Śūnyatā (Sanskrit: शून्यता, romanized: śūnyatā; Pali: suññatā) pronounced in English as (shoon-ya-ta), translated most often as emptiness, vacuity, and sometimes voidness, is a Buddhist concept which has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context
It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience
In Theravāda Buddhism, Suññatā often refers to the non-self (Pāli: anattā, Sanskrit: anātman) nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres
Suññatā is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience
In Mahāyāna Buddhism, śūnyatā refers to the tenet that “all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature (svabhava)”, but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Chan