In Buddhist thought, causality has always had an extremely important soteriological significance. The Indian Buddhist monk Nagarjuna (c. 2nd-3rd century AD), one of the most important and influential philosophers in all of Asia, came up with a very specific and sophisticated concept of causality. The emptiness (śūnyatā) of all existences, the main theme of Nāgārjuna's thought project, is very closely related to causality, which is absolutely essential to our understanding of the world and life. The text contains the first English translation and commentary on chapters 1 and 20 of his seminal text, The Root Treatise on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), which concern the exploration of causality. Nāgārjuna's analysis attempts to expose the antinomic and logically contradictory nature of the theory of causality, which operates with entities endowed with an immutable, self-existent essence or intrinsic nature (svabhāva). Nāgārjuna concludes that there can be no inherent causal connection between such existents. Causality, therefore, in the last analysis, is not an objective relation or metaphysical force connecting existents, but a conceptually created relation that could not exist without our conceptualizing mind. However, even if causality is not the "cement" of the universe or a physical force, it nevertheless exists conventionally for Nagarjuna as a pragmatic conceptual construct that underlies our everyday practice.
Czech edition