The six-word formula — “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” — causes more confusion than it needs to. Let’s walk through it.

Where form — that is all phenomena —is emptiness, form does not itself exist. Form, yes, appears to exist, because “we” see it, and name it as such.

But “we” are forms; we do not exist. What does not exist is claiming to see what is equally non-existent. What does exist? Not any thing: all is empty.

So, forms — phenomena — are said to exist, and likewise are also said to be empty of existence. Emptiness is not something which has been added to existing forms: emptiness is what forms are, from start to finish.

Emptiness being the final condition, not any thing has ever actually been created from what is an empty condition: not any things exists, in actuality. Thus, what appear to be forms are emptiness.

If there were no (supposedly real) forms, emptiness would not exist — because emptiness does not exist.

“We” say that emptiness exists, and so in that sense it appears to exist (i.e., “Emptiness is what forms are.”) But emptiness itself cannot be said either to be “non-existent” nor “existent”: if there were no minds in the universe, where would such a distinction come from?

Emptiness does not even exist as forms: there are no real forms.

What appear as forms are impermanent. We cannot say of emptiness that it is either “permanent” or “impermanent.” It does not “exist” (or “nonexist”).

However, of forms we can say that they appear to exist, but in actuality do not exist.

All that you need to know is that all phenomena — material or non-material — are empty of existence, beyond their appearance. This includes you, and your world.

Be mindful that everything, the moving and the unmoving, 

Is naturally empty from the beginning.  

- Darikapa

In whatsoever phenomenon

Expressed by whatsoever names,

Those do not exist.

This is the reality of phenomena.  

–a sutra

As the Samadhiraja says: “To not see anything is to see all phenomena.”

There is nothing to be removed from it;

There is nothing whatsoever to be added.

Reality should be viewed correctly.

When reality is seen, one is liberated.

–Asango