Nāgārjuna and Whitehead
springboards for reflection
Five Proposals from Nāgārjuna
1. Do not cling to your views.
The problem is not that we have views, but that we grasp them with attachment. Even the most life-giving ideas can become sources of rigidity if held too tightly. They are best held lightly—as invitations, not absolutes.
2. All views are relational and provisional.
No view stands alone or arrives fully formed. Each arises within a web of dependent co-origination, shaped by history, culture, and experience. For this reason, views are best understood as upāya—skillful means—valuable insofar as they help reduce suffering and cultivate compassion.
3. Philosophy serves life, not the other way around.
The development and defense of views has meaning only within a larger soteriological horizon. Philosophy is not an end in itself, but a practice in the service of awakening—helping us live with greater freedom, deeper responsiveness, and more expansive care for others.
4. We who hold views are relational and provisional, too; we have no substantial selves.
It is not only our ideas that arise dependently; so do we. The self who holds a view is not a fixed substance but a dynamic process—a nexus of relationships, memories, and momentary acts of becoming. To recognize this is to loosen the grip of ego around belief.
5. Take these proposals seriously, but do not cling to them.
Even these proposals must not harden into doctrine. They, too, are skillful means—provisional guides meant to foster freedom and compassion rather than constraint. To take them seriously is to experiment with them in life, but allow them to revised, relinquished, or reimagined as new situations arise and new forms of wisdom emerge.
The problem is not that we have views, but that we grasp them with attachment. Even the most life-giving ideas can become sources of rigidity if held too tightly. They are best held lightly—as invitations, not absolutes.
2. All views are relational and provisional.
No view stands alone or arrives fully formed. Each arises within a web of dependent co-origination, shaped by history, culture, and experience. For this reason, views are best understood as upāya—skillful means—valuable insofar as they help reduce suffering and cultivate compassion.
3. Philosophy serves life, not the other way around.
The development and defense of views has meaning only within a larger soteriological horizon. Philosophy is not an end in itself, but a practice in the service of awakening—helping us live with greater freedom, deeper responsiveness, and more expansive care for others.
4. We who hold views are relational and provisional, too; we have no substantial selves.
It is not only our ideas that arise dependently; so do we. The self who holds a view is not a fixed substance but a dynamic process—a nexus of relationships, memories, and momentary acts of becoming. To recognize this is to loosen the grip of ego around belief.
5. Take these proposals seriously, but do not cling to them.
Even these proposals must not harden into doctrine. They, too, are skillful means—provisional guides meant to foster freedom and compassion rather than constraint. To take them seriously is to experiment with them in life, but allow them to revised, relinquished, or reimagined as new situations arise and new forms of wisdom emerge.
Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
Interview with the Author
Hosted by Jessica Zu
Hosted by Jessica Zu
Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses:
For the abandonment of all views
He taught the true teaching
By means of compassion
I salute him, Gautama
But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? In (Oxford UP, 2024), Rafal K. Stepien shows not only how Nāgārjuna's radical teaching of no-view or “abelief” makes sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nāgārjuna's ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice.
Grounded in meticulous study of original texts from classical India and China but innovating on the theories and methods underpinning contemporary scholarship East and West, this study shows how profoundly important voices from the diverse religious and philosophical traditions of the world have until now been diminished, distorted, and silenced. In opening up truly global horizons of existing and co-existing in the world, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
* Elucidates Nāgārjuna's thought in its Buddhist context, integrating his views on belief and intention, language and mind, action and attachment, selfhood and suffering, violence and peace, emptiness and Buddhahood
* Presents a trenchant critique of the Christian and Western assumptions still dominating the study of religion and philosophy today
* Introduces and clarifies ideas of pivotal importance to the history of Buddhist thought in India, Tibet, China, and Japan
Readers may also find a related edited volume equally fascinating, Buddhist Literature as Philosophy and Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
Prof. Rafal Stepien is also leading a collaborative project, " The Ethics of Empty Beliefs: Chinese Buddhist Philosophy in the ‘Period of Disunity’" that has openings for postdocs and will host several workshops on studies of Sanlun and its influences in Sinophone spheres.
For the abandonment of all views
He taught the true teaching
By means of compassion
I salute him, Gautama
But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? In (Oxford UP, 2024), Rafal K. Stepien shows not only how Nāgārjuna's radical teaching of no-view or “abelief” makes sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nāgārjuna's ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice.
Grounded in meticulous study of original texts from classical India and China but innovating on the theories and methods underpinning contemporary scholarship East and West, this study shows how profoundly important voices from the diverse religious and philosophical traditions of the world have until now been diminished, distorted, and silenced. In opening up truly global horizons of existing and co-existing in the world, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
* Elucidates Nāgārjuna's thought in its Buddhist context, integrating his views on belief and intention, language and mind, action and attachment, selfhood and suffering, violence and peace, emptiness and Buddhahood
* Presents a trenchant critique of the Christian and Western assumptions still dominating the study of religion and philosophy today
* Introduces and clarifies ideas of pivotal importance to the history of Buddhist thought in India, Tibet, China, and Japan
Readers may also find a related edited volume equally fascinating, Buddhist Literature as Philosophy and Buddhist Philosophy as Literature
Prof. Rafal Stepien is also leading a collaborative project, " The Ethics of Empty Beliefs: Chinese Buddhist Philosophy in the ‘Period of Disunity’" that has openings for postdocs and will host several workshops on studies of Sanlun and its influences in Sinophone spheres.
Nāgārjuna and Whitehead
“For the abandonment of all views
He taught the true teaching.
By means of compassion,
I salute him, Gautama.”
Abandoning All Views?
The idea that we can—and should—abandon all views, living from a space free of fixed positions, will strike many as odd, even impossible. It may also seem irresponsible. For those who believe that the world urgently needs a new way of thinking—a new metaphysic, perhaps panpsychist and panentheistic in spirit—such a proposal can feel misguided.
From this perspective, all ways of living, whether life-nourishing or life-destroying, implicitly presuppose some metaphysical outlook. The real question is not “Do you have a metaphysic?” but “What metaphysic do you have?” If this is so, then the task is not to abandon views altogether, but to cultivate better ones.
Abandoning Your Views, but not Mine
Those committed to a more organic metaphysic will argue that what is needed today is a vision of reality that affirms the vitality and intrinsic value of all life—one that is sensitive to relationality, inter-becoming, and the deep entanglement of all things. Such a metaphysic also affirms that ideals like compassion and love, mercy and justice, truth and goodness are not merely human projections but belong, in some sense, to the very fabric of the universe.
If this outlook is joined with a belief in God, it may take a panentheistic form: the conviction that the universe lives and moves and has its being within a Spirit of love. This contrasts with more authoritarian images of God as a supreme external ruler who may summon the world toward domination and conflict rather than cooperation and care.
Given this, it is not surprising that those persuaded by such a vision will seek to commend it to others—to invite the abandonment, not of all views, but of those they judge to be destructive. From within this framework, the call to abandon all views can seem not only implausible but morally troubling. If ideas shape lives—and lives shape the fate of the world—then relinquishing all views may appear less like wisdom and more like abdication.
What Nagarguna Critiques
And yet, before dismissing this call, it is worth pausing. What Nagarjuna critiques—or, better, what we can learn from him, even if we do not fully understand or entirely agree—is the tendency to hold our views with a kind of grasping attachment, rather than as lures for feeling that can be entertained, revised, and released.
Here a fruitful connection emerges with Whitehead. In his philosophy, ideas are not merely abstract propositions to be believed or rejected; they are “lures for feeling”—invitations that shape how we experience and respond to the world. But every act of entertaining a proposition carries what he calls a subjective form: an emotional tone, a way of holding the idea. We can grasp our views tightly, with anxiety or possessiveness, or we can hold them lightly, with openness and responsiveness.
The Instability of All Views
But there is still another lesson to learn from Nagarjuna. It is that all views carry within themselves a certain instability: each contains tensions, limits, and, in some cases, internal inconsistencies. No view is self-grounding or immune from critique.
At the same time, all views arise within the broader web of pratītya-samutpāda—the dependent co-origination of all things. They do not drop from heaven fully formed or self-evident. Rather, they emerge from historical, cultural, psychological, and relational conditions. They are events within a living network, not eternal fixtures outside it.
Here a resonance can be seen with Whitehead’s principle of relativity. In Whitehead’s philosophy, nothing exists in isolation; everything arises through its relations to everything else. Each moment of experience is a response to a world already there, and it becomes what it is by prehending—by feeling and integrating—that world. In this sense, ideas, too, are relational events. They inherit the past, arise within a context, and contribute to the future.
Seen in this way, Nāgārjuna’s insight into dependent co-origination and Whitehead’s principle of relativity converge: both deny that anything—whether a physical thing, a self, or a view—stands alone. All are interdependent, co-arising, and dynamically constituted.
For this reason, the value of views is not absolute but pragmatic and transformative. They are worthwhile insofar as they help cultivate inner freedom, release us from dukkha, and awaken compassion toward others. In this sense, they function as upāya—skillful means.
And here again a Whiteheadian parallel emerges: views can be understood as “lures for feeling,” propositions that invite certain ways of experiencing and responding to the world. Their worth lies not in their finality, but in their capacity to guide life toward richer, more compassionate forms of becoming.
Philosophy is not an End in Itself
There is still another lesson to learn. It is that philosophy itself—the development and promulgation of views—has meaning only within a larger soteriological context.
In the spirit of Nagarjuna, philosophical reflection is not an end in itself. Its deeper purpose is therapeutic and liberative: to loosen the grip of confusion, to free us from dukkha, and to open pathways toward compassion and wisdom. Views are justified not only by their coherence, but by their capacity to heal and transform.
Here again a resonance can be found with Whitehead. His philosophy, too, is ultimately in service of life—seeking to widen experience, deepen sensitivity, and guide us toward what he calls “the art of life.” Philosophy, in this sense, is not about possessing truth but about participating in a process of becoming more responsive, more attuned, and more capable of fostering beauty in the world.
Are some views better than others?
In the spirit of Nagarjuna, no view possesses inherent superiority in and of itself. Every view is empty of self-grounding essence, conditioned by contexts, and therefore limited. Yet this does not mean that all views are equal in their effects. The question shifts from “Which view is ultimately true?” to “What does this view do?”
From this perspective, some views are indeed better than others—pragmatically, ethically, and soteriologically. A better view is one that:
- reduces dukkha rather than intensifying it,
- fosters compassion rather than indifference or hostility,
- opens the mind rather than closing it,
- supports wise and responsive action in a complex world.
Here a deep resonance appears with Alfred North Whitehead. If ideas are “lures for feeling,” then their value lies in the kinds of experience they invite and the forms of life they make possible. Some lures narrow experience, harden identity, and justify harm. Others widen perception, deepen relational awareness, and encourage care for the well-being of others.
So yes—some views are better than others. But their “betterness” is not a matter of possessing final truth. It is a matter of how they function within the ongoing process of life.
In addition to their pragmatic and ethical effects, some views can be judged more adequate to experience and more coherent than others. A view is more adequate when it does fuller justice to the range and depth of experience—when it can account not only for physical processes, but also for feeling, value, relation, creativity, and meaning. A view is more coherent when its ideas hang together without contradiction, illuminating rather than obscuring the patterns of the world.
Here again there is a natural convergence with Alfred North Whitehead, who explicitly proposed adequacy to experience and coherence as key criteria for speculative philosophy. A metaphysic should not explain some aspects of reality at the expense of others, nor should it collapse under internal inconsistency.
And yet, from a Nāgārjunian perspective, even these criteria must be held lightly. No system is perfectly coherent, and no view exhausts experience. Every account leaves something out, generates tensions, or depends on assumptions it cannot fully justify. Thus, adequacy and coherence are relative achievements, not final guarantees.
So yes—some views are better because they are more adequate and more coherent. But even the best views remain provisional, relational, and revisable. And the very criteria of 'adequacy' and 'coherence' are historically conditioned, and thus instances of pratitya samutpade. They are, at their best, powerful metaphysical lures for feeling—guides to experience that illuminate without claiming ultimacy.
Kazi Shakti and Process Buddhism
Among process philosophers, the one who has done the most to develop a Nāgārjunian process philosophy is Kazi Shakti. Her work is a sustained and creative exploration of what it might mean to bring the spirit of Nāgārjuna into living conversation with Alfred North Whitehead.
Drawing deeply on the Madhyamaka tradition, she emphasizes śūnyatā (emptiness) not as a negation of reality, but as a way of freeing thought from reification—freeing us from the tendency to treat our concepts, including metaphysical ones, as final or self-grounding. In this respect, her work serves as a gentle but persistent challenge to process thinkers who may, at times, hold even relational metaphysics too tightly.
At the same time, she shows how Whitehead’s emphasis on relationality, becoming, and the interdependence of all things can be deepened by a more radical appreciation of dependent co-origination. Rather than opposing metaphysics and emptiness, she explores how metaphysical ideas can function as upāya—skillful means, or what might be called metaphysical lures for feeling—guiding experience without claiming ultimacy.
Much of her work appears in essays and on her blog (holo-poiesis.com), which serves as a kind of living laboratory for Process Buddhism in the Madhyamaka spirit. There, philosophy is not presented as a closed system but as an ongoing, experimental, and relational practice—one that invites readers not simply to adopt new ideas, but to loosen their attachment to ideas altogether, even while using them in the service of compassion and awakening.
In this way, her work exemplifies the very synthesis this essay explores: a process philosophy that thinks deeply, but also lets go; that offers views, but holds them lightly; and that understands philosophy itself as a practice in the service of life.
Drawing deeply on the Madhyamaka tradition, she emphasizes śūnyatā (emptiness) not as a negation of reality, but as a way of freeing thought from reification—freeing us from the tendency to treat our concepts, including metaphysical ones, as final or self-grounding. In this respect, her work serves as a gentle but persistent challenge to process thinkers who may, at times, hold even relational metaphysics too tightly.
At the same time, she shows how Whitehead’s emphasis on relationality, becoming, and the interdependence of all things can be deepened by a more radical appreciation of dependent co-origination. Rather than opposing metaphysics and emptiness, she explores how metaphysical ideas can function as upāya—skillful means, or what might be called metaphysical lures for feeling—guiding experience without claiming ultimacy.
Much of her work appears in essays and on her blog (holo-poiesis.com), which serves as a kind of living laboratory for Process Buddhism in the Madhyamaka spirit. There, philosophy is not presented as a closed system but as an ongoing, experimental, and relational practice—one that invites readers not simply to adopt new ideas, but to loosen their attachment to ideas altogether, even while using them in the service of compassion and awakening.
In this way, her work exemplifies the very synthesis this essay explores: a process philosophy that thinks deeply, but also lets go; that offers views, but holds them lightly; and that understands philosophy itself as a practice in the service of life.