ABSTRACT
In one of his key texts, Mlamadhyamakakrik, Ngrjuna famously expounds the thesis of emptiness. In order to work out what it does mean, we first need to examine the notion of svabhva. Garfield and Priest thematized the paradoxical nature of Ngrjuna's thesis of emptiness. As Garfield and Priest argue, the paradox Ngrjuna presents us with is not only about expressibility but also about ontology. We can find the two truths doctrine in Abhidharma literature. According to the bhidharmikas, only simple, partless entities exist and everything else, such as chariots, doesn't exist. Given that simple, partless entities are real, we can talk about them truthfully. The semantics bhidharmikas adopted were the orthodox account in Indian philosophical circles around the time of Ngrjuna. The Mdhyamika can either replace the orthodox reference-based semantics by another account or keep the orthodox account but deflate its problematic consequences. The realization of emptiness thus depends on the attainment of a semantics that can accommodate it.
