Madhyamaka(also known as unyavada)is a Buddhist Mah y na tradition systematized by N g rjuna. N g rjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of the Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the gamas. In the eyes of N g rjuna the Buddha was not merely a forerunner, but the very founder of the M dhyamaka system. The tradition and its subsidiaries are called "M dhyamaka"; those who follow it are called "M dhyamikas." According to the M dhyamikas, all phenomena are empty of "self nature" or "essence", meaning that they have no intrinsic, independent reality apart from the causes and conditions from which they arise. M dhyamaka is the rejection of two extreme philosophies, and therefore represents the "middle way" between eternalism the view that something is eternal and unchanging and nihilism. Nihilism here means the assertion that all things are intrinsically already destroyed or rendered nonexistent. This is nihilism in the sense of Indian philosophy, and may differ somewhat from Western philosophical nihilism.
