Mind, Matter, and the Middle Way: Deconstructing Reality with Nāgārjuna
The question posed by Mr. A—"How does your view treat reality outside of one's mind? Do you believe that everything is mind, or is there reality distinct from it that interacts with the mind?"—cuts to the heart of one of the most enduring dilemmas in philosophy and contemplative inquiry. It presents a binary choice that has defined much of Western and Eastern thought: are you an idealist, who posits that reality is fundamentally mental, or a realist, who holds that a physical world exists independently of our perception of it?"
Soh responded:
As John Tan commented, "Dependent arising is precisely to address these extreme views via emptiness."
John Tan also said in 2015: "External objects are only valid conventionally, not ultimately. What cannot be separated was mistaken as separated due to conventions, and then when we attempt to trace back using our existing paradigm, we logically deduce it must be either oneness in substance or as interactions between entities. However, one that has tasted anatta in real time sees that neither is true. It cannot be expressed either as one substance or as an interaction between separate entities. One further refines one's view through MMK (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) and realizes the impossibility of manifestation in such views. The mind can then willingly release itself and rest in empty, non-arising appearances. If we refuse to clearly see the two truths, the mind will never find its place; it cannot rest, as it is unable to release the paradigm that defines it. To be thoughtless and non-conceptual are not the right antidotes to free the mind from extremes, and experience that is empty, non-dual, and non-arisen will be distorted. This is just my opinion."
The perspective offered here, rooted in the Madhyamaka ("Middle Way") school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the philosopher Nāgārjuna, is that this very dichotomy is a conceptual trap. The "answer" is not to choose a side but to deconstruct the premises upon which the question is built. The view is not that "everything is mind," nor is it that a solid, mind-independent reality exists "out there." By using the analytical tools of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), emptiness (śūnyatā), and non-arising (anutpāda), we can arrive at a more subtle, dynamic, and experientially verifiable understanding.
1. The Central Thesis: Appearances Are Not Mind, Nor Other-Than-Mind
A clear and concise entry point into this view is captured perfectly in the article from Awakening to Reality article Appearances: not mind nor other than mind. It states:
“…there is no mind apart from appearance and no appearance apart from mind.”
This statement is the cornerstone of the entire framework. It dissolves the perceived duality between an internal "subject" (mind) and an external "object" (appearance/reality), thereby avoiding both idealism and naïve realism from the outset. Let's unpack this in detail:
No appearance apart from mind: When we try to locate an appearance or an object—a tree, a sound, a feeling—entirely separate from the consciousness that cognizes it, we fail. An “unperceived object,” taken as something utterly divorced from any possible conditions of cognition, is an abstraction rather than something we can establish in experience. The very qualities by which an object is known—color, shape, texture, usefulness, location—are disclosed only in dependence on faculties, conditions, concepts, and cognition. Its status as an “object” is not found from its own side as an intrinsic essence; it is established dependently through bases, causes, conditions, valid cognition, worldly convention, and designation.
No mind apart from appearance: Conversely, when we turn our attention inward to find the "mind" or "consciousness" that is doing the perceiving, we cannot locate it as a standalone entity. What is mind without something to be mindful of? It has no color, no shape, no location. We only ever find the mind in action, seamlessly fused with the content of its experience—the seeing of sights, the hearing of sounds, the thinking of thoughts.
What we actually encounter in any given moment is a single, indivisible event of "experiencing" which we conceptually and retroactively split into a "perceiver" and a "perceived." The Madhyamaka view asserts that this split is a fabrication of thought, not a reflection of fundamental reality.
2. The Engine of Analysis: Dependent Origination (Pratītyasamutpāda)
How does Madhyamaka justify this radical claim? The primary analytical tool is the principle of Dependent Origination, which states that no phenomenon exists autonomously. Everything arises in dependence upon other factors. The classic Buddhist formula is: "When this is, that is. From the arising of this, that arises."
Nāgārjuna applies this principle relentlessly to the act of perception itself. He famously analyzes the triad of the Sense Organ, the Sense Object, and the Sense Consciousness. This interdependent relationship is made explicit in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), or "Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way."
It is crucial to note that Nāgārjuna is extending the Buddha’s own early analysis of perception and dependent arising. MN 18, the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, traces contact into feeling, perception, thinking, and conceptual proliferation; MN 148, the Chachakka Sutta, explicitly analyzes the perceptual triad—sense faculty, sense object, and sense consciousness—where “the meeting of the three is contact.” The broader twelve-link dependent-origination formula is especially central in the Nidāna-saṃyutta, including SN 12.15, the Kaccānagotta Sutta, where dependent origination is taught as the middle way between “all exists” and “all does not exist.” First, in MMK 3:7, Nāgārjuna establishes the dependency of consciousness:
Sanskrit: cakṣūrūpe pratītyaivam ukto vijñānasaṃbhavaḥ (MMK 3:7)
Translation: "Depending on the eye and on form, the arising of consciousness is taught."
(Note: While some explanations include "attention" (manaskāra) in this triad, the specific Sanskrit verse in MMK 3:7 does not. Attention is a key component in the Pāli suttas' analysis of contact (phassa), which forms the basis for Nāgārjuna's reasoning).
Second, in the preceding verse, MMK 3:6, Nāgārjuna generalizes this to the entire "seer-seeing-seen" complex. As Jay L. Garfield translates:
"If there is no seer apart from seeing, nor seeing apart from the seer, how could there be the seen (object) or the act of seeing when the seer is absent?" (Garfield, 1995)
These three elements—organ, object, and consciousness—are like three sticks propping one another up in a tripod. If you remove any one stick, the other two immediately fall. None of them is the independent "foundation"; their stability is their mutual, simultaneous dependence.
A modern analogy maps perfectly to this triad:
Smartphone Component | Madhyamaka Triad Counterpart |
|---|---|
Camera Sensor | Eye (Sense Organ) |
Scene/View | Visible Form (Sense Object) |
Image Signal/Data | Eye-Consciousness (Sense Consciousness) |
The "photo" as an event of consciousness only occurs when all three are functioning together. A dead battery ⚡ (no sensor), a lens cap ⚫ (no scene), or a processor crash 💥 (no signal generation) means the photo-event never appears. The image is not a thing that exists in the sensor, in the scene, or in the processor. It is nothing over and above that momentary, interdependent synergy.
3. The Result of Analysis: Emptiness (Śūnyatā) and Dependent Designation
This radical interdependence leads directly to the core Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā). This is arguably the most misunderstood concept in all of Buddhism. Emptiness does not mean non-existence or nihilism. It means the absence of svabhāva—intrinsic, independent, self-sufficient existence.
Because every part of the triad (organ, object, consciousness) depends on the others for its very existence and definition, no single part possesses its own inherent nature. It is "empty" of being a standalone thing. This logical progression is key: Dependent Origination reveals a lack of intrinsic existence, and this lack is what is termed emptiness.
This is where Nāgārjuna's most famous verse, MMK 24:18, becomes the lynchpin of the entire philosophy, tying all the concepts together. As translated by Siderits and Katsura:
"Whatever is dependently arisen, we declare that to be emptiness;
It is a dependent designation;
Just that is the middle path." (MMK 24:18)
The second line, "It is a dependent designation" (prajñaptir upādāya), means that our words—"eye," "form," "consciousness," "mind," "world"—are convenient labels or conventions we apply to this web of interdependent processes. The label is useful for communication (this is its conventional truth), but it doesn't point to a static, self-enclosed entity.
Crucially, this does not invalidate conventional reality. The Madhyamaka view is not a denial of the world but a denial of a specific, imaginary way of being (i.e., inherent existence). By seeing that phenomena are empty of a solid, independent core, we are not left with nothing. Rather, conventional functioning is seen more clearly for what it is: not a secondary realm that merely operates beneath some higher substrate, but the very dynamic, relational, and vibrant play of appearances. If there is no substrate, what else is there besides dependently arisen, dependently designated conventionalities? Precisely because they are empty rather than self-enclosed, they can be seamless, responsive, fluid, and causally effective.
Key clarification: conventional truth is not “just valid functioning” in the sense of a lower, second-best realm. If there is no substrate, what else is there besides dependently arisen conventionalities? Precisely because they are empty, appearances can be seamless, fluid, plastic, miraculous, and causally effective. Even a quantum bit of “thingness” would make appearances impossible.
John Tan’s clarification: do not make the conventional secondary
In a later clarification, John Tan warned that some teachers are not merely using an unfortunate phrase. Their explanation can reflect a view in which presence free from conceptual elaboration is taken as the ultimate, or in which “the ultimate” is assumed to be such nonconceptual presence. They then explain conventional phenomena as things that “still perform functions in the conventional world,” as though conventionalities are merely a lower, pragmatic layer while the real aim is a higher nonconceptual presence. John Tan said this is misleading because it promotes a subtle substantialist view: it leaves some “other” standing apart from conventional existence, as though emptiness or presence were a mirror behind the reflections.
“When it is said like that, they are not implying emptiness as if phenomena are empty, there is no hierarchy. Usually practitioners expressed this way because of their experience of presence free from conceptuality. They are implying although they are conventional, they still function validly. But the higher aim should be presence free from conceptual elaborations.”
“Without substrate, what else are there? … If you say other than conventional existence, there [is] some other … then there is substrate. … It is like saying, ‘Oh, they are just reflection.’ So does the sentence imply there is a mirror beside reflection?”
—John Tan, WhatsApp clarification to Soh Wei Yu, 25 May 2026; private communication, lightly edited for grammar
His point is not to flatten the two truths into ordinary realism, but to prevent a false hierarchy. Emptiness is not a superior nonconceptual presence apart from conventionalities, and freedom from conceptual elaboration is not a hidden ultimate substance behind names, forms, sounds, and thoughts. Once the supposed “mirror” is not reified apart from reflections, the reflections themselves are seen more clearly: empty, vividly functional, and nirvāṇic in nature. This is why John Tan says one must “turn it around”: conventional functioning is not merely what remains after emptiness is realized; it is precisely because phenomena are empty that they can function, appear, respond, and display so seamlessly.
This is also why the fourfold equivalence of MMK 24:18 should not be read as a hierarchy in which dependent arising is a lower truth and emptiness is a higher substrate, nor as a hierarchy in which conventionality is a second-best realm and nonconceptual presence is the actual ultimate. Dependent arising, emptiness, dependent designation, and the Middle Way are four names for the same lack of inherent existence. Likewise, Bodhicittavivaraṇa verse 68 says that “the conventional is taught to be emptiness” and “emptiness itself is the conventional”: one does not occur without the other, just as being produced and being impermanent are not two separate realities.
4. The Ultimate Implication: Non-Arising (Anutpāda)
This leads to the most profound and subtle implication of the Madhyamaka view: non-arising (anutpāda). If a phenomenon lacks an independent essence (svabhāva) and can never be found to exist on its own, then, upon ultimate analysis, it never truly “arose” as a self-contained entity in the first place.
This does not deny the vivid, functional reality of our experience. It denies only a specific mode of existence: inherent, self-established being. Things appear, function, and have effects; this is not a secondary domain under a higher ultimate, but the display of dependent arising itself. Their ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya) is not a substrate behind them, but their emptiness of inherent existence—their “non-arisen” nature. This “pacification of all conceptual proliferation” (prapañcopaśama) is a central theme, mentioned in the homage verse of the MMK (1:1) and elaborated in its final chapters on nirvāṇa (Ch. 25).
The rainbow is the perfect analogy:
Conventional Truth: A rainbow vividly appears in the sky. We can see it, point to it, and describe its colors. It is functionally present.
In the same way, the world of experience—including mind and matter—is like a magical display: vividly apparent yet ultimately unfindable as a collection of solid, independent things.
5. Transcending the Extremes: A Practical Summary
With this framework in place, we can now directly address the initial dichotomy of idealism and realism and see how the Middle Way avoids both.
Extreme View | Claim Made | The Madhyamaka Refutation |
|---|---|---|
Idealism | "Only mind is real; objects are mere projections of mind." | "Mind" itself is conditional and dependently arisen. It requires an organ and an object to function as mind. Thus, it cannot be the ultimate, foundational substance. |
Naïve Realism | "Objects exist 'out there' with their own inherent properties, independent of any mind." | An "object" only functions as such within the perceptual triad. Its "object-ness" is a relational quality, a dependent designation, not an intrinsic, mind-independent property. |
The Middle Way | Reality is a co-arising nexus of interdependent factors, empty of essence yet functionally effective. | The identity of Dependent Origination and Emptiness (MMK 24:18) provides the path that cuts between the extremes of eternalism (inherent existence) and nihilism (total non-existence). |
Even more subtle philosophical positions, like the Yogācāra school's concept of a "storehouse consciousness" (ālaya-vijñāna), are subjected to the same analysis by Madhyamaka thinkers like Candrakīrti. From a strict Madhyamaka standpoint, even if one posits such a foundational consciousness, that foundation itself must be analyzed. Upon analysis, it too would be found to be dependent on conditions for its arising and therefore empty of being an ultimate, self-sufficient ground.
Nāgārjuna: Selections from Bodhicittavivaraṇa (A Commentary on the Awakening Mind)
The following verses are from Nāgārjuna’s Bodhicittavivaraṇa / A Commentary on the Awakening Mind, translated by Thupten Jinpa. They illustrate the same Madhyamaka principles of dependent origination, emptiness, conventional functioning, and non-transfer.
Verse 59.
Starting with ignorance and ending with aging
All processes that arise from
The twelve links of dependent origination
We accept them to be like a dream and an illusion.
Verse 60.
This wheel with twelve links
Rolls along the road of cyclic existence
Outside this, there cannot be sentient beings
Experiencing the fruits of their deeds.
Verse 61.
Just as in dependence upon a mirror
A full image of one's face appears
The face did not move onto the mirror
Yet without it, there is no image [of the face].
Verse 62.
Likewise, aggregates recompose in a new existence
Yet the wise always understand
That no one is born in another existence
Nor does someone transfer to such existence.
Verse 63.
In brief, from empty phenomena
Empty phenomena arise
Agent, karma, fruits, and their enjoyer –
The conqueror taught these to be [only] conventional.
Verse 64.
Just as the sound of a drum as well as a shoot
Are produced from a collection [of factors]
We accept the external world of dependent origination
To be like a dream and an illusion.
Verse 65.
That phenomena are born from causes
Can never be inconsistent [with facts]
Since the cause is empty of cause
We understand it to be empty of origination.
Verse 66.
The non-origination of all phenomena
Is clearly taught to be emptiness
In brief, the five aggregates are denoted
By [the expression] “all phenomena.”
Verse 67.
When the [ultimate] truth is explained as it is
The conventional is not obstructed
Independent of the conventional
No [ultimate] truth can be found.
Verse 68.
The conventional is taught to be emptiness
The emptiness itself is the conventional
One does not occur without the other
Just as [being] produced and impermanent.
John Tan on Tsongkhapa's Nominalism (2020)
John Tan: That is, he [Mr. J] doesn't know how beautiful Prasangika nominalism is... ...focus on total exertion and dependent designations; it gels so perfectly and beautifully, and it has an entire view, world, or universe of its own. It integrates all without dispelling or affirming both the internal and external world (Middle Way) and thoroughly bases its entire world as names only. That is extremely beautiful, especially when you can integrate anatta, total exertion, and emptiness together. I only began to appreciate it recently when I contemplated Tsongkhapa's semantic nominalism seriously. I appreciate the two truths more and more, especially the conventional world, when seen together with the experiential insight of total exertion.
Soh Wei Yu: I see. Where can I read about Tsongkhapa's semantic nominalism?
John Tan: Actually, you can't just read about it. You must integrate it with the insight of total exertion and emptiness without resorting to non-conceptuality—just the linguistic beauty with all the constructs. Your current experiences and insights are sufficient to integrate them. The +A and -A are perfectly blended. All tastes of anatta, emptiness, and total exertion remain and gel so beautifully. The internal world and external world are bridged by being names only. No wonder Tsongkhapa doesn't need to reject the external world and doesn't need a reflexive awareness.
Summary of Key Verses & Suttas for Reference
MMK 3:6-7: Establishes the mutual collapse of the seer/seeing/seen triad and the dependency of consciousness on the sense organ and sense object.
MMK 24:18: Equates dependent origination with emptiness and dependent designation, defining the Middle Way.
MMK 1:1 & Ch. 25: Points to the ultimate truth of non-arising and the pacification of conceptual proliferation (prapañcopaśama).
Bodhicittavivaraṇa (A Commentary on the Awakening Mind): Provides analogies (mirror, dream, empty causality) to explain the relationship between conventional functioning, emptiness, and non-transfer.
MN 18 (Madhupiṇḍika Sutta) & MN 148 (Chachakka Sutta): Key suttas from the early Pāli canon that describe the triad of perception, forming the doctrinal basis for Nāgārjuna's analysis.
SN 12.15 (Kaccānagotta Sutta): Gives the Buddha’s early formulation of the Middle Way between “all exists” and “all does not exist,” followed by dependent origination.
SN 22.94 (Puppha Sutta): Supports the conventional-validity principle later cited by Madhyamaka: the Buddha does not dispute what the wise in the world agree exists or does not exist.
Concluding Thought for Contemplation
Seeing is just the fleeting, interdependent meeting of eye, form, and knowing—perfectly vivid, perfectly ungraspable.
References
Garfield, J. L. (1995). The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Oxford University Press.
Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages (GRETIL). (2010). Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, based on the edition by J. W. de Jong.
Siderits, M., & Katsura, S. (2013). Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Wisdom Publications.
Nāgārjuna. Bodhicittavivaraṇa / A Commentary on the Awakening Mind, translated by Thupten Jinpa.
John Tan. WhatsApp clarification to Soh Wei Yu, 25 May 2026. Private communication; quoted/paraphrased with permission in the article body.
SuttaCentral: MN 18, Madhupiṇḍika Sutta; MN 148, Chachakka Sutta; SN 12.15, Kaccānagotta Sutta; and SN 22.94, Puppha Sutta.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Tsongkhapa; Dharmakīrti; Abhidharma.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Hard Problem of Consciousness.
Update:
The problem is that we can deduce that the environment exists outside of the mind and independent of it. Look at your watch. Note the time. Now look away. Don't think about the watch for a few minutes. Now look back at it. The time advanced. It did so in synchrony with the rest of the watch. How? Whatever happened, did so outside of your consciousness. You weren't aware of the time advancing. So there is reality that functions outside of your mind.
My concerns is that all nonduality that Eastern philosophy and religion reports is confined to within the mind or at the moment of the mind's working together with the environment.
Thank you for this excellent and thoughtful comment. The watch analogy is a perfect, modern formulation of a classic philosophical challenge, and it gets right to the heart of the matter. You've pinpointed the exact place where the Madhyamaka view often seems counter-intuitive, and your concern is entirely valid from a conventional standpoint. To address it fully requires a deep dive into how different Buddhist philosophical schools approach this.
The core of your argument is that by inferring a process—the watch’s movement—that occurs outside your direct perception, you can prove the existence of a mind-independent reality. From the Madhyamaka standpoint, your watch example is conventionally correct: the watch does not stop functioning merely because you look away. Madhyamaka is not denying conventionally valid causal continuity. What it denies is the further metaphysical leap that this functioning proves a watch, time, matter, or mind exists from its own side, independently of parts, causes, conditions, conceptual designation, and valid cognition. The Prāsaṅgika analysis therefore targets the reified conclusion, not the ordinary fact that the watch keeps time.
First, we analyze the “watch” itself. What is this “watch” that you deduce exists when unobserved? Our concept of it—its mechanics, its purpose, its continuity—is built from prior perceptions, learned conventions, shared practices, and causal expectations. The very idea of a “watch that functions independently” is a concept that is itself dependently arisen. Then we analyze the “unobserved process.” You posit a continuous mechanical movement happening while you were not looking. Conventionally, this is a valid inference, not a fantasy. But from a Prāsaṅgika perspective, this inferred continuity is still a dependent designation (prajñapti), not an ultimately findable entity or process that exists with intrinsic nature.
This leads to the crucial question of how a philosophy can accept an external world conventionally while insisting it's ultimately empty. The answer lies in the precise definition of the two truths. For something to be accepted as "conventionally valid," it isn't just a fantasy. It must be functional (the watch keeps time) and part of our shared, everyday experience. This is why Prāsaṅgika thinkers do not deny the functional reality of the world.
This point is central to the perspective of the Tibetan master Tsongkhapa, who was a brilliant systematizer of the Prāsaṅgika view. It is important to nuance the status of this view across Tibetan Buddhism. While the Gelug school, founded by Tsongkhapa, holds Prāsaṅgika as systematically definitive, other major schools have a more varied approach. To be precise, certain Kagyu and Sakya lineages also teach shentong (gzhan-stong, or "other-empty") readings alongside rangtong (Prāsaṅgika, or "self-empty") presentations. The Nyingma school often balances Madhyamaka analysis with the direct experiential teachings of Dzogchen.
Nonetheless, Tsongkhapa’s clarification of Prāsaṅgika is profoundly influential. While he is a key figure, he was not alone in defending conventional reality; earlier Indian masters such as Bhāviveka and Śāntarakṣita also emphasized the necessity of a robust conventional world. Tsongkhapa’s particular force lies in his detailed systematization. In the lists of the distinctive Prāsaṅgika points associated with his tradition, the non-negation of external objects, the rejection of reflexive awareness as an ultimately or even conventionally self-established knower, and the rejection of ālaya-vijñāna as a separate foundational consciousness are all important. The watch is conventionally valid and functions. The error is only in believing it functions from its own side, with an intrinsic nature (svabhāva) independent of parts, causes, conditions, and a designating mind.
This approach of deconstructing experience extends to all phenomena. The Madhyamaka "Middle Way" states that the world isn’t a projection of our minds, but it isn’t totally independent of our minds, either, because it makes no sense to speak of a particular, fixed reality independent of any concept, mental process, or observer. Rather, there is interdependence. An object is seen by a hundred different people like a hundred reflections in a hundred mirrors. But is it the same object? As a first approximation, it is, but it can be perceived in completely different ways by different beings.
Colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures aren’t attributes that are inherent to the objective world, existing independently of our senses. The objects we perceive seem completely ‘external’ to us, but do they have intrinsic characteristics that define their true nature? We have no way of knowing, because our only way of apprehending them is via our own mental process. To take an example, what is a white object? Is it a wavelength, a ‘color temperature’, or moving particles? Are those particles energy, mass, or what? None of those attributes are intrinsic to the object; they’re only the result of our particular ways of investigating it.
A classic Buddhist story tells of two blind men trying to understand the color white. One was told it is the color of snow and concluded white was "cold." The other was told it is the color of swans and concluded white went "swish swish." The point is that the world cannot be determined by itself. If it could be, we’d all perceive it in the same way. This isn't to deny reality as we observe it, but simply that no ‘reality in itself’ is conventionally valid. Phenomena are only conventionally valid in dependence on other phenomena.
To appreciate the precision of this view, it's helpful to contrast it with others. Even within Madhyamaka, the earlier Svātantrika school differed. They also accepted a conventional external world, but believed that for a label to be valid, there had to be something findable on the side of the object that justified it—a sort of "barcode" or own-characteristic (svalakṣaṇa). The Prāsaṅgika view, as interpreted by Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa, rejected this, arguing for a more radical emptiness where valid mental labelling alone is sufficient.
This also clarifies how Tsongkhapa’s Prāsaṅgika diverges from Yogācāra. Unlike stronger mind-only readings that treat external appearances as projections of mind, Tsongkhapa’s Gelug Prāsaṅgika conventionally accepts external objects to the same extent that it accepts consciousness: neither is ultimately findable, but neither is dismissed as a mere private mental fantasy. What makes objects only conventionally real, in this presentation, is that their existence is established through correct designation and valid cognition, not by any discoverable essence on the object’s side. It is also too simple to equate all Yogācāra with crude idealism. In Buddhist epistemology, some presentations associated with Dignāga-Dharmakīrti use a representational model in which cognition directly apprehends a mental appearance, while the status of external objects is treated differently across interpreters and stages of the tradition. Some Sautrāntika-style readings allow external objects as inferred causal conditions; stronger Yogācāra readings deny that external objects are ultimately needed to explain experience. Tsongkhapa rejects both extremes: reductionist physicalism, insofar as it denies mindstream, karma, and rebirth by reducing all mind to brain chemistry, and reifying realism or idealism, insofar as either matter or mind is endowed with intrinsic substance. His Middle Way lets the watch keep ticking as dependent arising: conventionally valid because empty, never self-powered, with no substrate behind the ticking and no separate ultimate standing above it.
The Dzogchen tradition, while distinct in its direct, experiential methodology, arrives at a philosophical conclusion that is highly compatible with Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka when carefully stated. It fully accepts the conventional world of appearances. Longchenpa makes the point explicitly: the appearing object is not simply the mind, since it does not follow one around or disappear when one is absent; yet it is also not established as a truly existent extramental thing. He distinguishes the perceived appearance (snang ba) from the object that appears (snang yul). The object that appears is not the mind, he argues, because “it remains where it is when one is not in its presence and does not change its position when one goes elsewhere,” and because it shows features like color and shape that the mind itself does not. At the same time, these appearances are also not other than mind in the sense that no external object can be established as separate from the delusory perceptions of mind. What is mental is the “mere perceived appearance,” that is, how the mind registers the object; confusing these two is “reifying deceptive things and assuming them to be true.” This is precisely why, in ordinary life, mountains do not vanish when you look away, even while they are empty of any intrinsic essence. For a translation excerpt, see Mind & The Objects That Appear To It.
Having secured that commonsense point, Longchenpa then performs the ultimate analysis: phenomena are illusory. He repeatedly uses the eight similes of illusion—dream, magical display, mirage, echo, city of gandharvas, reflection, apparition, and so on—to show that appearances function and seem real, yet are unfindable under analysis: vividly appearing, but without any reality of their own, like a reflection in a mirror. When analyzed, the external apprehended object is found to be empty: it dissolves into partless atoms, which themselves cannot be established. Objects are realized to be “unreal,” “delusory appearances of the mind.” To be clear: on the conventional level, outer objects are accepted as conventionalities: they appear, function, are publicly corroborated, and are agreed upon by unimpaired senses and worldly consensus. This should not be heard as “they are merely conventional, while the real aim is elsewhere”; their empty conventionality is precisely what is being realized. In the Buddha’s own words—later cited by Candrakīrti—“The world argues with me; I do not argue with the world. What the wise in the world agree exists, I too say exists; what they agree does not exist, I too say does not exist.” What is rejected is not the functioning world, nor the vividness of conventionalities, but the reified sense that objects possess some intrinsic essence “out there.” Thus the Buddha also says in SN 12.15: “‘All exists,’ Kaccāna, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist,’ this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle,” followed by an exposition of dependent origination.
Dzogchen texts add that Buddhas still employ concepts and can designate individual things conventionally, yet they do not misapprehend these designated phenomena as independently or inherently existing. Many people—even some teachers—assume that full awakening means permanent mental blankness with no thoughts or concepts. Authoritative Dzogchen texts deny this. Even for a buddha, thoughts, labels, and speech can arise as part of enlightened display; the difference is that these appearances self-liberate as they arise and are not grasped or reified as independently existing. Likewise, when examined ultimately, the internal apprehending consciousness has no foundation and no root: it is self-clarity that is ultimately baseless. Thus, under analysis, neither external object nor internal subject can be pinned down. What remains, in Dzogchen terms, is the indivisible unity of primordial purity (ka-dag, emptiness) and spontaneous presence (lhun-grub, the display of appearances). As an interpretive bridge, one may say that ka-dag points to emptiness or primordial purity and lhun-grub points to the ceaseless display of appearances. This can functionally parallel the Madhyamaka pairing of ultimate and conventional, but it should not be presented as a strict doctrinal identity. In Dzogchen, the point is the inseparability of appearance and emptiness in rigpa, not the final establishment of two separately asserted truths. Dzogchen agrees that appearances are empty and dependently arisen, but adds an experiential distinction: the twelve-link chain driven by avidyā is afflicted dependent origination, whereas the ceaseless, effortless display of lhun-grub is described as unafflicted causality—the way appearances manifest from rigpa without ignorance. See: Dzogchen, Rigpa and Dependent Origination. Even Nyingma/Dzogchen commentaries that speak of “two truths” do so to show their inseparability—appearance and emptiness—and then point beyond conceptual fabrication.
Regarding the brain and the Hard Problem of Consciousness, the Madhyamaka analysis would be applied to the brain itself. How do we know of the brain? Through perception, diagrams, scans, measurement, inference, and scientific explanations. In each case, the “brain” as an object of knowledge is part of a dependently arisen nexus of sense faculties, instruments, objects, concepts, and consciousness. Therefore, the brain cannot be established as an ultimate, independent physical substrate for mind. Madhyamaka does not solve the Hard Problem by giving a new physical mechanism. Rather, it challenges the framework that makes the problem appear absolute: “brain,” “mind,” “matter,” and “causation” are all dependently designated and empty of intrinsic nature. From this angle, the problem is not answered by reducing mind to matter, but deflated by refusing the reified dualism between an intrinsically physical substrate and an intrinsically mental experience.
It is also crucial to note that classical Buddhist Abhidharma and Madhyamaka do not frame consciousness as a mere late-stage product of grey matter in the modern physicalist sense. They analyze experience in terms of dependently arisen mental and physical events, without reducing one to an intrinsically existent substrate. In classical Buddhist presentations, each moment of mind is conditioned by prior mind-moments and supporting conditions; matter can function as an important cooperative condition without becoming an ultimate self-standing source. This continuity of the mindstream (saṃtāna) across death underpins the standard Buddhist teaching of rebirth (see example)—a cycle Nāgārjuna takes for granted when he speaks of karma’s non-ceasing causal efficacy. His Middle Way avoids both a permanent soul and a reductive annihilationism: when you see a watch ticking after you look away, Buddhism can happily say, yes, conventionally valid causal processes continue outside your present cognitive frame; but those processes are not merely a secondary conventional layer beneath some truer substrate. They are dependent arising itself—empty, ungraspable, and causally effective. Nor are those processes, or the mind that later cognizes them, reducible to a self-standing physical substrate or an eternal consciousness.
Finally, you raise the most important concern: that this nonduality is just a subjective experience, "confined to within the mind." From the Prāsaṅgika perspective, the nonduality being pointed to is not the merging of a subject (mind) with an object (the world).
It is the realization that the very concepts of "subject" and "object" are themselves empty, dependently arisen imputations. The goal is not to dissolve the world into the mind (idealism) or to see the mind as a product of the world (physicalism). The goal is to see that the very boundary we draw between "in the mind" and "outside the mind" is a conceptual fabrication. Only one who has attained enlightenment recognizes an object’s ultimate nature – that it appears, but is devoid of any intrinsic existence – as the direct contemplation of absolute truth transcends any intellectual concept or duality. It's also important to add one subtle but critical Madhyamaka point: even that state of enlightened gnosis is itself seen as empty of inherent existence, thus avoiding any final lapse into positing a new absolute.
So, the nonduality Nāgārjuna points to is not a state within the mind; it is the collapse of the conceptual framework that creates the illusion of an "inner mind" and an "outer world" in the first place. The point is also not to demote conventionalities into a lower, merely practical realm while reserving reality for a higher ultimate. Once the imagined substrate is removed, the “reflections” themselves are seen clearly: vivid, functional, dependently arisen, and nirvāṇic in nature because empty. The "problem" of the watch's independent functioning only exists if you first grant the watch and the mind an independent, inherent existence that they do not actually possess.
Thank you again for a fantastic question that gets to the very core of the issue.
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