In the Jonang tradition, the Shentong view, literally “empty of other,” presents a distinctive understanding of emptiness centered on buddha‑nature. It maintains that relative, conditioned phenomena are empty of inherent existence, yet ultimate reality—identified as buddha‑nature, tathāgatagarbha, or dharmakāya—is not empty of its own nature. Rather, this ultimate is empty only of what is adventitious: defilements, conceptual fabrications, and all fleeting, conventional appearances. In this way, Shentong does not treat the ultimate as a mere negation or void, but as a positive, unconditioned presence that stands beyond the play of dualistic thought.

This ultimate reality is described as permanent, stable, luminous, and endowed with immeasurable enlightened qualities. It is portrayed as truly existing and immutable, yet temporarily obscured by stains that are foreign to its nature. When these obscurations are purified, what is revealed is not something newly created, but the already-present buddha‑nature that has always been there. Enlightenment, from this perspective, is the unveiling of what was never absent, once what it is “empty of” has fallen away.

Shentong thought thus draws a clear distinction between two modes of emptiness. On the one hand, all conventional phenomena are “rangtong,” empty of any inherent existence. On the other hand, the ultimate is “shentong,” empty of conventional impurities but full of inherent wisdom and enlightened qualities. This stands in contrast to approaches that extend the negation of inherent existence even to the ultimate itself, treating emptiness purely as absence.

Within this framework, buddha‑nature is not a conceptual construct but the luminous, knowing nature that underlies and transcends all conditioned experience. It is ever-present, yet recognized only when the veils of ignorance and defilement are removed. The Jonang articulation of Shentong thus offers an affirmative vision of the ultimate: emptiness understood not as a barren nothingness, but as the boundless, radiant ground in which all awakened qualities are already complete.