 In Mahāyāna Buddhism śūnyatā refers first of all to the fact that all things come into being in “interdependent origination” (Sanskrit: pratītya-samutpāda; Japanese: engi), and they are therefore “empty” of any independent substantial self-nature or “own-being” (Sanskrit: svabhāva). This thought is closely tied to the basic Buddhist thesis of “no-self” or “non-ego” (Sanskrit: anātman; Japanese: muga). All beings, including the ego, are interconnected and in flux. Psychologically, śūnyatā refers also to the releasement from all attachment to beings, from all reification and willful appropriation of them. Such attachments are both based on and in turn support the primary attachment to the fabricated ego, since the ego both strives to possess and is unwittingly possessed by its reification of beings. To awaken to the emptiness of all things, to their lack of substantial own-being or egoity (Japanese: shogyōmuga), therefore, is to free oneself from both an ego-centered and reified view of things as well as from the illusion of the substantial ego itself.