Hip Glossary: Shunyata

shunyata Pāli: suññatā Sanskrit: śūnyatā

Emptiness; or "Voidness", which constitutes an aspect of the Buddhist metaphysical critique as well as Buddhist epistemology and phenomenology. Śūnyatā signifies that everything one encounters in life is empty of soul, permanence, and self-nature. Everything is inter-related, never self-sufficient or independent; nothing has independent reality. Yet śūnyatā never connotes nihilism, which Buddhist doctrine considers to be a delusion, just as it considers materialism to be a delusion.

In the Mahayana Tathagatagarbha sutras, in contrast, only impermanent, changeful things and states (the realm of samsara) are said to be empty in a negative sense – but not the Buddha or Nirvana, which are stated to be real, eternal and filled with inconceivable, enduring virtues.