Vasubandhu’s understanding of emptiness is shaped by the Yogācāra vision of “consciousness-only” (vijñapti-mātra), and this gives his view a distinctive flavor among Buddhist philosophers. Emptiness, for him, is not primarily a denial of existence as such, but a disclosure that the familiar split between an inner subject and outer objects is a mental construction. What is empty is the imagined duality of seer and seen, the inner grasping mind and the supposedly external, independently existing world. External objects, as ordinarily conceived, are treated as mere mental projections arising within consciousness due to karmic seeds. In this sense, emptiness is the recognition that phenomena lack any fixed status as either “internal” or “external,” rather than a simple assertion that nothing exists at all.

Within this framework, Vasubandhu elaborates a complex model of consciousness, including the ālaya-vijñāna, or storehouse consciousness, which holds karmic seeds that give rise to momentary experiences. All appearances arise dependently from this stream of consciousness and thus lack any independent self-nature. Even this foundational consciousness, however, is not posited as a permanent substance; it, too, is part of a causal flow that is understood to be empty of inherent existence. Emptiness is realized as one sees that what appears is nothing but the unfolding of these dependently arisen mental events, without any solid core behind them.

A hallmark of Vasubandhu’s approach is the three-natures (trisvabhāva) analysis, which structures how emptiness is understood. The imagined nature (parikalpita) is the completely false overlay of subject–object duality. The dependent nature (paratantra) is the actual flow of dependently arisen experiences, conditioned by karmic seeds. The perfected nature (pariniṣpanna) is the realization that this dependent flow is empty of the imagined duality. Emptiness, then, is identified with this perfected nature: the clear seeing that what arises dependently is free from the falsely imputed split between knower and known.

In contrast with Madhyamaka philosophers such as Nāgārjuna, who emphasize that all phenomena—mental and physical—are equally empty and resist any positive ontological commitment, Vasubandhu places explanatory weight on consciousness and its transformations. Madhyamaka often proceeds by a rigorous, largely negative dialectic that undercuts any attempt to reify either mind or matter, whereas Vasubandhu offers a more phenomenological account in which the analysis of consciousness itself becomes the primary doorway to realizing emptiness. His emphasis on the constructive activity of mind, the rejection of independently existing external objects, and the structured account of the three natures together mark a distinctive way of articulating the same fundamental insight into emptiness that runs through the broader Buddhist tradition.