A Discussion of Sara McClintock and John Dunne's translation of Nāgārjuna's Precious Garland (Ratnāvalī)

Both classical and contemporary scholars have raised critical questions regarding the consequences of Nāgārjuna’s analysis of emptiness for ethics and politics. If all distinctions, phenomena, values, ideas—even suffering, karmic fruit, vulnerable sentient bodies, and ethics—are empty of inherent existence, what does this mean for how we act in the world, both as individuals and as members of social and political groups? Does the Madhyamaka analysis of emptiness undermine ethics and political values? And if not, what is the basis and motivation right action in a world in which suffering is ultimately empty of inherent existence?
Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland: A Teaching for a King (Rājaparikathāratnāvalī), is widely regarded as one of the most important Indian Buddhist texts to address this question of the relationship between Madhyamaka ideas of emptiness and ethics and politics. Despite its stature in Buddhist traditions and contemporary scholarship, it has not received as much attention as other texts attributed to Nāgārjuna. This is perhaps because it is a dense, enigmatic, and provocative text, primarily devoted to addressing leadership and the Buddhist path, integrating philosophy, ethics, politics, and the aspiration to become a bodhisattva.