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Emptiness / sunnatha
upekka
Veteran
in Philosophy
yes
we have heard and read that 'Form is emptiness, emptiness is form'
but
do you know 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'?
if so
please explain in plain english
(english is my second language, so be kind enough to use simple english, thanks in advaance)
0
Comments
You cannot explain it in English, nor in the words of any language. The words are here primarily to confirm what you have already seen/experienced within yourself. Not to substitute for your insight.
Buddhism is essentially an experience of yourself and of how you relate to the world.
Experiences cannot be contained in words ... for instance, an orgasm is an experience, but there are no words that can give you the knowledge of what having an orgasm is like.
You can hold the intellectual explanations of emptiness in your mind, but until you start to SEE, through your practices, how it is, you cannot comprehend it. Even then, everytime you say "Ah hah ... NOW I know ...." within 2-3 years you will realize you barely understood. After you go through this cycle 4-5 times, you gradually become less focused on what you think you are learning, and more focused on what you are being. The process, rather than the goal, becomes more important.
I once sat through 45 minutes of the Q&A session after a teaching (teacher was a Tibetan Tulku) while one student kept on asking for more and more explanations about emptiness. The teacher was so gentle and patient, even though the request could not be met. Finally the student started to try to explain to the teacher what THEY thought emptiness was, and then asking the teacher if they had gotten it right .. this didn't work either.
Buddhist insight cannot be gotten from someone else's words.
It cannot be rushed.
Do your practices and be patient. It takes 3-8 years before we even START to get the idea of what Buddha was actually talking about.
So when you take a teaching, and you don't understand it, don't be frustrated. You will get out of the teaching whatever you are ready to understand (which is based on your own practices). And if you take the same set of teachings over and over and over .. every time you repeat that teaching you will understand it better than the time before.
In this way, Buddhism is not a goal . it is a process. The more goal-oriented you are .. the more you try to pin down what you think it is about .. the more you miss the point of it. It is not really about where you are heading, it is about where you are now. Usually we are too distracted by the stream of thoughts, emotions, desires and aversions, to actually pay attention. We spend most of our awareness hoping tomorrow will be different from today, and even Buddhists fall into this trap.
THANKS
Thanks from me, too -- I needed that.
Form is Emptiness = all form is empty of inherent existence.
Emptiness is Form = emptiness can not be without form.
To explain a little further I've stolen some text from an answer on the internet:
_In short, "form" is the conventional truth, "emptiness" the ultimate truth. Now, why does he say "form is emptiness, emptiness is form"? The point is, all forms (i.e. all things) are empty, and all emptinesses are the emptiness of something (of a form). There are no forms (things) that are not empty; and there are no emptinesses that exists in and of themselves, without being the emptiness of something (the emptiness of a table, the emptiness of a self, the emptiness of a vase, and so forth). _
@upekka First, understand that this wonderful poetry is talking about the skandhas, and so is talking about the mind, not the abstract universe.
Now, for "form is emptiness and emptiness is form". Please go to the kitchen and get a bowl. Then come back and read the rest of this.
Do you have the bowl? Now, when I sent to get a bowl, you had no problem picking out what I named, did you? You know what a bowl is. This is the form of the bowl. See the clay or ceramic or wood shape? It has a color and texture and is so tall and so much around. It's a bowl because this object has the form of a bowl. Self evident and obvious.
But what attribute or feature makes this form a bowl, and not a plate or some other object? It's the emptiness it contains. The space inside the walls. The potential for this space to hold something. Seen this way, it's not the object, but the emptiness it encloses that makes this a bowl.
So what is it that makes this a bowl? Is it the form, or the emptiness? Or, perhaps, is the form and emptiness the same thing, and it's only our minds creating a false distinction between the two? So it is with our minds. Is our mind the physical brain and body and all the processes going on inside us, the person looking back from a mirror, or is the shape of our mind instead the emptiness it encloses, the capacity to contain our thoughts and memories and desires? Or is that a false distinction?
Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Conceptually sunyata is quite straightforward and is nothing to do with empty spaces in bowls. It's saying that the aggregates are empty of independent existence, in other words they arise in dependence on conditions.
So sunyata, like dependent origination, is a teaching on conditionality. Conditional means transient and insubstantial.
I look on such teachings as a pointer, like a hypothesis to be investigated in our own experience. So can you find anything in your own experience which exists independently, anything which is permanent? It's about looking closely. Insight is a practical rather than an intellectual activity.
@SpinyNorman you've missed the important part of the challenge. He said that English was his second language so asked you to explain emptiness is form using simple English. Whatever I think personally about the usefulness of a collection of buzzwords like conditional and origination, it's obviously ignoring the plea for keeping it simple.
I did it using a bowl as a metaphor. The mind isn't a bowl, of course, no more than it's a heap of something we call skandhas.
So if you had to use words of less than 5 or 6 syllables, how do you explain the concept of emptiness? Don't just parrot what you read in the sutra translations. Either you can explain it using simple words and in simple terms or you don't comprehend it.
I would say it just means the 5 aggregates lack anything substantial. Therefore, not worth holding onto.
The wonderful point of the sutra is that it's not saying the aggregates have the property of emptiness. It's saying they are emptiness and that there is no way to distinguish between emptiness and a skandha. Form is emptiness, but emptiness is also form. It's a remarkable claim and a remarkable sutra.
Yes, well put. Generally people who understand things clearly can explain them simply and clearly. Those who don't tend to ramble on at length.
That's exactly what it is saying, and I fear you have missed the point. As the Heart Sutra says: “Listen Sariputra, all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness."
I suspect you have taken "Emptiness is only form" too literally. What it actually means is that emptiness is always expressed as form ( or one of the other aggregates ).
It's a very muddled metaphor and completely misses the point. You are taking "emptiness" too literally, which is a common mistake. Emptiness means empty of inherent existence, it is nothing to do with empty space.
It's a teaching on conditionality.
LOL! Sometimes I feel like Seung Sahn holding the orange out to the Lama. I like you, Spiny. You keep me on my toes.
Challange accepted!
Asking a question provides a form for the answer.
The question has form but is empty until answered.
When answered it gives form to the empty question.
In a similar way ...
Our mind is empty but cluttered. Both mindlessly empty headed and full of aware knowing if so formed.
I am off to meet a Buddha that does not exist!
I suspect our friend @upekka may be more confused now than before he asked the question!
Then our work here is done.
Form is emptiness, everyone can agree with that. Why is understanding "emptiness is form" more difficult? It's the same statement.
Emptiness and form are different sides of the same coin because the coin is in constant change...
Yes "I" know.....For an explanation look within/ask the cushion....
But if that's so, what is the coin?
For the sake of labels, I'd say energy as I think the potential for energy is itself a type of energy.
Emptiness is an odd word to use really but it works. We are empty of an unabiding self but we are not empty of potential and really, the emptiness Buddha spoke of seems to me to signify the potential for change.
what facts you (your i) have to think that ' i is he'?
Huh?
I'm not sure he (and I do know that Bunks is male
)was actually assuming you were male. Before political correctness, it was common to use he or him if gender was unknown. Sometimes people will use devices such as s/he or he/she, but they tend to look clumsy.
I'm pretty sure no offense was intended.
o dear, i did not take it as offence, anyway thanks for your kind response
i wanted you (whoever) read it to have humor or food for thought depending on the state of mind the reader has at the time of reading the post
thanks for everyone who responded to the thread
happy travelling fellow travelers!
Sounds not too unlike Advaita Vedanta.
I guess from the "ultimate viewpoint" there is no real difference between fullness and emptiness --IF you see Reality as a flowing back and forth, as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh does:
Hindu thought seems to be synthetic, whereas the Buddhist tends towards the analytic.
But metaphysics will neither feed a starving belly nor lead one to an actual higher reality. Best to keep it simple, I think, such as TNH manages to do.
Quotation from The Mindfulness Bell, pg 5f, Dharma Talks Winter/Spring 2012
The Mahayana dictum
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śūnyatā
is the space between the spokes of the wheel
between the turning of Hina and Maha yanas
In other words it is the unspoke difference between the formed
and the emptied.
To put it another way it is no-mind v no thing
or mindfulness practiced mindlessly or vice versa.
or knot untied.
No, sunyata is not related to Advaita. Sunyata is conditionality, which isn't compatible with absolutes.
You might be interested in the Phena Sutta, which looks like a precursor to the Heart Sutra. The Mahayana didn't invent sunyata, they just pinched it from the suttas, reinventing the wheel as usual.
"Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick —
this has been taught
by the Kinsman of the Sun.
However you observe them,
appropriately examine them,
they're empty, void
to whoever sees them
appropriately."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.095.than.html
Thay came up with "Interbeing", which is interconnectedness. It looks like a positive expression of conditionality, as compared to emptiness which is a negative expression of conditionality.
I suspect that conditionality and transience are 2 sides of the same coin, though I'm not sure what the coin is here.
What is negative about emptiness?
I mean negative in a mathematical sense.
Aren't emptiness and form dependent on each other like the front and back of your hand? Without emptiness can form be discerned and vice versa? Emptiness in this sense of being nothing, zero or zilch. To be empty of something ie. form. That is dependent coarising.
Like consciousness and experience. Can one exist without the other? So consciousness is experience, experience is consciousness. So one talks of conscious experience, not unconscious experience.
That's just it. Any opposites that depend on each other are not really opposite but complimentary aspects of the same thing and/or process.
Whatever that thing and/or process may be.
Yin may be the conceptual opposite of yang but there is no opposite of yin yang except no yin yang.
No, sunyata is not non-existence. It's lack of independent existence.
You're talking about duality, not sunyata.
@SpinyNorman you need to understand that the concept of Sunyata is seen and described different ways by different schools of Buddhism. Your definition and understanding seems to be mainstream Theravadan but other schools don't necessarily agree. For my own school, emptiness is more than just saying everything is dependent and transient. For us, that is a surface treatment. Emptiness is the core of Buddha Nature, which means seeing past the illusion of duality.
The sutra doesn't just say form is emptiness. That's where you've stopped, according to our own teaching. It goes on to say emptiness is form. This sutra is all about duality.
Please consider that just because it's not your understanding or tradition, that doesn't mean you should tell other people your understanding is the only right one. Monks have spent centuries arguing with each other over the concept of emptiness with no winning side. We're no better or worse than they are.
No, because to get in depth we cannot talk of one without the other.
I completely agree that emptiness does not in any way signify nothingness.
It signifies change or at least the potential for change.
Ok, so then what is negative about emptiness in the mathematical sense?
My comments in this thread are based on Mahayana experience. As I said earlier I think you have taken "emptiness is form" too literally. What it actually means is that emptiness is always expressed as form ( or one of the other aggregates ). Read some Heart Sutra commentaries if you're still not convinced.
If you are claiming that the Heart Sutra is about duality rather than sunyata then you need to back that up with some reasoned argument.
Can you explain why? Duality in what sense exactly?
Not in this case. The way I see it, form is emptiness, emptiness is form means things and nothing are codependent as @ourself @Cinorjer mentioned.
It is the summation of this sutta which is Theravadin btw.
Existence/form and nonexistence/emptiness is not the middle way but seeing that form is emptiness is the teaching of dependent origination! That is what I think you refer to as lack of inherent existence aka anatta. And non duality is also the middle way.
I agree confusion is highly possible because of the multiple meanings in the usage of the word emptiness.
And isn't it a wonderful metasutra? The more we want to pin down the exact message meant by the words of the sutra, the more we discover its form is empty, conditional on the direction you approach the sutra. I see it pointing out that a comprehension of non-duality as necessary to penetrate the concept of emptiness, which resides in the absence of dualism. It's not a unique understanding I alone have. Scholarly works explore the relationship between the two.
But this is all secondary language. It's talking about something instead of experiencing it. Even knowing this, it's irresistible. That's the power of this sutra.
Sorry but that interpretation still doesn't make any sense to me, and sunyata is definitely not "nothing".
The Heart Sutra describes the identity of the aggregates and sunyata, it's not saying that they are two different things which depend on each other.
Have a read of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prajñā_(Buddhism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śūnyatā#Prajna-paramita_Sutras
Non-duality of what though? The Heart Sutra describes the identity of the aggregates and sunyata, it isn't describing them as a duality. Or are you talking about subject-object duality perhaps? Non-duality has a number of different meanings and applications, could you say which one are you actually talking about?
I suppose I can say I'm talking about the duality of opposites, and emptiness as the lack of inherent existence. Emptiness is not a thing, and it's not even nothing, because both statements assume an opposite. And at this point I'm starting to get much too abstract for my comfort. I can retreat to Zennisms like "Not one, but not two either" or "To say one has or does not have Buddha-Nature is to already go wrong."
It's most difficult to shock the mind out of dualistic thinking.
Emptiness is the lack of an abiding self or independent existence. Without subjectivity (duality) there is no causation and no emptiness.
No emptiness, no form.
Emptiness and form, potential and fruition, cause and effect. These are not opposites but complimentary aspects of the process of being.
Emptiness is form, potential is fruition and cause is effect.