Buddhist philosophy: What is Emptiness?

What did Buddha mean when he talked about emptiness? It's often thought to be a depressing or nihilistic thing, but the original meaning of it couldn’t be further.

What is seen to be empty are our thoughts about reality and ourself. Seeing emptiness is a means of deconstructing our rigidly held thoughts.

Buddha didn't talk about things like consciousness. In that time, there was a lot of superstition and ritual within Hinduism (the religion he was born into), and he probably did not want to add to the idolatry and deification. Even words like consciousness can be deified and blindly adhered to.

But words like emptiness leave little opportunity for this. The Buddhist term for Emptiness is Sunyata.

Rites Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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