Emptiness: not "nothing", but the absence of self-existence

The word "emptiness" (Sanskrit shunyata) often frightens or confuses people. It sounds as if Buddhists claim that nothing exists, everything is an illusion and life is meaningless. This is a common misunderstanding. Emptiness means something quite different.

Empty of what?

When we say "the glass is empty", we always mean empty of something: of water, of juice. The glass itself is still there.

It is the same here. Things are not empty of existence — they exist, they function, they affect one another. They are empty of svabhava (Sanskrit, "own nature", "self-existence"): of the kind of existence in which a thing would be there by itself, independently of causes, parts, and the way it is perceived and named.

In other words, emptiness is the absence of independent, self-standing being. Not the absence of things themselves.

The example of a car

This is a classic example; we will just take a car instead of the ancient chariot.

Where is the "car"? Is it the wheel? No. The engine? No. The steering wheel, the body, the seats? No single part is a car by itself. Maybe the car is the sum of the parts? But if you pile them up in a garage, you cannot drive the pile. Maybe the car is something separate from the parts? Also no: take away all the parts and nothing remains.

And yet the car drives perfectly well. It exists — not as a "thing in itself", but as a name we give to a certain combination of parts assembled in a certain way for a certain purpose. When we analyse, we cannot find a "car by itself". This is exactly what is called the emptiness of the car.

The most important case: the "I"

With a car this is easy to grasp and does not matter much. Things become serious when the same analysis is applied to our "I".

Where is the "I"? Is it the body? But the body changes, and we say "my body", as if it were something that belongs to me. Is it the thoughts? They keep replacing each other. Feelings, memory, character? All of this changes too. An unchanging, separate "I" cannot be found in any of the parts, nor in all of them together, nor apart from them.

And still the "I" exists in the ordinary sense: I live, make decisions, am responsible for my actions. What does not exist is only the "I" that appears to us: solid, independent, existing by itself. Yet it is precisely this kind of "I" that we cling to, defend and suffer for.

Two extreme views

The philosophy of Madhyamaka (Sanskrit, "the middle way") is called that because it avoids two extremes.

• The extreme of permanence: things and the "I" exist by themselves, solidly and independently. This is our ordinary, innate sense of the world.
• The extreme of nothingness: since there is no self-existence, there is nothing at all, no causes and effects, nothing matters. This is a wrong conclusion that leads to indifference.

The middle way: things do not exist by themselves, but they do exist — dependently, conventionally, through connections with other things. That is why actions have consequences, and ethics keeps its full meaning.

How it changes life

Imagine someone has insulted you. The usual reaction is: "he is a bad person, he humiliated me." It seems to us that "badness" is his inherent quality and that our "I" really has been hurt.

Seen from the point of view of emptiness, the picture changes. His act arose from causes: fatigue, resentment, his own fears. Our "I", so painfully hurt, cannot be found under analysis in the solid form in which we defend it. The hurt does not vanish by magic, but it no longer has anything to grip so tightly.

Understanding emptiness is not a cold theory. It is a way to weaken the clinging from which anger, fear and envy grow. That is why the Buddhist tradition regards it as the main medicine against suffering.

Understanding and experience

At first emptiness is understood with the intellect, through reflection and logic. This is an important and necessary step. Then the understanding deepens in meditation and gradually stops being just a thought. It is a long path, but it begins with a clear, correct understanding of what exactly we are looking for.