Quote by Nagarjuna: “Whatever is dependently co‑arisen, that is explained to be emptiness.”

Nothing exists entirely on its own — everything arises in relation to other things. A tree exists in relation to soil, rain, and light; a self exists in relation to body, memory, and others. Nagarjuna's insight is that this interdependence is not a weakness but the very nature of reality. Nothing has a fixed, independent essence.

Nagarjuna wrote during a period of flourishing Buddhist philosophical debate in India, when the Kushan Empire provided relative stability across a large swath of Central and South Asia. Buddhism was spreading into Central Asia and China, and philosophical clarity about its core doctrines was urgently needed to address competing interpretations.

Indian Buddhist philosopher of the second century CE whose Mulamadhyamakakarika established the Madhyamaka school of philosophy, one of the most influential strands of Buddhist thought. He developed the concept of sunyata (emptiness) with rigorous logical precision, arguing that all phenomena lack inherent existence. His work shaped Mahayana Buddhism across Asia.