>>17896453
You’re confusing emptiness with self-annihilation (vibhava-tanhā/ucchedavāda) and nirvana with a
eternalist escapism (bhava-tanhā/sassatavāda). Emptiness doesn’t mean disappearing from material appearance, it means seeing that appearance was never truly material to begin with. You're still trapped in dualistic thinking: Either you're "bound by form" or you've "phased out of existence." That’s the very illusion enlightenment dispels. The enlightened don't vanish, they stop mistaking the movie for the screen.

Even the Buddha, after his awakening under the Bodhi tree, continued to walk, eat, speak, teach and eventually die. He didn’t float into some abstract void; he lived within the world, but not bound by it. His death came through food poisoning, not transcendental disappearance, because enlightenment isn’t an escape from form, it’s the direct realization that form is already empty. If you’re waiting for awakened beings to evaporate before you take them seriously, you’re still worshiping illusion.

>>17896484
To say that "appearances are real" is merely to change the name of reification. You admit that they have no essence, but still insist on treating them as possessing some kind of independent reality, this is the error Nāgārjuna points out. In Madhyamaka, appearance is not denied, but is empty of intrinsic existence (svabhāva). The color blue and red does not exist by itself; it depends on causes, conditions, perception, and linguistic conventions.