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What is the Meaning of “Emptiness”?
Hi everyone.
Sorry, raising a question in such a large group makes me a little nervous.
So, please bear with me.
The question that I have relates to the concepts of emptiness.
Emptiness has come up in a few of your Dharma talks,
your videos and textbooks a few times.
It also comes up in many of the traditional texts
and Sutras like Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra.
Whenever I read through what emptiness means in the Buddhist concept
it leaves me a bit more confused
and sometimes a little bit dampened and slightly demotivated.
The reason is because the way I understand it is very shallow.
I understand it as because of the impermanence
because of the causality being dependent on each other,
things become empty or things are empty.
But my challenge and difficulty with understanding the concept is
how do I approach it so that I'm not undermining what is important in life
for instance family relationships that matter, ambitions that matter.
That's my question.
So the emptiness, we usually express that using the Chinese character
for me is not filled, right empty.
But as you know how a word is interpreted really depends on the context
of what came before and what follows after.
So the same word actually means multiple things.
But for example, if you claim that this word can only mean one thing,
then that's different. But what emptiness really refers to is that one word
can mean multiple things depending on the context.
That's what emptiness means.
So emptiness in this context does not mean a complete absence
of something or a complete void.
It really means that everything is contextual,
depends on the context of how those words or what definition that word belongs to.
So let's take an example. So somebody may look at you
and claim that you are a good person.
Another person may look at you and say you are a bad person.
So when somebody claims that you're a good person
that means that Joe, you have an essence of goodness in you.
And if somebody says you're a bad person
then you have something within you that, that person is perceived as bad.
So whether you have a bad factor or a good factor
that's something that's intrinsic to you. Then that's the opposite of emptiness.
But what emptiness refers to is that it's all about that person's perception
as being good, or that person's perception as being bad.
But there's nothing intrinsic within you that's good or bad.
So in other words, you don't have an essential kind of form or an element
or an attribute within you that somebody can point to
and say that's good or that's bad.
It is just their perception of you in that space and time context
in which they claim that you are good or bad.
So in that case when somebody says you are a bad person or you're a good person.
Then I can say that she is neither good nor bad. She is just, she is empty.
So that in that case empty means that you don't exist, that there's nothing, you know there's just a void.
It just means that there's nothing and attribute within you, or an essence within you intrinsically that we can call as good or bad.
Say we have this thing. Somebody actually ate a little bit of this thing and got healed. And so that person said 'Okay this is a great medicine’.
But somebody else actually took part in the same thing and then actually got sick. And that person pointed the same thing and said that's poison.
So is this thing medicine or poison?
There are three things. One is 'This is medicine', and one 'This is poison'.
The third is that it has medicinal properties or it has poisonous properties.
But this thing itself is empty.
That means that it neither has toxic properties nor medicinal properties.
That means that this is just the thing.
But in whatever context and which situation, this thing has been applied to sometimes has medicinal attributes or sometimes it has toxic attributes.
So that's when you use the word empty or Gong (공) to refer to that this is neither medicinal nor toxic, you are neither good nor bad person.
So all existence whether that's biological, that's a thing or non biological organic or even a thought, a mental phenomena and it's just empty it's neither good nor bad.
And it is just what it is.
So that's why we call it or label it as empty because that's the truth it is what it is.
However that thing how it's represented or manifest really depends on the situation and the context and the connections in which it is allowed to manifest.
So in some situations it is good, you are a person in some situations, you're a bad person in some situations, this thing is a decline, in other situations it is a poison.
So when we say Gong (공) the empty that is kind of what a thing is what a phenomenon is. But however it's represented within the context or situation it finds itself in and that is what we call Form.
Therefore if you really truly understand that all essence of all existence is really empty then there's no cause for you to suffer.
Because you realize the person is neither bad nor good.
That doesn't mean that person does not exist.
That just means that the person in this situation in this space and time context under this specific set of conditions may appear to be good or bad to me.
Doesn't look like you are fully clear on that.
I am thinking of how you mention good or bad sometimes is empty.
At the same time I can't help to think of historical dictators that have caused a lot of hurts.
But also at the same time I have in my head explained to myself that they have violated the precepts. That's all.
So even the precepts themselves are empty.
I guess I am still a little confused about the precepts being empty.
Do you mean they are dependent on the historical age we're in the society that we're in?
There's no ethical precepts that we can absolutely say that this is the truth.
That this is the way regardless of the situation and time and space that we find ourselves in, because that actually is a very dangerous path.
So what Buddha taught is that the proper way the right way is always determined by the space and time of the situation that we are under.
It's basically setting a compass down in a new place and seeing where it points north and that's when you find the right way.
So everything is dependent even though the proper path on that, that's the middle way.
And the concept of that middle way as it transition over to Mahayana Buddhism, it became translated or understood as emptiness.
So the emptiness, the concept and the words, actually was a criticism against Theravada kind of rigid traditionalism in which they claimed that a certain set of ethical constructions was the way.
And so the criticism in Mahayana against that was that the construct should be empty.
So basically the original criticism which Theravada's rigid absoluteness of the way wast hat there is no fixed way and that eventually got translated and kind of consolidated into the word emptiness.
Basically when someone claims that this the truth, then the criticism is that there's' nothing that you can point to and say that's the absolute truth and that got translated into that sense of emptiness.
So the fact that we misunderstand emptiness or the concept because of the word that we use in space, but it's only a part of all.
We usually obsess over somebody else, if we like that person.
And we want to make that person behave the way we want them to behave.
So if they don't behave accordingly then we feel bitter.
And if that disappointment becomes too much then we just let go, and we become indifferent to them.
If we realize this concept of emptiness then we can actually let go of our obsession.
Then we can allow him or her to behave as they want.
If they ask for our help, Then we help.
If they don't ask for help, then we don't help.
So we're neither indifferent in this case nor obsessive.