Catuskoti - Nagarjuna's Diamond Slivers

Nagarjuna's Diamond Slivers

Śūnyatā is the ninth 'view' (Sanskrit: dṛṣṭi), the viewless view, a superposition of the eight possible arrays of proposition P .

The eight arrays or octaves of the iconographic Dharmacakra represent drishti or traditional views that Shakyamuni countered. These eight arrays may be plotted as coordinates on a multidimensional field which may be rendered as a sphere, a mandala, a multidimensional shunya or zero where shunyata denotes zero-ness. The eight arrays are in a concordant relationship where they each constitute a chord to the sphere. The coordinates are equidistant from the epicentre of shunya where the array of the positive configuration (or hemisphere) and the array of the negative configuration (or hemisphere) constitute two polar radii or diametrical complements, a diameter in sum. These are the 'eight limits' (Wylie: mtha' brgyad; Sanskrit: aṣṭānta) of 'openness' (Sanskrit: śūnyatā), where śūnyatā is amplified by 'freedom from constructs' or 'simplicity' (Wylie: spros bral; Sanskrit: aprapañca). Karmay (1988: p. 118) conveys that 'spros bral' is a homologue of 'thig le' (Sanskrit: bindu), where 'spros bral' is literally "without amplification", understood as "that which cannot be displayed".