Emptiness misconceived

Posted By Mahabodhi on May 24, 2024

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton   4 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset.’           Sunyata Those casually or more deeply involved with Buddhism often bandy around the word Sunyata (pronounced shun-yata) or Emptiness, without necessarily comprehending—or even getting very close to—its true meaning: they assume it means something like ‘nothing is real.’ The truth is that the ‘mother of all (Buddhist) doctrines’—and the basis for sunyata—is praticca-samutpada or Dependent Arising: in short, Conditionality. This doctrine expresses the Buddha’s central insight that ‘all phenomena are dependently or conditionally arisen,’ thus they have no ‘own-nature / inherent-existence (svabhava).’ Nothing is self-supporting; nothing exists independent of (other) conditions. Sagaramati:   ‘Sunyata means that some “X” is “empty [sunya] of inherent existence,” that’s all. As we have said, sunyata and praticca-samutpada are the self-same doctrine seen in two ways. Therefore the doctrine of sunyata does not negate phenomena, but only negates that which has never existed, i.e. the illusion of “self-nature” that we attribute to phenomena. After insight into the emptiness of phenomena, the “same” phenomena are leftover: pots still carry on being pots; They don’t suddenly disappear into some fictitious emptiness. Fire still produces heat to keep us warm, etc. All that changes is our deep seated attitude to things: the way we are attached and dependent on them, the way we see and relate to them and cling to them for a sense of who we are, a sense of identity.’[1]   In fact, according to Nagarjuna, sunyata, praticca-samutpada and the Middle Way are coterminous in meaning:   ‘Whatever is dependently arisen (praticca-samutpada) That is explained to be emptiness (sunyata,) That, being a dependent designation (prajnapati,) Is itself the Middle Way[2]         Non-self The Middle Way is the path between the two extreme views of ‘Eternalism’ and ‘Annihilationism,’ where Eternalism is the belief in fixed unchanging essences, such as an eternal creator God or an unchanging fixed self. Annihilationism is the belief that at death nothing of the person continues. These two views lead to the corresponding extreme religious outlooks of puritanical theistic religion in the former case and laissez faire hedonism in the latter. As with most things, the helpful option is somewhere in the middle: that is, acknowledging that there is some moral structure to the Universe, but approaching that humanely: in a way that is based in awareness and experience rather than dogma and religious doctrine. There is a self, an agent, but that self can be changed, for better or worse (ethically) moment-to-moment.   The reaction of Lauren...