The Shorter Discourse on Emptiness and its Relationship to Nagarjuna
In MN 121 (Cūḷasuññata Sutta), the final understanding is reached not by discovering what remains, but by recognising that no disturbance or appropriation pertains to whatever experience occurs. Here, appropriation (upādāna) is the implicit act of making any experience—gross or refined—into a basis for being, rather than seeing it as dependently arisen. Appropriation is therefore the subject–object dependent structuring itself, and it is this structuring that “blows out”.
Precisely because nothing is re-established in its place, the sutta exemplifies an anti-reifying, non-ontological project.
Emptiness is defined operationally, not ontologically — it does not say emptiness is a thing. From the beginning, the Buddha defines emptiness as: “Empty of what is not there”. This formulation can give the idea that he is progressively heading to uncover a final ground, but he is not.
The progression is a refinement of disturbance, not a discovery of an underlying essence that is the final release posited by some Mahayana views that have conflicting explanations of what that remainder is eg: Buddhanature, Rigpa, Tathagatagarbha, etc.
In the Buddha’s explanation, each stage follows the same pattern:
- Attend to a domain (place, perception, attainment).
- Notice what disturbances are still present.
- Enter a quieter place where those disturbances no longer arise.
- Know: “This is empty of X” “Only Y remains as disturbance”.
The key is that “what remains” is always framed as disturbance, not as some existent thing. The final abiding is defined by what is absent, not what is present.
For Nagarjuna what is absent is self-existence, non-relativity, ontology.
At the highest level described (non-clinging emptiness), the sutta states that:
Even the most refined perception is known as conditioned (in other words, dependent). The mind does not identify with it. There is no delight, no appropriation.
Crucially, this is not presented as a metaphysical conclusion, it is presented as a mode of non-appropriating awareness. The “final understanding” is recognition of conditionality without grasping.
The sutta’s endpoint is the understanding that: Whatever is present is dependently arisen. Whatever is dependently arisen is liable to cease. Therefore nothing here can serve as a basis for “I” or “mine”.
This is insight into emptiness as non-appropriation, not insight into a final object. It is the insight into the process of dependent arising on which all existence relies without a stable ground. The key passage states that even the most refined perception (signless concentration of mind) is “produced by contact”, “conditioned”, and therefore “of a nature to cease”. The insight is: this cannot serve as “mine” or “I am” or “my self”.
This is non-reification enacted—not because the Buddha declares “nothing exists”, but because he shows that whatever is present cannot bear the weight of selfhood or possession.
Nibbana is not located as an object of emptiness meditation —instead, the sutta ends with release through non-clinging, not discovery through analysis. MN 121 arrives at its “final understanding” by exhausting disturbances, exhausting appropriation, without ever positing a remainder. The Buddha does not say “there is nothing there”, but he also makes it impossible to take anything as something there.
That is precisely why remainder-based Mahayana readings misread it, Nagarjuna blocks essence-remainder thinking which has crept back in by the time of Abhidamma theories and which reappear long after Nagarjuna.
The final understanding in MN 121 is the complete absence of disturbance and appropriation, non-ontology enacted, not asserted.
The Theravada scholar monk, Bhikkhu Analayo, argues that the Canon’s explanations of emptiness are sufficient in that it can be argued they were able to move mediators from Samsara to Nibanna without the need for further complications.
His point is that Nagarjuna’s attack on svabhava is contextually bound to the Abhidhamma claim that real dhammas exist. End of story, no need to continue that ancient targeting to a broader discussion that makes a problem out of something that was never mentioned by the Buddha.
Good point, if one can glean a clear view from the Canon, one does not need further elaboration.
But there is broader context than the second century, when one considers the actual history of Buddhism that is littered with exceptional teachers who again and again reintroduce permanence into a system whose foundation is impermanence and dependent arising.
If Buddhism’s own history shows repeated substantialist drift despite the Buddha’s clear teaching, then Nāgārjuna’s critique isn’t just a context-bound response to one Abhidhamma school. It’s a structurally necessary intervention that addresses an endemic tendency within Buddhist thought itself.
In other words: the Canon may be sufficient in principle, but insufficient in practice—because humans (including Buddhist scholars and meditators) persistently smuggle permanence back in.
This doesn’t make Nāgārjuna’s philosophy truer than the suttas, but it does make it necessary as an ongoing corrective within living Buddhist traditions.