Opinion
by Nagarjuna.

'I was here before.'
'No, you weren't.'
'This will last forever.'-
Horizons of the past.

'I will survive.'
'No, you won't.'
'This will end.'-
Horizons of the future.

What happened in the past
Is not happening any more.
If you think what happened then became you now,
What you grasp would be something else.
What are you but what you grasp?

If you are what you grasp,
You would not be here,
For what you grasp comes and goes;
It cannot be you.
How can the grasped be the grasper?

You're not different from what happened then.
If you were, you would not need a past.
You could survive without having to die.
The past would be severed, revocable.
Others would experience your acts.
Without a past you would be
Either manufactured or uncaused.

'I was here before.'
'No, you weren't.'
'I was and I wasn't.'
'You neither were nor weren't.'
'I will survive.'
'No, you won't.'-

Opinions are absurd.

If the gods were us,
We would be eternal;
For the gods are unborn in eternity.
Were we other than them,
We would be ephemeral.
Were we different,
We would never connect.

If I were half a god and half a man,
I would be eternal and ephemeral.
What can be ephemeral
Without eternity?

If this ends, what world would follow?
If this never ends, what world would follow?
Like a flame of a lamp
The flow of matter and mind
Neither ends nor never ends.

This would end
If mind and matter failed to flow
From the dying of their past;
It would never end
If mind and matter failed to flow
From a past that never died.

If half this ended and half did not,
I would end and never end,
Leaving half the grasper
Dead and half undead,
Half the grasped destroyed,
Half undestroyed.

Everything is empty-
In whom? About what?
Do opinions erupt?

For Gautama
In whose embrace
Dharma was shown
And opinions vanished.