I'm a fan of emptiness, Buddhist variety. Though this really is a simple notion, it took me quite a while to appreciate what "emptiness" means from a Buddhist perspective.
One reason is that in everyday usage, emptiness points to the absence of something, like an empty glass or an empty bank account. Though this isn't really how Buddhism uses the term, I frequently see people speaking of Buddhist emptiness similarly, as if it is a nothingness.
That's incorrect. Actually Buddhists view every entity as failing to have a quality of inherent existence.
Meaning, it doesn't stand alone as an independent reality. Instead, things are empty of inherent existence, for they only exist as a part of the whole, where everything belongs to an intricate web of interconnected relationships.
Though I'm not really surprised by this, given the depth of knowledge Joan Tollifson has about Buddhism, it still was pleasing to find that her book, Nothing to Grasp, speaks correctly about emptiness.
Our usual understanding of impermanence is that the world is full of things, like tables and chairs and you and me, and that these things are all impermanent. But in Buddhism they say that the true understanding of impermanence reveals that there is actually no impermanence because nothing ever forms in the first place as a persisting, separate, independent "thing" to be impermanent.
There is only thorough-going flux, seamless unicity -- this ever-present, ever-changing Here/Now. This is what Buddhists mean by emptiness and what Advaita calls the one, immutable Self. When this is seen clearly, there is no fear of death, for there is no one separate to die. And there is no "me" to be unworthy or to fail.
There are lots of implications that go along with emptiness. For example, dualistic ways of viewing the world don't make much sense in the light of emptiness. At least, when we view things from a broad holistic perspective rather than a narrow thing-centered perspective.
Tollifson writes:
Hearing wind in leaves, there is no persisting form, no division, no "me" apart from the wind, no listener apart from the sound, no sound "out there" apart from the listening presence. Without thoughts, there is simply the immediacy of whooooooosh!
Thought comes in afterwards and says: "I hear wind in leaves." Instantly, a whole conceptual picture takes shape in the mind like a mirage, a picture in which we suddenly seem to have subjects and objects, causes and effects, and actors who exist independently of their actions.
In this conceptual mirage, "I" am worrying about getting enlightened, and thought insists that there must be something more to Ultimate Reality than "just" that whooshing sound. That can't be enough!
Thought begins chasing something bigger and better to fill the sense of lack and uncertainty that it has just created! It imagines "Ultimate Reality" as something it hopes to find, a final understanding, a special experience, something other than Here/Now.
Round and round the thinking mind goes on its treadmill, chasing the imaginary carrot.
But the nondual absolute is that simple, immediate, conceptual whoooosh. And eventually we see that even thoughts and the mirage-worlds they spin are also a kind of energetic whoosh, and that nothing is outside that boundless totality. Even the mirage of solidity and separation is nothing but whooshing.
...We learn to think of ourselves as a separate, persisting individual encapsulated inside a bodymind, somebody apart from this world who was born into this world, somebody who "looks out" at the world and who lives "in" it.
But this separation is conceptual. When we look for this "body" or this "mind" or this "person" or "this world," all we actually find is thorough-going flux and ceaseless change, in which everything is inseparable from everything else.
Very cool. I don’t believe in death… I guess this explains why.
Posted by: infinite | January 15, 2024 at 01:47 AM
Just opened my winter magazine on Chan (Zen) and no surprise the main topic is emptiness. I say no surprise because emptiness is one of the foremost concepts in Chan and Zen Buddhism. The article repeats the meaning of emptiness being ‘empty of inherent or independent existence.’
In Brian’s post here, Toliffson accurately describes emptiness, outlining how it embraces everything or as it says in one of the Buddhist sutras: ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form.’
What interests me is how emptiness and impermanence relate directly to the other Buddhist tenet of suffering (or Dukkha, often translated as ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or ‘being out of kilter’) A study or meditation(s) on emptiness can reveal the main cause of suffering – the self. The self-structure cannot help but see itself as being a separate, perhaps lonely individual, a structure that is always striving to maintain its illusory existence. It seems to me that this striving creates the inability to see how thoughts tend to keep us enslaved in a ‘thought sphere’ that rarely has contact with the real or natural world. It’s enough that our brain/body creates our particular environmental realities and responses without adding a virtual world constructed by abstract concepts that separate us from the world, other people and ourselves.
As Toliffson points out: - “But this separation is conceptual. When we look for this "body" or this "mind" or this "person" or "this world," all we actually find is thorough-going flux and ceaseless change, in which everything is inseparable from everything else.”
Posted by: Ron E. | January 16, 2024 at 02:21 AM
Nice!
I like this Buddhist emptiness..
:0)
Posted by: Sita Schilt | January 16, 2024 at 06:08 AM