Madhyamaka presents reality as marked by śūnyatā, or emptiness, meaning that no phenomenon possesses inherent existence or a fixed, self-sufficient essence. All things, whether material objects, mental states, or concepts, lack independent, unchanging nature. They arise only in dependence upon causes, conditions, parts, and conceptual designation. Because of this dependent origination, phenomena are empty of any intrinsic core, yet they still function and appear within ordinary experience. Emptiness here does not signify sheer non-existence, but the absence of independent, self-sustaining entities.

This vision of emptiness is articulated through the doctrine of the two truths. On the level of conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya), persons, objects, and events operate in a way that can be described, related to, and used in practical life; they are “real” only in this dependent, everyday sense. On the level of ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya), however, analysis reveals that these same phenomena do not possess inherent existence. Thus, what appears solid and self-contained is, at a deeper level, a web of relations without any fixed essence.

Madhyamaka therefore walks a middle way between the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. It rejects the view that things truly and independently exist in an ultimate sense, while also rejecting the claim that nothing exists at all. Phenomena exist conventionally, as interdependent and impermanent, but are ultimately empty of any unchanging nature. Even emptiness itself is not treated as some absolute substance or ultimate “thing”; it too is empty of inherent nature and simply names the way things are. In this manner, reality is understood as dynamic and relational, a network of dependently arisen appearances that, when examined with insight, are found to be empty of any substantial, independent being.