Cracking the Walnut

Nāgārjuna gives us, in the first four lines, what we call the eight negations. He does so with the aim of removing eight notions of what is not real: birth, death, permanence, annihilation, sameness, difference, coming, and going. We are unable to touch the truth because these eight notions are present in our mind. We believe that there is birth and death, permanence and annihilation, same and different, coming and going, and because of that, our view of reality becomes distorted. This is why the Buddha had to find skillful ways to remove these notions from our minds.

Although they tried to keep the teaching of the three Dharma Seals—impermanence, no-self, and nirvāṇa—their realistic approach, articulated in the theory the three times exist, the nature of things is constant, had gone far from the teachings of the Buddha.