holding a view of emptiness, of nonexistence rather than exis-
tence, of “it is not” rather than “it is.” Rather, one should
avoid clinging to ideas or apprehensions that divide one’s ex-
perience into “is” and “is not,” “being” and “nonbeing,” or
“if not this, then that.” The path to enlightenment, ex-
pounded by the “teachers of emptiness” in the Praj-
ña ̄pa ̄ramita ̄ Su ̄ tras, absorbed the earlier Buddhist recognition
that the self and objects of perception are empty of self-
existence. The “teachers of emptiness” extended the aware-
ness of the empty nature to everything. Thus the dharmas
(causal factors of existence), the Buddha’s teaching, the path
to liberation, the beings who seek liberation, liberation, and
“emptiness as a teaching” were all viewed as being empty—
all viewed in an empty manner. The Bodhisattva Path was
described as “no-path” or “non-coursing”; the Buddha’s po-
sition was “having no place to stand.” The attainment of en-
lightenment was “no-attainment.” There was no defilement,
no purification; no arising and no dissipation of existence;
and no release from existence to attain nirva ̄n:a—because all
these are empty of self-substantiated reality, inherent charac-
teristics, and essential value. This kind of teaching was meant
neither for the “worldling” attached to the things of existence
nor even for a novice in the Buddha’s Middle Way. Such
people as these might become fearful and despondent or
might interpret the teaching as a nihilistic view or simply as
a negative expression of a transcendent essentialism. Only
courageous pursuers of truth who had accumulated a re-
source of spontaneous virtue and clarity of perception could
see that such “non-coursing” implies complete interrelated-
ness with all living beings and that the deepest cognition of
emptiness is expressed as compassion.
THE MA ̄DHYAMIKA SCHOOL. The effort to formulate and
justify the insight that all things are empty while living in
a spontaneous, comprehensively caring manner was system-
atized differently by two Indian schools of Buddhism, the
Ma ̄dhyamika (“middle way”) and the Yoga ̄ca ̄ra (“yoga prac-
tice”) schools. Na ̄ga ̄rjuna (late second century CE) is often re-
garded as the founder of the Ma ̄dhyamika school. The invo-
cation of one of his major writings, the Mu ̄lamadhya-
maka ̄karika ̄s (The Fundamentals of the Middle Way), in-
cludes a summary of “eight negations” that has epitomized
the emptiness teaching for subsequent generations: no origi-
nation, no dissipation; no permanence, no ending; no differ-
entiation, no identity; no coming (into existence), no going
(from existence). Throughout this work, Na ̄ga ̄rjuna analyzes
basic philosophical notions and views, for example, causal
conditions, time, karman, self (a ̄tman), the fully enlightened
one (tatha ̄gata), and nirva ̄n:a. He shows that none exists in
the sense of self-sufficient existence (svabha ̄va) and, thus,
that each is empty (of self-sufficient existence). At the same
time, he demonstrates that all phenomena exist because
emptiness is the same as dependent co-origination
(prat ̄ıtya-samutpa ̄da). As radical relational existence, empti-
ness is identical to existence. Contrary to the claim of his op-
ponents that to designate everything as “empty” is to say that
nothing exists, Na ̄ga ̄rjuna insists that one can account for
changing existence or enlightenment only if one recognizes
that these lack self-existent reality (i.e., emptiness as depen-
dent co-origination).
To perceive all existing things as dependently co-
originating, or empty, requires a shift from the conventional
mode of perception. Conventional experience divides the
world into likes and dislikes, desires and fears, and “you” and
“me” as separate entities. This hides the fact that these per-
ceptions can exist only in interrelationship. To perceive
through the deep awareness of emptiness, people must be-
come aware of how they construct attachments and fears
while perceiving, conceptualizing, and judging. Concepts
and language create the places for sensations and emotions
“to reside.” Therefore, they are a prime focus for dissipating
attachments. Na ̄ga ̄rjuna and his followers in the
Ma ̄dhyamika school use a critical dialectic to show how con-
cepts that presume to describe independent, self-sufficient
reality are illusory. The general structure of this dialectic is
to assert that any self-subsistent, independent entity is un-
changing and unrelated; to claim that such an entity ac-
counts for any phenomenon in the continually changing
world is either logically contradictory or contrary to com-
mon experience. Likewise in this dialectic is a rejection of the
common assumption that any denial of something logically
requires the opposite positive assertion. That is, when deny-
ing that an entity has “being,” a person implicitly asserts that
the entity has “nonbeing.” Thus in the Ma ̄dhyamika dialec-
tic a common argumentative procedure is the denial of “four
alternatives” (catus:koti). For example, in discussing the na-
ture of the perfectly enlightened one (tatha ̄gata), Na ̄ga ̄rjuna
states: “One can say neither ‘empty’ nor ‘non-empty’; nor
both, nor neither. The purpose of these designations is for
communication only” (Mu ̄lamadhyamakaka ̄rika ̄s 22.11).
The religious significance of the critical dialectic is to show
the “non-abiding” character of “the way things are.” The
empty character of existence cannot be encapsulated in lan-
guage or in any perception that implicitly assumes perma-
nent essential qualities or substances. By dislodging a per-
son’s hope that language or logic can capture the empty, or
intrinsically relational dynamic of existence, one can avoid
the delusion of permanence as a condition for happiness and
serenity. The use of logic to justify the emptiness of experi-
enced “things,” juxtaposed with the assertion that language
distorts a true cognition of emptiness, led to the doctrine of
two levels or modes of truth. The notion of two modes of
truth recognizes that logic, metaphor, or verbal description
has use in conventional day-to-day experience but that such
conventional use also hides and distorts a deeper (or higher)
cognition known through an immediate, direct, intuitive
awareness. For the Ma ̄dhyamika, emptiness was the object
of highest knowledge and, at the same time, accounted for
the possibility of the conditioned, conventional forms in ev-
eryday life. However, to say that emptiness is “the object”
of knowledge does not mean at the highest level of truth that
emptiness exists as a separate entity. This is the realization
of the “emptiness of emptiness.” Because “the two modes ofS ́U ̄NYAM AND S ́U ̄NYATA ̄ 8857