In his later years, Buddha was a teacher of sunyata: form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Because of the difficulty for the followers to understand the subject, it is said, he normally did not delve deeply into it. An exception, perhaps would be the discourse to a particular follower that he gave in Sri Lanka, known as the Lankavatara Sutra.

Around the Second Century A.D., an Indian monk wrote a poetic treatise in which—using logic that any philosopher would admire—he set out proofs of Buddha’s thesis.

While emptiness is more difficult to comprehend, we all know what forms are: we view ourselves as forms. So, Nagarjuna’s explanations concern “dependent arising”, or co-arising. Any thing which is dependent upon something else, whatever it is, for its existence—and that means every thing—does not exist on its own or by its own right. Therefore, being empty of autonomy, it is empty of true existence. What does not really exist cannot be claimed to be truly real.

So while things appear to be existent and real, they cannot actually be: all such appearances are empty of reality. In other words, the true nature of forms is their incontrovertible emptiness: “form is emptiness”.

Although, by taking on the subject of form first, one has an obvious and comprehendible way to engage emptiness, this traditional explanation has its limits. Buddha also taught that there is “no arising”.

What this means is that if something arises—is created, or originated—that is, comes into form—the arising would be an effect for which there would have to have been a cause.

Where the original condition was one of no arising, it would be a purely empty condition: not anything can arise from complete emptiness.

Therefore, to begin a discussion of emptiness on the basis of co-arising is to essentially create the forms which are said to co-arise—and which need to be seen as not real and not truly existing in the final analysis of emptiness. No forms can ever have been formed in a condition in which there is no arising.

Emptiness is a cause-less condition. Yet any thing which exists will have been caused. And all things, therefore, would be dependent upon causation, if nothing else. Causation is behind the idea of dependent arising.

The obvious end to the limitation of presenting form, first and it’s dependent arising, is to initially emphasize the condition of no arising—from which not anything has ever actually been created or originated in the first place.

Thus one can appreciate the genius of Hui Neng’s lines  (“dust” is a Buddhist metaphor for ignorance):  

When there is nothing from the start,

Where can dust alight?