In Madhyamaka thought, śūnyatā, or emptiness, designates the absence of inherent existence (svabhāva) in all phenomena. Nothing exists from its own side as a self-sufficient, autonomous entity with a fixed, unchanging essence. Phenomena do not possess an intrinsic reality that stands apart from conditions, relations, or conceptual designation. They are not independent or permanent, but arise only in dependence upon causes, conditions, parts, and mental imputation. To say that things are empty is therefore to say that they lack any self-established nature that would make them what they are in and of themselves.

This emptiness is understood through the lens of dependent origination: whatever appears does so only through a web of interdependence. Physical objects, mental states, and persons function and appear, yet they do so merely on the level of conventional designation. Ultimately, they are empty of any inherent nature, but conventionally they arise, interact, and have efficacy within experience. Even emptiness itself is not exempt from this analysis; it too is empty of inherent existence and cannot be grasped as some ultimate substance or ground. Thus śūnyatā is not a separate reality behind appearances, but the very mode in which dependently arisen phenomena exist.

Madhyamaka presents this vision of emptiness as the “middle way” between two extremes. On one side lies eternalism, the belief that things truly and permanently exist in themselves; on the other lies nihilism, the belief that nothing exists or has any real efficacy. Śūnyatā avoids both views by affirming that phenomena exist conventionally yet are empty ultimately. Things do not exist in the solid, independent way they appear, but neither are they sheer nothingness. This understanding of emptiness, applied universally to all phenomena without exception, is regarded as central to the cultivation of wisdom and the cessation of suffering.