Look for a standard biography of the figure known as the second Buddha and you find tales of a monk who turned rocks into gold, brewed elixirs of immortality, and retrieved hidden texts from dragon spirits beneath the sea. This episode separates the historical Nagarjuna, a South Indian monk of roughly 150 to 250 CE who advised a Satavahana king when Mahayana Buddhism was still a fringe movement, from the legends written centuries later by biographers like Kumarajiva. The hosts suggest those myths functioned as a marketing campaign to lend divine authority to the radical Perfection of Wisdom teachings.

The core of the conversation is his root verses on the Middle Way and their target, svabhava or inherent existence, replaced by sunyata, emptiness, and dependent origination, explained through the analogy of a shadow that exists only as a rela ...