For the Dalai Lama, compassion is to remove ignorance of the true condition of the world through clear teaching. Pointedly, “My religion is kindness.”

In an early primer, he stated “many intelligent persons are analyzing and seeking the meaning of emptiness… [This] has been written mainly with the intent of easy comprehension.”

Each and every phenomenon, from the very fact of its coming into existence, is established as having the nature of emptiness.

But this nature of emptiness is not to be considered as something which exists; to do so would make of it another entity or thing, such as any of the phenomenal things which are being recognized to be empty. The nature of emptiness is that it is empty, and we cannot say that emptiness either is existent or non-existent. In addition, what is empty does not “come into existence,” as phenomenon are thought to do. It is important that this nature of emptiness be clarified: it is what is ultimately real, not what is apparently (or conventionally to the viewer’s mind) true.

When we speak of an emptiness, we are not referring to the situation in which one object is empty of some other existent entity… Though we may also speak of ‘empty space’, since space is empty of anything physical, this too is not an example of what we mean by an emptiness… Rather, when we speak of a phenomenon as being empty, we are referring to it’s being empty of its own inherent existence…

An emptiness is the way of being, or mode of existence, of the phenomenon qualified by it. Therefore, if the phenomenon qualified by the emptiness does not exist, there is no emptiness of it… Therefore, when we seek the object designated as ‘an empty nature’, this empty nature is also not found…

Therefore, this is not the ascertainment of an emptiness either. Also, even if the meaning of an emptiness has been ascertained, but the thought, ‘This is an emptiness,’ appears, then one is apprehending the existence of an emptiness which is a positive thing…

Thus, there is even an explanation that, in these circumstances, an ‘emptiness’ can be viewed as a conventional truth.

He gives an example of the nature of emptiness:

Therefore, when a tree, for instance, is analyzed, the tree is not found, but its mode of being or emptiness is found. Then, when that emptiness is analyzed, that emptiness also is not found, but the emptiness of that emptiness is found. This is called an emptiness of emptiness. Thus, a tree is a conventional ‘truth’, and its mode of being is an ultimate truth…

Further, it is not that the objects of the negation [inherent existence] formerly existed and is later eliminated, like the forest which existed yesterday and which is burned by a fire today, with the result that the area is now empty of the forest. Rather, this is an emptiness of an object of negation [inherent existence], which from beginning-less time has never been known validly to exist.

So, from the standpoint of sunyata, phenomenon have no actual existence. Yet, as something whose mode of being is emptiness, one might say that phenomenon are ‘existent’: the first sentence is the ultimate truth.

Similarly, if phenomena had no deep mode of being other than their external or superficial mode of being, and if thus the way they appeared and the way they existed were in agreement, then it would be sufficient to hold that conventional modes of appearance are true just as they appear, and to place confidence in them. However, this is not so. Though phenomena appear as if true, most true, ultimately they are not true. Therefore phenomena abide in the middle way, not truly or inherently existent and also not utterly non-existent…

If we become familiar with this, the objects viewed—self, other, and so forth—appear as illusion-like or dream-like falsities which, although not inherently existent, appear to be so…

They appear to be inherently existent, or existing as independent entities, or existing objectively. Therefore, all consciousnesses are mistaken except for the wisdom that directly cognizes emptiness.

Emptiness can have no form, and – unlike forms to which we can give separate names – there is not anything there to which to give a name. Thus in the Twenty Five Thousand Stanza Perfection of Wisdom Sutra it says:

Feelings, discriminations, compositional factors and consciousnesses are like illusions. Illusions also are only names; they do not abide in places; they do not abide in the directions… When a Bodhisattva, a great being, practices the perfection of wisdom, he does not view names as real. Because he does not view them as real, he does not adhere to them. Further, O Sariputra, when a Bodhisattva, a great being, practices the perfection of wisdom, he thinks thus: this “Bodhisattva” is only a name; this “enlightenment” is only a name; this “perfections of wisdom” is only a name; these “forms” are only names; these “feelings”, “discriminations”, “compositional factors” and “consciousnesses” are only names…

Were it not for consciousnesses – which are empty of inherent existence – conceiving of forms and naming each separately, what would there actually be? Where the emptiness of emptiness is the ultimate truth, what could ever have come out of, or been created by, what is utterly empty?

Continuing with a quotation from Nagarjuna:

In many sutras and treatises phenomena are all said to be only names. When imputed objects are sought, they are utterly not there in any objective way. This is a sign that all phenomena are not objectively existent and are only established as existing through subjective designations and thoughts. Existing merely in this way functions as ‘existing’… “Thus, if the meaning of the designation ‘production’ is sought, production is not capable of being established.

Because it does not exist, the non-existent is not produced.

However, if the non-produced were inherently true as non-produced, it would be no different from being utterly nonexistent… The Condensed Perfection of Wisdom Sutra says, “Even if a Bodhisattva realizes, 'These aggregates are empty,' he is acting on signs of conventionalities and does not have faith in the state of non-production.” The thought that phenomena produced from causes and conditions are real was called Ignorance by the Teacher.

I bow down to the perfect Buddha,

The best of teachers, who propounded

That what dependently arises

Has no cessation, no production,

No annihilation, no permanence, no coming,

No going, no difference, no sameness,

Is free of the elaborations [of inherent existence and of duality]

and is at peace.