The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1408 page)

) at Udipi, where his succession and school is still maintained.

 
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see
MAJJHIMA NIK
YA
;
TRIPI
AKA
.

 
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(‘middle way’; Chin.,
San-lun
; Jap.,
Sanron
; Korean, Samnon). The ‘Middle School’, a system of Buddhist philosophy founded by
N
g
rjuna
in the 1st cent. CE, extremely influential within the
Mah
y
na
. The school claims to be faithful to the spirit of the Buddha's original teachings, which advocate a middle course between extreme practices and theories of all kinds, and it applies this principle to philosophical theories concerning the nature of phenomena. Thus the assertion that ‘things exist’ or that ‘things do not exist’ would be extreme views and should be rejected; the truth lies somewhere in-between and is to be arrived at through a process of dialectic, as opposing positions are revealed as self-negating. The adoption of any one position, it was argued, could immediately be challenged by taking up its opposite, and the M
dhyamaka therefore adopted a strategy of attacking their opponent's views rather than advancing claims of their own (which is not to deny that they might none the less hold their own philosophical views).
The scene for the appearance of the M
dhyamaka was set by the debates among the schools of the Therav
da over such basic doctrines as that all phenomena (
dharmas
) are impermanent (
anicca
) and without self (
an
tman
). This gave rise to philosophical difficulties concerning questions such as causation, temporality, and personal identity. The scholastic solution was to posit a theory of instantaneous serial continuity according to which phenomena (dharmas) constantly replicate themselves in a momentary sequence of change (
dharma-k
a
ikatva
). Thus reality was conceived of as cinematic: like a filmstrip in which one frame constantly gives way to the next, each moment, none the less, being substantially existent in its own right.
The M
dhyamaka challenged this notion of the substantial reality of dharmas, arguing that if things truly existed in this way and were possessed of a real nature or ‘self-essence’ (
svabh
va
), it would contradict the Buddha's teaching on no-self (an