Jay Garfield points out that we seek meaning in life because without it, we ourselves—and our presumed life—have no meaning.

We are driven to reify ourselves, the objects in the world around us, and—in more abstract philosophical moods—theoretical constructs, values, and so on because of an instinctual feeling that without an intrinsically real self, an intrinsically real world, and intrinsically real values, life has no real meaning and is utterly hopeless.

However,

Without viewing the world as empty, we can make no sense of any human activity.

And indeed our life (and the entire universe) falls into place when we recognize the unity of all things in their emptiness. And, in that emptiness, there is of course no meaning.

Making sense of the world and human activity depends upon understanding emptiness.

If that is understood correctly, then everything else falls into place.

As the teachings on sunyata show, all in (and including) the universe is by nature—despite appearance—empty of reality, and this includes any meaning that we presume. When even emptiness itself is empty, where could meaning be found?

Liberation from the search for such qualities or ideals, as meaning, can only be achieved by insight into the ultimate nature of things—their emptiness—and indeed into the ultimate nature of emptiness, which we shall see to be emptiness again…

From the ultimate point of view there are no individual objects, or relations between them… To say that “whatever is dependently arisen is unceasing and unborn” is to emphasize that dependent arising amounts to emptiness, and emptiness amounts to nonexistence in the ultimate sense.

From the standpoint of ultimate reality, in fact, not any thing has actually ever come into existence.

Nagarjuna emphasizes that everything—and this must include emptiness—is dependently arisen. So everything—including emptiness—lacks inherent existence.

            Neither from itself nor from another,

            Nor from both,

            Nor without a cause,

            Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.

You are dependently arisen and therefore, like all things, lacking in independent, true or actual existence. Where, then, is meaning to be found for that which lacks existence?

Put another way, what does it mean to say that life is meaningless, when life itself is empty of reality?

To put things more positively, Garma Chang says:

Liberation or Enlightenment is the result of a total annihilation of this deep-rooted, innate clinging to “beingness”… Sunyata is not nihilism; it is absolute transcendentalism… “Take it up,” because by freeing oneself from clinging, one can participate in every activity in the world without losing the Sunyata insight... There is no other way to enter the mansion of infinity except to go through the door of Emptiness.