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GCSE Religious Studies · key term
‘Emptiness’: the Mahayana teaching that things lack independent, permanent existence, not that nothing exists.
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Paper 1
‘Emptiness’: the teaching that things lack an independent, permanent or fixed essence because they depend on other causes and conditions.
Revise: Human PersonalitySunyata means ‘emptiness’: things lack an independent, permanent or fixed essence.
Explain sunyata as the absence of an independent, fixed essence—not as the claim that nothing exists.
Sunyata means emptiness of independent, permanent existence—not that nothing exists or that life is meaningless.
Identify the traditions clearly: the Five Aggregates are emphasised in Theravada teaching; sunyata and Buddha-nature are particularly associated with Mahayana.
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Paper 3
Emptiness: the teaching, particularly emphasised in Mahayana Buddhism, that things lack an independent, permanent or fixed essence.
Revise: Human PersonalityMahayana teaching particularly emphasises sunyata, or emptiness, and Tathagatagarbha, or Buddha-nature. These are different emphases, not completely unrelated accounts of human life.
Emptiness: the teaching that things lack an independent, fixed existence; it does not mean that nothing exists.