Tue, 06 Jul 2010
Emptiness Briefly
I know I haven't been posting regularly. Part of that is a lack of time. Another part has been seeing that my motivation for posting has been largely egoistic. But Lama Phurbu Tashi complimented one of my posts recently, which I think was a subtle hint that I should continue posting. Because I don't have the time to write anything substantial tonight, here is something I posted to one of the Buddhist forums.
Emptiness is not the absence of substance. Emptiness is the non-existence of a thing apart from its causes and conditions. For example, a rainbow only appears when sunlight, rain, and observer all come together in the right configuration. It has no separate objective existence. All things are like this. All are the result of the coordination of their respective causes.
Through meditation we come to see that the self that we hold onto so tightly is nothing more than a name. It is something we attribute to certain physical and mental factors, but has no existence apart or above these factors. It is only a concept we hold when these factors come together. When we truly see this there is no separation between us and our experience. The sense of separation between observer and observed is lost. This is what is meant when Buddhists (usually Zen Buddhists) use such phrases as becoming the sound.
