PhilosophersNāgārjuna

Nāgārjuna

All things are empty of inherent existence.

Buddhist philosophyvers 150 – 250 IndiaBuddhist philosopherFounder of the Middle Way school (Madhyamaka)DialecticianLittle-known life
yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe
Whatever is relational origination, we declare to be emptiness.
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śūnyatā sarvadṛṣṭīnāṃ proktā niḥsaraṇaṃ jinaiḥ
Emptiness is said by the Victors to be the way out of all views.
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nāsti ca mama pratijñā tasmān naivāsti me doṣaḥ
I have no thesis; therefore no fault is mine.
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sarvaṃ ca yujyate tasya śūnyatā yasya yujyate
For whom emptiness is tenable, everything is tenable.
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yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śivam
He who taught dependent origination, the blissful cessation of conceptual proliferation.
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Misconceptions

False
Nagarjuna teaches that nothing exists (it is nihilism).

This is the charge his opponents already make inside his own book (24.1 to 24.6), and he rejects it. For him "empty" means "without own-nature", not "non-existent": emptiness is the name of dependent origination (24.18). He refuses both "it exists" and "it does not exist": the first leads to believing in the eternal, the second to annihilation (15.10), and for whom emptiness is tenable, everything is tenable (24.14).

Nuanced
Emptiness is an ultimate reality hidden behind the world.

That is not the text's reading. Emptiness is not one more thing: it is dependent origination itself, and a mere "designation" (24.18). Nagarjuna warns that those for whom it becomes a view to hold are incurable (13.8). His commentator Candrakīrti says it plainly: emptiness, dependent designation and middle way are names of dependent origination alone. (Candrakīrti is not Nagarjuna.)