Chapter 5 - Nagarjuna and Gaudapada — A Comparative Study

In Indian Philosophical tradition, there have been several teachers and sages, who pronounced the truth as what they have understood and realized it in their own vision and experiences to counteract (counter-mine) the existing notion of reality–that each one considered us false or imperfect–of things, of the self and of the world. This tradition of intellectual debate includes were many great teachers of different time. Here we are trying to understand two such stalwarts who reigned and still reigns in the religio-philosophic firmament of Asia and which extend to include the world also. These great preceptors are Nagarjuna and Gaudapada.

Nagarjuna, who preached Buddhism was instrumental in its renaissance. Gaudapada countermined Nagarjuna’s logics with Brahman monism and re-established the Brahmavada of the Vedanta in the form of Advaita Vedanta. Both Madhyamika (Nagarjuna) and Advaita Vedanta (Gaudapada) deny that the ultimate reality can be understood in a dualistic manner.

“In the former this amounts, to a subversion of the motion of separate self-sufficiency (nihsvabhavata), while in the later non-difference is a proclamation of the reality of the non-dual substratum underlying all experiences”.^[1]

“The distinction between Madhyamika and Vedanta reflects two different conceptions of negatives in ‘ajati’, as in the former ‘ajati’ means there is no birth and in the latter it means there is an unborn.”^[2]