Śūnyatā as a Metaphor and Its Problems

The term śūnyatā (空/empty) has been used in different ways due to its homonymic characteristic since early Buddhism. When early Mahayana Buddhism arose, the teaching of śūnyatā was intensely promoted by the Prajñāpāramitāsūtra (般若經 /the text of perfect-wisdom) and eventually became the most important teaching in Mahayana Buddhism. Nāgārjuna (龍樹) inherited the tradition of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtra and used the term śūnyatā to construct a Madhyamika (中道/middle-path) understanding of the world. Due to the homonymic characteristic of śūnyatā, however, the term was also used to refer to the development of a different philosophy. The vagueness of the term was used as an excuse by which the Sarvāstivādin school criticized Nāgārjuna’s philosophy by claiming that his interpretation of śūnyatā violated the basic teaching of Buddhism. The purpose of this paper is to show that the Sarvāstivādin’s (說一切有者) criticism of Nāgārjuna’s teaching on śūnyatā is invalid because its argument is based on a literal interpretation of śūnyatā as opposed to Nāgārjuna’s metaphorical use of the term.