The most ordinary thing in the world is leaving one place and arriving at another. You do it before you finish this paragraph — you shift in your chair, glance at your phone, stand up to get water. Every conscious day is built out of *going*.
Many centuries ago, in the chapter known as the "Examination of Going and Coming" (觀去來品) of his *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* (《中論》, *Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way*), the Indian philosopher-monk Nāgārjuna (龍樹菩薩) chose this most familiar act as a surgical case. He takes the act of walking from A to B and asks, very patiently, where exactly the "going" is — and where exactly the "goer" is.
His answer, summarized across twenty-seven verses, is: nowhere. Not in the past, not in the future, not in the knife-edge present. Not as one thing with the goer, not as a different thing from the goer. The going cannot be pinned down. And this is not a puzzle, not a trick — it is the doorway to seeing how all of experience is constructed.
Let me walk you through the architecture of this analysis, because each piece has a job, and we will need them all later.
这个概念在说什么
The two-pronged target: 去法 (the going) and 去者 (the goer)
Nāgārjuna's first move is to notice that "going" is never just an event floating in space. Whenever we say "X is going," we are always already implying two things: an action — 去法 (*gamana-dharma*), "the going," the actual moving, leaving, approaching — and a person — 去者 (*gamaka*), "the goer," the one who is doing the going. The going without a goer is just an abstraction; the goer without a going is just sitting still. Real "going" lives in the seam between the two.
This matters because almost every problem in human life is built on the assumption that this seam is solid. *I am a person (a "goer"), and I am doing things (a series of "goings") — to grow, to achieve, to leave, to arrive.* Nāgārjuna is going to ask whether the seam itself is what we think it is.
The three-time dissection: 已去, 未去, 去時
His first scalpel is time. Any "going" must be happening somewhere on the timeline. So he splits it into three: 已去 (*already gone*, the past), 未去 (*not yet gone*, the future), and 去時 (*the moment of going*, the present). Then he examines each:
- 已去時有去嗎 — Is there a going in what has already gone? No — once it has gone, the going is over. The going does not hang around in the past like a photograph. - 未去時有去嗎 — Is there a going in what has not yet gone? No — if it hasn't started, the going doesn't exist yet. The future doesn't contain actions that haven't begun. - 去時有去嗎 — Is there a going in the moment of going? No — because the "moment of going" is itself an unstable, half-gone, half-not-yet-gone sliver. By the time you try to catch it, it's already half-finished.
This is the famous opening verse of the chapter:
「已去無有去，未去亦無去，離已去未去，去時亦無去。」 *In what has already gone there is no going; in what has not yet gone there is no going; apart from the already-gone and the not-yet-gone, in the moment of going also there is no going.* — 《中論·觀去來品》(*Mūlamadhyamakakārikā*, Examination of Going and Coming)
A precise point about vocabulary: 去時 in this chapter is *not* a casual word for "the present." It specifically means that fleeting instant when half of the going is over and half is still ahead — the knife-edge where your foot is lifting but hasn't quite landed. Ordinary Madhyamaka and Abhidharma writing use 去時 more loosely for "the present in general"; Nāgārjuna here is using it surgically.
The opponent: "But surely the moment of going is where the going happens!"
Nāgārjuna is too good a philosopher to ignore the obvious pushback: "You say no going in the past or future — fine. But at the moment of going, there *must* be a going, because the motion is visibly happening right there."
His reply: if you say there is a going-in-the-moment-of-going, you are now saying two things — there is a "moment of going" (the time-slice) *and* there is a "going that happens in that moment" (the action). That's two goings, and the moment-of-going is itself a kind of going, so the moment goes, and the going-in-the-moment also goes. You get a doubling:
「若去時有去，則有二種去：一謂為去時，二謂去時去。」 *If there is a going in the moment of going, then there are two kinds of going: one called the moment-of-going, and one called the going-of-the-moment-of-going.* — 《中論·觀去來品》
Or worse: the moment-of-going would have its own going, completely separate, needing nothing else to push it:
「若言去時去，是人則有咎；離去有去時，去時獨去故。」 *If one says there is a going in the moment of going, that person is in error; for then the moment of going would go apart from a going, the moment of going would go on its own.* — 《中論·觀去來品》
You can see the trap: trying to save the moment-of-going creates a moment-of-going-on-its-own, which is just as elusive.
The goer comes apart: 去者
Now Nāgārjuna turns to the other side of the seam: the goer. We assume there is someone doing the going. But:
- If the goer goes (is performing the going) — then the goer would *be* a going, which makes no sense; the goer would have to be located as already-gone or not-yet-gone or in the moment-of-going, and we've just seen none of those work. - If the goer doesn't go — then how is there any going at all? But this is exactly what we just showed: the going doesn't exist either. - Apart from these two, there is no third goer.
「去者則不去，不去者不去；離去不去者，無第三去者。」 *The goer does not go; the non-goer does not go; apart from the goer and the non-goer, there is no third goer.* — 《中論·觀去來品》
Then comes the identity-and-difference problem (一異, *one-and-other*): Is the goer identical to the going? If yes, then the goer is the going, which means a person is a process — but a person is not a process. Is the goer different from the going? Then the going happens without a goer, which is also absurd.
「去去者是二，若一異法成，二門俱不成，云何當有成？」 *When the going and the goer are two, if identity and difference were established, neither of the two doors succeeds — how could there be any establishment?* — 《中論·觀去來品》
Both ways fail. The goer cannot be found.
The initiation: 發 (setting forth)
We often console ourselves by pointing to a *starting point*: the moment you decided, the moment you set out, the kick-off. Surely *that* is real?
Nāgārjuna's question: where is that initiation?
- 已去中無發 — In what has already gone, there is no initiation. - 未去中無發 — In what has not yet gone, there is no initiation. - 去時中無發 — In the moment of going, there is no initiation.
「已去中無發，未去中無發，去時中無發，何處當有發？」 *In the already-gone, no initiation; in the not-yet-gone, no initiation; in the moment of going, no initiation — where should there be any initiation?* — 《中論·觀去來品》
And:
「未發無去時，亦無有已去……一切無有發，何故而分別？」 *Without initiation there is no moment of going, nor is there any already-gone... there is no initiation whatsoever — why then these distinctions?* — 《中論·觀去來品》
No initiation, no going. No going, no goer. The whole chain collapses at its supposed first link.
The collateral damage: 住, 行, 止
Once "going" is dissected, Nāgārjuna extends the same analysis to three related movements:
- 住 (*sthāna*, staying, abiding) - 行 (*gamana* or cognate, moving, continuing) - 止 (*sthiti/nivṛtti*, stopping, ceasing)
The logic is simple: if "going" has no inherent existence, then staying (which is going that has stopped), moving-continuously (which is going in series), and stopping (which is the cessation of going) all share the same problem. The closing verse seals this:
「去未去無住，去時亦無住，所有行止法，皆同於去義。」 *In going and not-yet-going there is no staying; in the moment of going there is no staying. All the methods of moving and stopping are the same as the meaning of going.* — 《中論·觀去來品》
The chapter's image: 行 (continuous motion) is like a seed sprouting into shoot, leaf, fruit — a chain. 止 (stopping) is like the seed being gone so the shoot-leaf-fruit also is gone. In a chain without a first link, there is no staying; in a chain that has ended, there is no staying either.
The final flourish: no beginning, no escape from samsāra's round
Last, Nāgārjuna turns the analysis outward to its doctrinal use: if coming (來, *āgamana*) and going (去) were inherently real — if there really were a "goer" going from a real "here" to a real "there" — then this coming-and-going would always have been there, and saṃsāra (the round of birth and death) would have no beginning:
「法若定有來，及定有去者，生死則無始，而實無此事。」 *If coming were established and going were established, saṃsāra would have no beginning — but this is not so.* — 《中論·觀去來品》
This is not a historical or cosmological claim. It is a logical one: a self-existing motion is incompatible with a beginningless round, and our world is indeed a beginningless round. So motion cannot be self-existing.
生活里的走查
Let us bring this 1,800-year-old analysis into a single morning.
Walk-through 1: Scrolling your phone
You wake up. The first thing you do, even before brushing teeth, is check your phone. Let us map this act onto the schema of 去.
去法 vs 去者. What is actually happening? Your thumb is doing a motion — a swipe, a tap, a flick. There is a small sequence of muscular contractions, a refresh of the screen, an updating of data. This is 去法 (the going). And there is a sense — "I am scrolling" — of someone behind it. That sense is 去者 (the goer). Nāgārjuna would ask: where exactly is the "I" that is scrolling?
已去. The post you just scrolled past. You have a faint memory of it — maybe a thumbnail in your visual memory. But the *experience* of having scrolled past it is already past. The going is not stored there; the going is over. Already gone, no going. This is one of the easiest places to confuse yourself: we think memory preserves experience. It doesn't — it preserves a trace. The vividness is in the next instant, not in the memory.
未去. The post that's about to load. You can anticipate it, predict its category (a meme, a news update, a friend's photo). But the experience of "going toward it" hasn't started. Not yet gone, no going. This is the trap of anticipation: we spend a lot of mental time in *未去*, rehearsing conversations before they happen, planning meetings, dreading confrontations. The mind builds an entire world in the future tense. Nāgārjuna is showing that even the act of "going toward" an anticipated event has no real existence when we look closely.
去時. The very instant your thumb is on the glass. Half the swipe is past, half is ahead. You are not at the start (otherwise the swipe wouldn't be moving), you are not at the end (otherwise the swipe would be over). You are in a knife-edge that has no width. Try to be there. You can't. The moment of trying-to-be-there is a different moment. The going recedes.
發. "Yes, but the whole scroll began somewhere. I picked up the phone. I tapped the app. There was an initiation." Where is it? In the moment before you picked up the phone (already gone)? In the moment after you'd opened the app (not yet gone)? In the precise moment of picking up (the half-past, half-future)? No initiation is findable in any of these. This is uncomfortable — we want initiations to be real: first dates, first jobs, first cigarettes, first betrayals of self. The mind insists there is a moment when it all began. The analysis says: that moment, when looked at, dissolves.
The doer collapses. So who, exactly, is doing the scrolling? "I am." But if "I" am identical to the scrolling, then "I" am a motion. Are you a motion? You don't feel like one — you feel like someone moving. If "I" am different from the scrolling, then there is "I" and there is "scrolling," two things. But then "I" would have to exist independent of any scrolling, and you'd have to find an "I" when you weren't scrolling. When you put the phone down, is there still an "I"? Yes — but that "I" is doing something else, breathing, thinking, sitting. The "I" and the "scrolling" cannot be pinned down as one thing or as two things.
住, 行, 止. You close the app. Now you're "not scrolling." This is 止. But the analysis applies identically: no past, no future, no knife-edge present; no "stopper." You sit in stillness for a moment. This is 住. But the staying is just a slower kind of going, inheriting all the same problems.
You haven't done anything unusual. You just scrolled. And Nāgārjuna says that this ordinary micro-act contains the entire structure of the round of birth and death: a doer, an action, an initiation, a ceasing — none of which can be found when examined carefully.
Walk-through 2: Leaving a relationship
Take a bigger scene. After two years, you decide to end a relationship. You sit across from your partner. You say the words. You leave.
- 去法: the leaving, the walk to the door, the drive home, the first night alone. - 去者: "I" — the person who is now "leaver," "ex," "single again." - 已去: the years together — already over. Memory preserves traces, not the experience. - 未去: the imagined future — what your ex will do, how you'll feel next Christmas, whether you'll regret it. - 去時: the very moment of saying "I am leaving" — half-decided, half-already-said. - 發: the moment you decided. When was it? A Tuesday in March? An argument last August? It doesn't have a clean starting point. - 住, 行, 止: the years of staying in the relationship, the everyday moving together, the moment it stopped.
The trap here is identifying with 去者 — "I am someone who left." That identity feels very solid. The analysis is not asking you to deny that you left or that you are now in a different state. It's asking whether "the one who left" is the kind of thing that exists in the way you think it does. The "I who left" is built from the action of leaving plus the memory of the action plus the anticipation of a future identity. Without these, is there a leaver? This doesn't make the breakup less real. It makes the identity of "leaver" less of a prison.
Walk-through 3: The meditation cushion
You sit down to meditate. You leave behind your email, your to-do list, your open tabs. This is the most explicit 去 in your day.
- 去法: the act of sitting, the turning toward the breath. - 去者: the meditator, the watcher. - 已去: every thought that has passed. - 未去: every thought that's queued up. - 去時: each breath — a knife-edge between the in-breath just finished and the out-breath just begun. - 發: the very moment of "now I am meditating." Did it begin with the bell? With the posture? With the intention? None of these are findable.
The analysis is most useful here. The meditator is trying to find a stable "watcher" — but the watcher turns out to be one of the things being watched. The act of sitting collapses into the watching collapses into the breath collapses into the meditator. No fixed center.
当代人为什么需要它
Three reasons this analysis is not just historical curiosity.
1. The "goer" trap and the self-improvement industrial complex
A large industry sells you the idea that there is a "real you" (去者) and you need to take this real you on a "journey" (去) — to your authentic self, your higher self, your calling. The implicit metaphysics: you (fixed) + path (fixed) + destination (fixed).
Nāgārjuna quietly dismantles this. The "real you" doing the journey is itself unfindable on examination. The path has no inherent starting point or endpoint. The destination is a construction. This is not depressing — it is liberating. You are not behind on a journey you never started. There is no real you who is "lost."
This is the deep answer to a question many contemporary people have but rarely frame: *Why do I feel like I'm not going anywhere, even though I'm constantly going?* The answer is that the "going somewhere" is a category error. You are not a fixed goer on a fixed path. You are this — whatever this is — moment by moment.
2. Hustle culture and the anxiety of progress
Contemporary life runs on the ideology of motion. Career, productivity, dating apps, fitness, meditation streaks — all are measured as goings. "Where are you going?" is a job-interview question, a small-talk opener, an internal panic.
When "going" is examined and not found, the panic softens. Not because you've given up, but because you've seen through the structure. You can still act. You can still walk to the subway. But you don't need a "real you" arriving at a "real destination." The walking is enough.
There is something to learn here from contemplative traditions: not as a productivity hack, but as a different relationship with motion. When you walk to the train, you're not behind. When you scroll, you're not wasting time. The going has no separate destination to fail to reach.
3. The beginningless problem: why do I feel so old?
Many people carry a sense of "I've been going forever and I'm tired." Nāgārjuna's final move — if coming and going were self-existing, saṃsāra would have no beginning — speaks directly to this. The tiredness is real. But the sense of an eternal goer being worn out by an eternal going is built on a category mistake.
What if there is no goer who is going-since-the-beginning-of-time, only the constant arising-and-cessation of going, here, now? Then the weariness is local, not cosmic. You don't have to be the one who has been walking forever.
A note on contemporary analogies — and their limits. Modern neuroscience increasingly describes the self as a continuously constructed narrative rather than a fixed entity; there is no single "self-spot" in the brain, and the sense of agency is built moment by moment. AI systems, similarly, have no fixed "doer" — but they also don't have a sense of "I am going" the way we do. These are suggestive parallels, not equivalences. The neuroscience of self is still being worked out; AI systems arguably "process" but don't have the felt sense of an agent. Nāgārjuna is doing something more radical than any scientific finding: he is examining the very categories of "doer" and "action" and finding them empty — not as a hypothesis, but as an inference that holds whenever we look. The analogy points in the same direction; the analysis goes further.
常见误读与澄清
Misreading 1: "This is just impermanence"
People often hear "no going can be found" and translate it as "everything changes, nothing lasts." That is the doctrine of impermanence (無常, *anitya*), which is true and important, but is not what Nāgārjuna is doing here. Impermanence says things *change*. Nāgārjuna is going further: the very *thing* that changes has no fixed identity to begin with. Even before time passes, the category of "going" cannot be pinned down. This is emptiness (空, *śūnyatā*), not impermanence.
Misreading 2: "This says nothing moves"
A common misreading, especially from people trained in physics: "Wait, things clearly move. Nāgārjuna is wrong."
The analysis is not denying motion. You do walk to the subway; the train does leave the station; the relationship does end. What's being denied is that motion has an *inherent nature*, a self-existing "going" that can be located in past, present, or future. To say "motion is empty of inherent existence" is not to say "motion doesn't happen." It's to say "motion happens without being grounded in any fixed essence." Most physicists would actually agree: motion is described relationally, not as a self-existing substance.
Misreading 3: "This is about Zeno's paradoxes"
The ancient Greek paradoxes of motion (Achilles and the tortoise, the arrow) are often compared to Nāgārjuna's analysis. They look similar — both examine whether motion can be coherently described — but they are different projects. Zeno wants to show motion is impossible (or incoherent), and then Aristotle or others rescue it. Nāgārjuna is not trying to rescue motion. He is using motion as a tool to see something deeper: that all experiences are empty of inherent existence. The conclusion is not "motion is incoherent" but "the categories we use to talk about motion — goer, going, time, place — are themselves not fixed."
Misreading 4: "去時 just means 'the present moment'"
A subtle but important error. In everyday Madhyamaka usage, 去時 can indeed mean "the present." But in this specific chapter, it has a precise, narrow meaning: the *half-gone, half-not-yet-gone* knife-edge instant. Nāgārjuna is not saying "no going in the present in general." He is saying "no going in this knife-edge moment, which is what the opponent keeps pointing to as the place where going is real." Conflating this with "the present" loses the force of the argument.
Misreading 5: "This is nihilism"
If there is no real goer, no real going, no real coming — is anything left? Yes: the arising-and-cessation of phenomena, moment by moment, dependent on conditions, without inherent essence. This is not nothing. It is the conventional, dependent, ever-changing world we already live in — just seen without the overlay of self-existing entities. Nihilism would say "there's nothing here at all." Madhyamaka says "there's everything here — but it doesn't have the self-existing essence you assumed it had." This is the difference between a desert and a garden without a permanent gardener.
Misreading 6: "If there's no goer, no one is responsible"
This is the practical worry. If I am not a real goer, can I be blamed for leaving? Can I take credit for arriving?
The Madhyamaka answer: responsibility works at the conventional level, just fine. You left, and you can be held responsible for leaving. The analysis doesn't dissolve the conventional facts. It dissolves the metaphysical assumption that there is a real, fixed "you" *behind* the leaving — a self-existing agent who is the ultimate owner of the action. This is not a license for irresponsibility; it is a release from the metaphysical load of "being a real self who did a real thing."
Misreading 7: "This is just a clever trick"
A final, dismissive reading: "Nāgārjuna is just playing word games." This is the easiest reading to make and the hardest to escape from. The reason it's wrong: if you take the analysis seriously and actually try to find the goer in the moment of scrolling, you will find that the findability is genuinely problematic. The analysis is not a verbal sleight of hand. It is a *phenomenology of agency* — a sustained, careful look at what is actually there when we act.
You can confirm this yourself. The next time you get up from your chair, try to catch the moment of "going." Notice that the moment you try to catch, it's gone. Notice that the "you" doing the trying is itself one of the things being examined. You don't have to believe the doctrine. You just have to look.