The stock phrase in EBTs is:
“Anamataggoyaṃ, bhikkhave, saṃsāro. Pubbā koṭi na paññāyati …”
If you search for it in SuttaCentral you find thousands of occurrences of it.
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This is how Ven Candrakīrti comments on the passage:
To quote: “Whatever is most familiar to one is most effective for him naturally. If one is bewildered how can one receive the truth? As it is not possible to make a foreigner understand by a language not his own, so the unenlightened person (loka) cannot be made to comprehend except by means of the everyday.”
As the illustrious one said: “The unenlightened person is at variance with me; I am not at variance with the unenlightened person. What is accepted by the unenlightened is accepted by me; what is not accepted by the unenlightened is not accepted by me.” Thus the scripture. The illustrious one always treated the elements of personal existence, the senses and their objects, and the types of consciousness as “real” (tathyam). These are thought to be real when perceived by those who are to be guided - those suffering from the optical defect of primal ignorance — in whom has been aroused the desire to learn about the various natures of the things generally accepted as real. And this with an eye on the higher truth and with a view to arousing the faith of the ordinary man in himself.
“This holy man is aware of every last happening in the world, he is omniscient and all-seeing; he possesses the knowledge of the inanimate world from the infinity of space to the coursing of the winds and he knows the uttermost limits of the world of beings; he knows incontrovertibly the many kinds of origin, existence and end, what is cause, what is effect, what is pleasurable, what is painful.”
So, after those who are to be guided have realized the omniscience of the illustrious one, at a later time it is explained that everything is not real (na tathyam) as naively taken. At this point what is real is what does not change. But all compounded things change in fact because they perish by the moment. Therefore, because of this fact of change, they are not real either. The word “or” means “and”; it is to be taken as joining the two views. That is: “Everything in this world can be taken as real and as not real.”
For some it is explained that everything in the world is both real and not real at the same time. For the unenlightened everything in the world is real; for those who have started on the way everything is false because not perceived in its naive reality (evam anupalambha).
There are those however who, from long practice, see things the way they really are, who have eradicated the obstructions (avarana) virtually completely like the roots of a tree; for them it is explained that everything in the world is neither real nor not real. In order to remove what remains of the obstructions, both alternatives are rejected even as one rejects predicates like black and white for the son of a barren woman.
This is the teaching of the illustrious Buddhas. It leads men from byways and establishes them on the right way. In the interests of gradual instruction and of adapting to those who are to be led, the teaching is flexible.
All the teachings of the illustrious Buddhas, who are possessed of universal compassion, ultimate insight and practical wisdom, are intended to be a means of penetrating (avatara) to the eternal way of things (tattvamrta). The perfectly realized ones have not uttered one word which was not in fact a means of penetrating to the eternal way of things. They administer medicine suited to the illness. They have the urge to succour those who need guidance and they teach the truth accordingly. To quote from the Four Hundred Verses: “Things are real, things are not real, things are both real and not real: all this is said variously. Indeed all cures as such are cures for a specific desire.”
But, you ask, what is the nature of “the way things really are” which the teachings of the revered ones are intended to penetrate to? This is explained in the verse “When the object of thought is no more, there is nothing for language to refer to.” When this obtains what further questions can there be? Though this is so, none the less the way things are really must be spoken of. This is done by speaking in a second sense (samaropatah). One accepts the everyday (laukika) terms “real”, “not real” and so on which are drawn from the world of transactional discourse (vyavaharasatya).
Nagarjuna expresses it this way.
(Mūlamadhyamakavṛttiprasannapadā, Darbhaga 1960, Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, 10: tatra - yadyadyasya priyaṃ pūrvaṃ tattattasya samācaret na hi pratihataḥ pātraṃ saddharmasya kathaṃcana iti tathā ca bhagavatoktam - loko mayā sārdhaṃ vivadati nāhaṃ lokena sārdhaṃ vivadāmi yalloke’sti saṃmatam, tanmamāpyasti saṃmatam yalloke nāsti saṃmatam, mamāpi tannāsti saṃmatam [etc.], translation Mervyn Sprung)
Something we might find interesting is how Ven Candrakīrti presents the Pupphasutta in the above example, which we can find at SN 22.94 in the Pāli Canon:
Pāli: nāhaṃ, bhikkhave, lokena vivadāmi, lokova mayā vivadati
Candrakīrti: loko mayā sārdhaṃ vivadati nāhaṃ lokena sārdhaṃ vivadāmi
English (after Ven Sujāto): I don’t argue with the world; it’s the world that argues with me.
Next it might be interesting to look at how the relatively anonymous Venerable Vimalākṣa’s nested commentary on the Chinese recension of the text treats the passage. This is the commentary that accompanies the above Chinese recension of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (interestingly enough, the MMK enters into Chinese Buddhist discourse with this embedded commentary. It is not until quite later that the MMK circulates without this commentary.)
This commentary is interesting because there are elements of it that seem very agreable, but one can’t help find the choice of words, “true characteristic”,
Odd. It is ultimately a Madhyamaka treatise, the paper linked to earlier supplies different theories as to its origins, second to fourth century, either in India or Central Asia, but all this talk about penetrating to the “true characteristic” of dharmāḥ, no matter how caveated by admissions of that that characteristic as “calm extinction”, is likely to set off small dharmātmavāda alarms.
Some people teach that there is a soul, in which case it must be of two kinds. Either the five skandhas are themselves the soul, or the soul exists apart from the five skandhas.
If the five skandhas are the soul, then the soul will have the characteristics of arising and ceasing. Thus it says in the verse ‘if the soul is the five skandhas it will have the characteristics of arising and ceasing’, and why? Becuase once arisen, it will perish. Because they have the characteristics of arising and ceasing, the five skandhas have no permanence, and just as the five skandhas have no permanence, the two dharmas of arising and ceasing likewise have no permanence. Why is this? Because arising and ceasing also perish after they have arisen and hence are impermanent. If the soul were the five skandhas, then, since the five skandhas are impermanent, the soul would also be impermanent and would have the characteristics of arising and ceasing, but this is not correct
If the soul existed apart from the five skandhas, the soul would not have the characteristics of the five skandhas. As it says in the verse: ‘if the soul is different from the five skandhas, then it will not have the characteristics of the five skandhas’. Yet no other dharma exists apart from the five skandhas. If there were any such dharma apart from the five skandhas, by virtue of what characteristics, or what dharmas, would it exist? If you say that the soul is like empty space, separate from the five skandhas yet existent, this is also wrong, and why? We have already refuted empty space in the chapter on refuting the six elements. No dhama called ‘empty space’ exists.
If you assert that a soul exists because belief in it exists, this is not correct, and why? Belief is of four kinds; the first is belief in a manifest thing, the second is belief in something known through this manifest thing as when seeing smoke, we know that there is a fire. The third is belief by analogy as when, in a country with no copper, one uses the example of it being like gold. The fourth is belief in what is taught by saints and sages, as when they say that there are hells, heavens and uttarakuru. Without seeing anything, we believe the words of the holy men and thus know about them.
Such a ‘soul’ cannot be found amongst these beliefs. It is not found in belief in manifest things, nor in inferential belief, and why? Inferential knowledge means that having previously seen something, you thenceforth know (about) this kind of thing, as for example a man who has previously seen that where there is fire there is smoke, subsequently, seeing only smoke, knows that there is fire. The concept of ‘soul’ is not like this, for who could first have seen the soul in the combination of the five skandhas, such that afterwards, seeing the five skandhas, he knows that there is a soul?
Suppose you say that there are three kinds of inferential knowledge, the first being ‘like the original’, the second being ‘like the remainder’, the third ‘seeing together’. ‘Like the original’ means previously having seen that fire has smoke, seeing smoke now, you know that it is like the original which had fire. ‘Like the remainder’ means, for example, that when one grain of rice is cooked, you know that the remaining ones are all cooked. ‘Seeing together’ means, for example, that when you see with your eyes a person going from hereto another place, you also see his going. The sun is like this. It emerges from the east and goes to the west. Although you do not see it going, because a man has the characteristic of going, you know that the sun also has going. In the same way suffering, pleasure, hate, desire, and insight, etc. must also have whatever goes with them. For example, seeing subjects you know that they must rely on some king. But these are all incorrect, and why?
In belief through the characteristic of together-ness, having first seen a person combined with a dharma of ‘going’ who reaches some other place, when you subsequently see the sun reach another place you know that there is the dharma of ‘going’. But there is no prior seeing of the five skandhas combined with a soul, such that subsequently seeing the five skandhas you know that there is a soul. Therefore, no existence of a soul can be established by inferential knowledge of ‘together-ness’.
There is no soul to be found within the teachings of the saints either, and why? In the teaching of the saints, what they first see with their eyes, they subsequently expound. And since the saints teach other things which can be believed, we should know that when they speak of the hells, etc., these can be believed in, but it is not so with the soul, for there is no-one who, having previously seen a soul, subsequently speaks of it.
Therefore, you may seek for a soul within all beliefs such as these four types of belief, but you will not be able to find it. Since you cannot find a soul even though you seek for it, no distinct soul exists separate from the five skandhas.
Further, because of the refutation of seeing, seer and seen in the chapter refuting the six sense faculties, the soul is to be refuted in the same way. For if even an eye seeing coarse dharmas cannot be found, how much less can we find a soul by empty delusions, imagination and so forth? For these reasons, we know that there is no self.
‘Mine’ exists because ‘I’ exists. If there is no I, then there is no mine. Through putting into practice the holy eight-fold path and extinguishing the causes of I and mine, one attains the firm insight of no I and no mine.
Question: Even though non-self is the truth, what is wrong with teaching, merely as a convention, that there is a self?
Reply: Non-self exists by virtue of the negation of the dharma of self. No fixed self can be found, so how could there be non-self? If there were a fixed non-self, then annihilation of if would give rise to attachment and craving. As it says in the Prajñāpāramitā, if a bodhisattva has a self, he cannot act, and if he has no self, he cannot act.
Question: If it teaches neither self nor non-self, neither emptiness nor non-emptiness, what does the Buddha-dharma teach?
Reply: The Buddha teaches the true character of all dharmas, and within that true character there is no path for verbal expressions, for it extinguishes all mental activity. Mind arises because of the characteristic of grasping, exists because of the rewards and retribution of karma in a previous world, and cannot therefore see the true character of dharmas. The Buddha teaches the cessation of mental activities.
Question: Even though an unenlightened person’s mind cannot see the reality, surely a saint’s mind can see the reality? Why does he teach the cessation of all mental activities?
Reply: The true character of dharmas is nirvana, and cessation means nirvana. It is in order to point towards nirvana, that cessation is also termed cessation. If one’s mind were real, what use would be such ways to liberation as emptiness, etc? Why, amongst all the samadhis would the samadhi of cessation be regarded as the highest, and why ultimately reach nirvana without residue?
Therefore we should know that all mental activities are empty deceptions, and as empty deceptions, should cease. The true character of all dharmas surpasses all dharmas of mental phenomena, has no arising and no ceasing, and has the characteristic of calming and extinction solely.
Question: In the sutras it says that all dharmas, having from the beginning the characteristic of calm extinction are themselves nirvana. Why do you say that they are like nirvana?
Reply: Those who are attached to dharmas classify dharmas into two kinds, some being worldly, some being of nirvana. They say that the nirvana dharmas are calm and extinct, but do not say that the worldly dharmas are calm and extinct. In this treatise it is taught that all dharmas are empty in nature and have the characteristic of calm extinction. Since those who are attached to dharmas do not understand this, nirvana is used as an example. Just as with your assertion that the characteristic of nirvana is emptiness, with no characteristics, calm extinction, and no vain thoughts, so it is with all worldly dharmas.
Question: If the Buddhas do not teach self, non-self, and the cessation of all mental activities and the cutting-off of ways of verbal expression, how do they make people understand the real character of dharmas?
Reply: All the Buddhas have unlimited powers of skilful means, and dharmas have no fixed characteristics. In order to save all living beings, they may teach that everything is real, or they may teach that everything is unreal, or that everything is both real and unreal or that everything is neither unreal nor not unreal. If you search for a real nature of dharmas, you will find that they all enter into the ultimate meaning and become equal, with identical characteristics, which is to say no characteristics, just like streams of different colour and different tastes entering into a great ocean of one colour and one taste, which is to say no taste. At the time when one has not yet penetrated into the true character of dharmas, each one can be contemplated separately as unreal, existing merely by the combinations of conditions. There are three levels of living beings; superior, average and inferior. The superior person sees that the characteristic of dharmas is that they are neither real nor unreal. The average person sees the characteristics of dharmas as either all real, or all unreal. The inferior man, since his powers of perception are limited, sees the characteristics of dharmas as a little real, and a little unreal, regarding nirvana, because it is an inactive dharma and does not perish as real, and regarding samsara, because it is an active dharma, empty and false, as unreal. Neither unreal nor not unreal is taught in order to negate ‘both real and unreal’.
(中論 T1564.24a15, translator Brian Christopher Bocking)
I feel like a comparison between these two commentaries could be an entire thread of its own. What subschool of Madhyamaka does Ven Vimalākṣa belong to I wonder? Fascinating.
Will there be a Nagarjuna for Dummies book that I can read? How on earth does one use this stuff in daily life?
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IMO, as a former and current dummy, I would recommend just reading the source text a lot, and I mean a lot, IMO it has replay value, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, only better.
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Maybe after I memorize DN33, which looks to be a lifetime.
Who needs to recite? Just “know”.
I kid! 
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https://www.amazon.com/Nagarjunas-Madhyamaka-Philosophical-Introduction-Westerhoff/dp/0195384962
I’ve heard of this one cited as a good introduction. Beware, being Nāgārjuna, the tone is philosophical; unlike the experiential tone of the suttas.
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This book is definitely not for dummies lol!
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I tried reading the Amazon introduction and got stuck. Perhaps Zen was a reaction to Nagarjuna. Reading the intro made me miss my Kanshiketsu. Now I am happy with the middle way of the suttas.
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Something that came to mind, but only in regards to the above discussion about “koṭi”.
Rājā āha—“bhante nāgasena, yaṃ panetaṃ brūsi ‘purimā koṭi na paññāyatī’ti, katamā ca sā purimā koṭī”ti? “Yo kho, mahārāja, atīto addhā, esā purimā koṭī”ti.
The king said: ‘When you say that the ultimate point is not apparent, what do you mean by “ultimate point”?’ ‘Of whatsoever time is past. It is the ultimate point of that, O king, that I speak of.’
(Mil 3.3.3, Rhys Davids)
Sāvatthiyaṃ viharati. “Anamataggoyaṃ, bhikkhave, saṃsāro. Pubbā koṭi na paññāyati avijjānīvaraṇānaṃ sattānaṃ taṇhāsaṃyojanānaṃ sandhāvataṃ saṃsarataṃ.
At Sāvatthī. “Mendicants, transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
(SN15.19, Ven Sujāto)
Seems like its a reference to temporality. Somewhat related perhaps to the akaliko nature of the dhamma?
Just mind that the established understanding of the term akaliko has it meaning immediate,with no delay, and not timeless or outside time.
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Indeed, just to concur with this point.
Akālika does not mean “outside of time”, and isn’t used in contexts such as this. It is, rather, used in the sense of “immediate”, especially in the sense of “bearing fruits without having to wait an interval”, i.e. when you practice Dhamma you can see the results in this life, without having to go to heaven.
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