The Ethical Advantage of the Theory of Emptiness

So what is the distinctive advantage of the Madhyamaka theory of emptiness for establishing the ethical ideal of the bodhisattva? There is much to be said about this question as well as others arising in the same context, but the basis of such answers in Nagarjuna's writings on Madhyamaka is at best implicit. The examination of these issues becomes considerably more interesting when we take into account later Madhyamaka texts which address questions dealing with the distinctive consequences for ethics explicitly and in greater detail. We can imagine a variety of reasons why we find so little discussion of these matters in Nagarjuna's works. One obvious possibility is that the respective text or texts were lost relatively early in the tradition. Alternatively Nagarjuna's focus of interest when developing the Madhyamaka approach may have been a set of metaphysical and epistemological questions, and its ethical dimensions may have been explored in detail only by later writers. A final possibility is that discussions of the point where the perfections of wisdom and compassion join may have been regarded as too advanced to be put down in writing and were transmitted only orally. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that the investigation of Madhyamaka ethics will find a more extensive set of data in later writers than in what is preserved in Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka. (from Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, A Philosophical Introduction, by Jan Westerhoff, Oxford 2009)