Perhaps here we have found a significant reason for the introduction of the third
nature. By negating svabhāva and emptiness, Nāgārjuna was unable to bring out the
consummate aspect of ultimate reality; the Yogācārins needed a third nature to refer to
the same idea that Candrakīrti alluded to through his description of absolute-svabhāva in positive terms.
It is here, too, that we see how the Yogācāra was able to protect the Mahāyāna from nihilism. While the following is merely speculative, it seems reasonable to suppose that some Mādhyamika philosophers were guilty of a similar charge that Nāgārjuna had brought against certain Ᾱbhidharmikas, of turning the Dharma into a dry philosophy. It often occurred throughout Buddhist history that its followers became attached to certain doctrines and their exposition, and it is likely that ordinary, unrealized
scholars could become adept at negating the propositions of others, in the style of
Nāgārjuna, and yet have no direct experience of emptiness.
Without the experience of the enlightened state, it is probable that nihilism would ensue; as we saw, Mādhyamika reasoning tends to lean towards nonexistence. Thus, perhaps the Yogācārins saw their task as that of placing the emphasis on affirmation once again, and what they affirmed was the actual experience of emptiness. In this way, they were able to protect the Mahāyāna doctrines from becoming a mere exercise in demolishing the views of others,and to set out, once more, the path to enlightenment, which starts precisely from the experience of emptiness on the first bodhisattva-ground (bodhisattvabhūmi).
The second part of the Vasubandhu‘s statement affirms "the existence of the
imagined in emptiness". Thus while the first half constitutes a sort of affirmation of
emptiness, the second is an affirmation of conventional appearances.
As we have seen,Vasubandhu says that the imagined nature has both an existent and a non-existent aspect,and he explains that this is why things are neither empty nor nonempty (MVB 1.2;Anacker 2005, 212). In other words, this is another warning not to grasp at emptiness too tightly, for instance, by disregarding the imagined nature entirely, or conceiving it as absolutely unreal. The imagined too exists, he says, although not in the way it appears.
A few writers have seemed to focus too one-sidedly on this affirmation of existence,
forgetting that whatever is affirmed is said to exist in emptiness, and therefore not
inherently. The next section turns to some of these misunderstandings.
Misinterpretations of the Yogācāra