 One of the basic distinguishing features of Great Vehicle (Mahāyāna) metaphysics is the affirmation that not only the person, but all entities (dharma) are empty of a “self” or an inherent nature (svabhāva). That means, in the terms laid out in the Treasury, that all dharmas are only conceptual fabrications. But that is not the only way of looking at things. To say that all things have three inherent natures is not to take back the Great Vehicle’s denial of inherent natures, but rather to explain it. It is to say that, what we ordinarily take to be a thing’s individual character or identity is best understood from three angles, so as to explode its unity. The first nature is the fabricated nature, which is the thing as it appears to be. Of course, to use this term is to indicate the acceptance that things do not really exist the way they appear. This is a thing’s nature as it might be defined and explained in ordinary Abhidharma philosophy, but with the added proviso that we all know that this is not really how things work. The second nature is the dependent nature, which Vasubandhu defines as the causal process of the thing’s fabrication, the causal story that brings about the thing’s apparent nature. The third nature, finally, is the emptiness of the first nature—the fact that it is unreal, that it does not exist as it appears.