truth”—like everything else—are related but distinct, the
systematic formulation of how they were to be defined and
related became a focus of much subsequent discussion and
writing throughout the millennia. Within the Ma ̄dhyamika
school and between various schools or lineages of teaching
in India, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan, there were various
understandings of the two levels of truth and the meaning
of emptiness in the context of realizing the highest truth.
Within Ma ̄dhyamika, the subschool called Pra ̄san ̇ gika (from
prasan ̇ga, a logical method of “necessary consequence”)
stressed the distorting character of all concepts and logic. Its
adherents applied their rigorous “consequential dialectic” to
all concepts that purported to express the highest truth, in
order to dislodge any pretense of language to do so. Language
and logic are, nevertheless, important tools to show the self-
contradictory and distortional character of conceptual for-
mulation. In his Prasannapada ̄ (Clearly worded commen-
tary), on Na ̄ga ̄rjuna’s Mu ̄lamadhyamakaka ̄rika ̄s, Candrak ̄ırti
advocates this position, emphasizing that the awareness of
emptiness is the destruction of all views or formulations.
Even the negation of self-existent reality (svabha ̄va) is not a
positive cognition of anything. In his commentary,
Candrak ̄ırti argues against Bha ̄vaviveka, an important
spokesperson for the other Ma ̄dhyamika subschool, the
Sva ̄tantrikas (“Independents”). The Sva ̄tantrikas held that
language and logic cannot express the most profound aspects
of the highest truth but that some assertions express the truth
of emptiness more accurately than others. Further, the accu-
rate statements are amenable to verification within conven-
tional rules of logical justification. This discussion continued
outside India, especially in the development of Tibetan Bud-
dhist lineages. For example, the Pra ̄san ̇ gika position was
elaborated by the Sa skya and later by the Rnying ma pa
commentators, while the Sva ̄tantrika position was advocated
by the Dge lugs pa lineage, including the great master Tsong
kha pa (1357–1419 CE). The Tibetan monasteries developed
their own lineages by drawing on ideas and interpretations
from various earlier schools. They attempted to synthesize
the teachings from different sources and thus develop a more
complete view, while the Pra ̄san ̇ gika view is said to be the
basis for knowing emptiness and is found in all four divisions
of the tantras (“deep meaning texts”).
THE YOGA ̄CA ̄RA SCHOOL. The ideas of the other major Indi-
an school of Maha ̄ya ̄na Buddhism, the Yoga ̄ca ̄ra, were sys-
tematically formulated during the fourth century CE by the
two monks Asan ̇ ga and Vasubandhu. Like the
Ma ̄dhyamikas, the Yoga ̄ca ̄ras also recognize that all phenom-
ena are empty (i.e., conditioned, without selfsubsisting reali-
ty). However, they insist that the “courser in wisdom” should
positively affirm the ultimate reality of consciousness. It is
consciousness that is empty and that knows in an empty or
delusive manner. All living beings, Asan ̇ ga claims in his
Madhya ̄nta-vibhaga (Distinguishing between the middle and
extremes), have the capacity to pervasively construct “that
which is not there” (abhu ̄ta-parikalpa). This capacity artifi-
cially divides the interdependent world into many dualities,
for example, subject and object, being and nonbeing. The
elimination of dualistic fabrication is true emptiness. Con-
sciousness, in Yoga ̄ca ̄ra reflection, is the comprehensive reali-
ty and is composed of three kinds of reality: completely fic-
tive or illusory (parikalpita-svabha ̄va), dependent or
conditioned (paratantra-svabha ̄va), and truly real or nondual
(parinis:panna-svabha ̄va). Through the practice of the Bodhi-
sattva Path the illusory reality is recognized for what it is:
nonexistent. This recognition purifies the conditioned exis-
tence, which itself is not a real object but a modality of con-
sciousness. When this is realized, the nonduality (or empti-
ness) of all things is manifest and exists as the ultimate reality
(parama ̄rtha sat). Whereas the Ma ̄dhyamikas stress that both
the conditioned forms and the unconditioned reality are
empty, the Yoga ̄ca ̄ras emphasize that the true reality is nei-
ther empty nor nonempty.
Another aspect of the Yoga ̄ca ̄ra emphasis on conscious-
ness, found in several Indian discourses that contributed to
the Maha ̄ya ̄na understanding of ultimate reality, was the no-
tion of the “matrix of enlightened reality” (tatha ̄gata-garbha).
Vasubandhu had described the basis of multiple kinds of
consciousness as a “store consciousness” (alaya-vijñana).
This store consciousness contains both pure and impure
“seeds” (b ̄ıjas) that influence subsequent consciousness. Sim-
ilarly, the tatha ̄gata-garbha is the womb, or matrix, from
which pure consciousness in the manifested world arises.
Such a Maha ̄ya ̄na text as the Sr ̄ıma ̄la ̄dev ̄ı-sim:hana ̄da Su ̄tra
(The lion’s roar of Queen Srimala) equates the tatha ̄gata-
garbha with emptiness. Here “emptiness” means both “being
devoid of impurities” and the natural “power of enlighten-
ment” to produce nonattached consciousness in worldly
forms. The ultimate nature of the tatha ̄gata-garbha is perfect
purity. It is manifested in forms as well as being the formless
reality. However, enlightened reality—also called “the Bud-
dha nature”—is said to be nonempty in respect to the virtues
of Buddhahood, which are manifested in the phenomenal
world. Insofar as there is a strong emphasis on enlightened
reality, which is manifest in particular concrete forms, the
tatha ̄gata-garbha is said to be neither simply empty nor sim-
ply nonempty. In India during the second half of the first
millennium CE, in China beginning in the fifth century CE,
and in the development of the Tibetan lineages, Buddhist
scholars developed several formulations of the relation be-
tween the conditioned and the unconditioned realities, be-
tween the pure and the impure conditioning influences, and
between emptiness and conditional form.
EMPTINESS IN CHINESE AND JAPANESE SCHOOLS. In China
the Ma ̄dhyamika school maintained a teaching lineage for
several centuries from the fifth century CE on as the Sanlun
(“three [middle way] treatises”) school. The teachings of the
Ma ̄dhyamika were studied in Japan from the seventh century
CE on but without a separate community following a lineage
succession. The Yoga ̄ca ̄ra doctrine was transmitted to China
through the translation of texts and a lineage of teachers that
became known as the Faxiang (“characteristics of dharma”)
school. This school was transmitted to Japan during the sev-8858 S ́U ̄NYAM AND S ́U ̄NYATA ̄