Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
The Heart Sutra
"Form is emptiness,
Emptiness is form.
Form does not differ from emptiness,
Emptiness does not differ from form.
Sensation, Cognition, Control, and Awareness are also like this."
It is easy for us to see that matter and space are a unity, but what about our mental phenomena and emptiness? Through a meditation, this unity can be seen too.
1. Think a thought, paying attention to it. This is "form". This is like being focused on a bird.
2. Allow that thought to dissolve, and pay attention to the gap between thoughts. This is "emptiness". This is like being focused on the sky.
3. Think another thought, this time paying attention to the thought and the space around it. This is form and emptiness as a unity. This is like knowing the bird and the sky.
: )
Hope this meditation helps.
Might also be relevant to the Zen folks out there, who avoid the duality of thinking or not thinking and embracing "beyond thinking", or however you want to phrase it.
Questions? Comments?
Emptiness is form.
Form does not differ from emptiness,
Emptiness does not differ from form.
Sensation, Cognition, Control, and Awareness are also like this."
It is easy for us to see that matter and space are a unity, but what about our mental phenomena and emptiness? Through a meditation, this unity can be seen too.
1. Think a thought, paying attention to it. This is "form". This is like being focused on a bird.
2. Allow that thought to dissolve, and pay attention to the gap between thoughts. This is "emptiness". This is like being focused on the sky.
3. Think another thought, this time paying attention to the thought and the space around it. This is form and emptiness as a unity. This is like knowing the bird and the sky.
: )
Hope this meditation helps.
Might also be relevant to the Zen folks out there, who avoid the duality of thinking or not thinking and embracing "beyond thinking", or however you want to phrase it.
Questions? Comments?
1
Comments
Emptiness does not differ from form.
Emptiness and form are not two items in relation to each other.
The bird and the sky are equally empty.
Dr. Greg Goode
If you go to the movies, you get totally caught up in the story of the movie. And it could be the movie of a monk in a cave or it could be the movie of somebody enjoying life fully, but then you look up and see the beam of light going through the theater and landing on the screen, and you realize nothing is happening! There's nothing happening on the screen. It's all an appearance. I think that if we get too caught up in which appearance is the right appearance or which appearance is more spiritual, it completely misses the point that freedom is not about which movie is playing; it's in the mind being free of clinging, whatever the form.
J. Goldstein
I practise zen-buddhism and tao.
To me, all is one yet reality has choosen not to show us directly.
Avalokita looked deeply into the five skandhas of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, and he discovered that none of them can be by itself alone. Each can only inter-be with all the others. So he tells us that form is empty. Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness."
~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
It was when I first read this short commentary on the Heart Sutra a few years ago that Buddhism clicked for me and it was really what got me in the door, so to speak. 'Emptiness' never made any sense whatsoever until I read this book. And TNH has a way of putting it in an easy to understand way.
Emptiness and dependent co-arising are really two sides of the same coin, and, in a certain sense impermanence is emptiness seen from a temporal perspective. Emptiness, dependent co-arising, impermanence, all intersect. Where all three meet is what is called non-self, no-mind, non-abiding, the emptiness of emptiness: THIS.
Emptiness is wholeness, excluding nothing.
But ' emptiness is form ' ?
That takes a lifetime ".
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
I find Thich Nhat Hanh a little 'flowery' for my tastes, but I'll give it a go.
Thanks.
P.S. Emptiness gives me a 'so what?' effect. Yeh, so everything can be taken apart and you'll not find any inherent existence in anything; that the mind imputes the conceptual understanding of what something is. Nothing inherently exists on it's own side.
But my bills still need paying, the dog still needs walking, I still get ill and I'm still very much tied up in all this.
I'll keep on coming back!
Yes, there are still all the bills and walking the dog, getting sick, chopping forewood and carrying water-- but the difference is that without the real-isation of emptiness (not merely the intellectual understanding but to truly SEE it) is the means to releasing the attachment to them. How we relate to things is more important than those things themselves because in a way, our way of relating to things is what determines what they are.
Most importantly, emptiness means compassion - everything is connected, nothing is separate, we are all one big buddha-body. All the fictitious dotted lines we draw around 'me' and 'you' and 'him' and 'her' and 'it' and 'us' and 'them' make us believe that they are separate entities doing their own independent thing, and all our pushing and pulling is taking place because we actually believe THAT is reality. And so we chase delusions and we of course don't get what we want and so we make ourselves miserable. Real-ising emptiness means real-ising non-attachment.
Its only when we talk about the Dharma or the supramundane reality that emptiness makes sense. We are born, then we die (one day) and we are gone, this ties in with impermanence and interdependent origination, because we exist due to external circumstances. And once life is extinguished, we are no more, hence we are empty of any inherent everlasting condition. The Mind only concept slightly skews this, but thats another topic.
To impose the emptiness concept into everyday life is quite confusing and can be misleading, especially if the audience comprises of new Buddhists.
Everything is made up of atoms and molecules, is it helpful to look at it in this manner in our everyday life, well bread is bread, you dont imagine you're eating atoms or whatnot.
@riverflow, its good you understand the meaning of emptiness, but one should only use it on very selective applications, like during Dharma studies, meditation etc.
No disrespect intended.
The bread is also the sun, the rain, the earth, the river, the farmer, the factory, the workers, the machinery, the truck drivers, the grocery store manager, the town, the city, the stock market investors, the children, the ancestor's, etc. etc. etc.
Emptiness is not abstract, rather it is conventional ('concrete') reality which is abstract, and that is the problem that emptiness addresses. We've been conditioned to see things as separate. Until we can see that my suffering and the suffering of others is all tied together, we are only digging deeper into dukkha.
The question is what is 'real' and what is 'illusion'? The illusion in question is not whether things exist or not, but what is the nature of that existence. Coconuts, rocks, people, cats, and chairs certainly exist-- but not in the way we think they do, as independently existing things. Every thing is necessary, not one thing can be removed. But we want to remove things, or add things and that's dukkha, wanting the impossible.
The 'illusory' nature of what we call 'existence' is not that it is nonexistent (that is not what is meant by 'emptiness') but rather it is like a mirage seen in the distance. As you approach the mirage it vanishes-- your realise you simply mis-perceived and mis-interpreted what you were seeing. But you did in fact see that dark patch in the distance-- it did exist, but not in the way that you had first thought.
Emptiness does not mean things don't exist, but rather that the nature of that existence is not an objective reality-- nor is it subjective. Everything is inter-causal--with no exemptions (including emptiness itself). There is nothing to hold onto--this is total, absolute trust and yet this is called non-abiding because there is really nothing to cling to: nirvana.
This only sounds strange to us because we have been conditioned to put dotted lines around 'me' and 'my stuff,' and 'you' and so on. This is very deeply relevant to Buddhist practice, at least in Mahayana. It is the basis of compassion and wisdom as one.
Going back to the Heart Sutra: 'Form is emptiness, emptiness is form...' Form is conventional reality, and emptiness is supramundane reality-- these two truths are not really two, but not being awakened beings, we still see them that way. Practice is a way to learn to see them as one, to realise that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Non-thinking is emptiness.
Emptiness is emptiness.
This marvelous functioning is emptiness.
Tree is not tree, thus tree.
This is how emptiness works in a very basic way (VERY basic), though there is certainly much more great depth to emptiness than this practical application. But my point is that even from a beginner's standpoint, emptiness is not just fancy metaphysics reserved for ivory towers.
You give a donation, but then do not think about it.
(It is there, but it is not there...
Form is emptiness,
Emptiness is form..)
To say that there is no table, well depends on which 'truth' you're talking about.
Now if you are discussing the Dharma, for sure we are on the subject of ultimate truth, we look beyond the conventional truth. My main point is we must segregate the two truths.
Knowing the Dharma, it works very well if its in the back of your mind. You come across an issue that needs further evaluation, then apply the Heart Sutra, by all means.
Its definitely not meant to be bandied about in every instance, not unless you're a practising monk.
Well if you've reached the level of mindfulness, where your mind is so focused and can apply the duality of concepts (multitasking ... ) then by all means.
Otherwise, remember that they are two very distinct concepts.
Bredd is everything, how is that helpful??
There is a depth to the Two Truths that can easily be missed-- and it is missed by interpreting it as a dualistic concept. I don't think this does justice to its function in Mahayana.
The absolute and the relative are not two separate things--they mutually define one another. The Two Truths are not 'two,' nor are they even 'truths'--including the so-called 'absolute.' They are just more views (even the absolute). Even the Two Truths doctrine is a provisional means to push one past both and toward realisation, where the relative and the absolute are also empty (this corresponds to the emptiness of emptiness), beyond 'is' and 'is-not.'
This is not a negation of the phenomenal world but the fulfilment of it without attachment. That is why Nagarjuna wrote, 'Nothing of samsara is different from nirvana, nothing of nirvana is different from samsara. That which is the limit of nirvana is also the limit of samsara; there is not the slightest difference between the two.'
This is why Bankei could say that his miracle is when he is hungry, he would eat; when he was tired, he would sleep. The difference is there is no attachment to eating and sleeping. Eating and sleeping are not obliterated by emptiness but fulfilled by emptiness. It is because we are attached to eating and sleeping, seeing them as something separate things to obtain that we are hounded throughout life by dukkha.
As Sheng Yen has said, 'People often interpret the mind of transcendence to be a way of escaping the world or running away from reality. Actually, this is not so. The departing mind is simply a mind unattached to the world, a mind beyond gaining or losing.' Or Bodhidharma: 'When we’re deluded there’s a world to escape. When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape.'
The relative and the absolute interdependently hinge on one another--otherwise there would be little difference between Buddhism and the myriad Platonist variations on appearance vs. 'reality.' In such a case, emptiness just becomes a metaphysical substratum behind the phenomenal world--and this is the very thing the Two Truths is designed to prevent from occurring. The absolute and the relative are views which co-exist and depend on one another.
By analogy, when looking at an ocean wave, you are actually seeing two things simultaneously: (1) the wave (which is conventional, because where can one place a dotted line saying, 'OK, here is the border of the wave. Anything past this dotted line is something other than this wave'). And (2) the ocean out of which individual waves arise. Furthermore, each wave that arises from the ocean does not merely depend on the ocean to act as its own unique wave, but each wave is connected to all other waves and each wave affects all other waves. You cannot have a wave act independently of all other waves. The wave is a wave, but it is also the ocean at the same time. To see both at the same time is, by analogy, what the Heart Sutra means by 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form.'
Neither of the Two Truths are actually 'truths' but indicate ways of relating to ourselves and others. It is what happens to all our notions of 'truth' when attachment is removed from the picture. Taken together, the Two Truths is yet another method for realising emptiness, and this realisation is not a concept (i.e. all this gibberish I am writing at this moment) but a lived experience (this is the best that can be said verbally on THIS shore)--it is non-conceptual and im-mediate.
Hence the old saying, 'Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.' A new kind of ontological intimacy arises out of this understanding--the manner of relating has changed. The Two Truths itself is skilful means, not an actual set of 'truths.'
It is so simple, it has been under our noses all this time:
In spring, the cherry blossoms,
In summer, the cuckoo’s song,
In autumn, the moon, shining,
In winter, the frozen snow:
How pure and clear are the seasons!
~Dogen
That purity Dogen speaks of is not found in the absolute, nor is it found in the relative, but beyond both: Suchness.
One of the peculiar things about Buddhism is that there is no final doctrine to rest in--not even awakening! This is why even emptiness is said to be empty--which is another way of saying the absolute depends on the relative. In Mahayana at least, everything is skilful means--everything. Every Buddhist doctrine is a method to utilise, not an ideology to believe in. Every one of those things in the massive Buddhist toolbox is designed for one thing only: awakening of all sentient beings, non-attachment, non-abiding. Even dropping away must be dropped! Gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svaha!
Another way of saying this is that it is a total trust in suchness (we unenlightened beings do not trust suchness, nor anything else, including ourselves). We ARE suchness, but we have to real-ise it for it to be reality.
It was painted red and white, that was its form or expression.
However it was also empty of red or white or lamp-postness, until I or someone, formed such an experience.
This experience of knowing that people, things all the rich tapestry of life, is never empty, never full. Rather it is empty and full at the point of experience.
Most people think of their experienced world as real or full, in a similar way to when they are no longer there. However what is there when not experienced is very empty of qualities.
It is like the 'sound' of the tree falling in the proverbial forest.
Soundless and empty of 'sound'. Sound is what we hear. It is a form or representation of a happening that is empty until formed.
Confused? . . . just a formed emptiness . . .
:clap:
When observing objects, they are seen to be the mind, devoid of objects;
When observing the mind, there is no mind, as it is empty of an entity;
When observing both, dualistic fixation is spontaneously freed;
May we realize the luminous nature of mind.
Emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness.
Why is it necessary to see it any other way?
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Tathata (suchness, thusness). "Merely thus," "just such": everything is such as it is and in no way different from that thusness. This is called "tathata." When tathata is seen, the three characteristics of anicca, dukkha, and anatta are seen, sunnata is seen, and idappaccayata is seen. Tathata is the summary of them all -- merely thus, only thus, not-otherness. There is nothing better than this, more than this, other than this, thusness. To intuitively realize tathata is to see the truth of all things, to see the reality of the things.
Bhikkhu Buddhadasa
'It is what it is.'
is what is, what is?
Can there be a what is? Or is everything dependent upon imputation and construction?
Or is the Buddhist what is, emptiness.
And if that is the case, then isn't emptiness just a convention that points to the lack of inherent existence. Actually there is no such thing as emptiness, other than by name.
Oh more holes, but no ground!
I loved the paper analogy; about how the whole of the cosmos is contained in the paper.
I'm still 'me' though, which is quite unfortunate.
When they form, we are attentive to their nature . . .
. . . we can also be attentive to their emptiness . . .
How? By not clinging, discriminating, making more of the form than necessary . . .
I would suggest metta in its highest aspect is both emptiness and form
. . . but nobody can think of such things . . .
I liked the first paragraph of the above^