- Buddha-Nature
- Compassion
- Defining Bodhicitta
- Emptiness
- Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
- Equanimity
- History of Bodhicitta Teachings
- How to Develop Bodhicitta
- Interdependent Origination
- Lineage of the Profound View
- Lineage of the Vast Conduct
- Mahāyāna
- Mind Training
- Non-Self
- Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
- The Bodhisattva Ideal
- The Bodhisattva Path
- The Bodhisattva Vow
- The Bodhisattva's Goal
- The Four Immeasurables
- The Six Perfections
- The Three Higher Trainings
- The Two Accumulations
- The Two Truths
- Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
- Types of Bodhicitta
Emptiness in Tibetan Buddhism refers to the absence of inherent, independent existence in all phenomena. Nothing exists by itself or has a fixed, unchanging essence. Everything arises through interdependence and relationships with other causes and conditions. This doesn't mean things don't exist, but that they lack absolute, separate reality.
Emptiness, known in Sanskrit as śūnyatā (Pāli: suññatā), stands as one of the most profound and misunderstood concepts in Buddhist philosophy. It is a unique doctrine that separates Buddhism from many other religious traditions.
Emptiness represents the culmination of the Buddha's insight into the nature of reality. Far from nihilism or negativity, emptiness reveals the dynamic, interconnected, and dependently originated nature of all phenomena. By understanding that nothing possesses independent, inherent existence, we free ourselves from the grasping and ignorance that perpetuate suffering.
This concept emerged as a central teaching in early Buddhism and reached its fullest philosophical expression in the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly through the work of the philosopher Nāgārjuna in the second century CE.
In the cultural and religious environment of the Indian spiritual traditions prior to the coming of the Buddha, the belief in some kind of permanent, unchanging, independent ātman soul was very widespread and prominent. This enduring entity was said to transmigrate from lifetime to lifetime and is often described as a witness. There are some similarities between this view of an ātman soul and the soul as presented in the non-Indian theistic religions.
The Buddha presented the nature of the self as śūnyatā, a self that is completely empty of this kind of ātman soul. The emptiness of a person, the ultimate nature of the self, stands in direct contradiction to that kind of an independent and unchanging soul.
Many people on hearing the word emptiness tend to think of it as complete nothingness or a complete vacuity, a lack of anything at all. But far from being a doctrine of nihilism or meaning mere nothingness, emptiness points to the absence of any inherent, independent existence of the self.
It is important to understand that emptiness was not taught as some mere intellectual exercise. Rather, emptiness was taught as a transformative insight that liberates one from all suffering. This is because realization of this ultimate nature of the way things really are acts as the direct antidote to the fundamental ignorance that Buddhism identifies as the driving force for the whole process of unenlightened existence—that is, the notion that we and phenomena are permanent and independently existing entities.
As the later Madhyamaka philosopher Candrakīrti explained, emptiness is not a transcendent reality separate from ourselves and conventional phenomena but rather the true nature of the self and those very phenomena.
Just to have a conceptual understanding of emptiness is not enough. It must be complemented by direct meditative realization. When a practitioner truly and directly perceives emptiness, they cease to grasp at the self and phenomena as independently existing, thereby eliminating the root of craving and aversion. Therefore, the wisdom of śūnyatā is crucial if we are to stand any chance of liberation from samsara.
Emptiness and Compassion
Understanding emptiness does not negate the meaning of cultivating positive states of mind such as compassion. In fact, the understanding of this deeper reality informs our compassion. If all persons are equally empty of inherent existence, then the basis for selfish grasping disappears, and the artificial barriers between self and others dissolve.
This connection between emptiness and compassion becomes explicit in the Mahāyāna bodhisattva ideal, where wisdom realizing emptiness and compassion for all beings function as inseparable wings of enlightenment.
Development of the Concept of Emptiness
Although there are mentions of śūnyatā in the earlier non-Buddhist Indian traditions, such as the Jain school, this concept is developed in a much more sophisticated way in the Buddhist tradition.
The doctrine of emptiness has developed through several distinct phases in Buddhist thought. Over time, many different philosophical schools, often referred to as tenet systems (siddhānta), developed within Buddhism in an effort to explain the exact philosophical meaning of emptiness.
Śūnyatā in the Pāli Tradition
The concept of śūnyatā, or "emptiness," is connected to the concept of "no-self" (in Pāli, anatta, or in Sanskrit, anātman) in early Buddhism. In this early Buddhist tradition, the emphasis fell primarily on the emptiness of the self or person (pudgalaśūnyatā).
There are several references to emptiness in the early canon of the Pāli suttas. In the Khuddakanikāya, the Buddha highlights the importance of emptiness, stating that beings trapped in the cycle of samsara can go beyond death if they are able to realize the truth of emptiness:
- I've come with a desire for a question:
- One who regards the world in what way
- isn't seen by Death's King?
The Buddha:
- Always mindful, Mogharāja,
- regard the world as
- empty,
- having removed any view
- in terms of self.
- This way
- one is above & beyond death.
- One who regards the world
- in this way
- isn't seen by Death's King.[1]
In the Suññasutta (SN 35:85) the Buddha is asked by Venerable Ānanda about the meaning of this phrase "the world is empty." The Buddha replies by saying that the "world being empty" means to be empty of self:
Then Ven. Ānanda went to the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, "It is said that 'the world is empty, the world is empty,' lord. In what respect is it said that 'the world is empty?'"
"Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that 'the world is empty.' And what is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self? The eye is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Forms . . . Eye-consciousness . . . Eye-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on eye-contact—experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain—that too is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. "The ear is empty. . . . "The nose is empty. . . . "The tongue is empty. . . . "The body is empty. . . . "The intellect is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Ideas . . . Intellect-consciousness . . . Intellect-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on intellect-contact—experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain—that too is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. "Thus it is said that 'the world is empty.'"[2]
Here, the Buddha states that being empty means to be empty of self, or even anything connected with self. Even the experience of pain, pleasure, or neutral feelings that arise in dependence on such things as the sense of sight, smell, or touch—all of these are empty of self.
The Meaning of Emptiness in Mahāyāna Buddhism
Following these early references from the historical Buddha, the concept of emptiness was further developed by the Abhidharma schools and then further by Nāgārjuna and the early Mahāyāna school of Madhyamaka.
With the emergence of Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly through the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) sūtras and texts, the concept of emptiness expanded dramatically. The scope of śūnyatā extended beyond the individual person to include the emptiness of all phenomena (dharmaśūnyatā).
The famous lines from the Heart Sūtra declare "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form," indicating that emptiness and conventional appearance are not separate realities but two aspects of the same truth. This expansion proved revolutionary, as it meant that not just the person, but even the fundamental constituents of reality as presented in early Buddhist philosophy—the dharmas or phenomena—lack inherent existence.
The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism explains the meaning of emptiness particularly in terms of this Mahāyāna tradition:
In its developed usage in the Madhyamaka school, as set forth by Nāgārjuna and his commentators, emptiness becomes an application of the classical doctrine of no-self (anātman) beyond the person (pudgala) and the skandhas to subsume all phenomena (dharma) in the universe. Emptiness is the lack or absence of intrinsic nature (svabhāva) in any and all phenomena, the final nature of all things (dharmatā), and the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). Despite its various interpretations among the various Madhyamaka authors, emptiness is clearly neither nothingness nor the absence of existence, but rather the absence of a falsely imagined type of existence, identified as svabhāva. Because all phenomena are dependently arisen, they lack, or are empty of, an intrinsic nature characterized by independence and autonomy. Nāgārjuna thus equates śūnyatā and the notion of conditionality (pratītyasamutpāda).[3]
In this Madhyamaka tradition, emptiness refers to the absence of svabhāva, a Sanskrit term meaning "own-nature" or "inherent existence." To say that phenomena are empty is to recognize that they do not exist independently, intrinsically, or essentially. Rather, all things exist only in dependence upon other things—causes, conditions, parts, and the conceptual labels we apply to them.
Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way) represents one of the most philosophically sophisticated articulations of emptiness. Through rigorous logical analysis, Nāgārjuna demonstrated that all conceptual positions regarding the ultimate nature of reality dissolve under analysis. His famous tetralemma systematically refutes all possible positions of existence in any absolute sense: things neither exist, nor do not exist, nor both exist and not exist, nor neither exist nor not exist. He is keen to point out that this does not lead to nihilism but presents a view that charts its way between eternalism (the belief in permanent existence) and nihilism (the belief in absolute nothingness). Nāgārjuna even goes so far as to analyze emptiness itself and finds even that to ultimately be empty of any intrinsic existence.
Notes
- ↑ Khuddakanikāya, Sutta Nipāta, The To-the-Far-Shore Chapter (Pārāyana Vagga) 5:15: Mogharāja's Question, Dhammatalks.org, https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/StNp/StNp5_15.html.
- ↑ Saṁyuttanikāya 35:85, Suññasutta, Dhammatalks.org, https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN35_85.html.
- ↑ Robert E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez Jr., eds., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 872.
