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Is my understanding of emptiness correct?
Joshua
Veteran
Hi,
I've been doing quite a bit of reading over the past few months and I feel like I'm really starting to progress in my understand of Buddhism, but before I allow myself too much confidence I think it's necessary that I make sure my foundation is secure. I think the concept of emptiness (shunyata) is one of the most important teachings to comprehend. It's introduced early on and yet is highly advanced. While one is trying to correctly understand the dharma he will undoubtedly be trying to put different pieces of the puzzle together, and every time he wanders off and learns of another piece, or fortifies his comprehension of another piece, the entire puzzle and all of its separate pieces spontaneously elucidate themselves further. Like this I must make sure that I truly understand emptiness.
There's two different angles from which I understand emptiness:
1. All material and mental phenomena do not arise spontaneously without a cause, but rather one thing functions as an obtaining cause of another thing; like a seed that bears the sprout which no longer is a seed, so this bears that which is no longer this--an unfathomable cosmic system of dominoes. Therefore nothing has a permanent and therefore conceptual existence. Which leads to my understanding of the self (perhaps this is really anatta, it's difficult to discern; but I think that's the point, that it's a cohesive philosophy), that
2. The mind itself as we conventionally imagine it has no objective existence, like I said in my first point, it simply arose from a causal relationship with the five aggregates. I think of the concept of the self as sort of like a beach ball. Conventionally a beach ball is fundamentally empty of material (the inside, it's a bad analogy
), like the concept of a self does not really exist, but it appears objective because karmic impulses cause us to perceive reality conceptually and therefore dualistically. We then try to fill in the blanks with confusion and karmic impulses by sort of building an invented concept of self, like one would create a beach ball with plastic and then assume the hollow inside existed all along and that the plastic outside was produced by the inside. Rather it is the other way around and hence illogical, therefore the objective mind cannot exist.
I wonder though, there is a type of mind that can exist, the mental continuum. Awareness. How is this affected by emptiness?
Thank you.
I've been doing quite a bit of reading over the past few months and I feel like I'm really starting to progress in my understand of Buddhism, but before I allow myself too much confidence I think it's necessary that I make sure my foundation is secure. I think the concept of emptiness (shunyata) is one of the most important teachings to comprehend. It's introduced early on and yet is highly advanced. While one is trying to correctly understand the dharma he will undoubtedly be trying to put different pieces of the puzzle together, and every time he wanders off and learns of another piece, or fortifies his comprehension of another piece, the entire puzzle and all of its separate pieces spontaneously elucidate themselves further. Like this I must make sure that I truly understand emptiness.
There's two different angles from which I understand emptiness:
1. All material and mental phenomena do not arise spontaneously without a cause, but rather one thing functions as an obtaining cause of another thing; like a seed that bears the sprout which no longer is a seed, so this bears that which is no longer this--an unfathomable cosmic system of dominoes. Therefore nothing has a permanent and therefore conceptual existence. Which leads to my understanding of the self (perhaps this is really anatta, it's difficult to discern; but I think that's the point, that it's a cohesive philosophy), that
2. The mind itself as we conventionally imagine it has no objective existence, like I said in my first point, it simply arose from a causal relationship with the five aggregates. I think of the concept of the self as sort of like a beach ball. Conventionally a beach ball is fundamentally empty of material (the inside, it's a bad analogy
), like the concept of a self does not really exist, but it appears objective because karmic impulses cause us to perceive reality conceptually and therefore dualistically. We then try to fill in the blanks with confusion and karmic impulses by sort of building an invented concept of self, like one would create a beach ball with plastic and then assume the hollow inside existed all along and that the plastic outside was produced by the inside. Rather it is the other way around and hence illogical, therefore the objective mind cannot exist.I wonder though, there is a type of mind that can exist, the mental continuum. Awareness. How is this affected by emptiness?
Thank you.
0
Comments
The subtlest level of mental activity ("clear light awareness"), which continues with no beginning and no end, without any break, even during death and even into Buddhahood. [***] It is an absence of an impossible way of existing. The impossible way of existing has never existed at all. Translators often render the term as "emptiness." [***] It is naturally free of conceptual cognition, the appearance-making of true existence, and grasping for true existence, since it is more subtle than the grosser levels of mental activity with which these occur.
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
http://bit.ly/dWC1Ef
Supple and strong,
like the hollow center of the bamboo,
It responds spontaneously.
It accommodates completely.
It is the utility of the world:
the useful emptiness of a room, a cup.
I understand emptiness in a very similar manner.. And, if you haven't, first go search for the meaning of the word Shunyata.. I din't have to do that for i know sanskrit.. And i would like to add to your statements... Shuunyata in the first case was well put... There is nothing other than these "set(s)" of cause and effect.. And as for the second... There is no atman and hence, everything is devoid of its' nature... If you analyse each thing carefully, i would just seem illogical for them to exist :P So, everything is devoid of this "self" so they are all empty... You can merge this with the first one... The body/form cannot account for anything for it will perish.. So will the feelings, etc... And hence, even the mind can cease to be..
Love And Light,
Nidish :thumbup:
To say the self is empty is to acknowledge the illusion (mental fabrication) of our own mind created identity. That we are somehow a permanent and separate entity. Not so. We are empty of self, we are consciousness reborn breath by breath, thought by thought, into the present moment.
The Heart Sutra says "Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness." What does this mean?
If I show you a bowl, what part of this object makes it a bowl? Its shape? Its function? But then I drop the bowl and break it, and hand you the pieces. You still recognize it as a bowl, but it is in pieces now and has lost both shape and function and is not even one single thing. So what is it that makes it a bowl? Is there any inherent bowl-ness you can point to?
Equally with the skandhas. The mind is made up of skandhas, but those are ultimately empty. Even the skandha of form is empty. Point to a spot in the brain where you can say, "This is me!"
So what is left?
Master Seung Sahn:
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed -- that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then what is the one pure and clear thing?
I'm very curious when you cite the Heart Sutra in saying that form is emptiness. I can see how in terms of absolute reality all things are relative to your perspective and therefore non-conceptual. Therefore to say emptiness is form is to say you've conceptually perceived reality and created impossible ways of perception. Do I understand correctly?
But whether or not you understand deep in your guts that everything you experience is inherently empty yet transcends form is something only you and a Zen Master can determine.
The way we do it in our particular practice, is to hand you something and ask, "What is this?" What you do next gives the answer. Not the most illuminating method, but that's Zen for you.
Sorry that I'm not explaining things clearly, I'm trying to keep it as brief as possible and that makes things tricky. Basically things are non-dual. Funny enough your mind perceives things otherwise and no matter how penetrative, insightful or intelligent you are, anything short of nirvana means you don't quite see beyond the mirage.
If you're familiar with Harry Potter let's say we're in Hogwarts and some picture was taken of a group of people, and you're looking at this picture when they suddenly come to life. They start to inquire about existentialism--about God and the nature of self and such. And you just look at them bewildered and think, "But it's just a freaking picture?". Likewise this is just our universe and here I am, simply composed of the elements like the people in the picture. I don't think it's important to get tied up with conceptually understanding that 'I' have 'hands' typing on a 'keyboard', but rather the deeper levels of conceptual manifestation in your mental continuum. In other words, you ought to realize to what degree conceptual thinking, that is--not thinking in terms of emptiness, causes impossible ways of existing to pop into your head for which you gain conviction and thus crave.
At the end of the day, is reality real, or is it mind? Or this depends on the school? I know Yogacarins think in terms of mind-only, but even then I know little to nothing about them. Is reality and mind coexisting, is that emptiness? Or is reality the illusion of mind? I think this is the most important bridge for me to cross in order to fully comprehend.
Thank you all
Are you giving me riddles of koan nature? I feel like you ought to be a Taoist master, you're a real man though, Upala.
When you understand this, you'll know that everything you are existed before you, exists now, will exist after; it is not you, not separate, and it is not you which is reborn upon death. This is the not-nothing, not-self afterlife; neither nihilism nor eternalism. Then you will understand emptiness. The true understanding of anything is not born from thinking about it; thinking is the mind chasing its moods, being directed by its tanha/thirst, remaining in Samsara. One must examine this mind by taming it and allow deep insights to arise out of the calm to develop wisdom that brings peace. Practice is essential, much more than study.
It's not such a simple thing if you can't see it. Some people don't understand dukkha on another forum and yet persist in debating rebirth. What use has any of it, if it doesn't bring true peace? It's in the very basic nature of ourselves that we do not wish to look; afraid of what we'll find, but there is peace there.
We are the flower that falls to the ground, becomes the fertilizer that allows new flowers to grow. The new flowers are like the old one, given rise in part by the old one, but not the same flower.
(That all said, I'm taking a break from the two forums for a while. I'll answer e-mails as best I can. See ya around. ~~gone)
Namaste
First, you're doing some deep thinking about emptiness, but when I read your words, what jumps out at me is talking about 'conceptual thinking'. All thoughts are conceptual. Thoughts are made of words and labels and are how our minds try to make sense of the world and our experiences. It's not good or bad, only how our minds work.
It's impossible to make a single thought that is empty of concepts. So, even the label emptiness is a concept, as is any other label we put on it like 'suchness' or 'voidness'. What you've run into is the limits of thinking. So we can't describe the emptiness spoken of in the Sutras in any true sense, what it IS, but we can give examples and say what it isn't.
Our minds can understand something without giving it a label, and that in Zen is the true understanding. A child has no name for gravity but experience causes him to understand what it means to fall down. You might not have heard of karma, but your mind is capable of understanding that if you steal something you might get caught, and you won't like the consequences.
So with emptiness, we can say what it isn't. It's not saying everything is worthless or that the world around us doesn't exist. We're not saying it's wrong to call a tree what it is, a tree. The shared conceptual world is how we communicate with other people.
Our minds confuse the concept, the label for the reality it's trying to describe. So our minds divide the world into good and bad, and people into a multitude of catagories. Friend, lover, enemy, stranger, teacher, savior. All just people. Form is empty, and emptiness is form.
So if you focus past the concept, the label our minds assign to some perceived part of reality, what do you see?
I like this cartoon. Oh, cool. It's from Dresden Codak; I love those comics. http://dresdencodak.com/gallery/
IMHO, it is about the usefulness of emptiness, and perhaps a little about anatman.
Some Bodhisattva Root Downfalls a la Berzin http://bit.ly/egUtW0
I think I'm getting close.
I can say that sometimes when I get close to even what seems to be a nonconceptual understanding of emptiness (without comprehending through internal thoughts) that, when considering that time itself is a conceptualization, life seems very one dimensional.
Can anyone help me with the nature of reality vs. emptiness. Or is that beyond the scope of what can be ascertained?
At any rate, I will also be disappearing for some Christmas fun with my mommy for three days. Thanks and happy holidays!
The nature of reality *is* voidness, no? It is not that Reality is set against ("vs.") Emptiness.
I think trouble can arise if you reify "emptiness". Like the comic above, we cannot take it literally: voidness is not a "hole". It is not "nothing" in contrast with "something".
IMO, voidness is a teaching tool. It is meant to be apophatic. It describes Reality, the way things really are, by acknowledging what they are not.
Thing is, we perceive emptiness as bad. Non-existence. The unknown. A void to be filled immediately, whenever we discover it.
This is False view.
Everything arises or is born from emptiness into form and returns or dies back into emptiness. It is the natural flow. Emptiness = Form.
Through meditation and mindfulness we experience emptiness as the absence of thought and presence of awareness. Emptiness has the quality of impermanence.
We experience form as the thought or sensation arising from non-thought. Form has the quality of permanence and continuity.
Habitually, we attach to form and reject emptiness.
Valois - I spent a long time trying to intellectually understand emptiness (these two links were helpful for me http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html and
Good luck!
Reality is empty, or at least it contains no discrete things, only parts. And these parts have parts. And these parts are parts. All reality is interconnected.
The first K-meson decay after the big bang is connected with the neurons that register this full stop as you read it. And this comma is connected to the most distant point in the universe, in time and space.
If it is not connected to all within this reality, it is not part of this reality.
When I asked about the nature of reality, I didn't really intend on it to be taken like I was giving emptiness intrinsic value, but rather, literally, does Buddhism talk about the nature of reality? It seems that through the lens of emptiness, it's saying that matter is real and any conjecture otherwise is simply conjecture at best because you're simply expected to 'go with the flow'. Emptiness in the absolute meaning without a universe being projected by the consciousness seems to gravitate towards nihilism. Of course anyone here could tell me I'm not thinking in terms of emptiness, but isn't that a loophole? Conventional reality is as important as absolute reality and likewise I think my full comprehension of Buddhist emptiness is contingent upon understanding of Buddhist reality. I'm sort of looking for an orthodox answer as well, because esoteric Buddhism gets a bit 'out there' and starts flirting a bit too much with faith.
Any ideas?
When a "thing" exists, it's still not anything stable or of itself. It's just a compounded phenomena that we apply a label to. We only call it something while it still fits our conceptual framework. A TV is only a TV if it has the right parts and still works or looks like a TV; when we start dismantling it, at some point it's just "junk", or just "these parts". Where has the TV gone? Back to the place of birth, where there are now other things that might be combined to make new things.
When a "thing" ceases to exist, it hasn't been destroyed (or died), it's only followed the natural changing that is emptiness. Emptiness is both Anatta (not self) and Anicca (impermanence) combined. These conceptual things are only physical manifestations of changing phenomena.