  A distinguishing characteristic of Bhāvaviveka’s approach to Madhyamaka is his conviction that a Mādhyamika should put forward a positive argument for a position rather than merely showing the inadequacies of other positions. His criticism of Buddhapālita was focused primarily on that very point; Buddhapālita offered no statement of what the Mādhyamikas believe but confined himself to pointing out that what other people believe is untenable in one way or another. To criticize the positions of others but not to venture to state a position of one’s own was regarded by the Indian debate tradition as a substandard use of argumentation called vitaṇḍā, which literally means making an attack. Bhāvaviveka was at pains to show that Mādhyamikas could not legitimately be accused of this sort of philosophical sniping. He affirmed that Mādhyamikas do have a conviction that they are prepared to state and defend, namely, that all phenomena are devoid of an inherent nature, that is, a nature that they have independently. All phenomena are conditioned, and such natures as they have are natures that they acquire through their conditions rather than on their own. The concise Madhyamaka way of saying all this is to say that all phenomena (dharmas) are empty (śūnya). Since the Mādhyamikas believe that all phenomena are empty, they owe it to their readers to provide reasons for thinking that that is a reasonable thing to believe.