empty (śūnya). Eckel illustrates the differences in method between Bhavya and Buddhapalita as follows:The first substantive verse of Nagarjuna's MMK says: "Nothing arises from itself, from something else, from both, or from no cause at all." Buddhapalita explains the first part of this verse as follows: "Nothing arises from itself, because its arising would be useless, and because it would lead to an absurd conclusion. There would be no point for things that already exist in their own right to arise again, and, if something arises after it already exists, it would never cease to arise." Bhaviveka reformulates this argument as a positive assertion: "The internal sense media ultimately do not arise from themselves, because they already exist, like consciousness." By making this logical transformation, Bhaviveka takes an argument that reduces the opponent's assertion to an absurd conclusion (prasaṇga) and substitutes an independent (svatantra) inference, with a proper thesis (pratijñā), reason (hetu), and example (dṛṣṭānta).Regarding the fact that Nagarjuna himself states that he does not defend any thesis in his The Avoidance of Refutations (Vigrahavyāvartanī), Bhavya makes use of the doctrine of two truths to defend his method. Though he agrees that ultimately there can be no thesis, it is still possible to use words in a conventional manner to convince others through reasoning as a "skillful means" (upāya). Eckel notes that his defense of positive syllogisms may have been motivated by its importance in the sixth century Indian circles of formal debate. In these circles, the practice of merely attacking the views of one's opponent without defending a thesis of one's own (which was called vitaṇḍā) was seen as bad form and not well respected. The Importance of Reasoning Regarding the importance and use of reason on the Buddhist path, Bhāviveka agrees with some of his Buddhist opponents that reasoning cannot know true reality. However, according to Bhāviveka, reason (tarka) does have a role in the Buddhist path and that is the removal of wrong and confused views about reality which block one's spiritual progress. Bhāviveka affirms that "Buddhas use faultless inference in a way that is consistent with tradition to completely reject many different concepts of imagined things" and "inference rules out the opposite of knowledge." For Bhāviveka, it is after reasoned inference has cleared away all the confusing wrong views (kudṛṣṭi) and conflicting doctrines (vāda) that a person is able to "see all objects of knowledge just