- Lived:
- c. 600–650 CE · India, probably the south; taught at the great monastery-university of Nālandā
- Tradition:
- Indian Buddhist — Madhyamaka, the "Middle Way" school of Nāgārjuna
- The Big Idea:
- Emptiness — the absence of fixed essence in anything — must not be softened, systematized, or turned into one more theory; the philosopher's only honest weapon is to show how your own assumptions collapse on your own terms.
- In their words:
- "Conventional truth is the method; ultimate truth is what the method arrives at. Whoever confuses the two has taken a wrong road." (Madhyamakāvatāra, plain rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- He proved you can take a chariot apart seven ways, find no chariot anywhere — and still ride it home. Nothing has an essence; everything still works.