View has No View. Emptiness is Empty

To view is to mind-stain. Stainlessly pure reality is Twice free: of viewed and of viewer. View itself has no view.
~ JIGME LINGPA

"Even emptiness is empty. For example, the emptiness of the bottle of milk does not exist inherently. Rather, it exists in a dependent way. The emptiness of the bottle of milk is dependent upon its basis (the bottle of milk). It is also dependent upon having been designated as emptiness. As we saw above, this is alluded to in Nagarjuna’s Treatise, verse 24.18.

Understood this way, emptiness is not a substitute term for awareness. Emptiness is not an essence. It is not a substratum or background condition. Things do not arise out of emptiness and subside back into emptiness. Emptiness is not a quality that things have, which makes them empty. Rather, to be a thing in the first place, is to be empty.

It is easy to misunderstand emptiness by idealizing or reifying it by thinking that it is an absolute, an essence, or a special realm of being or experience. It is not any of those things. It is actually the opposite. It is merely the way things exist, which is without essence or self-standing nature or a substratum of any kind. Here is a list characteristics of emptiness, to help avoid some of the frequent misunderstandings about emptiness, according to the Buddhist Consequentialists:

    Emptiness is not a substance

    Emptiness is not a substratum or background

    Emptiness is not light

    Emptiness is not consciousness or awareness

    Emptiness is not the Absolute

    Emptiness does not exist on its own

    Objects do not consist of emptiness

    Objects do not arise from emptiness

    Emptiness of the "I" does not negate the "I"

    Emptiness is not the feeling that results when no objects are appearing to the mind

    Meditating on emptiness does not consist of quieting the mind"

-- Greg Goode