A TEACHING By Thrangu Rinpoche     The hinayana schools maintain that our experience is based on the conditioned production of compounds. These compounds, being compounds, are mere designations having no reality of their own. They are made up of elements which are extremely small-the finest possible analyzable particles and the finest possible analyzable moments or units of time. According to this view, which reflects an incomplete attitude toward emptiness, all cognizable objects are built up, with the help of appropriate conditions, out of these real particles and moments. The Vijnanavada or Cittamatra school of the mahayana maintains that all experience is a projection of mind occurring as a result of previous karma. Due to the ripening of karmic seeds, we project our world, which then functions in conformity with the way it is projected, but which is empty of any reality in and of itself. The projecting mind, however, is held by this school to be real.  But a position which attributes true existence to some things in the phenomenal world, for example, the hõnayÝna tradition holds that small particles (atoms) and units of time as real and the Cittamatrins hold the perceiving mind as inherently real, is a position which still clings to a partially false notion of some kind of self-nature.  In the view of Madhyamaka school, however, there is no adherence to any concept of essential nature at all. In none of the experience of the skandhas is there anything truly real; if we examine the basic nature of reality, we cannot find anything that constitutes the essence of that reality. But this does not imply a mere nothingness.  The lack of objectifiable reality nonetheless permits the continued expression of all kinds of experiences. When investigating the ultimate nature, we discover that there is no fundamental characteristic, no essential reality, no objectifiable reality to anything, so it is said that all things are empty, that there is no true reality at all. However, emptiness is not distinguishable from the appearance of the phenomena we experience. These phenomena themselves are not separated from the fundamental nature, so our basic experience in the world is, in reality, never anything but fundamental emptiness, or the lack of reality in everything.  So the conventional truth concerns the way all appearances and experiences function, and the ultimate truth concerns the lack of objectifiable reality in everything are inseparable; they are not two different things, but rather an integrated whole. This is the basic viewpoint of Madhyamaka as expounded by Nagarjuna, and it is a description of the actual viewpoint on reality of an enlightened Buddha.    from The Open Door to Emptiness