He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with. (Antonio Porchia)
Emptiness (Śūnyatā) is probably the most important philosophical and religious concept of Mahayana Buddhism. Its precise meaning has been explained differently by different schools and in different Buddhist cultures, but almost all Mahāyāna Buddhists would agree with the following characterization: Philosophically, emptiness is the term that describes the ultimate mode of existence of all phenomena, namely, as naturally ‘empty’ of enduring substance, or self-existence (svabhāva): rather than being independently self-originated, phenomena are dependently originated (ptatītya samutpāda) from causes and conditions. Emptiness, thus, explains how it is that phenomena change and interact as they do, how it is that the world goes on as it does. Religiously, emptiness is the single principle whose direct comprehension is the basis of liberation from samsāra, and ignorance of which, embodied in self-gasping (ātmagraha) is the basis of continued rebirth – hence suffering – in samsāra.
