Thanks so much for supplying links to original sources! And also, while we’re at it, may I just remember the work of Rahul Sankrityayan, who discovered this and many other manuscripts from Tibet and made them available. This is how we can see precisely what Nagarjuna said in the original Sanskrit.
Let’s look at what these passages say and don’t say. If there is one thing about Nagarjuna that we should bear in mind, it is that he was extremely subtle and precise in his phrasing, and deliberately worded his terse sayings to provoke a response. The key to grokking his method is to realize that he is engaging in a historical dialectic; specifically, critiquing the Abhidharma project.
16:10: na nirvāṇasamāropo na saṁsārāpakaṣaṇam
There is no addition of nirvana nor removal of samsara
Like so many things Nagarjuna says, this is an interesting way of looking at it, but seems uncontroversial. When someone becomes enlightened, they neither add to nirvana nor take away from samsara. He comes at things from a sideways angle, challenging us to see old truths in new ways. Here, he is echoing old Sutta imagery about, say, the fact that the earth or the ocean is neither increased or diminished. He wants to get you on board, to nod your head and take at least this step with him.
But why is this an issue? What point is Nagarjuna making? He is, of course, setting us up!
yatra kastatra saṁsāro nirvāṇaṁ kiṁ vikalpyate
This being so, what distinction is there between samsara and nirvana?
He does not say there is no distinction. He asks, quite reasonably, on the basis of what we are to make a distinction.
The term vikalpyate has a connotation of discriminative, limited thinking. He is posing apparent paradoxes to force the mind into accepting the limits of rational knowledge and open up to a different way of seeing. The methods of discrimination, i.e. the methods of the Abhidharma, are inadequate for understanding the central profundities of the Buddha’s teaching. In other words, he is echoing the Buddha’s saying that nirvana is difficult, hard to see, beyond the scope of reason (atakkāvacara).
And yes, the (much later) koan school of Zen drew directly from this method.
On to the next passage!
25:19: na saṁsārasya nirvāṇāt kiṁ cid asti viśeṣaṇaṁ
Samsara has no detail at all to distinguish it from nirvana.
na nirvāṇasya saṁsārāt kiṁ cid asti viśeṣaṇaṁ
Nirvana has no detail at all to distinguish it from samsara.
(Note, I’m using “detail” for kiṁ cid, keep it in mind, it comes up next verse, too.)
Here again, the key term is viśeṣa “distinction”. It is also a term of logic and rationality. A huge part of the Abhidhamma project was to nail down the specific details that differentiate one thing from another.
Rhetorically, what he is saying is: “It’s ultimately impossible to find absolute conceptual distinctions between things. Even in the case of samsara and nirvana, which we all understand are the furthest things apart from each other, such attempts fail a close scrutiny.”
But what kind of difference is Nagarjuna talking about? The following passage illustrates his point.
25:20: nirvāṇasya ca yā koṭiḥ koṭiḥ
The limit of nirvana is also the limit [of samsara]
na tayor antaraṁ kiñcit susūkśmam api vidyate |
there’s not the slightest detail at all found between them.
This harks back to the Sutta saying, which all Nagarjuna’s audience would have known well, that there is no “first point” (pubbakoti) of samsara. We all know that. But of course, unless a being is in samsara, they cannot realize nirvana. So the first point of samsara is the first point of nirvana. But the first point of samsara is unknowable, and hence the first point of nirvana is also unknowable. This illustrates the previous point, that there is nothing by which we can differentiate the two.
Notice how dense Nagarjuna’s writing is. In these few lines, he is calling back Sutta imagery and ideas, while taking the reader by the hand over familiar ground, then pushing them into empty space. He employs a subtle philosophical argument, whose purpose is to show that philosophical arguments are useless, or at least, limited in application. He’s tying the Abhidharmists in knots, beating them at their own game.
To interpret these sayings in a positivist ontological sense is to fall into exactly the kind of thinking that Nagarjuna was trying to undermine. He does not say that “nirvana and samsara are the same thing”. On the contrary, his whole point is that such definitive statements hide implicit assumptions about the real existence of “things” that go beyond what either the Suttas or empirical evidence can support.
The Abhidharma movement, according to Nagarjuna, forgot the limits of knowledge. This is why he reminds them of this at this crucial juncture. In their relentless quest to pin everything down, to define and categorize, they lose the epistemic humility that was a hallmark of the Buddha’s teaching.