DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Emptiness - break off thread from the beginners section.

**PapsEdisa** · 11-22-2011, 09:42 PM

Don't mind if I jump in here.

According to my Mahayana training, saying that all things are empty (as a blanket statement per se) is wrong (nihilist). They are rather empty of inherent existence. It has to be qualified, as things do exist conventionally, just not ultimately. So the concept of inherent existence is crucial to this.

This is why I hate "empty" as a translation for sunyata. It allows people to write something like "empty of inherent existence." Nobody would write "sunyata of inherent existence."

srivijava also noted that:

The problem is, nobody imposes such criteria on sensory data. Run of the mill, uninstructed people all acknowledge the fleeting nature of life.

This is also absolutely correct. Even people in India at the time of Buddha knew about fleeting nature of life (they probably called it Dukkha), they just didn't know why. So sunyata is not about fleeting nature of life, because there is no point in teaching this.

What people keep forgetting when they discuss sunyata is the concept of "dependent origination." Without "dependent origination," the whole concept of sunyata is rather meaningless.

I refer back to Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:
"The law of existence according to nidānas, I said is Śūnyatā" (Again, my translation, which is probably different than others, or my earlier one here.)

This is saying that sunyata's definition is that all things' creation, existence and destruction (or change) are governed by the law of nidanas.

People here are probably familiar with the 12 nidanas, but that's just an example of how our behavior occurs. Everything in the world has its own nidanas, the computer that you are using, the internet, the sun, the cloud all have its own nidanas. For these things, we summarized these nidanas and call them names like Maxwell's equation, boolean logics, electrons....etc.

We (At least scientists and engineers) understand the nidanas of our physical worlds, so we can manipulate them and change them to do our bidding. We are lucky that physical things can be changed, so that even those of us that are not scientists and engineers can enjoy the fruits of their understandings.

So we need to understand the nidanas of our own nature so we can change ourselves. Unfortunately, this is not shareable, because we are all different. To me, this is what enlightenment is all about.

11-22-2011, 09:42 PM	#18
PapsEdisa Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 545 Senior Member	Don't mind if I jump in here. According to my Mahayana training, saying that all things are empty (as a blanket statement per se) is wrong (nihilist). They are rather empty of inherent existence. It has to be qualified, as things do exist conventionally, just not ultimately. So the concept of inherent existence is crucial to this. This is why I hate "empty" as a translation for sunyata. It allows people to write something like "empty of inherent existence." Nobody would write "sunyata of inherent existence." srivijava also noted that: The problem is, nobody imposes such criteria on sensory data. Run of the mill, uninstructed people all acknowledge the fleeting nature of life. This is also absolutely correct. Even people in India at the time of Buddha knew about fleeting nature of life (they probably called it Dukkha), they just didn't know why. So sunyata is not about fleeting nature of life, because there is no point in teaching this. What people keep forgetting when they discuss sunyata is the concept of "dependent origination." Without "dependent origination," the whole concept of sunyata is rather meaningless. I refer back to Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: "The law of existence according to nidānas, I said is Śūnyatā" (Again, my translation, which is probably different than others, or my earlier one here.) This is saying that sunyata's definition is that all things' creation, existence and destruction (or change) are governed by the law of nidanas. People here are probably familiar with the 12 nidanas, but that's just an example of how our behavior occurs. Everything in the world has its own nidanas, the computer that you are using, the internet, the sun, the cloud all have its own nidanas. For these things, we summarized these nidanas and call them names like Maxwell's equation, boolean logics, electrons....etc. We (At least scientists and engineers) understand the nidanas of our physical worlds, so we can manipulate them and change them to do our bidding. We are lucky that physical things can be changed, so that even those of us that are not scientists and engineers can enjoy the fruits of their understandings. So we need to understand the nidanas of our own nature so we can change ourselves. Unfortunately, this is not shareable, because we are all different. To me, this is what enlightenment is all about.
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