page_title: Śūnyatā
section_title: Theravāda
hierarchical_section_title: Śūnyatā / Theravāda
caption_attribution_description: San Francisco
context_page_description: Śūnyatā – pronounced in English as, translated most often as emptiness and sometimes voidness – is a Buddhist concept which has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience.
  In Theravada Buddhism, suññatā often refers to the non-self nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. Suññatā is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience.
  In Mahayana, Sunyata refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature," but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Zen.
context_section_description: Theravāda Buddhists generally take the view that emptiness is merely the not-self nature of the five aggregates. Emptiness is an important door to liberation in the Theravāda tradition just as it is in Mahayana, according to Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal. The classic Theravāda text known as the Patisambhidamagga (c. 3rd century BCE) describes the five aggregates as being empty (suññam) of essence or intrinsic nature (sabhava). The Patisambhidamagga also equates not-self with the emptiness liberation in a passage also cited by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga (Vism XXI 70):
  "When one who has great wisdom brings [volitional formations] to mind as not-self, he acquires the emptiness liberation" -Patis. II 58.
  The Visuddhimagga (c. 5th century CE), the most influential classical Theravāda treatise, states that not-self does not become apparent because it is concealed by "compactness" when one does not give attention to the various elements which make up the person. The Paramatthamañjusa Visuddhimaggatika of Acariya Dhammapala, a 5th-century Theravāda commentary on the Visuddhimagga, comments on this passage by referring to the fact that we often assume unity and compactness regarding phenomena or functions which are instead made up of various elements, but when one sees that these are merely empty dhammas, one can understand the not-self characteristic:
  "when they are seen after resolving them by means of knowledge into these elements, they disintegrate like froth subjected to compression by the hand. They are mere states (dhamma) occurring due to conditions and void. In this way the characteristic of not-self becomes more evident."
  The modern Thai teacher Buddhadasa referred to emptiness as the "innermost heart" of the Buddhist teachings and the cure for the disease of suffering. He stated that emptiness, as it relates to the practice of Dhamma, can be seen both "as the absence of Dukkha and the defilements that are the cause of Dukkha and as the absence of the feeling that there is a self or that there are things which are the possessions of a self." He also equated nibbana with emptiness, writing that "Nibbana, the remainderless extinction of Dukkha, means the same as supreme emptiness." Emptiness is also seen as a mode of perception which lacks all the usual conceptual elaborations we usually add on top of our experiences, such as the sense of "I" and "Mine". According to Thanissaro Bhikku, emptiness is not so much a metaphysical view, as it is a strategic mode of acting and of seeing the world which leads to liberation:
  Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.
  This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.
  Some Theravādins such as David Kalupahana, see Nagarjuna's view of emptiness as compatible with the Pali Canon. In his analysis of the Mulamadhyamikakarika, Kalupahana sees Nagarjuna's argument as rooted in the Kaccānagotta Sutta (which Nagarjuna cites by name). Kalupahana states that Nagarjuna's major goal was to discredit heterodox views of Svabhava (own-nature) held by the Sarvastivadins and establish the non-substantiality of all dharmas. According to Peter Harvey, the Theravāda view of dhammas and sabhava is not one of essences, but merely descriptive characteristics and hence is not the subject of Madhyamaka critique developed by Nagarjuna (see below).
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caption: Sea froth at sunset
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