But for all that the doctrine of sunyata as stated in the Madhyamika aphorisms ascribed to Nagarjuna leaves an impression of audacious and ingenious sophistry.  After laying down that every object in the world exists only in relation to every other object and has no self-existence, the treatise proceeds to prove that rest and motion are alike impossible.  We speak about the path along which we are passing but there is really no such thing, for if we divide the path accurately, it always proves separable into the part which has been passed over and the part which will be passed over.  There is no part which is being passed over.  This of course amounts to a denial of the existence of present time.  Time consists of past and future separated by an indivisible and immeasurable instant.  The minimum of time which has any meaning for us implies a change, and two elements, a former and a subsequent.  The present minute or the present hour are fallacious expressions.[104]

Therefore no one ever is passing along a path.  Again you cannot logically say that the passer is passing, for the sentence is redundant:  the verb adds nothing to the noun and vice versa:  but on the other hand you clearly cannot say that the non-passer is passing.  Again if you say that the passer and the passing are identical, you overlook the distinction between the agent and the act and both become unreal.  But you cannot maintain that the passer is different from the passing, for a passer as distinct from passing and passing as distinct from a passer have no meaning.  “But how can two entities exist at all, if they exist neither as identical with one another nor as different from one another?”

The above, though much abridged, gives an idea of the logic of these sutras.  They proceed to show that all manner of things, such as the five skandhas, the elements, contact, attachment, fire and fuel, origination, continuation and extinction have no real existence.  Similar reasoning is then applied to religious topics:  the world of transmigration as well as bondage and liberation are declared non-existent.  In reality no soul is in bondage and none is released.[105] Similarly Karma, the Buddha himself, the four truths, Nirvana and the twelve links in the chain of causation are all unreal.  This is not a declaration of scepticism.  It means that the Buddha as a human or celestial being and Nirvana as a state attainable in this world are conceivable only in connection with this world and therefore, like the world, unreal.  No religious idea can enter into the unreal (that is the practical) life of the world unless it is itself unreal.  This sounds a topsy turvy argument but it is really the same as the Advaita doctrine.  The Vedanta is on the one hand a scheme of salvation for liberating souls which transmigrate unceasingly in a world ruled by a personal God.  But when true knowledge is attained, the soul sees that it is identical with the Highest Brahman and that souls