The excerpt explains a deep truth from Buddhist philosophy: the unity of form and emptiness. It teaches that what we experience as form — our bodies, objects, events — arises from nothingness, and yet this nothingness is not absence or destruction. Rather, it is the fertile source from which all forms emerge.

“Form is emptiness” expresses the idea that all things, though they appear solid and independent, are actually without fixed, unchanging essence. Bodies, mountains, rivers, thoughts — all are temporary configurations. They exist only because of conditions, and when those conditions change, the forms change or dissolve. To exist “where there is nothing” means that all form is supported by an unseen emptiness, a lack of permanent structure, allowing change, growth, and decay.

“Emptiness is form” expresses the complementary truth. Emptiness is not a barren void but the very reason anything can exist at all. From emptiness comes all form. Without the absence of fixed nature, no new form could arise. Every experience, every object, every life is emptiness made visible. Nothingness, therefore, is not separate from life but is its foundation and its expression.

The critical instruction in the excerpt is not to see these two — form and emptiness — as separate. They are not opposites. They are not different layers of reality. They are one and the same viewed from different angles. The form you see and touch is at the same time empty of fixed self. The emptiness you cannot touch is constantly presenting itself as form.

To grasp this unity is to dissolve the artificial walls the mind often builds — between life and death, between being and nonbeing, between fullness and void. It is an invitation to live without clinging and without fear, to move through life knowing that all things are at once real and without permanent hold.

Understanding that form and emptiness are one is not a philosophical trick but a deep way of seeing. It allows one to accept change, loss, and transformation with greater peace. It invites a life lived with presence and detachment, care and freedom, full engagement without grasping.

Life arises from the midst of nothingness. And in each moment, form and emptiness reveal themselves as not two, but one.