You must consult the translation in your Burtt anthology as well as the two translations given on this website. I have also placed photocopies of Garfield's commentary on reserve in the philosophy department for you to copy.
Group Assignments:
Group #1: Do Chap. 1 (Causality/ Conditions): 11-14.
Group #2: Do Chap. 25 (Nirvana): 1-3.
Group #3: Do Chap. 25 (Nirvana): 5-8.
Group #4: Do Chap. 25 (Nirvana): 9-12.
Group #5: Do Chap. 25 (Nirvana): 13-16.
Terms for Understanding Gier and Garfield
Reification. The process of making an abstraction into a thing, or making a dependent thing into a substance.
Convention/Conventional. That which humans have invented in thought and language to communicate the events of the world of interdependent coorigination. These concepts have no referent to anything absolute or fixed, such as Plato's forms. All we have are conventional truths about the world not absolute truths. Even our way of dividing up the world is conventional, i.e., dependent upon concepts and language (e.g., the Eskimo’s many types of snow).
Cause. An event or state that has in it a power to bring about its effect and has that power as a part of its essence or nature.
Condition. An event, state, or process that explains another event, state, or process without any metaphysical commitment to any occult connection between explanandum and explanans.
Explanandum and explanans. The thing explained and the "explainer."
Efficient Condition. The event the explains the subsequent event, such as the striking of a match to make its lighting "occur." Note: Nagarjuna uses a Sanskrit verb translated as "occur" deliberately to avoid the verb "cause."
Percept-Object Condition. The object in one's environment that is the condition for the mind's perception of it. For Buddhist realists this object is independent of the mind, but for Buddhist idealists this object is located in the mind itself. Nagarjuna and perhaps the Buddha himself rejects this division of "inner" from "outer."
Dominant Condition. The purpose or end for which an action is taken. Aristotle would call this a final cause.
Immediate Condition. All the intermediate phenomena that make up any causal chain, e.g., all the physical conditions found in the efficient condition of stiking a match to make it light.
Being (Garfield: inherent existence). With a capital "B" it means Being as substance, self-contained, self-sufficient, independent, eternal, unchanging reality.
being (Garfield: conventional existence; Burtt: relational existence). Relative being, i.e., dependent things that arise out of interdependent coorigination.
Absolute Non-Being (inherent nonexistence). The negation of Being, which would be absolute nothingness. This is the type of non-being that the Greek philosopher Parmenides thought could not be thought. On that point he was absolutelys right.
Relative non-being (conventional nonexistence). The negation of relative being, which according to Plato (Sophist) is eminently thinkable because it is everything that a being is not. For Nagarjuna the Sanskrit word for relative non-being is shunyata.
Tetralemma. A problem with four alternatives rather the typical dilemma with only two.