/lit/ - Literature

>>6487579
in the kaccayanagotta-sutta (nidana-vagga, samyutta nikaya) the buddha says his teaching is the middle (neither/nor) between non-existence and existence. it is a refutation of nihilism and eternalism: the view that "it is not" and "it is". nagarjuna directly referred to this sutta by name in his magnum opus, giving it the distinct honor of recognition above all else by a master thinker.

the buddha taught the impermanence and emptiness of conditioned phenomena but not the inefficiency of kharmic actions or the non-arising of their necessary consequence. death is not a simple cessation as far as the buddha was concerned. the body dies, and the pali suttas are full of vivid reminders of the decaying nature of the physical body, and the personality and identity is gone forever (you will not meet your grandpa existing eternally in heaven running in meadows), but the kharmic force does not get cut off, it regenerates in a new body and continues. this is the process of samsara. the buddha taught that for the fool and the wise man alike, the only reason they have come to be is fueled by past ignorance and craving, and the only difference between them is that the wise has abandoned ignorance and cut off craving, bring his life process in samsaara to the point of extinction, which is nibbana.