B. Emptiness

Knowing that everything is empty is only half the battle.

Essentially Madhyamika says that there are two truths. There is the ultimate truth of emptiness, which is essentially ontological ambiguity, or interconnectedness in the positive sense. Then there is the conventional or provisional truth. This truth is your existence as a person or being.

So you don't dispense of one or the other. If you dispense of emptiness and focus on the provisional you fall into eternalism. If you dispense of the provisional and focus on the ultimate you fall into nihilism. This is why the Madhyamika literally means middle or center.

So how do you come to the middle? It is because both truths are valid at the exact same time as one complete truth.

Be careful not to impose on Madhyamika theories of the yogacara school/philosophical tradition. Madhyamika does not say that things do not exist, outside the mind or otherwise. When the madhyamika tradition says things are real or unreal it means in relation to an inherent, eternal self. It does not mean that you don't exist, or that the world is a hologram.

I think you are stuck with emptiness, which is one of the big warnings philosophers like Nagarjuna warned people to avoid.

Tiantai and Tendai thought goes one step further to posit a Center or Middle that unified all this together into a beautiful doctrine.

A

“When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

A

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

A