Intellectual aspect of emptiness may focus on clarity

Jeffrey

I had an aha moment reading in my text. My thesis is that a lot of the so called intellectual presentation of emptiness relates to the 'clarity' aspect of emptiness. Because it is a seeing of what constitutes emptiness. In Tibetan Buddhism it is said that the mind is: clear, luminous, and unimpeded. Luminous refers to the feeling we get when we realize emptiness. So all of the body feeling perhaps although that is a skhanda and one of the four mindfulnesses of body, feeling, states, and a fourth I forgot, lol. Anyhow sensitivity tells us that we are doing good. If enlightenment path felt bad... boy that would not be happy. Unimpeded has to do with the spaciousness aspect. Karma can bring many ships to our shore and they just keep coming. Change and so forth.

Anyhow this text on clarity reminded me of the intellectual presentations such as the example of a carriage. A carriage isn't a wheel or a driver or a horse or connectors or the axle. It isn't all of the sum because if you changed drivers or pieces it could still be a carriage. Even abstracted as a definition that can still change as language and culture changes, which means it is merely labeled as such a carriage. If it were old and in a heap it could become part of a nest of an animal.

Here's the text that I thought was the clarity aspect of emptiness:

The words clarity and awareness normally imply that there is an object of awareness or clarity. One aspect of the fundamental quality of clarity is its power to be clearly aware of vivid and precise details, qualities, relationships, connections, purpose, meaning and significance. Another is its power to be clearly aware of the dynamic, changing aspect of all experience and the spaciousness in which that dynamic takes place. For example, it is not just a matter of clearly appreciating a sound and knowing a meaning, it is also a matter of recognizing its impermanence and emptiness. You could think of it in terms of driving a car. It is not just a matter of appreciating the many things involved in driving, but also of recognising the speed of the car and the space it is moving in.

Notice how much detail and significance is present simultaneously. For example, even though by the end of a word or sentence the beginning has gone, we can still clearly apprehend layer upon layer of meaning within a single utterance. There is the meaning of the tone, the voice, the person speaking, the direction from which it comes, the emotion it expresses, the meaning of the word, the context, the connotations and so on. All this is conveyed in an instant of clarity and fully integrated with awareness that precedes and follows it. You may want to say taht this is due to memory, but all this does is to call the moment of clarity 'memory'. It is still the same phenomenon. Can you imagine being able to fully isolate a single instant of awareness (or memory) in order to appreciate the richness of its qualities? All the qualities have to be present in a single instant, otherwise there would be no connection between them and they could not be known aspects of a single utterance. The clarity/awareness aspect of any experience is truly astounding and yet we are aware in this manner, to some degree, all the time. Such awareness is intrinsic to our being.

Thanks for reading. I wonder if there will be a discussion?

footiam

If something is empty, what is there to discuss?

Jeffrey

You can discuss the emptiness silly. If something is red you can discuss the 'redness'.

Jeffrey

The discussion is the clarity of emptiness. And opening up is the openness. The tension and so forth is the sensitivity. Really a lot to talk about

pegembara

Another approach to the understanding of death is through an understanding of the law of aggregates or Sankharas which states that everything is a combination of things and does not exist by itself as an independent entity. "Sankhara" is a Pali term used for an aggregation, a combination, or an assemblage. The word, is derived from the prefix san meaning "together" and the root kar meaning "to make." The two together mean "made together" or "constructed together" or "combined together." "All things in this world," says the Buddha, "are aggregates or combinations." That is to say, they do not exist by themselves, but are composed of several things. Any one thing, be it a mighty mountain or a minute mustard seed, is a combination of several things. These things are themselves combinations of several other things. Nothing is a unity, nothing is an entity, large or small. Neither is the sun nor moon an entity, nor is the smallest grain of sand an entity. Each of them is a Sankhara, a combination of several things.

Things seem to be entities owing to the fallibility of our senses — our faculties of sight, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting, and even thinking. Science has accepted the position that our senses are not infallible guides to us. A permanent entity is only a concept, only a name. It does not exist in reality. In the famous dialogues between King Milinda and Thera Nagasena, the latter wishing to explain to the King this law of aggregates, enquired from the King how he came there, whether on foot or riding. The King replied that he came in a chariot.

Buddhist Reflections on Death
Section 3 [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/gunaratna/wheel102.html]

taiyaki

The sound though appearing is emptiness in its essence.
In this appearance there is no hearer or heard. This is no arising, nor falling.
A contraction towards appearance is taking the world to be unreal or real.
Samsara is that simple. To cast away the world of fabrication, what freedom and what release.

No thing lost, no thing released, no thing there to begin with.
Yet intelligence/presence unfolds as this display, this mirage, this centerless apparition.

Takuan

footiam said:

If something is empty, what is there to discuss?

Nagarjuna wrote a few volumes on the subject. Lots of discussion concerning emptiness in the into-tibetan tradition. It can all get rather confusing, which is why some schools focus on the actual realization of emptiness rather than the theory behind it.

Takuan said:

In a practical sense, sunyata also means "open", "spacious", "free". Being "open" or "free" in this sense, means that one does not discriminate based on conceptual knowledge. Why? because all concepts are inherently empty and... here we go again. lol

@Jeffery, I would say that clarity means the nondual perception of reality, or not discriminating phenomena based on conceptual knowledge.

Jeffrey

@Takuan, clarity is also the senses are clear. We delight when we have a new glasses prescription, better headphones, a clearer reception, or a new high definition TV. It is obvious that these things are enjoyable and that is because we delight in the clarity of the senses. For the mind people enjoy expressing themselves in text. People pay big money for special perfumes. The enjoyment is the sensitivity, but all three Openness, Clarity, and Sensitivity are all fused. So when we go into space being able to have a clear room, clean and able to move,, when we do that the sensitivity feels good. When we are cramped it feels bad but even that feeling shows that we feel openness. Anger is the distortion of seeing clearly the emptiness of an offending object; due to distortions of that clarity we instead want to destroy that object.o

Emptiness isn't a special idea that we think about only on reflection. It is the nature of the cosmos. And OCS is the nature of mind and from the yogacara perspective it is also the nature of the universe as us beings are only concerned with our living experience.

Metallica

Intellectual discussion of emptiness without practice is just talks.

Zengo

Emptiness is not the essential nature of reality. Emptiness is itself empty of inherent existence and non-essential. This is made explicit in Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika.

BhanteLucky

Metallica said:

Intellectual discussion of emptiness without practice is just talks.

Many here are serious practitioners.
Intellectual discussion happens, as well as a lot of sitting and living practise.