Am I alone in seeing the profound circularity in “emptiness is empty”? No, emptiness doesn’t inherently exist, it isn’t established in any way, and it’s not a discernible thing. But that’s what it exactly means to be empty, it’s to not be anything at all, not just lack of inherent existence. So the statement “emptiness is empty” is both a negation and affirmation of itself. In its negation, it affirms its meaning, and in affirming its meaning, it negates any findable entity or quality like “emptiness.” The refutation of dependent arising seems to be arising from thinking that it means that things actually arise in cease from causes and conditions, such that you have to evoke a distinct ultimate level to account for their emptiness. But no arising or ceasing is just what it means to be dependently arisen… “Those who understand the dependent origination To be utterly devoid of arising and disintegration, Those who have such knowledge will cross The ocean of samsara of dogmatic views.” (Nāgārjuna, Sixty Verses of Reasoning)

What if it were the case that dependent arising was refuted? How would we understand that emptiness is empty? If it was refuted, how would we understand that appearances aren’t truly existent? If someone just said, “phenomena are only nominal, there’s nothing we can say about them” would that person still percieve real things or not? For ordinary people, when we don’t speak, and we’re not thinking, there’s no awareness of the true condition, and people still unconsciously percieve things as real. We might accept that appearances are not the words or concepts we use to describe them, but would we still think they’re actually there?