Those new to Buddhism, especially Westerners, often get caught up in the wrong notion of emptiness. This is easy to do, I must admit, having done it myself especially as a Westerner. Such emptiness is best described by Asanga in the Bodhisattvabhumi who said that anyone asserting that emptiness is the negation of all (sarvâbhâvat) has wrongly conceptualized emptiness.

We learn from the Buddhist canon that the Buddha was not a pan-positivist (all is). However, we are comfortable with the negation of “all is” which Asanga warned us against. Then we discover later that the Buddha was also not a pan-negativist—he didn’t accept the negation of “all is.” We tend to forget this. The Buddha’s great enlightenment transcended both the position of the pan-positivist and the pan-negativist.

Believe me, I have sympathy for the beginner who does not have a good grasp of emptiness. It is easy to misunderstand emptiness.

We can also wrongly misunderstand emptiness by falling into the habit of believing nirvana to be a kind of extinction or annihilation. We gloss over all of the positive epithets of nirvana that it is the beyond, the subtle, permanence, the exquisite, bliss, the wonderful, the marvelous, the pure, the island, the shelter, the harbor, a refuge and the ultimate.

Exploring the term empty, its use in the Pali canon, we find it used as an adjective, “the empty village.” Here empty doesn't mean that there is no village, only that the object qualified, namely, the inhabitants of the village, are not there at this time. They are elsewhere. This is the same with an empty house in the empty village. There is nobody in the particular house at this time. When we read that a monk goes to an empty place to meditate, the place he goes to is not emptiness, but a place that is empty of distractions. We also learn from the Pali canon that the world is empty (suññam lokam) in the sense of being empty of what belongs to the true self.

Turning now to the freedom of Mind (ceto-vimutti), it is empty. This means that Mind is empty of desire and delusions. Next, when a monk’s Mind is freed he enters pure ultimate unsurpassable emptiness, this is a positive state devoid of all determination which means that emptiness, i.e., the state of the empty, is a pure dynamic field—not mere absence.

Needless to say, emptiness occupies an important place in Mahayana Buddhism which can be very confusing for the beginner because the term can be used in different ways. Here are some examples.

“The ambrosial teaching of emptiness aims at abolishing all conceptions (samkalpa). But if someone believes in that [emptiness] you [have declared] he is lost” (Lokâtîtastava).

“Mañjushri said....if he contemplates emptiness as the defilement, he is said to be engaged in right practice” (The Inconceivable State of Buddhahood Sutra).

“The Buddha-essence is emptiness of traits of adventitious [defilements] with discriminations, but it is not emptiness of the supreme attributes of Buddhahood, which have the character of differentiations” (Uttaratantra).

"Emptiness is defiled and purified, and it is pure and impure. Its purity is said to be like the purity of water, gold and aether” (Madhyantavibhaga).

“Thatness (tathata), Emptiness (shunyata), Reality-limit (bhuta-koti), Nirvana, Dharma Substrata (dharmadhatu) are like the multiple bodies made of spirit (manomaya-kaya)—these are taught as being synonymous (prayaya)” (Lankavatara Sagathakam).

“The first level is True Emptiness (zhen kong). This corresponds to the Dharmadhâtu of principle. Fundamentally, its actual essence (shi ti) is only the Fundamental Mind (ben xin). What is discussed is not illusory cognition (nian lu), and there is called the True. What is discussed is not superficial characteristic of obstructive form (xing ai se xiang), and therefore it is called ‘empty’” (Zen master Tsung-mi).

All this is very difficult, but if we first understand emptiness to be like the emptiness (i.e., unreality) of the superimposed snake on a length of curled up rope, we shall go a long way in becoming better acquainted with how emptiness is used in Mahayana. This would mean that Buddhahood is the awakening or recognition of Mind that is totally empty (devoid) of empty (i.e., unreal) illusory superimpositions—so totally empty of them that what Mind beholds of itself is sheer emptiness which is a signless state but, nonetheless, a real state, so real that all else is an illusion when compared with it! It sounds paradoxical that something so vitally real can be so totally empty yet this is the way ultimate reality is or the same, pure Mind. At this point,we are not dealing with absence, abstract negation, removal, or privation.