Emptiness in mind and in reality Recent exchange here got me thinking. Nagarjuna's karika, 1.3 (Batchelor) 


  Na hi svabhāvo bhāvānāṃ pratyayādiṣu vidyate 
  
  Avidyamāne svabhāve parabhāvo na vidyate
  
  The essence of things does not exist in conditions and so on. 
  
  If an own thing does not exist, an other thing does not exist.


There is a venerable tradition of different interpretations of Nagarjuna, based on "the two truths".

Can that phrase be read to mean emptiness does not exist in non-emptiness: if and only if an own thing does not exist in non-emptiness then an other thing does not exist in emptiness

So the first phrase says that emptiness is empty in the sense that the absence of svabhava does not exist in things. After that, that whenever a self caused thing cannot be found, then there is no other empty thing.

I don't think it's a normal interpretation?





For the purposes of my philosophical question elsewhere (a neat argument for karma and rebirth) I have rendered 'empty' to mean 'analytic' and 'non-empty' to mean empirical.


  Definition of analytic. Of or relating to analysis or analytics
  especially : separating something into component parts or constituent
  elements.
  
  Definition of empirical. Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
Subtleties... The concept of emptiness is a mental object that is predicated on other things. We only get to the concept of emptiness by seeing through and negating the fullness (meaningfulness) of other concepts.
The experience of emptiness in not predicated on the concept of it. To experience emptiness is to see that 'emptiness' is no more real than 'fullness'.
If one holds the concept of a thing-in-its-own-right (an 'own thing'), one must hold the concept of its negation (that which is 'not-such'). If one holds the concept of a negation, one must hold a concept of that which has been negated (a thing-in-its-own-right). So what lies beneath those concepts?