What This Concept Is Actually Saying
「去來」 is a technical term from Chapter 2 of Nāgārjuna's *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* (《中論》), titled 〈去來品〉—"Examination of Going and Coming." It names an entire *method*, not just a topic. The method is: take something you take for granted—here, *motion*—and anatomize it so precisely that the thing you thought you were seeing turns out to be ungraspable.
The one-sentence definition the classical materials give is: use the three-time frame (*past going, future going, present going*) to dismantle any self-nature in motion; then extend that dismantling to *the goer*, *the going*, and *the place gone to*—all three turn out to be interdependent, empty, but conventionally nameable, "like an illusion, like a magical transformation" (如幻如化).
It is important not to flatten this into a flat denial ("there is no motion") or into a flat affirmation ("motion is real"). The final line is precisely *neither determinately existent nor determinately non-existent* (不得言定有、不得言定無). This is the Mūlamadhyamaka signature: not nihilism, not eternalism, but a careful seeing-through.
The Three-Time Frame (三時): 已去、未去、去時
Any act of "going" can be sliced three ways:
- 已去 (*already-gone*, the past side of the event) - 未去 (*not-yet-gone*, the future side) - 去時 (*the moment of going*, the present side, supposedly where motion is "actually happening")
The founding verse of the chapter lays out the move in four lines:
已去無有去，未去亦無去， 離已去未去，去時亦無去。
*In the already-gone there is no going; in the not-yet-gone there is no going; setting aside these two, in the going-time there is also no going.*
Why? Because "already gone" is by definition *past*—the going has departed it. "Not yet gone" is by definition *future*—the going has not yet arrived. Strip away both ends, and there is no independent "middle" to which the going can be pinned. The argument is not that motion does not happen; it is that when you look for *the going itself* inside any of its three temporal slices, you cannot find it as a self-standing thing.
The Opponent's Strongest Move: "Going Happens at Going-Time"
The opponent in the chapter presses hard:
動處則有去，此中有去時， 非已去未去，是故去時去。
*Where motion is active, there is going; within that there is a going-time; it is neither the already-gone nor the not-yet-gone; therefore, at going-time, there is going.*
This is the common-sense intuition you can hear in a thousand mindfulness teachers: "the present moment is where life happens; let go of past and future, dwell here." Nāgārjuna takes this view seriously and answers: if you admit a "going-time" *distinct from* the already-gone and the not-yet-gone, then within that going-time there should be a *further* going—otherwise "going-time" is just a label, not a container of motion. Like saying there is fruit inside the jar: the jar is the time, the fruit is the going; if you actually open the jar, what you find must be the going itself.
The "Two Goings" Trap (二去之咎)
If you grant "going at going-time," you have now committed to *two* goings: (1) the going *that has* a going-time, and (2) the going *within* that going-time. Two goings require two goers. But there is only one person walking down the street. So the original intuition—motion is *one*, lived, present—collapses the moment you try to make it precise.
This is a remarkably contemporary critique: it is the critique of any model of "lived presence" that tries to *contain* an event inside a duration. You can't have a container and a content without doubling both.
The Three Aspects (三法): 去法、去者、所去處
Once "going" cannot be pinned down in any one of the three times, the analysis widens to the *three-part structure* of any motion:
- 去法 (*the going*, the action itself) - 去者 (*the goer*, the agent) - 所去處 (*the destination*, the place gone to)
The two are not independent. Each requires the others to make sense. There is no going without a goer; there is no goer without going; there is no destination without going and without a goer. The chapter does not stop at noting this mutual dependence—it uses it to drive a series of dilemmas.
The Agent-Action Dilemma (作者與作業之兩難)
若謂於去法即為是去者，作者及作業是事則為一； 若謂於去法有異於去者，離去者有去，離去有去者。
*If the goer is identical to the going, then the agent and the action are one; if the goer is different from the going, then there should be going without a goer, and a goer without going.*
This is the classical *agent-action* problem in concentrated form: either identity (which collapses the distinction we rely on) or difference (which leaves the parts unconnected). Both have problems. The chapter then shows that setting-out (發, the *departure* moment) and staying (住, *remaining*) are equally unlocatable in the three times, and that the latter directly contradicts going ("staying" is incompatible with "going" by definition).
Determinate vs. Indeterminate: 決定／不決定 (a technical pair)
For each of the three aspects, the text uses a pair you do not see in everyday discourse: *determined* (決定, i.e., firmly fixed in self-nature) versus *indeterminate* (不決定, i.e., not firmly fixed).
- If the goer is *determined*, then separated from the going there should be a goer—and this is not the case. - If the goer is *indeterminate* (genuinely nonexistent in itself), then it is merely named by virtue of going—and it cannot serve as the basis of the three goings.
The same double-refutation is run on *the going*. The point of using "determinate / indeterminate" rather than the simpler "existence / non-existence" is that the chapter wants to rule out *both* a hard metaphysical affirmation and a hard metaphysical denial at the same stroke.
The Final Conclusion
去法、去者、所去處，是法皆相因待……不得言定有、不得言定無，是故決定知，三法虛妄，空無所有，但有假名，如幻如化。
*The going, the goer, the destination—all three are mutually dependent on one another… one cannot say they are determinately existent, nor determinately non-existent; therefore it is decisively known that these three are empty, with no self-nature, having only conventional designations—like an illusion, like a magical transformation.*
This is the most-cited conclusion of the chapter and it is *not* a denial. "Empty of self-nature" (空無所有) is precisely what allows the conventional name (假名) and the magical-illusion analogy (如幻如化) to do their work. To say motion is "like an illusion" is not to say motion is unreal; it is to say it appears, functions, and yet is not the kind of thing that can be pinned down as a self-existing entity.
The Wider Scope: 往來 (Coming and Going)
The chapter also extends the analysis from *abstract motion* to *sentient beings and conditioned phenomena* under the term 往來 (*coming and going*, the verb-pair applied to beings and *saṃskāras* rather than to abstract motion). Three further moves appear:
諸行往來者，常不應往來，無常亦不應，眾生亦復然。
*For conditioned phenomena that come and go: if permanent, they should not come and go; if impermanent, they should not come and go; and the same is true of sentient beings.*
若眾生往來，陰界諸入中，五種求盡無，誰有往來者。
*If sentient beings come and go, in the skandhas, dhātus, and āyatanas, the five-fold search finds nothing—who, then, is the one who comes and goes?*
若從身至身，往來即無身；若其無有身，則無有往來。
*If from body to body, then coming-and-going means no body; if there is no body, there is no coming-and-going.*
A note on terminology: the chapter uses 陰界入 (skandhas, dhātus, āyatanas)—not the more familiar "五蘊 / 五陰"—as the field over which the *five-fold search* (五種求) is run. And the agent of coming-and-going is identified with 身 (body) rather than with "self" (我). These are not random choices: the analysis is meant to dismantle even the most bodily, most biological-seeming substrate of identity.
Why the Chapter Has Outsized Importance
The *three-time frame* (已去 / 未去 / 去時) is not unique to this chapter. It is the chapter's export model. The *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* itself recycles it elsewhere:
- The *chapter on arising* (〈生品〉) compresses its argument with "生非生已生……去來中已答" ("arising is not arisen, etc.… this has already been answered in the chapter on going and coming"). - The *chapter on burning and fuel* (〈燃可燃品〉) treats the rest of its analysis with "餘如去來說" ("the rest is as in the going-and-coming chapter"). - The *chapter on seeing* (〈見品〉) uses "as already-burnt, not-yet-burnt, and burning-time there is no burning, so in the three times there is no seeing" as a ready-made analogy.
So when you understand 「去來」, you have understood a structural key to the entire *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā*.
A Walk-Through in Contemporary Life
Let us take a single, ordinary motion and walk it through the framework exactly as the chapter does. The classical materials define each term precisely; I will map that precision onto a contemporary scene, and mark where most people *mis*-map it.
Scene: You are on a crowded subway, eyes on your phone, scrolled deep into a feed. Your thumb is moving.
The Three Times of the Thumb
- 已去 (already-gone): the posts you have *already* scrolled past. The "going" of your thumb is no longer there—the motion has departed. - 未去 (not-yet-gone): the posts you *will* scroll to. They have not yet been touched; the motion has not yet arrived. - 去時 (going-time): the present moment you would normally point to and say "this is where the scrolling happens."
Most contemporary readers will instinctively map "going-time" onto "the present moment" and feel the framework is just a poetic version of "be here now." This is the mis-map. The chapter does *not* point you to "the present moment" as the true location of motion. It runs the argument that *even at going-time, going cannot be found*. "Be here now" is precisely the opponent's view (動處則有去……是故去時去), and it is the view the chapter is dismantling.
The Two-Goings Trap in the Feed
Suppose you say, "I am being mindful of this scroll; let me inhabit the going-time." The moment you try to *inhabit* it, you have introduced a *second* going: the going that has a going-time (the scroll itself) and the going inside the going-time (your inhabitation). Now you need *two* scrollers—one scroll that is happening, one scroll that you are attending to. But you only have one thumb, one attention, one feed. The doubling is not real, and the doubling exposes the original picture as never having been one thing in the first place.
This is why "just be present" sometimes produces a kind of *anxious intensification* rather than ease: you have doubled the event in trying to locate it.
The Three Aspects in the Same Moment
- 去法 (the going): the action of the thumb, the flicking motion. - 去者 (the goer): the "I" who is scrolling. - 所去處 (the destination): the next post, the bottom of the feed, the place where this motion is supposedly aimed.
Now the agent-action dilemma. Are you *identical* to the scrolling? Then there is no "you" who could stop scrolling or pick it back up—you just *are* the scroll, which is absurd. Are you *different* from it? Then there should be a you that exists without the scroll, who could be observed apart from the motion. Try, right now, to find that you. The chapter says: you cannot, and the *finding* is what reveals the mutual dependence.
The Determinate / Indeterminate Pair on "Me, the Scroller"
- If determinate (you are a fixed, substantial scroller): then separated from this scroll there should be a scroller. Close the app. Where is the scroller now? Still there, you might say, just not scrolling. But then the scroller cannot be defined *by* scrolling, so what defines it? The text pushes: a scroller *separated from any particular scroll* is not the scroller you are talking about. - If indeterminate (there is no real scroller, just a name attached to the scroll): then the name "scroller" cannot anchor any of the three goings—there is no stable subject across the past-scrolled, the future-scrolled, and the now-scrolled.
You do not have to resolve this. The chapter's move is to *hold both ends*—neither to commit to a substantial self behind the thumb, nor to deny the conventional usefulness of saying "I scrolled."
Coming and Going in the Commute Itself
Now zoom out from the thumb to the subway as 往來.
- The destination (所去處) is the office. - The conditioned phenomena (諸行): the train's motion, the passengers' shuffling, the doors opening. - The body (身) as the substrate: the train, your body, the doors.
The verse 「若從身至身，往來即無身；若其無有身，則無有往來」 plays here: if coming-and-going goes *from body to body* (from the platform you left, to the platform you are arriving at), then coming-and-going *dissolves the bodies it depends on*. The "from platform" is already gone before you arrive; the "to platform" is not yet arrived while you are leaving. There is no body that is stably the "body that is coming-and-going"—only a stream of momentary bodies, each past or future relative to the supposed motion.
The same goes for *you*, the commuter. Five-fold search across the five aggregates (skandhas), the eighteen elements (dhātus), the twelve sense-fields (āyatanas)—form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness; eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind and their objects; etc.—does not yield a stable commuter that is the agent of this daily going-and-coming. The chapter does not say "you are not commuting." It says: when you look carefully, the *commuter-who-commutes* cannot be pinned down as a self-standing thing.
Where Most People Mis-Map
- Mis-map 1: "Just be present." Reads "去時" as the present moment and stops. Misses that the chapter *dismantles* the present moment as a stable container of motion. - Mis-map 2: "Motion is an illusion, so don't move." Reads "如幻如化" as "fake" and infers quietism. Misses that the conclusion is *neither existence nor non-existence*; motion happens, and is empty of self-nature. - Mis-map 3: "This is physics." Reads "no going at going-time" as a quantum-mechanics or relativity claim about the unreality of time. The chapter is making a *philosophical* claim about *graspable self-nature*, not a physical claim about spacetime. - Mis-map 4: "This is neuroscience." Reads it as "your brain constructs the present." The chapter's three-time frame is *not* a perceptual-construction argument; it is a conceptual analysis of *motion itself*. - Mis-map 5: "I am the doer, I just need to let go." Fails to see that the chapter does not leave a thin "doer" behind. Even the "letting go" is itself an act—and it will be subject to the same three-time analysis.
Why Contemporary People Need This
We live inside an era saturated with *going*. Information goes from server to screen, capital goes from market to market, jobs go from one city to another, attention goes from tab to tab, relationships go from "are we okay?" to "are we still together?" to "are we done?", and on and on. Two contemporary pressures make 「去來」 particularly sharp.
1. The metaphysics of motion under capitalism.
Modern life runs on a deep, unspoken metaphysics: there is *a mover* (the entrepreneur, the self-improver, the hustler, the algorithm, the agent), there is *the motion* (the work, the deal, the scroll), and there is *the destination* (the raise, the exit, the engagement, the next milestone). The three are treated as substantial, separable, and real. 「去來」 says all three are mutually dependent, empty of self-nature, conventionally named. This is not a counsel of passivity. It is a *deeper realism* about the structure of motion that lets you stop loading metaphysical weight onto yourself every time you move.
2. The fetish of the present moment.
Mindfulness culture, productivity culture, and self-optimization culture have converged on the same instruction: *dwell at going-time*. The chapter's argument with this is one of the most rigorous in Buddhist philosophy. "Going-time" cannot be the location of motion because it *requires the motion to be findable as a self-standing event within it*, which doubles the motion. This is why "presence" practices can subtly *increase* the sense of self even as they promise to dissolve it. 「去來」 offers a different angle: not "be here now," but *see through the very idea that "here now" can hold what is happening*.
3. Identity as commuter.
Many people today experience themselves as a series of roles, jobs, relationships, identities—a commuter on a perpetually moving train. The chapter's 「往來」 analysis directly addresses this: there is no stable commuter-being underneath the commuting. This is not nihilism; it is *relief from the metaphysical weight of having to be a fixed self across all the going-and-coming*.
4. Attention as motion.
Contemporary attention science treats attention as a scarce resource that *moves* from object to object. The chapter's framework invites a deeper question: is there *an attender* who owns the attention, distinct from the attending? The agent-action dilemma applies cleanly here. The answer is not "you are your attention," nor "attention is just mechanism." It is the mutual-dependence diagnosis.
5. As a tool for not-being-trapped-by-frames.
Whenever you find yourself in a binary—"am I moving or staying?", "am I the doer or the done-to?", "is this real or is this an illusion?"—the chapter gives you the discipline of *doubling the binary* and watching it collapse. This is a transferable skill: a structured way of undoing metaphysical certainty without sliding into its opposite.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
"The chapter says motion does not exist."
Clarification. The chapter says motion is *empty of self-nature*—it cannot be pinned down as a self-existing event within any of its three times, nor can the goer be pinned down as a self-existing agent, nor the destination as a self-existing place. The closing line is "but there is conventional designation" (但有假名), which is *not* the same as saying motion is unreal. 「如幻如化」 ("like an illusion, like a magical transformation") is the analogy: a magician's illusion *appears*, *functions*, and *cannot be grasped as a self-standing entity*. It is not "nothing." This is a foundational distinction in Mūlamadhyamaka that beginners consistently flatten.
"The chapter is a logical trick."
Clarification. The arguments *are* logical, but their function is not to win a debate. They are *therapeutic*—they dismantle the conceptual glue that holds the picture of "self-existing motion" in place. The framework of "determinate / indeterminate" is designed precisely to break the assumption that existence and non-existence are the only two options. Treating the arguments as mere logic-chops misses the existential work the chapter is doing.
"This is just 'be here now.'"
Clarification. 「去時」 is *not* the present moment as the goal of practice. 「去時」 is the very thing the chapter dismantles. The opponent in the chapter *is* the "be here now" advocate. The chapter takes their view seriously, runs the two-goings argument, and shows that "the present" cannot be the location of motion without doubling itself. The contemporary application is *not* "inhabit the present"; it is *see through the metaphysics that makes "inhabiting the present" feel like a coherent instruction*.
"This is physics or neuroscience."
Clarification. You can use contemporary science as *analogy*—the difficulty of locating a stable "now" in relativity, the way the brain constructs temporal continuity, the way an algorithmic recommender dissolves the "you" who chooses. But the chapter is *not* making a physical or neuroscientific claim. It is making a claim about *self-nature* (自性 / svabhāva), which is a different conceptual register. Science can be conversationally illuminating; it cannot be claimed as proof. Conversely, the chapter does not need science's confirmation to do its work.
"This means 'there is no self' in a hard-atheist sense."
Clarification. 「往來」 dismantles the *commuter-self*, the *scroller-self*, the *agent-self*—but it does not leave a metaphysical void. It leaves *conventional designation* (假名) operating exactly as it always did. You can still say "I scrolled," "I arrived," "the train came." What you cannot do is *substantialize* any of those designations into a self-existing entity. This is a different move from flat denial.
"The three times are just past, present, future."
Clarification. The three times here are *three slices of a single motion*, not three metaphysical zones of the universe. 已去, 未去, 去時 are not "the past in general," "the future in general," and "the present in general." They are the past-going of *this going*, the future-going of *this going*, and the supposed present-going of *this going*. Keeping this in mind prevents you from reading the chapter as a metaphysics of time; it is a metaphysics of *motion*.
"The chapter is too abstract to matter."
Clarification. Try running it once on a commute, once on a relationship transition, once on a decision at work. The framework reliably dismantles the metaphysical certainty that you had a substantial self behind the motion. That dismantling is not a thought-experiment; it is *experienced*. This is why the chapter is one of the most frequently returned-to chapters in Madhyamaka literature across Asia, including Zen (where 「去來」 and 「往來」 show up in *kōan* literature, e.g. Mazu's "ordinary mind is the Tao" tradition of "walking is Zen, sitting is Zen") and Tibetan dialectics.
Where to Land
If you take only one thing from 「去來」, take the structure rather than any single argument. The structure is:
1. Pick a motion you believe is real. 2. Slice it into three times (already-gone, not-yet-gone, going-time). 3. Show that motion is not findable in any slice. 4. Show that the goer is not findable apart from the motion, and vice versa. 5. Run the determined/indeterminate double-refusal. 6. Conclude: empty of self-nature, conventional designation, like an illusion. 7. Extend to 往來—the coming-and-going of beings and conditioned phenomena—and dissolve the agent by five-fold search. 8. Carry the structure to other concepts (arising, burning, seeing) without re-proving it.
This is a *method* that survives any particular topic. You can run it on "leaving a relationship," "scrolling a feed," "switching jobs," "growing old," "dying." Each time, the metaphysical assumption that there is a self-existing mover moving toward a self-existing destination dissolves—and what remains is motion that happens, a goer that is named, a destination that is named, all of it like an illusion, like a magical transformation, none of it graspable as a self-standing thing.
This is what Nāgārjuna's chapter on 「去來」 is for. It is not a denial of motion. It is the most careful seeing-through of motion ever written in classical Buddhist philosophy.