The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2374 page)

(Skt., P
li, ‘emptiness’; Chin.,
k’ung;
Jap.,
k
; Korean,
kong
). In early Buddhism, the term suññat
is used primarily in connection with the ‘no-self’ (anatman) doctrine to denote that the Five Aggregates (
skandhas
) are ‘empty’ of the permanent self or soul which is erroneously imputed to them.
The doctrine of emptiness, however, received its fullest elaboration at the hands of
N
g
rjuna
, who wielded it skilfully to destroy the substantialist conceptions of the
Abhidharma
schools of the
H
nay
na
. Since there cannot be anything that is not the Buddha-nature (
buddhat
), all that appears is in truth devoid of characteristics. The doctrine of emptiness is the central tenet of the
M
dhyamaka
school, and a statement of N
g
rjuna's views in support of it may be found in his
M
la-M
dhyamaka-N
rik