Steven’s Reviews > Ocean of Reasoning: A Great Commentary on Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika > Status Update

Tsongkhapa makes another interesting point, saying that if space were accommodating to objects in a positivistic way, you would be able to have two objects in the exact same spatial location. However, since space is merely the absence of an object, it cannot accommodate two objects in one location--You have to move one object in order to place another one in its stead. Space is therefore dependent on material form

So at this point we're refuting the elements, and Tsongkhapa gives a very convoluted explanation of the untenable sequential arising of characteristics and the things that they characterize. Basically, he is saying that they are both dependent on one another and their ultimate absence--They cannot arise sequentially, because if one existed without the other, the syllogism would fall apart

Okay so, I think the first two chapters of the commentary are the most important--If you can understand those chapters, you will probably be able to understand the rest of the commentary without any issue. Tsongkhapa is very adamant in pointing out that 1) nothing has an inherent, permanent essence, and that 2) action produces the agent, not the other way around (although neither are essentially real)

In these previous few pages, Tsongkhapa refutes the essence of phenomena in both temporal and grammatical senses. Temporally, an action does not inherently exist because it once it stops, there is no more action to be found. You cannot find it in the past, present, or future. Grammatically, neither the agent nor the action can essentially exist, because otherwise they would have to be identical to one another.

Tsongkhapa makes a further point saying that while capacity is the agent of activity, the substance is not. The capacity for an action belongs either to the noun or the verb as a referent, but not both. Because activities themselves lack an inherent substance, they can only be determined by their effects, and subsequently by identifying the proper predicate as a mental deduction.

Tsongkhapa makes another complicated grammatical argument here: he says that if either a noun or a verb is connected to a referent, then it is impossible for the other to be connected to the referent. In other words, they cannot belong to the same continuum--If "going" can only be found in relation to space-time, then it cannot be found in the "goer" in any inherent sense of the word.

Tsongkhapa makes an interesting observation here: he says that the referent of the word "going" does not refer to the object that is moving, but instead the space or interval being gone over. In other words, you can only determine motion interdependently based on an object's position in space-time. Therefore, motion does not exist essentially, but only relationally.

Tsongkhapa refutes coming and going by making two arguments: One is that since two things cannot arise and fall away at the same time, motion has to be understood as a continuum of infinite moments where there is, in fact, no essential motion to be found. The other argument he makes is actually rather flimsy in my opinion, and it has to do with the non-existence of the front and back of the foot as well as the path.