AT FIRST GLANCE, one cannot find any more statements more at odds with each other than the two following emblematic stanzas. Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika XIII.7 says:
If there were anything nonempty,
there’d also be something “empty.”
There is nothing that is nonempty,
so how could there be the empty?
Maitreya’s Uttaratantra I.155 declares:
The basic element is empty of the adventitious,
which has the characteristic of being separable.
It is not empty of the unsurpassable attributes,
having the characteristic of being inseparable
Let’s explore the relationship between these stanzas, which seem to make arguments for what I’ll call here “not to be” and “to be.” Nagarjuna (considered to have lived during the second century CE) is of course most famous—or notorious—for his Madhyamaka approach of relentlessly nixing all phenomena, including even buddhahood. Most of his lesser-known praises also evidence this approach, discussing familiar notions such as emptiness, nonarising, lack of nature, no-self, and dependent origination. Even the Dharmadhatustava (“Praise of the Dharmadhatu”), which otherwise presents the dharmadhatu (in the sense of mind’s luminous nature; often used synonymously with buddhanature) in a positive light, clarifies “not to be”:
As the dharmadhatu is not a self,
neither any woman nor any man,
free of all that could be grasped,
how could it be designated “self”?
…
The dharma purifying mind the best
consists of the very lack of a nature
…
But once we see the double lack of
