Look for the chariot: search an object for its inherent existence
Take one ordinary thing, look for exactly where the thing itself is, and notice that you find parts, causes and a name — but no separate essence.
Why it works
In Saṃyutta Nikāya 5.10 the nun Vajirā answers Māra that just as “chariot” is the word used when the parts are assembled, “sentient being” is the convention used when the aggregates are present. Madhyamaka turns this into a method and applies it to everything: Garfield’s reading of Nāgārjuna describes looking for the bearer of the parts, or the essence that gives a thing its identity, and finding conventions instead. The search does not make the object vanish — the cup still holds your tea — but it exposes the gap between how solid and self-standing the thing feels and what can actually be found, which is the habit Madhyamaka calls grasping at inherent existence.
How to do it
- Choose a neutral object in front of you — a cup, a chair, a phone — rather than something emotionally loaded.
- Ask: where exactly is the cup? Go through its parts one by one — handle, base, rim, glaze — and ask of each, “is this the cup?”
- Ask whether the cup is somewhere apart from those parts, as an extra ingredient.
- Notice what you do find: parts, a history of being made, and a word that gathers them into one thing.
- Pick the cup up and use it. Notice that the analysis has not stopped it working — that is part of the point.
Evidence
The chariot simile is Vajirā’s verse in SN 5.10, applied there to the person. Garfield’s 1994 essay and his 1995 translation and commentary on Nāgārjuna set out the Madhyamaka analysis: when we look for the substance underlying a thing’s properties, or the bearer of its parts, we find none, and its identity turns out to rest on convention. The support is textual and philosophical; the exercise has not been studied. (anecdotal)
A reasoning practice drawn from the texts and their modern philosophical readers; no study has tested its effects. The early verse is about the person, and applying the same search to objects is the Mahāyāna extension.
Sources
- Sujato, B. (trans.). With Vajirā (Vajirāsutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya 5.10). SuttaCentral.
- Garfield, J. L. (1994). Dependent arising and the emptiness of emptiness: Why did Nāgārjuna start with causation? Philosophy East and West, 44(2), 219–250 (includes a translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā chapters 1, 2 and 24).
- Garfield, J. L. (1995). The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (translation and commentary). New York: Oxford University Press.
Common mistake
Concluding “so the cup doesn’t exist.” The analysis refutes a cup with its own independent essence, not the cup you drink from — ending in denial is the nihilist extreme the Middle Way is named for avoiding.
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More practices for Śūnyatā: Emptiness and the Two Truths in Madhyamaka
- Trace how a thing depends: on causes, on parts, on a name
See one thing you care about as held up by its causes, made of its parts and gathered by a label — which is what “empty” means in practice.
- Keep both truths when you decide something
Act fully within ordinary reality — deadlines, promises, money — while holding lightly that none of it has a fixed essence.
- Don’t turn emptiness into a new thing: the emptiness of emptiness
When “everything is empty” starts to feel like a hidden void behind the world, apply the same search to emptiness itself.
- Hold form and emptiness together, in the spirit of the Heart Sūtra
Rest on one sight, sound or sensation and hold two things at once: it is vividly here, and it has no fixed core.
- Search a fixed self-story for its essence
Take a sentence like “I’m just not a confident person” and look for the inherently existing thing it names — then see what you find instead.
- Let seeing emptiness open into compassion
Use the insight that no one is fixed — including someone who has hurt you — as ground for care rather than for detachment.
- Know what to do when “nothing is real” starts to feel frightening
If emptiness practice leaves the world feeling dreamlike or your self feeling missing, ground yourself, ease off, and talk to someone.
Related concepts
- Dependent Origination: How Suffering Arises and Ceases
The twelve-link chain as a map of how suffering sustains itself — and where to step off
- Anatta: The Buddhist Teaching of No-Self in Practice
What the no-self insight actually means — and the practices that make it useful, not nihilistic
- Non-Dual Awareness, Made Practical
Effortless mindfulness and the recognition of open, aware presence
- Anicca: Working Practically with Impermanence
Seeing change directly, not just believing it — and why that difference is everything
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