Dependence and emptiness › A walker and the act of walking

Chapter 2 examines motion through the distinctions between what has been traversed, what has not been traversed, and what is being traversed. It also examines the relationship between a mover and moving. In 2.7-9, the text asks how a mover could be established without motion, and how motion could be established without a mover.

Imagine describing someone as a walker. We identify that person as a walker through walking; we do not first discover a separate walker-essence and then attach an independently existing action to it. Equally, walking is not something we can identify while disregarding any moving person or body. The illustration makes the dependence between agent and activity easier to see.

It would overstate this point to conclude that a person cannot exist while sitting down. The ordinary person and the person described specifically as a walker are different explanatory subjects. The question is what establishes the person as a walker. Confusing these levels would make the argument seem to deny an obvious everyday possibility.

Nor should we present chapter 2 as an experimental discovery that motion is impossible. Its analysis asks what happens when motion and mover are treated as self-established entities. Following the argument requires examining those commitments, rather than appealing to ordinary movement as though Nāgārjuna had simply failed to notice it.