ABSTRACT
Emptiness is a central teaching in Mahayana Buddhism. The Indian Mahayana scriptures known as the Prajñaparamita sutras have the teaching of emptiness as their primary focus. The recurrent theme of these texts is that all phenomena are empty like a magical illusion and perfect wisdom or understanding fully comprehends emptiness. The Madhyamika concept of emptiness entails more than an assertion of interconnectedness; in addition, it means that all phenomena are empty in the sense that they lack existence independent of the conceptualizing activity of the mind. Madhyamika philosophy also rejects the two-tiered ontology of conditioned things that lies at the heart of the Abhidharma project by denying that any dependently originating entities have substantial existence. The Madhyamika concept of emptiness invites comparison with contemporary currents in philosophy that attack ontological realism - that is, the philosophical view that there is a real world which is not conceptually constructed.
