Madhyamaka is one of the two major schools of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy (the other being Yogācāra. It traces its origins to the work of the South Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), who first gave systematic philosophical expression to insights articulated in the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras, the Prajñāpāramitā literature. Central to those texts was the claim that all things thought to be ultimately real are in fact "empty" or devoid of intrinsic nature. The Madhyamaka school arose out of efforts to defend this claim and explore its consequences. The Madhyamaka understanding of the concept of emptiness, and the dialectical strategies used to establish its validity, played central roles in the development of Mahāyāna thought in India and subsequently in Tibet and East Asia.

Emptiness as Lack of Intrinsic Nature

When the Mādhyamikas say that all...