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.

Some Rambling Thoughts About the Conclusion

Thinking about the final extinguishment the Buddha gives in MN 121, he is taking us step by step from gross disturbance to the very finest.

At the start, grasping is obvious. It is the sense that we drag an exaggerated object toward “me”. Something out there matters, and I want it closer. As the Buddha presents the process, this grasping is steadily refined. It gets thinner and subtler until it needs a different word. At that point it becomes appropriation.

The gross dragging has stopped, but ownership remains.

This continues to be sandpapered down even further, until it is almost transparent. Now the mind is not grabbing anything in the usual sense. There is only a faint, ghost-like presence: a sense that there is someone here having the experience. That separation alone is still a self, and it is still appropriation.

This final, subtlest appropriation only works as long as there appears to be a pairing: something that appropriates, and something that is appropriated. When that pairing is no longer operating, appropriation cannot arise at all.

What the Buddha is pointing to is that this thin appropriation is still dependent arising at work. Seeing this is not the discovery of something new. It is the undoing of the activity itself. Dependent arising cancels out.

Why cancellation, and not the discovery of a final stage or thing called Nibbāna?

Because this faint “someone” only exists if there seems to be something separate from it. You cannot have one without the other. Appropriation is nothing more than this pairing: subject and object, appropriator and appropriated. That pairing is the last form of grasping.

But dependent arising cannot be a single thing. Something can only be dependent if it depends on something else. So this final pairing cannot produce something independent, singular that continues as a last object, a final state, or a remainder.

When that is seen, there is nothing left to hold — and no one left to hold it. The whole setup collapses at once.

That is why the Buddha does not end MN 121 with a statement about reality. He ends with extinguishment. The fire does not go anywhere. It simply stops, because there is nothing left to burn.

It’s not that dependent arising as a principle cancels out (the causal process continues in the world). What cancels out is the specific instance of dependent arising that constitutes self-making through appropriation.

The Theravada scholar monk, Bhikkhu Analayo, argues that the Canon’s explanations of emptiness are sufficient in that 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.

It’s a 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 Nagarjuna’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.

Relegating svabhava to an ancient Abhidhamma dispute, as if the term were self-limiting, risks ignoring what it actually names. It points to the impossibility of being independent — directly in line with dependent arising which suggests the very drift Nagarjuna warns against.

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 Nagarjuna’s philosophy truer than the suttas, but it does make it necessary as an ongoing corrective within living Buddhist traditions.

The 7 Step Refinement Taken by the Buddha in MN121

In MN 121 (Cūḷasuññata Sutta) the “distraction” (upaddava / disturbance) layers are processed in this strict order, each defined by what is absent and what still remains:

Social / communal disturbance
– Presence of people, village activity
– Abiding: forest
Environmental multiplicity
– Variegated forest perceptions
– Abiding: perception of earth (single, uniform theme)
Material form as a whole
– Perception of earth as form
– Abiding: infinite space
Spatial extension
– Perception of space
– Abiding: infinite consciousness
Cognitive extension
– Perception of consciousness as something
– Abiding: nothingness
Conceptual negation itself
– Perception of “nothing”
– Abiding: neither-perception-nor-non-perception
The residual disturbance
– The fact of this state being conditioned and dependently arisen

At this final point, nothing further is “processed” or removed.
The remaining disturbance is appropriative stance itself, seen as conditioned — and that seeing is release.

This is the full MN 121 progression, without ontological residue.

A Note on Remainder Theories

Some Mahayana formulations sometimes describe awakening as being the recognition of a luminous, pure, or unchanging “nature”—which can sound like precisely the kind of remainder-essence thinking that MN 121 (and Nagarjuna) work to undercut.

But there is the nuance worth considering:

While the sutta doesn’t posit a remainder as object or essence, it does describe a mode of dwelling that is “supreme, true, unsurpassed” and “without fabrication” (atammayata). The question some readers raise is: does this mode itself constitute a kind of remainder—not as thing, but as awakened awareness?

The reply is that that mode is precisely the absence of appropriation, not a thing appropriated. It’s the how of awareness, not a what that is discovered. It is release-through-non-clinging, not insight-into-X —where X is a pre-existing something that has qualities.