Nagarjuna

An Indian Buddhist philosopher traditionally regarded as the founder of Madhyamaka, the Middle Way school of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, and the author of the Mulamadhyamakakarika, the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. Nagarjuna argued that all phenomena are sunyata, empty of svabhava, or fixed independent essence, because everything that exists does so only in dependence on other things. He presented this emptiness as a middle path between the extreme that things exist eternally and unchangingly and the extreme that nothing exists at all. His method, examining a claim and its negation and finding both untenable in isolation, profoundly shaped later Buddhist philosophy across India, Tibet and East Asia.