Perhaps we can understand what this means, if we consider that we only experience emptiness by relying upon the appearance of these dependently co-originated things, that is, we cannot look directly for emptiness itself, we cannot set out to find it.
Rather paradoxically, one can only find emptiness by looking for the svabhāva of some
object, and not finding it. This is, after all, what emptiness means, it is the lack of
svabhāva of some phenomenon, and therefore, it is always the emptiness of this or that,
that we find, and never emptiness as an isolated, independently existent phenomenon.
Garfield points out that "understanding the ultimate nature of things is completely
dependent upon understanding conventional truth...[it] just is understanding that their
conventional nature is merely conventional" (1995, 299).
Consequently, this means that, ultimate truth, emptiness, is conventional too, since it cannot be found to exist independently. Therefore, although Nāgārjuna introduces the Two Truths as distinct, he eventually comes to identify them, and in fact, every dualism is ultimately collapsed in the Mahāyāna. Most important among these is the
identification of saṃsāra and nirvana, yet, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by this. Garfield suggests that conventional truth and ultimate truth are the same entity characterized, conceived, or perceived in different ways. Given that saṃsāra is our conventional reality, and nirvana is reached when we have insight into ultimate truth,then the very same world is nirvana or saṃsāra, depending on our perspective (Garfield 1995,324–328).