In Mahāyāna thought, emptiness (śūnyatā) names the insight that all phenomena lack any fixed, independent essence or self-nature (svabhāva). Things arise only in dependence upon causes, conditions, and conceptual designation; they are not solid entities existing from their own side. This vision does not assert that nothing exists, but rather that what appears is contingent, relational, and without an unchanging core. Emptiness thus refines the earlier teaching of no-self by extending it from persons to all dharmas, revealing that every aspect of experience is devoid of inherent existence.

Because phenomena are empty in this way, clinging to them as permanent or ultimately real is exposed as a fundamental error. Grasping at self and things as solid gives rise to attachment, aversion, and the ignorance that sustains suffering. Insight into emptiness loosens this grip, dissolving the tendency to reify experience and thereby undermining the roots of distress. Far from leading to nihilism, this realization opens a middle way between affirming eternal, self-existing entities and denying the functioning of the conventional world altogether.

For the bodhisattva, emptiness becomes the ground of both wisdom (prajñā) and great compassion. Seeing that beings and situations have no fixed nature, the bodhisattva recognizes that transformation and liberation are genuinely possible. At the same time, compassionate activity unfolds without attachment to rigid identities—no ultimately existent savior, no ultimately existent beings to be saved, no final state grasped as a solid attainment. This non-clinging engagement allows work for universal salvation while remaining free from the subtle pride and fear that arise from reified views.

Emptiness also illuminates the non-dual character of reality, including the relation between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Since both are empty of inherent existence, they are not two utterly separate realms but different ways of relating to what is dependently arisen. On this basis, the bodhisattva does not need to flee the world to realize awakening; the very field of ordinary experience becomes the arena of practice. Because no doctrine, method, or situation is fixed in its own essence, skillful means (upāya) can be infinitely adapted to the diverse needs and capacities of beings, all within the play of conventional appearance grounded in emptiness.