We often view emptiness as a negative condition, a symptom of depression, despair, or grief—an assessment furthered by authors like Franz Kafka or the existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Offering an alternative view, A Philosophy of Emptiness reclaims these hollow feelings as a positive and even empowering state, an antidote to the modern obsession with substance and foundation. Digging through early and non-Western philosophy, Gay Watson uncovers a rich history of emptiness. She travels from Buddhism, Taoism, and religious mysticism to the contemporary world of philosophy, science, and art practice. Though most Western philosophies are concerned with substance and foundation, she finds that the twentieth century has seen a resurgence of emptiness and offers reasons why such an apparently unappealing concept has attracted modern musicians, artists, and scientists, as well as preeminent thinkers throughout the ages. Probing the idea of how a life without foundation might be lived—and why a person might choose this path—A Philosophy of Emptiness links these concepts to contemporary ideas of meditation and the mind, presenting a rich and intriguing take on the concept of emptiness and the history of thought.

Nagarjuna is one of the finest philosophers who ever lived. This second century Buddhist philosopher from south India is known for his criticism on speculative theories and viewpoints. But his name is better known for introducing the idea of emptiness (sunyata), a philosophical concept that had hugely influenced the discourses of Eastern philosophy, religion, and culture for about 2000 years. Nagarjuna cleverly introduced emptiness (sunyata), into Buddhist discourses to explain its central philosophy: the philosophy of Middle Path. Through the negative mode of argumentation, he taught how we naturally get trapped into extreme viewpoints and speculate on them. His philosophy of Middle Path (Madhyamika) explains the progress of human reasoning moving in its natural course avoiding extreme viewpoints for finding harmony and freedom. During the second century, in a different milieu, Nagarjuna warned his students about the dangers of speculative thought created out of extreme viewpoints and philosophical doctrines. He taught them to look into the structures of such doctrines critically by using negation to know what the truth is. Therefore, the philosophical idea of emptiness (sunyata) is not the end of negation assuming perfect nihilism, but teaching us that it would work like medicine for removing all our ignorance. More precisely, it is like zero (sunya) in mathematics, a number with an undefined value, but real numbers find newer values by associating with it. It is a philosophical tool that helps us control our alleged fears, anger, petty hatred, etc., by invoking the natural course of human compassion (karuna) for us to live and die naturally. Therefore, the structure of emptiness is the philosophy of Middle Path.

Emptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.

The Emptiness of Emptiness presents the first English translation of the complete text of the Madhyamakāvatāra (Entry into the Middle Way) a sixth century Sanskrit Buddhist composition that was widely studied in Tibet and, presumably, in its native India as well. In his lengthy introduction to the translation, Huntington offers a judiciously crafted, highly original discussion of the central philosophy of Mahāyāna Buddhism. He lays out the principal ideas of emptiness and dependent origination not as abstract philosophical concepts, but rather as powerful tools for restructuring the nature of human experience at the most fundamental level. Drawing on a variety of Indian and Western sources, both ancient and modern, Huntington gradually leads the reader toward an understanding of how it is that sophisticated philosophical thinking can serve as a means for breaking down attachment to any idea, opinion or belief. All of this on the Buddhist premise that habitual, unreflective identification with ideas, opinions, or beliefs compromises our appreciation of the ungraspable miracle that lies at the heart of everyday, conventional reality. The author shows how the spiritual path of the bodhisattva works to transform the individual personality from a knot of clinging into a vehicle for the expression of profound wisdom (prajñā) and unconditional love (karuṇā).

Pt. I Sixteenth century : Translation hazards -- The zen shock -- The Buddha's progress -- Chaos and the God of Zen -- Valignano's lectures and Catechism -- Buddhist philosophy -- God's Samadhi -- Pt. II Seventeenth century : Oriental Ur-philosophy (Rodriques) -- Pan-Asian religion (Kircher) -- Buddha's deathbed confession -- The common ground (Navarrete) -- Pan-Asian philosophy (Bernier) -- The merger (Le Clerc & Bernier) -- From Pagan to Oriental philosophy -- Philosophical archaeology (Burnet) -- Zoroaster's lie (Jacob Thomasius) -- Ur-Spinozism (Bayle).

Boston University Professor Malcolm David Eckel takes us on a contemporary quest to discover the essential meaning behind the Buddha's many representations. Eckel shows that the dimensions of early Indian Buddhism--popular art, conventional piety, and critical philosophy--all work together to express the same religious yearning for the fullness of emptiness that Buddha conveys.

In his Precious Garland, a classic of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Nagarjuna advises a king on how best to secure a happy rebirth while making progress toward the ultimate goal of enlightenment. In Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness, Khensur Jampa Tegchok walks us through the Precious Garland, drawing out the implications of its arguments and grounding its advice in our world today, with equal measures of penetrating explanation and inspiring encouragement.

The pinnacle of Buddhism's understanding of reality is the emptiness of all things. Exploring reality towards the realization of emptiness is shockingly radical. It uncovers an exhilarating freedom with nowhere to stand, while engendering a loving joy that engages the world. This path-breaking book employs the emptiness teachings in a fresh, innovative way. Goode and Sander don't rely solely on historical models and meditations. Instead, they have created over eighty original meditations on the emptiness of the self, issues in everyday life, and spiritual paths. These meditations are guided both by Buddhist insights and cutting-edge Western tools of inquiry, such as positive psychology, neuroscience, linguistic philosophy, deconstruction, and scepticism. The result is a set of liberating and usable tools for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

What is emptiness? This question at the heart of Buddhist philosophy has preoccupied the greatest minds of India and Tibet for two millennia, producing hundreds of volumes. Distinguishing the Views, by the fifteenth-century Sakya scholar Gorampa Sonam Senge, is one of the most important of those works, esteemed for its conciseness, lucidity, and profundity. Freedom from Extremes presents Gorampa's elegant philosophical case on the matter of emptiness here in a masterful translation by Geshe Lobsang Dargyay. Gorampa's text is polemical, and his targets are two of Tibet's greatest thinkers: Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school, and Dolpopa, a founding figure of the Jonang school. Distinguishing the Views argues that Dolpopa has fallen into an eternalistic extreme, whereas Tsongkhapa has fallen into nihilism, and that only the mainstream Sakya view - what Gorampa calls "freedom from extremes" - represents the true middle way, the correct view of emptiness. Suppressed for years in Tibet, this seminal work today is widely regarded and is studied in some of Tibet's greatest academic institutions. Gorampa's treatise has been translated and annotated here by two leading scholars of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and a critical edition of the Tibetan text on facing pages gives students and scholars direct access to Gorampa's own words. Jose Cabezon's extended introduction provides a thorough overview of Tibetan polemical literature and contextualizes the life and work of Gorampa both historically and intellectually. Freedom from Extremes will be indispensable for serious students of Madhyamaka thought.