Chapter 22. Investigation of the Tathāgata

[The tathāgata] is not the skandhas and is not other than the skandhas; the skandhas are not in him, and he is not in them; the tathāgata does not possess the skandhas — what tathāgata, then, is there here?

If the Buddha, who has appropriated the skandhas, does not exist by own nature, then how would he, who does not exist by own nature, exist by other-nature?

The one who depends on other-nature is what is devoid of self; and what is devoid of self — how will it be a tathāgata?

And if there is no own nature, how will there be other-nature? Without own nature and other-nature — who is that tathāgata?

nāgārjuna wrote:

Without own nature and other-nature — who is that tathāgata?

If there were some tathāgata who had not appropriated the skandhas, then he would now appropriate them and so come to be.

pūrvapakṣin wrote:

then he would now appropriate them and so come to be

But neither is there any tathāgata who has not appropriated the skandhas; and one who does not exist without appropriating — how will he appropriate?

There is no unappropriated appropriation of any kind; and in no way is there a tathāgata without appropriation.

The one who is sought in five ways, through sameness and otherness, and who [thus] does not exist — how is he proclaimed a tathāgata through appropriation?

This appropriation too does not exist by own nature; and what does not exist by own nature — how would it [exist] by other-nature?

Thus both the appropriation and the one who appropriates are in every sense empty; how then is the tathāgata proclaimed empty through what is empty?

One should not say “empty,” nor that he is non-empty; “both” and “neither” — [this] is said only for the sake of conventional designation.

Whence, in the one who is stilled, the fourfold of “eternal, non-eternal” and the rest? And whence, in the one who is stilled, the fourfold of “finite, infinite” and the rest?

The one who has seized the dense clinging “the tathāgata exists,” when he imagines “he does not exist,” would imagine this of the one who has passed into nirvāṇa as well.

And in this one, empty by own nature, the thought whether the Buddha exists or does not exist after cessation is not possible.

Those who spin the Buddha into conceptual proliferation — the Buddha, who is beyond all proliferation and imperishable — all of them, struck down by that proliferation, do not see the tathāgata.

Whatever the own nature of the tathāgata is, such is the own nature of this world; the tathāgata is devoid of own nature — devoid of own nature is this world too.