Editing Prajnaparamita (section)

====Negation and emptiness====
Most modern Buddhist scholars such as [[Etienne Lamotte|Lamotte]], Conze and [[Yin Shun]] have seen [[Śūnyatā]] (emptiness, voidness, hollowness) as ''the'' central theme of the Prajñāpāramitā sutras.{{sfn|Orsborn|2012|pp=107–108}} [[Edward Conze]] writes:

<blockquote>It is now the principal teaching of Prajñāpāramitā with regard to own-being that it is "empty." The Sanskrit term is ''svabhāva-śūnya''. This is a ''[[tatpuruṣa]]'' compound (one in which the last member is qualified by the first without losing its grammatical independence), in which [[svabhava]] may have the sense of any oblique case. The [[Mahayana]] understands it to mean that dharmas are empty of any own-being, i.e.,that they are not ultimate facts in their own right, but merely imagined and falsely discriminated, for each and every one of them is dependent on something other than itself. From a slightly different angle this means that dharmas, when viewed with perfected [[gnosis]], reveal an own-being which is identical with emptiness, i.e in their own-being they are empty.<ref name="Conze, Edward 1953 PP.117-129"/></blockquote>

The Prajñāpāramitā sutras commonly use [[apophasis|apophatic]] statements to express the nature of reality as seen by Prajñāpāramitā. A common trope in the Prajñāpāramitā sutras is the negation of a previous statement in the form 'A is not A, therefore it is A', or more often negating only a part of the statement as in, "XY is a Y-less XY".{{sfn|Orsborn|2012|p=171}} Japanese Buddhologist, Hajime Nakamura, calls this negation the 'logic of not' (''na prthak'').<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nagatomo |first1=Shigenori |title=The Logic of the ''Diamond Sutra'': A is not A, therefore it is A |journal=Asian Philosophy |date=November 2000 |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=213–244 |doi=10.1080/09552360020011277 |s2cid=13926265 }}</ref> An example from the [[Diamond Sutra]] of this use of negation is:

:As far as 'all dharmas' are concerned, Subhuti, all of them are dharma-less. That is why they are called 'all dharmas.'<ref name="ReferenceA">Harrison, Paul. Vajracchedika Prajñaparamita Diamond Cutting Transcendent Wisdom</ref>

The rationale behind this form is the juxtaposition of conventional truth with ultimate truth as taught in the Buddhist [[two truths doctrine]]. The negation of conventional truth is supposed to expound the ultimate truth of the emptiness ([[Śūnyatā]]) of all reality - the idea that nothing has an ontological essence and all things are merely conceptual, without substance.

The Prajñāpāramitā sutras state that dharmas should not be conceptualized either as existent, nor as non existent, and use negation to highlight this: "in the way in which dharmas exist (''saṃvidyante''), just so do they not exist (''asaṃvidyante'')".{{sfn|Orsborn|2012|p=192}}