The problem with your objection is that you need to look at the context of the statement in question. As for the Nagas, I know of no place that Nagarjuna made that claim of himself, and it is not unlike claims one can find in the Theravada. Few if any religions or religious figure is free of that sort of thing.waterchan wrote:Assuming the Mulamadhyamakakarika is an original work of Nagarjuna and not a misattribution, Nagarjuna said that nirvana and samsara are the same and "not even a subtle interval can be found" between them.Dan74 wrote:(With apologies to Tilt)waterchan wrote:Tilt, I am unfamiliar with Nagarjuna. You seem to think that Nagarjuna has something valuable to contribute to Theravada, but I cannot take seriously his claim about having dibs on the true Tipitaka that he retrieved from the Naga realm, besides other claims. Please point out where I am wrong.
Nagarjuna (like Vasubandhu etc) had many things ascribed to him, some probably many centuries later, and we probably shouldn't let that get in the way of appreciating Mulamadhyamakakarika, say.
If I interpret this at face value, it flies in the face of the goal of liberation from samsara. If I have to interpret it at deeper than face value, then that's really an unnecessary stretch of the imagination, is it not?
David Kaluphana did a translation of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, (which may be online somewhere) looking at it from a standpoint of Pali suttas, and the fact that a number of Tibetan Buddhism scholars got cranky about it speaks in its favor. It is worth a read. Also, Ven Nanananda has had things of interest to say about the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā in the context of the suttas. As for where those things are to be found, I'll leave that to the Ven Nanananda experts here to point you in that direction, and you can look above, where I do believe that mentioned (but, alas, the link in broken).