There is a reflexive dimension that is engaged whenever Buddhists take meditations on the concept of “emptiness” far enough to encompass the subjectivity of the thinker. This has long been important in the history of Buddhism, but now constitutes a significant contribution to the history of human consciousness. Here is a summary of how the “emptiness” of all things encompasses the “self” in such a way that we can get a glimpse of “the one who is right now reading this.” Recall that “emptiness” can be handily defined in terms of three basic Buddhist principles – impermanence, dependent arising, and no-self. Things are “empty” of their “own being” insofar as they are always subject to change and insofar as the change they undergo is caused and conditioned by change in other things upon which they depend. All things lack a “self,” therefore – a permanent, self-caused identity that always makes them exactly what they are.

Meditation on this universal predicate – that all things are empty – eventually attains a reflexive dimension when it returns to encompass the one who predicates “emptiness” – you or me as subjects. What would it mean to understand through prolonged meditation that “I” am “empty?”