Nagarjuna

Here are some highlights of Nagarjuna's contributions:

• 150 AD Born a Brahmin in Southern India
• Few details are known about his life. Tendency to mystify and embellish stories about him have led eminent scholars to be very skeptical of differnet and sometimes conflicting traditional accounts, and also to very question of his having ever existed.
• However, works testify by their very existence to the historicity of their author who is undisputedly known as Nagarjuna.
• He wrote in order to expound the basic teachings of the Prajnaparamitra Sutras.
• Sutras are rules or aphorisms from Sanskrit literature that compiled philosophic subjects or religious scriptures.
• They were comprised of gathas, songs or verses.
• The contents of the gathas in sutras were often the subject of expositions explaining them what wwere called Shastras.
• The central focus of Nagarjuna's interest was to expound the Maha-prajnaparamita Sutra.
• Some dispute wheter he actually wrote the Mahaprajnaparamitra Shastra, but there is little dispute that his disciple Kumarajiva took what he believed was Nagarjuna's writing and spread it to China.
• The Sanskrit version long passed from existence, but the writings became translated to the Chinese and became the precursor teachings of Zen Buddhism.
• The comprehension of the teachings is essentially in two phases: right understanding, and moral action that springs from compassion.
• The skilfulness of non-clinging (upaya) springs from right understanding.
• The manifold of experience is undifferentiated. There are no divisions.
• Nagarjuna is credited with the concept of sunyata, or emptiness. Through non-clinging to the determinate divisions in the mundane world,
• Life in the world when lived in the light of this highest truth is itself Nirvana
• Silence is the highest truth to the wise.
• Ultimate truth cannot be taught except in the context of mundane truth.
• Prajna is understanding: the principle of comprehension.
• You must appreciate the unique nature and value of every specifig standpoint, yet not be confined to any one.
• Everything holds good in the case of one who is in agreement with sunyata.
• Clinging is rejected. To cling to sunyata or ralativity as itself absolute is the most serious of errors.
• That which is of the nature of coming and going, arising and perishing, in its conditioned (mundane) nature is itself Nirvana in its unconditioned (ultimate) nature.
• The realization of the non-ultimacy of specifig views and the non-substantiality of specific entities is the essential first step in the wayfarer's realization of the ultimate truth as well as in the his work in the world.
• 250 AD Dies at age of 100.

"Nagarjuna's towering achievement in the development of Mahayana Hinduism is fundamental to understanding Zen Buddhism."

Read more about Nagarjuna at this Wikipedia entry.