Was Nagarjuna a nihilist?
Some mistakenly perceive my teaching of emptiness as nihilistic. This is a profound misunderstanding. Nihilism asserts the non-existence of anything. Emptiness, as I teach it, asserts the absence of *inherent* existence. Phenomena still appear and function conventionally. The point is that this functioning is dependent, not self-sufficient. To mistake emptiness for nothingness is to remain trapped in conceptual extremes.