Madhyamaka treats what is ordinarily called “self” as empty (śūnya) of any inherent existence or independent nature (svabhāva). When examined analytically, no fixed, permanent, or autonomous self can be found standing apart from the flow of experience. What appears as a person is understood as a continuum of psycho-physical aggregates (skandhas), arising and ceasing in dependence upon causes, conditions, and conceptual designation. There is no separate owner or controller behind these aggregates; the “I” is not a hidden essence but a way of speaking about this conditioned process. Thus, both the individual self (pudgala) and all phenomena are said to lack intrinsic nature, which is the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) applied to personal identity.

At the same time, Madhyamaka does not fall into the extreme of denying all meaningful talk of persons. Within the framework of the two truths, the self is affirmed on the level of conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya) as a useful designation for the functioning continuum of body and mind. On this level, language about “I,” moral responsibility, and continuity across time is not rejected, so long as it is understood as dependently originated and merely imputed. On the level of ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya), however, no independently existing self can be established; when sought, it cannot be located apart from the aggregates and their conditions. The self is therefore neither a permanent essence nor a total non-entity, but a dependently arisen convention devoid of any independent, substantial reality.

This vision is sometimes expressed as a twofold emptiness: the emptiness of persons (pudgalanairātmya) and the emptiness of phenomena (dharmanairātmya). Both the apparent subject (“I”) and the objects of experience are without inherent nature, and yet both function within the web of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). By holding to this middle path between eternalism and nihilism, Madhyamaka undermines the tendency to grasp at a solid self while also avoiding the denial of lived experience. In this way, the teaching on the emptiness of self is not a mere abstraction, but a carefully balanced perspective that allows ordinary life to proceed, even as the imagined solidity of “me” and “mine” is gently but thoroughly exposed.