ABSTRACT
The ontic madness of emptiness is the lack of fixed ontologies. A fixed ontology pins down the world with fixed identities. It sees essences in things and holds them to be ultimately real and independent entities that cannot change. Buddhists protest fixed ontologies as compulsions whose results are pain. Rather than clinging to identities, Buddhists seek an experience of identitylessness, or freedom from identity. From the perspective of the everyday world – where fixed ontologies are habitually embraced and defended without reflection – this approach to identity appears insane. But Buddhists revel in the perception that reality is fluid and not fixed.
