eight negations ［八不］ ( happu): Also, middle path of the eight negations. Eight expressions of negation that appear in the opening of Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Middle Way: “Neither birth nor extinction, neither cessation nor permanence, neither uniformity nor diversity, neither coming nor going.” The teaching of the eight negations is intended to demonstrate that the true nature of phenomena can be defined neither as existence nor nonexistence, nor, for that matter, as any other fixed concept that one might choose to impose upon it. Rather, the nature of phenomena is non-substantiality, the Middle Way that transcends all dualities.