ABSTRACT
The discrepancies between Mipham and his opponents on the knowability and expressibility of Emptiness, the topic for this chapter, comes as an immediate corollary to their differences in their ontological understanding of the ultimate qua Emptiness, which we have discussed in the previous chapter. The ontological theory of what is the ultimate is invariably interwoven with the epistemological and semasiological issue of how it is known and expressed or whether it is knowable and expressible at all in the normal sense of the words. Thus, ontology, language and epistemology are closely linked together. We have seen this intricate link, in the preceding chapter, in the way the ultimate is defined through its epistemic subject and its mode of cognition. In this chapter, we shall see how the proponent’s understanding of the nature of the ultimate determines his epistemological and semasiological position pertaining to the ultimate.
