this particular passage from the a poem written by the 2nd dalai lama is particularly relevant to my own concerns.

you help me to see the great inner enemy,
the I-grasping habit that sees things as real,
and to see its limitless harmful effects.
you also showed me how to destory it;
so now everything manifest in the the sphere of perception
effortlessly arises within the path of the void.

yet you did not let me fall into nihilism,
but pointed out to me the relevance of how
all the things that appear, though mere labels,
nonetheless continue to function conventionally
according to the laws of cause and effect.
thus you freed me from the terrible cliffs
of grasping the extreme of “is” and “is not.”

on my retreat, i wrote a note to the teacher asking something along these lines ‘how does one know when is the approraite time to skillfully apply the concept of emptiness’.? his answer, “why hold on to such a belief”.