A noção de upāya no budismo Mahāyāna e o Mūlamadhyamakakārikā de Nāgārjuna

Abstract

The present work aims to investigate how the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses of The Middle Way) – major work of the philosopher Nāgārjuna, one of the major Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers and founder of the Mādhyamika school (“School of the Middle Way”), who lived in the II century C.E – is structured as a pedagogical-soteriological expedient, that is, an upāya, which utilizes fundamentally rational devices for a systematic elimination of mistakes of the aspirants of the Buddhist way, in order to liberate them from the condition of suffering which characterizes existence based on ignorance (avidyā). Therefore, it requires a genealogy of the notion of upāya in the IndianBuddhist civilizational context.