Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism

[ellisonz]

Posted: 03/06/2013 5:14 am
Lewis Richmond
Buddhist writer and teacher

"Emptiness" is a central teaching of all Buddhism, but its true meaning is often misunderstood. If we are ever to embrace Buddhism properly into the West, we need to be clear about emptiness, since a wrong understanding of its meaning can be confusing, even harmful. The third century Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna taught, "Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake by the wrong end." In other words, we will be bitten!

Emptiness is not complete nothingness; it doesn't mean that nothing exists at all. This would be a nihilistic view contrary to common sense. What it does mean is that things do not exist the way our grasping self supposes they do. In his book on the Heart Sutra the Dalai Lama calls emptiness "the true nature of things and events," but in the same passage he warns us "to avoid the misapprehension that emptiness is an absolute reality or an independent truth." In other words, emptiness is not some kind of heaven or separate realm apart from this world and its woes.

The Heart Sutra says, "all phenomena in their own-being are empty." It doesn't say "all phenomena are empty." This distinction is vital. "Own-being" means separate independent existence. The passage means that nothing we see or hear (or are) stands alone; everything is a tentative expression of one seamless, ever-changing landscape. So though no individual person or thing has any permanent, fixed identity, everything taken together is what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "interbeing." This term embraces the positive aspect of emptiness as it is lived and acted by a person of wisdom -- with its sense of connection, compassion and love. Think of the Dalai Lama himself and the kind of person he is -- generous, humble, smiling and laughing -- and we can see that a mere intellectual reading of emptiness fails to get at its practical joyous quality in spiritual life. So emptiness has two aspects, one negative and the other quite positive.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-richmond/emptiness-most-misunderstood-word-in-buddhism_b_2769189.html

[Newest Reality]

1. Just exploring

the term and its implications is practical and valid as a useful means to liberate and enlighten.

That is, with the underlying understanding that one first separates out the essence from the concept in order to directly experience their relationship and implicit non-duality.

Boundaries are, like concepts, the water that the fish swim in. Just as we are constantly surround by air and space, (which there is more of by volume than the stuff it contains) we easily fail to notice the context of our experience. We can easily substitute "thinking about" for direct experience of anything. We can easily establish and believe in boundaries, (like the lines around States in a country or personal spheres) to the point where they are established in a way as to seem concrete.

While boundaries are useful and practical, even if they are conditioned and imposed, they are also restrictive and can obscure reality to the degree that we find ourselves deluded much more than we have to be. In that sense, conceptual thought, and even emotions are either boundaries or bounded reflections of experience and feelings.

Of course, we can learn the various interpretations of emptiness, nothingness, voidness, space as a simile, etc., and discuss them adeptly until the sacred cows come home, yet, exploring this matter points to direct experience and that also might mean decisively delving into an experience of what is implied that, for the Western paradigm, also means facing unfounded fears and delusional concepts held to be true in themselves. Yet, the implied goal and benefit is always a liberation of what disturbs us emotionally, (frustration, problems, suffering) from our side of an experience and a clarification of what disperses our thinking process, muddies the mind, and obscures the essence of the matter.

So, conceptually embracing "emptiness" and investigating the conceptual and philosophical implications of this knowing can also be self-defeating, i.e., if one feels satisfied with knowing enough about it to comprehend it intellectually only. Hence, there is also the consideration that emptiness in itself is also empty, which can, when embraced decisively, confound the habitual grasping at "knowing" as a satisfaction in place of direct experience.

Deep and wide, near and far! Perhaps too many terms can become a form of interpolation, yet, breaking out of conceptual shells and cages of belief as a way to understand infinite potential, is the name of the game. In that sense, consider emptiness as "unthinking sameness". That is, in the midst of whatever experience, (internal/external) one is having. Paying attention to the reaction of the intellect to the words is what is useful here, not the particular kind of reaction itself or a judgement concerning its nature. Noting the provisional and relative aspects of inquiry can quite naturally yield a immersion into a definitive mode of direct and unmistakable emptiness, with or without meditation.

Flexible, adaptable and open-minded insight arises from within your own experience and in relationship to the context of the moment, so relaxing into it without expectation and with an aim to suspend bias and condition.

In one sense, this is all completely empty right now, logically ,scientifically, philosophically and, ultimately experimentally. If you take that track and follow it through, then you will know that for yourself, which is the only way to discover it anyway.

Thrice Good Fortune and Freedom From Extremes!

[RagAss]

3. "Nothing is real when seen as separate from Self ...Everything is real when seen as Self"...

- Ramana Maharshi

[Viva_Daddy]

4. The "emtiness" Buddhism is referring to....

...is the apparent emptiness/space (i.e., consciousness) within which everything is perceived. It is the unchanging screen upon which the changing images of the film ("reality&quot are displayed.

[onestepforward]

5. A little lol about emptiness

that I saw tonight on Twitter: