Causality and Emptiness: The Wisdom of Nagarjuna

This book presents Nāgārjuna’s wisdom through four interconnected texts that move from practical instruction to philosophical depth. The Good Hearted Letter offers a concise manual of Buddhist practice, covering faith in the Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha, generosity, morality, patience, vigilance, renunciation, impermanence, suffering, and the cultivation of the path. The Heart of Interdependent Origination explains dependent arising as the structural principle of Buddhist thought, clarifying how phenomena arise through causes and conditions rather than through a permanent self or independent essence. Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas develops Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka method, using reasoning to free the mind from extreme views and mistaken assumptions about reality. Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas further applies the philosophy of emptiness to key Buddhist doctrines, showing that emptiness does not deny causality but makes causality intelligible by rejecting inherent existence. Together, these four works show the strategic continuity between ethical practice, dependent origination, the two truths, and liberation, making the book a systematic introduction to Nāgārjuna’s role as one of the central architects of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy.