Kongming

If jing is lost for whatever reason, be it ejaculation (as I imagine would be the most common setback for cultivators) or through other means, what is the best means to quickly regain what was lost? Is this even possible or is it just a matter of letting time heal the loss? Furthermore what, in general, are the best means of cultivating jing and preventing future jing loss, especially again through sexual activity, in the future? I hear some say Zhan zhuang is key here. Is this the case? Is there other or superior means?

So for those of us interested in Quanzhen/Longmen/Neidan Daoism, what is it that we can do to get started without being formally part of a lineage or having a teacher? I imagine general efforts like cultivating virtue, self-discipline, dispassion, reading Daoist texts, etc. can be done on one's own, but how about some practices? Any form of meditation recommended for beginners? Does neigong/qigong factor into a Quanzhen/Longmen regimen? Any basic or preparatory actions to take in relation to neidan? Any good sources to learn more on the practical elements?

From Stephen Eskildsen's book on the early Quanzhen masters: This thesis (A comparative analysis: Buddhist Madhyamaka and Daoist Chongxuan in the early Tang) might prove useful as well: http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4731&context=etd

Thanks, I've read the core text which I think is excellent but have never read Roth's book. Would you say some of the insights provided by Roth outside of the core text are relevant for practice and hence worth reading? Thanks, this is something I've heard before and it is something to keep in mind, but my reasoning here isn't based on merely a desire or logical conclusion but based upon some dream messages I've received which, to my mind, has informed me to go abroad for these purposes. Actually I have multiple goals to be fulfilled by trying to go abroad (I plan on trying to get a degree in Mandarin as a second language in Taiwan to allow me to master Mandarin and acquire the qualifications necessary to teach English abroad, another goal of mine. I am also interested in learning the guqin and finding a teacher for that purpose as well.) Hopefully with right effort, mastering the language, and a bit of luck I will find some legitimate teachers who won't pigeonhole me as just another Westerner but will be able to see my sincerity (though before all that I will need to succeed in getting accepted into the degree/scholarship program I am looking into.) Thanks. I learned zhan zhuang from a mixture of video and book instructions, and while not ideal I hope that this will be effective until I find a teacher (I think there may be some in my local area so will have to look into it.) My current daily regimen is to do seated meditation in the morning for half an hour and in the evening if circumstances permit, to do zhan zhuang two or three times a day for 10 minutes at a time, and to do a series of qigong/neigong exercises, namely Bone Marrow cleansing/healing sounds that I learned from Cohen's video, Damo Mitchell's "Ji Ben Qigong" and his instructions on Wuxing qigong, and finally Feng Zhiqiang's Hunyuan qigong. Aside from this I practice abstinence, try to eat healthy, study, and use art/music as a means to have aesthetic and/or contemplative experiences (such as guqin mentioned, but also others) which I see as a useful aid in purification and toward the path.

No need to apologize, I agree with your sentiment. I certainly hope to find a teacher and plan on going abroad for that purpose in the near future, but in the meantime was hoping to not let the time go to waste and do what I can to get started, even if it is not starting with neidan proper but just preparation for neidan, hence this thread.

Well, it may be a bit lofty, but honestly my ultimate goal is to see the path to the end, to become a 真人 and/or 天仙 and attain the Dao. I suppose more short term goals on the path would be to attain self-mastery and a completely virtuous life. I read Zhang Boduan giving an instruction of visualizing a golden ball of energy at the lower dantian while sitting in meditation. Is this what your student was taught or something similar? How about the material in Wang Liping's Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu? Is this a legit source and worth working from?

One could see it as an internal development to Buddhism, yes, but Buddhism influenced by its wider surroundings and cultural arena, namely Vedic/Brahmanic/Hindu/Shaivite India. Not too long ago I was reading a work on Shingon Buddhism (I believe it may have been Yamasaki's) and he noted that early Buddhism didn't make much use of the mantra or mudra, both of which antecede Buddhism and were more prominent in Hinduism, and that the idea of attaining siddhi or supernormal power, while present in earliest Buddhism, also wasn't emphasized to the degree it was in tantra, which matches in this case the Hindu yoga school. In other words, much of the core of tantra has greater origins in the Hindu world than that of earliest Buddhism (actually there have been many scholars which see much of Mahayana itself as a "Hindu-ization" of Buddhism, partly due to simple religious exchange and also as a means for Buddhism to continue to compete with the revitalization of Hinduism during the Gupta and afterward.) As to the rest of your post, I can't say I am in disagreement and you may very well be right about the energetic aspect to earliest Buddhism.

Thanks, I've read both of these works before, perhaps its time I re-read them. These do indeed give a broad overview of the matter, but what I am looking for is some insight into how things work today. Say I went to China, joined the Quanzhen order, and found a teacher, what would I be doing? I hear that an initial part of Daoist training is learning to chant along with the liturgy, but since I cannot currently participate in the liturgical tradition, I was wondering what perhaps some of the first steps would be? Ethical rectification, fixing ones diet, etc. are all part of general discipline, but what of initial practices? Zuowang and some sort of neigong perhaps? BTW Eskilden's other book (Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity) looks interesting, I'm currently waiting for a paperback and/or cheaper edition though.

While I don't agree with the sentiment entirely, it is interesting that Chan/Zen has been stated by some figures to be Daoism in Buddhist drag, or in other words that Chan's origins and spirit are more Daoist inspired, perhaps directly springing from a Zhuangzi-style tradition, than inspired by the scholasticism of Madhyamika or Yogacara that was prominent in Indian Buddhism. Ray Grigg's "The Tao of Zen" explores this a bit, though I think the notion is a bit too simplistic and ignores that Chan did in fact study sutras, chant mantras and dharanis, etc. historically. So for those who are particularly attracted to Zen, it is interesting that it may be a Daoicized Buddhism that draws your interest. It's also interesting that various scholars (such as Needham, David Gordon White, etc.) have compared Daoism, especially the alchemical aspects, with tantra, going so far as to say that the tantric department of Chinese Buddhism was Daoism and that the Daoists carried on the tantric spirit after the collapse of the institutionalized Zhenyan school due to the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution. As mentioned earlier in the thread, tantra itself seems to ultimately have been of Shaivite origin (see Alexis Sanderson) and we can see quite a different spirit and emphasis between early Pali Buddhism and its heir Theravada and late Siddha-derived Vajrayana. I suppose what I am getting at is that the two forms of Buddhism that Daoism resembles the most, namely Chan and tantra, are also the forms of Buddhism which have been affected by a non-Buddhist spirit or inspiration to the greatest degree, namely influence by early Daoism and Shaivite tantra/yoga respectively. Couple this with the fact that many Buddhists, especially Madhyamika, deny all ontology and the notion of an eternal spirit or an eternal Absolute reality (such as Brahman), and it seems that there is indeed substantial differences between Daoism and Buddhism that are perhaps worth investigation. Perhaps at the apex, the perspective of the Buddha and the Daoist immortal, we can speak of a unity of the traditions, but at the relative level I don't think its as simple as saying they are the same and it is just a matter of which teacher you connect with. Just to take two examples: --Qi, qimai, yinyang, wuxing, the use of and inspiration of the Yijing, alchemical praxis and symbolism, neigong, etc. are all more associated with Daoism than Buddhism, though Chinese Buddhists of course may make use of them as well. --Daoism has an emanationist cosmogony and sees the world as congealed out of higher energies of the Dao (qi.) Buddhism generally doesn't deal with an emanationist cosmogony and sees the world as an illusion-like production of the coming together of the 5 skandhas. Just some thoughts I'v had on the topic I figured worth sharing for the sake of discussion.

So which is it, a medical qigong or a sort of alchemical training, or at least conducive to and supportive of alchemical training? Furthermore can it be combined with other forms of qigong if done at a different time of the day? For example, my current daily qigong/neigong exercises are zhan zhuang thrice daily, Damo Mitchell's "Jiben Qigong" and Wuxing qigong twice a day, and finally I do Feng Zhiqiang's Hunyuan qigong in the evening. Would Spring Forest Qigong be in conflict with any of these?

Ming 命 apparently. Here's an article by Pregadio on ming: http://www.healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=192 From what I've seen, ming seems to correspond to the inner energetics found in tantra for example, but as we know tantra is a late Buddhist development (arguably with Shaivite origins rather than Buddhist origins as per Alexis Sanderson) and the high tantra in Buddhism (dealing with chakras, prana, etc.) seems mostly confined to Tibetan Buddhism and hence in a Chinese context Daoism may have been what fulfilled this role.

While I am in agreement with your position and there are plenty of Daoists who emphasize the unity of Buddhist and Daoist goals as mentioned, I have also seen the same claim of the superiority of neidan in other sources (such as Robinet's Taoism: Growth of a Religion) due to the fact that Daoists cultivate both xing and ming whereas it was claimed that Buddhists only cultivate xing. Furthermore I have also seen the claim by Daoists that they are trying to recapture what Chan achieved up til the Sixth Patriarch, implying that there was some sort of degeneration or confusion of Chan and that it was Quanzhen/neidan that was reviving it. So it seems there must have been some basis to the idea that at least some of the Daoists believed their methods and system was superior.

To each their own I suppose, I am a fan for the most part though I do have my own disagreements. What about what was written in Eskildsen's book? It certainly seems Daoists have mostly upheld the unity of the three teachings idea. In Cleary's Vitality Energy and Spirit anthology there is even a Daoist master who says that the goals of Chan and alchemy are the same. That said the Daoists must have certainly felt there was something special about neidan and their own praxis to set it apart from Buddhism, or else why didn't they just become Buddhists? Furthermore why were there Buddhist converts to Quanzhen? Just a matter of affinity or a real difference? On the Buddhist side, the most common attack I see is on the notion of the Dao, which they claim is an eternalistic notion akin to the Brahman they criticize, and on the concept of xianhood which they portray as similar to devas and hence still stuck in samsara. Two different hierarchies of teachings created by two different Buddhists (Zongmi and Kukai) both portray Daoism as inferior to even the most elementary forms of Buddhism, which in turn in their view are inferior to Mahayana, Huayan, Chan, and Shingon. In any case, I guess my point is its easy to say they are the same and that syncreticism is good and that to each his own, etc. but can anyone actually put forward decisive arguments in favor of one or the other? It seems the Buddhists are more willing to do so than Daoists.

Well it seems to me that, barring a few comments, the thread has mostly been conciliatory and in favor of religious pluralism, which as an admirer of the Traditionalist school (Guenon, Evola, etc.) I would certainly agree with. That said, here are some of the arguments I mentioned earlier for those interested: From Stephen Eskilden's "The Teachings and Practices of the Early Quanzhen Taoist Masters": And reaffirming the same point from the website "LiteratiTradition": Most Taoist and Buddhist scholars argue that Inner Alchemy was thoroughly influenced by Buddhist thought, namely the Buddhist intellectual speculations, such as “being” and “non-being.” It is, in fact, completely Taoist reaction to Buddhism, while the nature of Buddhist awakening differs from that of the Taoist. The great Chinese Buddhist Adept Daoan 道安 (314-385) wrote: “The Buddhist teaching sees the emptiness of life, thus abandoning the body to liberate all sentient beings. The Taoist teaching sees the body as the ultimate, thus cultivating food and medicine for longevity.” (Daoan, T.52, 2103: 39a8.) Ultimately, Buddhism aims at absolute spiritual awakening, but Taoism pursues awakening through longevity. Therefore, Inner Alchemy is a technique of enlightenment, not much a doctrine but a practice achieved by exercising the techniques of longevity. Taoist inner alchemists make it very clear that their ideas are different from the notions of Chan/Zen Buddhists. According to Taoist inner alchemists, Chan/Zen Buddhists only dwell on xing 性, or the original nature in its pristine purity, which they wish to attain in an intuitive and immediate vision. They neglect ming 命, or fate, life, which represent the resistance of corporality and gravity within human beings. Only when xing and ming are combined, they join in the “non-action which is the action.” According the Classics of Inner Alchemy, Robinet describes, without ming, xing will forever be stuck in inactive emptiness; without xing, ming will never attain perfect non-action. (Robinet, 323)

For those Westerners who are interested in or consider themselves Daoists (or Easterners interested in Western traditions), have you ever done a comparison of Daoism with the various Western traditions such as European (Greco-Roman, Germanic, Celtic, etc.) paganism, Platonism/Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Western alchemy, or Christian mysticism? If so, what did you uncover? Did you find such a comparison useful to your own quest? For example, do you think one could see chief deities such as Zeus or Odin as rough equivalents to the Jade Emperor? Mountains like Olympus as rough equivalents to Kunlun? Perhaps we could use this thread to not only discuss the usefulness or ones thoughts on the matter, but also ones findings. I haven't done extensive research into this area, but here are some interesting things to consider that I've mulled over the past few days: --In Germanic mythology, cosmology begins with the Ginnungagap or Great Yawning Void, which is similar to how the Dao was conceived in its Absolute aspect (Wu.) Later, with the meeting of two opposite but complementary forces or "realms" of Muspelheim and Niflheim or fire and ice, the world begins to form. This concept of course is quite similar to yin and yang. Finally, the myths of the giant Ymir and Chinese Pangu are roughly equivalents. --It has been noted that the philosophy and metaphysics of Plotinus and Neoplatonism are markedly similar to Daoism (as well as Vedic/Upanishadic lore), both being a species of monism/panentheism and emanationism with similar mystical concepts regarding the One. --Hermeticism and the Western esoteric tradition in general place a strong emphasis on the importance of the macrocosm-microcosm, just like Daoism. Furthermore, Hermetic alchemy and Daoist neidan are considered quite similar to each other, such as both seeking the elixir of life and transmutation of the human condition. From Daoist Alchemy in the West: The Esoteric Paradigms by Lee Erwin: Also, some snippets from Girardot's Myth and Meaning in Early Daoism: The Theme of Chaos: Please do share your own thoughts or findings in these areas.

Well it is clear that you are talking about Christianity and perhaps Catholicism specifically. While not my ideal and while negative states of guilt and fear can arise from the system, I will have to overall agree to disagree insofar as I admire traditional Catholicism (especially medievalism) and find it infinitely superior to modern secular humanism. While I cannot agree on the notion of an eternal hell, I believe that hell states are real and that by committing some of the actions Catholics would call mortal sin may lead one to hell, or at least rebirth as an animal or a poor human life as per Indian doctrines. One must also wonder why in the modern West, which has largely discarded its traditional Christian morality and way of life and engages in the actions formerly prohibited by Christianity, that depression, anxiety, and mental illness run so rampant. I am sure a variety of causes could be pointed to, but overall I don't think what the West has replaced Christianity with (secular humanism, atheism, scientific materialism, relativism, etc.) has been a liberation so much as a greater bondage. From what I understand Evola's view on science is that it is an inferior sort of knowledge since it doesn't do anything in regards to man's existential situation--even as the master of atomic weapons man is just as fragile as he'd be without it, indeed if the modern techno-industrial society were to ever collapse he would find himself much worse off to face the trials of nature than the primitives of Papua New Guinea or the Amazon. Furthermore the scientific worldview has largely manage to desacralize nature for modern man and alienate him further from his spiritual nature. Thus a true strength, a true superiority, and true wisdom hasn't arisen from science, only a superficial material power and knowledge which, while temporally and relatively quite useful, on the ultimate level it carries no use and has even weakened man. Contrast this with the notion of the liberated man, the yogi, the mahasiddha, the Daoist "zhenren", etc. which were the ideals of traditional civilizations. I personally am a believer in a final attainment. If one manages to reach transcendence, there is no time. Where there is no time, there is no change. How then can one speak of improvement or progress any further since such possibilities can only occur where there is time and change?

Well I certainly agree with this and am favorable to such an approach as well, though I imagine for certain mentalities a totalizing approach could also have its benefits if it could lead such a one toward Truth or transformation. I suppose the problem doesn't come down to a need to pick a particular tradition in a monotheist sense but rather on the issue of praxis, especially at the highest levels. For example, someone engaged in the advanced stages of neidan training shouldn't stop and start mixing in some Chan gong'an study or start doing Kundalini yoga. In the realm of praxis therefore one would have to be committed to a particular system, a particular way of life, etc. This is where finding one's particular path, in an Eastern context, would come in. This of course doesn't mean one would need to cease appreciating or learning from other traditions. That said, while the trends in the East certainly have been as you described there also have been Buddhists and Daoists who were anti-Daoist and anti-Buddhist respectively, who engaged in debates with each other, who were against syncreticism, and even sometimes would engage in violence or destructive actions toward each other (say the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of the Tang or the burning of the Daoist cannon by the Mongols at the instigation of the Buddhists.)

Well while fear and guilt certainly aren't ideal, if we truly believe that there are consequences for how we live our lives that extend beyond the grave as traditional civilizations and cultures most certainly did, then I imagine when weighted against each other the negative psychological states of fear and guilt aren't as negative as possibly entering hell states, animality, etc. after death. It's also a fact that most men will not and cannot become sages, and so since transcending all dualities is hard to come by for most, I suppose having an ethical or moral framework would in turn be the best medicine for most. I am also a fan of Evola, though I haven't read much Spengler. That said you should know that Guenon, Evola, etc. weren't necessarily Luddites and that rejecting the spiritual premises of modernity need not also include a rejection of possible technological benefits of modernity. Though I do have a bit of a streak of Luddism in me, mainly in regards to industrial waste, pollution, the ugliness of modern cities, and my personal dislike of automobiles and how they've made the environment ugly (asphalt roads everywhere), destroyed natural habitats, and make the world a noisy place. Not a total primitivist in other words but a bit of a deep ecologist at heart. I of course agree that many things can give meaning to a person's life and that such a meaning may be different for different people. That said what I am talking about is objective meaning, as in why are we here and share this same human condition, what is the goal of this life, etc.. A true relativist has to conclude there is none, whereas I contend that objectively it is to spiritually progress, which of course includes various subsets (like experiencing beauty, etc.)

A material belief system doesn't account for the transcendent dimension, namely that which is beyond space-time, the latter of course being the measurable, material universe known to science. The Dao (or Brahman or the Neoplatonic One or God for example), while encompassing this material dimension, also extends timelessly beyond it. In any case, the most prominent viewpoint I encounter by modern materialists is that consciousness is a product of our brain and that with death the result is the destruction of consciousness, and that it does not transform or go elsewhere. In other words, there is no postmortem consequences to how we live our lives or our actions and that all that awaits us at the end is an eternal dirt nap. This is nihilism and is the only logical consequence to materialism. Well I personally do throw modernity out the window since it is the most advanced stage of what Hindus call Kali Yuga, Buddhists call the Dharma Ending Age, Hesiod called the Age of Iron, and some Daoists referred to as the Shanghuang or Highest Sovereign. This notion is also present in the Norse concept of Ragnarok. In other words all of them held the notion of a spiritual and moral decline of humanity and their descriptions of this pretty accurately reflect the modern world. A modern figure who touches on these points in detail who I highly recommend is Rene Guenon. There is a choice in how one lives ones life, but not to meaning. The choice is between success and failure, progress and regress, making use of or wasting ones life. In all cases the meaning of life is to progress spiritually. Again, if meaning is merely an individual choice then it is really pure imagination, something that can be fancifully imparted by anyone for any purpose. In other words, it means that life has no real meaning.

Yes, to be independent is to be free from all conditioning. If you are dependent on causes, conditions, or other phenomena, you are not independent. To my eyes, independence is freedom and a mark of the ultimate, whereas it is conditioned phenomena which lack these qualities and hence are impermanent, unsatisfactory, etc. In my view the Absolute is the noumenon rather than a phenomena among many. It is the source or ground of all reality and prior to (metaphysically not temporally) the differentiation of things. It is also "you" or "I", hence the whole Tat Tvam Asi of Hindu schools, another proposition I hear Buddhism denies. One could put it in a different way: There is one Absolute reality which can be perceived in different ways, namely the relative and ignorant perspective (sentient being) or that of the Absolute perspective (enlightened, Buddha.) To experience or "be" the timeless, eternal, unchanging, unconditioned, nondual, etc. aspect is the latter. That's how I see the matter at least. No my question is in regards to the fact that you say Dzogchen is the highest and can create rainbow bodies. Yet Dzogchen is only but one tradition within Tibetan Buddhism, which in turn is but one form of Buddhism among many others. The question is whether all those others (Chan/Zen, Shingon, Pure Land, Theravada, etc.) can create the rainbow body and hence are superior to Daoism as you state? In any case, Daniel Reid here doesn't seem to think of Daoism as any bit inferior to Dzogchen: http://danreid.org/daniel-reid-articles-practice-makes-perfect-dzogchen-chuanchen.asp

Nihilism encompasses a variety of notions, such as the idea that "nothing is" but also the idea that with our deaths there is complete annihilation. That's a logical consequence of scientific materialism. As to relative meanings to life, since anyone can make up anything as the meaning of life, what it of course means is that there is no meaning to life. This is also a form of nihilism, sometimes called existential nihilism. In any case, the Dao is essentially an impersonal "God" or Absolute and has descriptively similar equivalents in the Christian tradition (such as that of Pseudo-Dionysius.) Yes, the meaning of life is to progress spiritually, to become a Buddha or a Daoist sage/zhenren or immortal.

So what about all non-Dzogchen Buddhist forms? What about all non-Tibetan Buddhist traditions? Are they up to par?

Most of what you described here, aside from your last sentences in both paragraphs, sounds like it could be Brahman (or other formulations of same, such as the Dao or the Neoplatonic One) and yet supposedly Buddhism denies the Brahman. So what is it that it denies? It seems to me to be dependent means to be unfree. Dependent origination is what applies to phenomena, namely to be dependent on causes and conditions and on other phenomena. If the Absolute is dependent, doesn't that in turn mean it is subject to causes and conditions? This treats the Absolute as though it is a "thing" among other things, whereas in reality it is supposed to transcend all things or be the source or ground of all reality. This is something else which confuses me in Buddhism. If something is impermanent (say the Absolute), then it will end and hence is nihilism. Yet if something is timeless and transcendent, it is unchanging. That which is timeless and unchanging is eternal by definition. In other words, something either has an end or it doesn't...what possible alternative is there? I guess there are different dharma doors for different people, but to me it seems that other similar systems (say Vedanta, Neoplatonism, Daoism, Kashmir Shaivism) are clearer, more logical, and more coherent than much of Buddhism and don't have the negative quality of being subject to nihilistic misinterpretations (if Madhyamika and Theravadin "anatta" doctrines are indeed not truly nihilism, which is a contentious issue.)

I can certainly agree with this and find such an approach useful myself. Maybe I've just been encountering the wrong crowd of Buddhists because beyond a mistrust of the use of language or dualistic thinking, there seems to be a certain strand of Buddhism that wishes to actually deny that there is an Absolute and also deny that Madhyamika's function is one of silence in order to transcend conceptualization in order to intuit the truth. Take for example articles like this: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/02/madhyamika-buddhism-vis-vis-hindu.html Though sometimes the reverse could be true. For example, there is no actual categorical denial of the the atman in the Pali and anatta is consistently used as an adjective as I noted earlier. Yet certain Theravadin dogmas regarding the atman make their students read the texts in a predetermined way which might serve to obfuscate the truth on the matter, depending on your perspective. Similarly in Mahayana the Tathagatagarbha Sutras and especially the Nirvana Sutra openly speak of the atman and the Absolute, yet certain sects of teachers state that these teachings are provisional or mere upaya in order to put forth the more typical Madhyamika denial of any essences or Absolutes. Perhaps ultimately it isn't nihilism, but I suppose what I find incompatible to my nature or strange is doctrines which are so close to nihilism that they can easily be mistaken as such and require warnings to inform people that it isn't as such.

I understand what you are saying here and I still disagree. This disagreement of course isn't merely a Western or Schopenhauerian issue, the Vedantins, Shaivites, and other Hindu philosophers lodged the same claim of nihilism against Buddhism (particularly Madhyamika) in various debates on the issue. From what I've seen, many Buddhists state that the skandhas exhaust reality and claim there is nothing (such as the Hindu Atman-Brahman) which transcends the skandhas. The skandhas in turn are impermanent and suffering. Nirvana is the cessation of ignorance and the further cause for the arising of karma and the skandhas. So we are logically left with all being impermanent suffering and with its cessation (since there is nothing beyond), nothing at all. This is nihilism. Furthermore dependent origination is discussing the conditioned realm of phenomena, but does it take into account that which is unconditioned, transcendent, and therefore not dependently originated? Some Buddhists account for this (like Dolpopa) but many state there is no such thing, i.e. a denial of a transcendent, timeless, changeless, and hence eternal Absolute like Brahman. It is this positioning which I see as nihilistic and disagree with. That's the only utility I can see for Madhyamika, as a via negativa methodology for realizing the impermanence and lack of self in all conditioned entities in order to awaken to that which is not impermanent, namely the timeless and eternal Absolute (Brahman, etc.) Most Buddhists categorically deny that this is what Madhyamika is or its intention from what I've seen however.