By wisdom, Nagarjuna meant the perfection of wisdom, declared in the sutras to be the knowledge of emptiness.
Knowledge of emptiness is key to this emancipatory process, as Tsongkhapa claims, for one must realize the emptiness of the Consequence School, the lack of true essence, to be free from the subtle sense of self and achieve nirvāṇa (Cozort 1998, 316).
Socrates responds to Agathon's fancy speech about love with an elenchus, so that his emptiness, his lack of knowledge, flows into Agathon, destroying the wisdom of great beauty that had won his tragedy a first prize the day before (175e4 7).
Within texts in the Zhuangzi that advocate emptiness, for example, emptiness requires emptying the heart of all knowledge.
As the theory of emptiness is something we are supposed to acquire knowledge of it is essential to get clear about the means by which we are supposed to do so, and indeed about what our epistemic object consists of in this case.
On the other hand, then, emptiness is truly emptiness "only when it empties itself even of the standpoint that represents it as some 'thing' that is emptiness.
The realization of this emptiness was a kind of non-realization, a giving up, or an inexpressible, mystical, prajna-knowledge which contrasts with "ordinary" knowledge.
Bhāvavevika's third etymological sense of the term paramārtha has it identified with cognition that accords with the knowledge of the ultimate truth on the ground that such cognition has emptiness as its object and such knowledge is a means through which one develops a non-conceptual knowledge of ultimate reality.
Emptiness, too, is not "found" when sought (emptiness is empty, too).
As Maitreyanātha states, ultimate truth takes three primary forms as emptiness it is the ultimate object, as nirvāṇa it is the ultimate attainment, and as nonconceptual knowledge it is the ultimate realization (MadhVK, Sems tsam phi 42B).
