Greetings Brother. I honestly do not proclaim myself to be a Buddhist as such, but I do believe that Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka School and author of the Madhyamaka Karika, provided some key insights into what the Shakyamuni Buddha ULTIMATELY discovered. Nagarjuna paid special attention to the truth of dependent origination and the doctrine of emptiness (shunyata), stating that all dharma (phenomena), whether material, mental, or verbal, are empty of inherent existence. Since this is so, one cannot logically say that anything exists, does not exist, both exists and does not exist, or neither exists nor not exists. In short, the ontological status of reality is emptiness, and this insight leads to complete calming of verbal descriptions. However, much like Sankara does later in arguing for his own Advaitist Vedantic views, Nagarjuna accepts that there are two levels of reality--one ultimate (absolute) and one conventional (relative). All conceptual phenomena, such as reincarnation and rebirth, take place at the conventional, "less real", level. From the standpoint of the ultimate level, everything that occurs at the conventional level is mired by ignorance, so the philosophical (ie verbal) details of how rebirth occurs are really not so important. The real goal is to transcend verbal differentiations and arguments by understanding the implications of dependent origination. Once you understand that, there is no birth and rebirth, for you have gone beyond the mind itself. Namaste.
