am not here refuting a single case only; I am refuting all causes and fruits together. Whether the fruit arises from existing beforehand in the cause, or from not existing beforehand, or from both — none of these three arisings is established. So your saying "on another occasion we saw oil come from sesame" falls into the fault of a reason that is itself as much in doubt as the very point it was brought to prove.
The last sentence names a recognized fault of Indian logic, 同疑因 — a reason as doubtful as the thesis, what the Sanskrit tradition calls sādhyasama. The charge is precise. The opponent wants past observations of oil emerging from sesame to establish that arising happens in a particular constrained way. But every one of those observations is an observation of arising, which is the very thing in dispute. To say "we have seen oil arise from sesame" is to help oneself to the conclusion while calling it evidence.
Two things are worth saying about this, because the argument is easy to misread as a denial of the obvious. First, Nāgārjuna is not claiming that sesame and sand are interchangeable, or that pressing sand would be a sensible thing to do. He nowhere denies conventional regularity; Gate Eight will make his acceptance of it explicit, at length. What he denies is that the regularity can be cashed out as a real causal power residing in a real thing and transferred to another — which is what both rival doctrines need it to be. Second, notice the scope he claims in the middle passage: I am not refuting a single case; I am refuting all causes and fruits together. He is not competing with the Sāṃkhya and the Vaiśeṣika for the correct theory of causation. He is arguing that the space in which such theories are built is empty, and that any evidence drawn from within it inherits the problem.
3. The Agent, the Act, and Why the Objection Does Not Come Back
Both doctrines, pressed, dissolve the ordinary vocabulary of doing: cause, act, agent, means. At this point an opponent might reasonably turn the argument around — if all that is gone, has Nāgārjuna not destroyed his own ability to say anything? The reply is the single most important methodological sentence in the treatise, and it will be repeated almost verbatim in Gate Eleven.
「復次，若先因中無果而果生者，諸因相則不成。何以故？諸因若無，法何能作？何能成？若無作、無成，云何名為因？如是作者不得有所作，使作者亦不得有所作。
Furthermore, if the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause and yet arises, then the mark of a cause is not established at all. Why? If there is nothing in the causes, what can a thing do, and what can it accomplish? And if there is no doing and no accomplishing, what is it you are calling a cause? In this way an agent gets nothing done, and one who sets an agent to work gets nothing done either.
「若謂因中先有果，則不應有作、作者、作法別異。何以故？若先有果，何須復作？是故汝說作、作者、作法諸因皆不可得。因中先無果者，是亦不然。何以故？若人受作、作者分別有因果，應作是難；我說作、作者及因果皆空，若汝破作、作者及因果，則成我法，不名為難。是故因中先無果而果生，是事不然。
And if you say the fruit exists beforehand in the cause, then there should be no distinction at all between the act, the agent, and the means of acting. Why? If the fruit is already there, what further need is there of acting? So on your own account the act, the agent, the means of acting, and the causes are alike not to be got. And "the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause" is likewise not so. Why? If someone accepted the act and the agent and drew a distinction between cause and fruit, this objection would properly be raised against him. But I say that act, agent, cause and fruit are all empty; so if you refute act, agent, and cause-and-fruit, you thereby establish my own position, and it is no objection at all. Therefore that the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause and yet arises is not so.
「復次，若人受因中先有果，應作是難；我不說因中先有果，故不受此難，亦不受因中先無果。
Furthermore, if someone accepted that the fruit exists beforehand in the cause, this objection would properly be raised against him. I do not say the fruit exists beforehand in the cause, and so the objection does not touch me — nor do I say that the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause.
This is the Madhyamaka move that most often gets mistaken for evasion, and it is worth being clear about why it is not. Nāgārjuna's arguments are all of the form: if you hold that things have natures of their own, then the following absurdities follow. Such arguments cost him nothing, because he holds no such thesis for them to rebound onto. When the opponent tries the natural counter — "your reasoning would destroy your position too" — the reply is that there is no position of that kind to destroy. Refuting act, agent, cause and fruit is not damage to Nāgārjuna; it is his conclusion, arrived at by the opponent's own hand.
What this does not mean is that he holds the opposite thesis. He is at pains to say so twice: he does not say the fruit pre-exists, and he does not say it does not. Both are claims about what a real, self-natured fruit is doing before it arrives, and he rejects the premise that generates the question. This is the difference between emptiness and nihilism, and the treatise will state it in so many words in Gate Eight.
4. Both at Once: Light and Dark in One Place
The third limb of the verse is dispatched briefly, and the reason is structural rather than dismissive: a compromise between two contradictory claims inherits the objections to both, and adds a new one of its own.
「若謂因中先亦有果亦無果而果生，是亦不然。何以故？有、無性相違故；性相違者，云何一處？如明闇、苦樂、去住、縛解不得同處，是故因中先有果先無果二俱不生。
And if you say the fruit arises from both existing and not existing beforehand in the cause, this too is not so. Why? Because existence and non-existence are contrary in their very nature; and what is contrary in nature — how should it be in one place? As light and dark, pain and pleasure, going and staying, bondage and release cannot occupy one place, so from neither "the fruit exists beforehand in the cause" nor "the fruit does not exist beforehand" does any arising follow when the two are joined together.
「復次、因中先有果先無果，上有無中已破。是故先因中有果亦不生，無果亦不生，有無亦不生，理極於此。一切處推求不可得，是故果畢竟不生。果畢竟不生故，則一切有為法皆空。何以故？一切有為法，皆是因是果。
「有為空故，無為亦空。有為、無為尚空，何況我耶？」
Furthermore, "the fruit exists beforehand in the cause" and "the fruit does not exist beforehand in the cause" have each already been refuted above. So the fruit does not arise from existing beforehand in the cause, nor from not existing, nor from both; and here the principle reaches its limit. Search for it anywhere at all and it is not to be got — and therefore the fruit in the end does not arise. And since the fruit in the end does not arise, all conditioned things are empty. Why? Because every conditioned thing is both a cause and a fruit.
Since the conditioned is empty, the unconditioned is empty too. And if the conditioned and the unconditioned are both empty, how much more the self!
The reason for such short work is given plainly: both halves have already been refuted, so a position asserting both is refuted twice over before it starts. The additional argument — that contraries cannot occupy one place — is only needed to block the reply that the compromise might be a new position rather than a sum of two old ones. The four everyday pairs are chosen to make the point unarguable: nothing is lit and dark at once, nothing is both going and staying, no one is at the same moment bound and freed.
Note the closing cadence, which by now the reader will recognize from Gate One. Every conditioned thing is both a cause and a fruit — nothing in the conditioned world stands outside the relation — so the collapse of cause and fruit is the collapse of the whole conditioned realm, and everything else follows from that in a single line.
5. Gate Three: The Four Conditions
Gate Three opens the same question onto Buddhism's own most careful piece of causal machinery. The four conditions are an Abhidharma inheritance, designed to say with precision what makes any moment of experience arise, and they appear here in the same order and with the same definitions as in the opening chapter of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The verse's demand is minimal: show me the fruit. Not in the whole gathering, and not in any single condition — so from where does it come?
復次，諸法緣不成。何以故？
Furthermore, things are not established by conditions. Why?
廣略眾緣法， 是中無有果；
緣中若無果， 云何從緣生？
In the gathering of conditions, taken at length or in brief,
there is no fruit within;
and if there is no fruit in the conditions,
how does anything arise from conditions?
瓶等果，一一緣中無，和合中亦無，若二門中無，云何言從緣生？
問曰：「云何名為諸緣？」
A fruit such as a pot is not in any one of the conditions singly, nor in their combination. And if it is in neither of these two ways, how can one say it arises from conditions?
Question: What, then, are the conditions?
答曰：
「四緣生諸法， 更無第五緣，
因緣次第緣， 緣緣增上緣。」
Answer:
Four conditions produce all things;
there is no fifth condition —
the causal condition, the antecedent condition,
the object condition, and the dominant condition.
四緣者：因緣、次第緣、緣緣、增上緣。因緣者，隨所從生法，若已從生、今從生、當從生，是法名因緣。次第緣者，前法已滅次第生，是名次第緣。緣緣者，隨所念法，若起身業、若起口業、若起心心數法，是名緣緣。增上緣者，以有此法故彼法得生，此法於彼法為增上緣。
The definitions are given straight, without irony, and that matters. This is Buddhism's own analysis, refined over centuries, and Nāgārjuna reproduces it accurately before touching it. The four cover distinct work: the causal condition is what a thing comes out of; the antecedent condition secures that each moment follows immediately on the ceasing of the last, with no gap and no overlap; the object condition is what a mental event is about, without which no cognition could be a cognition of anything; and the dominant condition covers everything whose presence permits a thing to arise without directly producing it. "There is no fifth" is a completeness claim: between them, these four were meant to leave nothing about arising unaccounted for.
Which is precisely why the gate is short. If the analysis is complete, then the fruit must be found somewhere within it, and the question can be asked once and for all.
6. Where Is the Fruit? And Why Not from a Non-Condition?
The argument runs the same dilemma as Gate Two, now against the fourfold analysis. Then it adds the sharpest single line in the gate: if the fruit is genuinely not in its conditions, then absence is all that its conditions and its non-conditions have in common — so why should it come from the one rather than the other?
如是四緣，皆因中無果。若因中有果者，應離諸緣而有果，而實離緣無果。若緣中有果者，應離因而有果，而實離因無果。若於緣及因有果者，應可得，以理推求而不可得，是故二處俱無。如是一一中無、和合中亦無，云何得言果從緣生？
In all four of these conditions, there is no fruit in the cause. If the fruit were in the cause, then apart from the conditions there would be a fruit — and in fact apart from the conditions there is none. If the fruit were in the conditions, then apart from the cause there would be a fruit — and in fact apart from the cause there is none. And if the fruit were in the conditions and the cause together, it ought to be obtainable — yet pressing the matter by reason, it is not to be got. So it is absent from both places alike. Thus it is not in any one of them, nor in their combination — how then can one say that the fruit arises from conditions?
復次：
若果緣中無， 而從緣中出，
是果何不從， 非緣中而出？
Furthermore:
If the fruit is not in the conditions
and yet comes forth from the conditions,
why should that fruit not come forth
from what is not its conditions at all?
若謂果，緣中無而從緣生者，何故不從非緣生？二俱無故。是故無有因緣能生果者。
果不生故，緣亦不生。何以故？以先緣後果故。緣果無故，一切有為法空；有為法空故，無為法亦空；有為、無為空故，云何有我耶？
If you say the fruit is not in the conditions and yet arises from them, why does it not arise from what is not its conditions? — since it is equally absent from both. Therefore there is no cause or condition that can produce a fruit.
And since the fruit does not arise, the conditions do not arise either. Why? Because the condition comes first and the fruit after. Condition and fruit being absent, all conditioned things are empty; the conditioned being empty, the unconditioned is empty too; and the conditioned and the unconditioned being empty, how should there be a self?
The last movement contains a small step that is easy to read past. Having concluded that the fruit does not arise, Nāgārjuna adds that the conditions therefore do not arise either — and his reason is that a condition is defined by coming before a fruit. This is the reciprocal argument again, and it is the engine of the entire treatise: nothing here is refuted in isolation. A condition is only a condition of something. Take away what it conditions and you have not left a bare condition standing on its own; you have taken away the only thing that made it one.
It is worth registering what the last three gates have jointly done. Gate One emptied the natures of things, Gate Two emptied their production, and Gate Three emptied the analysis by which production had been made precise. Nothing has yet been said about time, or marks, or arising as such. Those come next — and the reason the following gates can be so much shorter is that the pattern of argument has now been established three times over.
Part Three Complete
This closes Gate Two and Gate Three: the doctrine that the fruit is absent from its cause, refuted by fingertips that would produce carts; the appeal to sesame and sand, answered by showing that observations of arising cannot establish arising; the compromise position, dismissed as two refuted claims joined together; and the four conditions of Abhidharma, searched for the fruit and found not to hold it — in any one of them, or in all four together. Part Four takes up Gate Four, the longest of the remaining gates, where the target is no longer causation but the three marks by which a conditioned thing was supposed to be recognized as conditioned at all: arising, abiding, and ceasing.
Continue to Part 4 — The Three Marks, and the Lamp →