[oronozopiy]

We say the characteristic of water is sunyata, because it is constantly changing, and the way it can change depends on its "Dependencies." if you add heat, water evaporate faster (i.e. changes faster.) if you make it cold, water can become ice (i.e. changes). If you leave it be, it evaporates, just slowly (i.e. changes).

So a phenomenon can become the cause of another phenomenon, it can also become the dependency of yet another phenomenon.

Everything does exist. But everything is inherently sunyata (i.e. changes all the time depending on their Nidānas.)

dear yuan

thankyou , this is a particularly nice way of describing it ,

I used to find the whole subject of emptyness (shunyata) difficult to get my head arround simply because of the amount of terminology used to explain it ,

you are right to sugest that we think of it as' shunyata ', as the term emptyness has other conotations and therefore tends to confuse .(I think it is a problem caused when translating sanskrit or pali , as we do not have specific terms for these concepts)

I tend to think allong the lines of conventional reality as being empty of permenantly or inherently existant phenomena , and ultimate reality (buddha nature tathagatagabha) as the only perminantly non changing phenomena .(therefore the only truely existant phenomena)

a question for yuan ,

do you think that there exists cultural conditioning that prepairs an aspirant to understand principles like 'shunyata' ?
(natural cultural conitioning that westerners lack , therefore making it harder for the westerner to grasp some principals )

(aloka , please make a seperate thread if you think it is preferable , thank you )

namaskars ratikala