What you find when you search for their final nature is their unfindability under that sort of analysis.  Does this mean that they don’t exist?  No, it means they don’t exist in that way; it means also that they don’t exist in the kinds of ways that we reflexively think that they do.

    C. emptiness exists, but is a negative (a lack, an absence)
            Like the lack of elephant in room
            Like the absence of married bachelors in Mt. Pleasant.
            Like the clarity (lack of clouds) in sky:
            Things have a clear, open, unobstructed nature: an empty nature
    D. Emptiness is empty
        When you look for how chair REALLY exists, you find emptiness of chair; but when you look for emptiness of chair, it too is unfindable under analysis.  

This is a profound point in Buddhism.  It is not that everything else is unreal in relation to one THING which is REAL in and of itself (see Hinduism).  Rather, it is that nothing is real in and of itself; everything exists ONLY in relation to other things.
    
E. The two truths
      But one can still distinguish:  ultimate truth = emptiness
                                                conventional truth = everything else
        Both truths are right, are ok; neither contradicts the other;
         Two levels of analysis, in effect; two sense channels, two radio channels
           Each and everything thing has or is both of these realities.

      F. How empty things exist, if not in and of themselves they exist interdependently:       
                            parts and wholes
                            causes and effects
                            subjects and objects
                    each depend on each other. 
They exist conventionally (part of meaning subj/obj dependence)
  They exist as imputations. 

They exist less solidly than we expect--but amazingly still function just fine.

II. How to meditate on emptiness
    A. General points
        The importance of analysis in this system
             analysis as a form of meditation; but not finally liberating
            Compare to methods of Theravada, Zen

        Can we prove that emptiness is true?  Is this equivalent to trying to prove that God exists in Christianity?  If emptiness is true, does that make all of Buddhism proven?

    B. The structure of the analysis
        Cognitive psycholgy example
        elephant example
        Married bachelor example
    C. Actual analysis
         1. identifying the object of negation
            conjuring up a sense of “I,” catching yourself reifying
            painting the target.  See Lama Yeshe.
        2. limiting the possibilities
             law of excluded middle?
            other ways of getting a sense of assurance of comprehensiveness

Example:  finding assurance that:  If something did exist in and of itself, it would have to be one with or different from its parts.

        3. Excluding the possibilities, analytically, one at time
                 for example;
                a. if a person were one with the aggregates, then each person would be  five as the aggregates are five; yet that is not the case . . .
                 b. if a person were truly different from the aggregates, and existed  in and of herself, then she could exist without her body and without her mind, completely separate from them;  yet she cannot|

        4. This leads to the conclusion, the knowledge, the realization via meditative analysis, that the person does not exist as it appears, does not exist intrinsically.  One realizes the emptiness of the person, the person’s lack of existing in and of herself.

D. Combining stabilizing meditation with analysis

E. Non-conceptual realization of emptiness = realizing nirvana, actual antidote

F. Alternating between two channels, practicing compassion and wisdom:  developing form (earthly and bliss) and truth bodies

G. How a buddha sees stuff