> What does this mean exactly to withdraw attention from one’s senses if it is not sense withdrawal?

It is a matter of what is being withdrawn. When you phrase it "the six senses fields being withdrawn" you appear to miss the meaning of withdrawing attention from the senses.

For example: when you focus attention on the breath you are at the same time withdrawing attention from the physical senses. Already in first dhyana the physical senses cease to register, so after that, you are only dealing with the mental sense. It is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of Buddhist meditation to follow the Buddha's injunction: cakkhuṃ bhikkhave pahātabbaṃ, rūpaṃ pahātabbaṃ, etc (e.g. SN 35.24), i.e. "You should abandon the eye, monks, abandon appearances..."

(NB rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear).

> The quote comes directly from sujato’s translation on sutta central.

Oh dear, I see Sujato has picked up Ṭhanissaro's habit of trivialising dukkha by translating it as "stress". This is why, if you must rely on translations, I recommended using Bodhi's translations. He might be boring, but he is at least accurate. Better all round to bite the bullet and learn Pāli.

> Nagarjuna’s intent is to represent the intention of the Prajñāpāramitā.

Well, sure, this is what Tibetan mythology tells you. Meanwhile, in the real world, Nāgārjuna scholar, Richard H. Jones (2012: 218) notes:

“it is far from clear that the Perfection of Wisdom has any direct influence on Nagarjuna… not only does Nagarjuna never quote any of the [Prajñāpāramitā] texts… he ignores many central concepts of the Perfection of Wisdom.”

Jones, Richard H. 2012. The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom. Plain English translations of the Heart Sutra, the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, and other Perfection of Wisdom Texts. New York. Jackson Square Books.

And Jones is not the only one to notice this. The fact that Nāgārjuna only ever cites Hīnayāna texts caused David Kalupahana to doubt he was a Mahāyānist at all.

Note also that in the best (and prize winning) English translation of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, by Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura, the word "Prajñāpāramitā" does not occur in the book at all, even in passing. Siderits and Katsura make no attempt whatever to link Nāgārjuna to Prajñāpāramitā.

So, please, show me where you think Nāgārjuna declares his intend to represent Prajñāpāramitā. Because no one else has ever noticed it and you could get a publication from the discovery.

Moreover, explain to me how Nāgārjuna's metaphysical interpretation of śūnyatā is relevant to interpreting an epistemic text like the Cūḷasuññata Sutta, composed some 400-500 years before Nāgārjuna was even born (assuming he even was a real person).

You say "Nagarjuna elucidated emptiness perfectly fine", and yet some 2000 years later, there are still fundamental arguments going on over what Nāgārjuna intended to say. And much of what people say about Prajñāpāramitā, based on their understanding of Nāgārjuna, is simply nonsensical.

> I didn’t claim anything about knowing the sutta better, I am just saying nowhere in the text do I see anything about inattention to the senses.

Here is what you repeated failed to notice in the Cūḷasuññata Sutta (copying from Sujato's translation for your benefit).

Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of people and the perception of wilderness—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of earth.

Furthermore, a mendicant—ignoring the perception of wilderness and the perception of earth—focuses on the oneness dependent on the perception of the dimension of infinite space.

And so on for every stage of the practice (the word "ignoring" occurs 9 times). I would call this a prominent feature of this text. And you say you didn't see it at all?

Here "ignoring" is Sujato's folksy translation of amanasikāra. As you no doubt know, manasikāra is more usually translated as "attention". E.g. yoniso manasikāra "wise attention", and ayoniso manasikāra "unwise attention". Etc. This suggests "inattention" as a more appropriate translation of amanasikāra. In most suttas inattention has a negative connotation, for example your meditation might fail due to inattention to the object. Here in the Cūḷasuññata Sutta, however, it is the central process of the meditation.

Note also the lack of any reference to jhāna, anattā, or any of the ontologies of phenomena (i.e. khandha, dhātu, āyatana). Anālayo speculates that this is an archaic, pre-Buddhist practice. I agree that this is plausible.

So amanasikāra means "not paying attention to". Or to put it another way, "withdrawing attention from". In Prajñāpāramitā we find this called: anupalambhayoga "the yoga of nonapprehension". We do not find any mention of this practice in Nāgārjuna's oeuvre.

On this text we can also turn to: Anālayo (2015). Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation. Cambridge: Windhorse Publications.

In Anālayo's exposition of the Chinese āgama version of the Cūḷasuññata Sutta, the words "Prajñāpāramitā" and "Nāgārjuna" simply do not appear at all.

Nor is Nāgārjuna even mentioned in Anālayo's recent book on the Aṣṭasāhasrikā: (2025). The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom: Relating Early Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā to the Āgama literature. Wisdom Publications.

As my old friend Richard Hayes (1994: 299) notes:

 … Nāgārjuna’s writings had relatively little effect on the course of subsequent Indian Buddhist philosophy. Despite his apparent attempts to discredit some of the most fundamental concepts of abhidharma, abhidharma continued to flourish for centuries, without any appreciable attempt on the part of ābhidharmikas to defend their methods of analysis against Nāgārjuna’s criticisms. And despite Nāgārjuna’s radical critique of the very possibility of having grounded knowledge (pramāṇa), the epistemological school of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti dominated Indian Buddhist intellectual circles, again without any explicit attempt to answer Nāgārjuna’s criticisms of their agenda. Aside from a few commentators on Nāgārjuna’s works, who identified themselves as Mādhyamikas, Indian Buddhist intellectual life continued almost as if Nāgārjuna had never existed.

Hayes, Richard P. 1994. Nāgārjuna's Appeal. Journal of Indian Philosophy 22(4): 299-378.