Before I begin, I want to pay my respects to the “Shentong School of Thought”, an offshoot of Madhyamaka Buddhism that no longer exists. The Shentong school described the great emptiness as:
The Luminous Light of the Void ,an emptiness that is ever-present, yet radiant.
According to their teachings, rooted in the Mahayana tradition, the nature of the mind is both empty and luminous, free from conceptual constructs yet naturally aware.
With this guiding light, let’s journey through time and explore major Buddhist schools of thought, examining their perspectives on emptiness and my own reflections.
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Theravada Buddhism: The Emptiness of the Five Aggregates
Our journey begins with Theravada Buddhism, where emptiness is understood through the lens of the Five Aggregates(Pancakkhandha).
According to this tradition, what we perceive as self is nothing more than a collection of five impermanent components:
- Form - The physical body, which depends on food, air, and conditions to exist.
- Feeling - Pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations, which arise and vanish based on circumstances.
- Mental Formations - Thoughts and tendencies, which are just reactions to external stimuli.
- Perception - Recognition and labelling of experiences, which depend on past conditioning.
- Consciousness - The awareness that arises through the senses, yet it too depends on all the other aggregates.
Since each of these aggregates arises in dependence on something else, none of them possess any inherent existence.
They are, hence empty(sunya) by nature and devoid of an independent self.
Liberation, therefore according to this path, comes from realising this truth and breaking free from attachment to illusion which is this world and its belongings.
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Mahayana: A Deeper Analysis of Consciousness
Mahayana Buddhism accepts the Theravada view of the Five Aggregates as empty, but it develops the philosophy in two key ways:
- Beyond the Five Aggregates - While Theravada teaches that consciousness(vijnana) is empty and impermanent, Yogacara Buddhism analyses consciousness into several layers. These include mental consciousness(manovijnana), which processes thoughts and concepts, and the self-clinging consciousness(klista-manas), which appropriates experience as “I” and “mine” and according to this view, both arise dependently and are therefore empty of any inherent existence.
- The Storehouse Consciousness - Yogacara introduces the concept of alaya-vijnana, or storehouse consciousness, a deep stream of consciousness that carries karmic impressions(bīja, or “seeds”) from past experiences. These karmic seeds condition future perceptions, thoughts, and actions, providing an explanation for continuity, memory, habit, and rebirth without requiring a permanent self.
According to the Mind-Only(Cittamatra) school, what we ordinarily experience as reality is inseparable from the processes of consciousness.
Perception occurs in rapid, momentary events rather than as a single continuous stream. The world we experience is shaped by karmic seeds arising from the storehouse consciousness, creating the appearance of both an external world and an enduring self.
The storehouse consciousness may be compared to an ocean, with thoughts, emotions, and perceptions appearing as waves upon its surface. Though these waves appear distinct and substantial, they arise from causes and conditions and are therefore ultimately empty of any independent existence.
Yet even Yogacara’s storehouse consciousness remained conditioned and therefore subject to transformation. However other Mahayana traditions, such as the Shentong traditions, sought something deeper: an unconditioned luminous awareness that was not merely another layer of consciousness, but the very ground of awakening itself.
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Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka: The Final Deconstruction
At last, we arrive at Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka(Middle Way), a school of thought that takes emptiness to its furthest philosophical conclusion.
Nagarjuna is a philosopher unlike any other, not because he offers his own vision of reality, but because he refuses to establish any position at all.
He is the hyper-logician of Buddhism, wielding emptiness as a sword to dismantle every conceptual framework without replacing it with a new one.
His method is one of radical negation, extending even to concepts that many spiritual traditions regard as ultimate truths.
For this reason, he rejected not only ordinary notions of self and existence, but also any attempt to reify consciousness, mind, or emptiness itself.
His magnum opus, the Mulamadhyamakakarika(Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), stands as one of the great works of world philosophy. Through relentless analysis, Nagarjuna argues that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, not only the Five Aggregates, not only consciousness, but every concept that claims an independent or self-sustaining reality.
Madhyamaka goes further than any school before it by declaring that:
- No entity, concept, or experience possesses inherent existence.
- Everything exists only through causes, conditions, and relationships.
- Any attempt to conceptualise an ultimate reality turns that reality into another object of thought.
- Even emptiness itself is empty and cannot be grasped as a final truth or substance.
- There is no ultimate essence, no final “Thing” hidden behind appearances waiting to be discovered.
No self, no eternal substance, no independent awareness, no metaphysical essence to abide in, only a reality that is empty, relational, and ultimately beyond all conceptual grasping.
I, wholeheartedly agree with Nagarjuna’s philosophy of emptiness and, more broadly, the Buddhist understanding of reality.
In many ways, I see Buddhism not as a separate religion but as another school within the vast umbrella of Hindu thought, making Buddhism, in my own interpretation, a seventh philosophical stream within it.
To me, Nagarjuna’s insights and the teachings of the Vedic thoughts fit together like two perfectly interlocking pieces of a greater whole.
One reveals the emptiness inherent in all things, stripping away every illusion of permanence and selfhood. The other points toward the fullness that remains beyond all negation, which is the vast, all-encompassing reality that cannot be diminished or exhausted by conceptual analysis.
First, one recognises the empty nature of existence, seeing through the illusions of separateness and permanence, only then can one embrace its boundless completeness: the realisation that what appears empty from one perspective may, from another, be experienced as infinitely whole.
For me, the journey from Buddhism to Hinduism is a movement from recognition to acceptance, the recognition of the self’s empty nature, followed by the acceptance of an ultimate fullness beyond all conceptual divisions.
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Fullness from Emptiness
I am reminded of a powerful mantra from the Isha Upanisad, which beautifully captures this paradox:
“ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते॥
That is full, this is full.
From that fullness, this fullness emerges.
When fullness is taken from fullness, what remains is still full”.
At first glance, fullness and emptiness appear to be opposites, yet both traditions use them to point beyond ordinary categories of existence and non-existence. What the Upaniṣads call fullness, certain Buddhist traditions approach through emptiness - not as a negation of reality, but as freedom from all limitations imposed by conceptual thought.
In the Shentong School of Thought, this empty nature of reality is described as the Luminous Light of the Void. In this radiant emptiness, all things arise and dissolve back into the void.
Whether we choose to call it fullness(Hinduism) or emptiness(Buddhism) is ultimately a matter of perspective.
Both are concepts and as Nagarjuna reminds us, all concepts are ultimately empty of inherent essence.
Neither the fullness nor the emptiness can describe the true subject because as soon as we start describing it, we objectify it and it disappears.
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Relative vs Absolute: The Blue Sky Analogy
Buddhism speaks of emptiness in the realm of relative reality and focusing on the truth of how things appear, rather than their absolute reality. Consider the question:
Is the sky blue?
It is blue, and yet it is not blue. The blue sky is a relative truth, something that appears real to our perception.
But in absolute reality, there is no intrinsic “blueness” in the sky, only a reflection, an illusion created by scattered light.
This distinction between relative and absolute truth is the key to understanding emptiness. The world appears to exist, yet is empty of any inherent nature and just as the blue sky appears real, yet vanishes when we look deeper and therefore the blue colour of the sky has no independent existence and hence is empty of the self.
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The Nature of Subject and the Object
To understand the nature of reality, we must first examine the body we possess and recognise it for what it truly is, an object of experience.
An object, by definition, is something that can be experienced and that changes constantly.
By this definition, the physical body, the mind, emotions, feelings, and even memory qualify as objects, they can be observed, sensed, and analysed. These aspects of our being are constantly changing, the body ages, the mind evolves, emotions shift, and memories fade. Yet, for change to be noticed at all, there must be something unchanging that registers the difference.
This unchanging presence, the silent witness behind all experience , is what we call the true subject.
An object can never know the true subject, it can be perceived, but it cannot perceive. It exists within experience, but it is not the experiencer. This realisation extends beyond just the body, it applies to every concept we hold, including God.
My next statement should not be confused with the fact that God is not important. I think it has great importance to bring our mind on the focus of the True Subject.
God as a concept however, is the objectification of the subject. God exists because we declare its existence.
The very concept of God is dependent on our perception, it does not stand independently and it is shaped by the mind that conceives it.
And if all things that exist depend on something else to be defined, then they are empty by nature and without inherent existence of their own.
Following this train of thought naturally leads to the emptiness of all things, sentient or otherwise and every concept, every piece of knowledge, everything we can think of within relative reality exists only in relation to something else.
It is dependent, and therefore, empty. And if it is empty, it can ultimately be rejected in the broader sense.
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The Truth in Silence
When someone once asked Nāgārjuna, if everything is empty, what about the nature of ultimate reality, what about God, his answer was simple:
We cannot talk about it.
Why? Because the moment we speak of it, we reduce it to a concept, an object within thought and in doing so, it becomes empty as well.
In my opinion, Nagarjuna’s refusal to define ultimate reality stems from a deep understanding of the impossibility of the object experiencing the subject.
How can that which is observed ever grasp the observer? How can the finite ever comprehend the infinite?
Perhaps, in the end, all that can be done is to see through the illusion of objectification itself, to realise that the moment we try to hold on to something, it slips through our grasp. And in that very act of letting go, we glimpse the truth that cannot be spoken.
It is like trying to grasp sunlight streaming through your fingers, the more you try to hold it, the more it slips away, leaving only its warmth behind.
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The Luminous Void
I find the Shentong perspective deeply compelling, and it closely aligns with the teachings of the Upanishadic thoughts, which envisions emptiness as a luminous void, radiant, ever-present, and full of light.
Ultimately, it is our acceptance or rejection of this luminous void that shapes the quality of our lives. I appreciate Nagarjuna’s approach of negation in understanding emptiness, yet I also find solace in the gentle, ever-present breeze of the luminous void, a reality that is always illuminated, always here.
An Emptiness which experiences itself as Samsara (Relative world where we live and have experiences) and Nirvana (The Absolute).
To reject this luminous void is to remain bound to Samsara and caught in the endless cycle of duality, of cause and effect, of conditions endlessly giving rise to more conditions, turning the wheel of ego and experience without rest.
But to accept it, is to step into Nirvana and to awaken to a reality beyond all concepts, beyond all opposites, beyond the very illusion of separation itself.
Yet, this reality cannot be spoken of or truly described and It is not something to be grasped intellectually but something we are already experiencing, moment by moment. It is there the instant we open our eyes, effortless, requiring no thought, no conceptualisation. It is always available, always present.
For those who have glimpsed this light yet still find themselves navigating the illusion, I am reminded of yet another powerful Sanskrit teaching often found in the Upanishads:
Bhāti Chet Bhāti
It is appearing - let it appear
A gentle surrender to whatever arises!