Book excerpt: This book provides an outline of the Buddhist shunyata principle (the inherent emptiness of all phenomena), and presents a Western philosophical base by which to logically support its integration into the western mindset. Buddhim and Western philosophy are surprisingly compatible. Buddhist Existentialism outlines the influence of existentialists, such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and introduces us to the ideas of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist thought.