Jonang thought, especially in its shentong articulation, draws a sharp ontological line between conventional phenomena and ultimate reality. Conventional appearances are understood as empty of any intrinsic existence, but the ultimate—buddha-nature or dharmadhātu—is held to be a truly established, luminous reality. This ultimate is said to be “empty of other”: empty of adventitious, conditioned defilements and all that is impermanent and dualistic, yet not empty of its own unconditioned nature. It is described as beginningless, permanent, and endowed with inconceivable qualities such as wisdom and compassion, which are obscured rather than absent. From this perspective, spiritual practice does not fabricate something new but uncovers what is already fully complete at the deepest level.

Rangtong Madhyamaka, by contrast, insists that emptiness is a sheer absence of inherent existence in all phenomena without exception, including buddha-nature and nirvana. Ultimate truth is not a positively existing ground but a non-affirming negation: the simple fact that nothing possesses its own independent essence. Even buddha-nature is interpreted primarily as the emptiness of mind, or the lack of intrinsic existence in mental phenomena, rather than as a permanent, substantial reality. This view avoids positing any ultimately real, changeless substrate, precisely to prevent subtle forms of reification from creeping back into the path.

The divergence between these two orientations thus centers on what is affirmed at the ultimate level. Jonang shentong maintains that while conventional things are self-empty, ultimate reality is other-empty yet ontologically real, a changeless gnosis endowed with enlightened qualities that stands in stark contrast to illusory phenomena. Rangtong maintains that both conventional and ultimate realities are uniformly characterized by the same emptiness of inherent existence, and that any talk of buddha-nature must be read in that light. Where Jonang sees a luminous, ever-present ground revealed when obscurations fall away, Rangtong sees the very falling away of all grounds as the heart of wisdom.