Whatever comes about conditioned by something else is quiescent from the point of view of inherent [intrinsic] existence. Therefore both the process of origination and the act of production itself are quiescent. Like an illusion, a dream, or a castle in the air are production, duration and cessation declared to be.
Emptiness itself is in a sense an abstraction. It is the absence of svabhāva and is seen through prajñā, analytic understanding in its various forms. Emptiness is not a vague absence, still less an Absolute Reality. It is a ‘mere absence’ (abhāvamātra), but the absence of a very specific thing. It is the absence of svabhāva, intrinsic existence itself, related to the object which is being critically examined in order to find out if it has intrinsic existence. Emptiness is the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) in this tradition in the sense that it is what is ultimately true about the object being analysed, whatever that object may be. Emptiness is hence a property (expressed in English by the ‘-ness’ ending), a property possessed by everything. Everything has the property of being empty of intrinsic existence. It is hence not itself a thing, certainly not an intrinsically existing thing, in its own right. Emptiness, Nagarjuna asserts, was taught by the Buddhas as an antidote to all dṛṣṭis, a word which must indicate here a viewpoint or dogma holding to the real existence of something as having intrinsic existence. Those who take emptiness as a dṛṣṭi are declared to be incurable (MK 13: 8; Nagarjuna 1977; Williams 1977). In common with others Mi bskyod rdo rje (pronounced: Mi kyer dor jay), the Tibetan hierarch of the Karma bKa’ brgyud (pronounced: Ka gyer) tradition (the Eighth Karma pa, 1507–54), refers to two false interpretations of emptiness. One takes emptiness as equalling nihilism: nothing exists at all on any level; the other that emptiness is some sort of really existing Ultimate Reality or Absolute – perhaps like the Brahman of Hinduism. In common with what we saw in examining the Perfection of Wisdom literature, emptiness is not for these Madhyamikas the Ultimate Truth in the sense that it is an ultimately existing or intrinsically existing entity. Rather it is the ultimate truth in the sense that it is what is ontologically true or ultimately the case about something, the object that is being analysed to find out if it fundamentally, really, i.e. independently, exists. What is ultimately true about that object is that it does not fundamentally, really, exist. If the object of analysis were to be emptiness itself then emptiness would also be found to lack intrinsic existence – just as the object (say, a dharma) is empty of intrinsic existence because, being the result of causes and conditions, it is thereby dependently originated, so too must be its emptiness. Thus we come to the emptiness of emptiness (śūnyatāśūnyatā; see Hopkins 1983: 433). Understanding this is a potentially infinite series, depending on what it is that the opponent is grasping at, for the function of understanding emptiness is simply to cut grasping.