(Questioner) Hi, Sunim, Hi, everyone.
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 concept 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 and 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.
The way I understand it is that because of the impermanence and 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, or ambitions that matter.
That's my question.
(Sunim) We usually express emptiness using the Chinese character
meaning not filled, empty.
But how a word is interpreted really depends on the context
of what came before, and what follows after.
So, the same word can mean multiple things.
For example, if you claim that this word can only mean one thing,
it can be called "form." But if it means multiple things
depending on the context, we can call it "empty."
That's what emptiness means.
Emptiness in this context does not mean a complete absence
of something or a complete void.
It really means that everything is contextual and depends on the context
in which the words are used or the definition the word falls under.
Let's take an example: 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.
When somebody claims that you're a good person
that means that you have an essence of goodness in you.
If somebody says you're a bad person, you have something within you that
that person perceives as bad.
So, whether it is a positive element or a negative one, the very assertion that
such an element exists is what is referred to as "form," in contrast to "emptiness."
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 that there's nothing intrinsic within you that's good or bad.
In other words, you don't have an essential form, element, or attribute
within you that somebody can point to and say that's good or bad.
It is just their perception of you, within that specific context of space and time,
in which they claim you are good or bad.
So, when somebody says you are a bad person or you're a good person,
I can say, "You are neither good nor bad.
You just are. You are emptiness, devoid of a fixed self."
In that case, empty doesn't mean that you don't exist,
that there's nothing, or that there's just a void.
It just means that there's no attribute or an essense within you intrinsically
that we can call as good or bad.
Let's say we have this thing.
Somebody took a little bite of this thing and got healed.
So, that person said, "This is a great medicine."
But somebody else took a bite of the same thing and got sick.
That person pointed the same thing and said that's poison.
So, is this thing medicine or poison?
There are three things in this world.
One is medicine.
Second is poison.
And the third is that it has both medicinal and 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 a thing.
In whatever context and situation this thing has been applied to,
it sometimes has medicinal attributes or sometimes has toxic attributes.
That's when you use the word emptiness or Gong (空) to refer to that
this is neither medicinal nor toxic, you are neither good nor bad person.
All existence, whether that's biological or non-biological,
or even a thought, a mental phenomena,
is empty (of a fixed nature). It's neither good nor bad.
That's why "the truth is emptiness." In other words, it simply is what it is.
How it's represented or manifests really depends on the situation,
the context, and the connections in which it is allowed to manifest.
So, in some situations, you are a good person
and in other situations, you're a bad person.
In some situations, this thing is medicine; in other, it is poison.
So, when we say Gong (空), or emptiness, it refers to the true nature of existence-
just as it is-while Saek (色), or form, is how that nature appears to us
in various ways, depending on the context or situation.
Therefore, if you truly understand that the essence of all existence
is really empty, there's no cause for you to suffer
because you realize the person is neither bad nor good.
That doesn't mean that nothing exist.
That just means that the person in a specific context of space and time,
under a specific set of conditions, may appear to be good or bad to me.
It doesn't look like you are fully clear on that.
(Questioner) I am thinking of how you mentioned
good or bad sometimes is empty.
At the same time, I can't help but think of historical dictators
that have caused a lot of hurt.
But also, I have in my head explained to myself
that they have violated the precepts. That's all.
(Sunim) Even the precepts themselves are empty.
(Sunim Laughter)
(Questioner) 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?
(Sunim) There's no precepts that can be regarded as an "always objective truth,"
regardless of the context, time, and space that we find ourselves in
because that is a very dangerous path.
So, the Buddha taught us that the right way is always determined
by the space and time of the situation that we are under.
It's like 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; it's not that the right way is predetermined.
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 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 was that 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.