སྟོང་པ་ཉིད། | Glossary of Terms

In the Mahāyāna this is the term for how phenomena are devoid of any nature of their own. One of the three doorways to liberation along with the absence of aspiration and the absence of attributes.

In this sūtra, monks on the vehicle of the śrāvakas and the Great Vehicle both are to apprehend dharmas as empty. The Abhidharma position that dharmas exist as ontological simples appears by and large to be rejected here.

This Skt. term is usually translated by “voidness” because that English word is more rarely used in other contexts than “emptiness” and does not refer to any sort of ultimate nothingness, as a thing-in-itself, or even as the thing-in-itself to end all things-in-themselves. It is a pure negation of the ultimate existence of anything or, in Buddhist terminology, the “emptiness with respect to personal and phenomenal selves,” or “with respect to identity,” or “with respect to intrinsic nature,” or “with respect to essential substance,” or “with respect to self-existence established by intrinsic identity,” or “with respect to ultimate truth-status,” etc. Thus emptiness is a concept descriptive of the ultimate reality through its pure negation of whatever may be supposed to be ultimately real. It is an absence, hence not existent in itself. It is synonymous therefore with “infinity,” “absolute,” etc.‍—themselves all negative terms, i.e., formed etymologically from a positive concept by adding a negative prefix (in + finite = not finite; ab + solute = not compounded, etc.). But, since our verbally conditioned mental functions are habituated to the connection of word and thing, we tend to hypostatize a “void,” analogous to “outer space,” a “vacuum,” etc., which we either shrink from as a nihilistic nothingness or become attached to as a liberative nothingness; this great mistake can be cured only by realizing the meaning of the “emptiness of emptiness,” which brings us to the tolerance of inconceivability.

This could refer to any of a number of enumerations of emptinesses. “Seven emptinesses,” “fourteen emptinesses,” and “eighteen emptinesses” are listed in this sūtra.

Voidness, emptiness; specifically, the emptiness of absolute substance, truth, identity, intrinsic reality, or self of all persons and things in the relative world, being quite opposed to any sort of absolute nothingness (see glossary, under “emptiness”).

See “emptiness.”