There are sages who maintain that the nature of ultimate reality is emptiness, also known as nothingness or voidness.

Out of what is nothing can only come nothing. In other words, not anything can have its origin, or be created, from a basis of absolute nothing. Put another way, where nothingness is the ultimate, or ground condition, not any thing can ever have appeared, of any sort. Any thing which appears to exist—or have been, or will be—can have no reality. Any thing (material or immaterial) involved in a process of time, or occupying conceivable space, or considered either a cause or an effect, cannot in fact be true.

Presumably this would apply as well to any idea or discussion of nothingness itself, or to even an idea of nothing or emptiness.

The person who does thus consider nothingness is not real. Neither is the person real who does not consider nothingness.

Neither person—who considers or does not consider emptiness—is actually living a life in time and space (which likewise do not actually exist).

Therefore, it matters not whether emptiness or nothingness are considered. But in the assumed life of those who take their existence to be real, the contemplation of nothingness lies closer to the truth than does its lack. The closer one delves into the emptiness of assumed reality, the freer one is of the illusion of existence. “No-thing”cannot be said to exist, nor is there no-thing which can be said to not exist.

Not anything can be said to exist, to have been born, originated or created. Everything which seems to appear is not real or actual, in fact. An unreal person goes to bed at night and has a dream. The dream is not real, in fact. Nor is the dreamer of the dream.

The dreamer awakens in the morning and a world and its events appear, not any of which has reality. The one who sees this unreal world is himself not real. Nor is the life he is living, nor was his birth, or will be the death of an unreal person. To know and understand all of this has an important impact on the person. It frees one from the concerns about time, space and cause-and-effect. To know that life is not real is to know that death is not real.

Reality is a dream. Its dreamer is not real. Not anything which seems to occur during the dream of life is important. Not anything which appears in the dream is permanent. The characteristic of the universe is change. No-thing does not change. An end of the dream has no effect on nothingness. Nor does a beginning of a dream have any effect on nothingness. Nor does anything which occurs in the dream change nothingness.

Why is there a dream of existence? How otherwise could emptiness be contemplated? “Emptiness is form.” And all conceivable forms are empty. All of so-called reality is within an empty dream. Nothingness itself is empty.