David R. Loy. Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond
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«Śūnyata is perhaps the most important term in Mahāyāna, but it is not easy to translate. It comes from the root śū, which means “to swell” in two senses: hollow or empty, and also full, like the womb of a pregnant woman. Both are implied in the Mahāyāna usage: the first denies any fixed self-nature to anything, the second implies that this is also fullness and limitless possibility, for lack of any fixed characteristics allows the infinite diversity of impermanent phenomena. It has been unfortunate for Anglo-American Buddhist studies that “emptiness” captures only the first sense, but I follow the tradition.

The term is used in both Pāli and Mahāyāna Buddhism, but differently. Śūṇyatā in Pāli Buddhism generally means, first, that this world of saṁsāra is empty of value and should be negated in favor of nirvana; and second, that both saṁsāra and nirvana are empty of any self because all compounds are only clusters of dharma-elements. In Mahāyāna, śūnyatā means that the true nature of the world (tathatā) is empty of all description and predication; and that even all the dharma-elements are empty of any self-existence because all “things” are relative and conditioned by each other.

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…the equanimity of the Bodhisattva is due to his seeing all dharmas (including percepts) as śūnya, without any reality of their own and referring to nothing else besides themselves. That is the experience of tathatā, the “suchness” of things.»