Emptiness (shunyata, or tongpa in Tibetan) is an utterly core theme in Buddhist teaching. When we first hear about it, we usually don’t have much idea what it’s about at all. We may mistake it for some kind of void, or a teaching that nothing matters because “everything is empty”. Can we get a handle on it without years of study? Words or phrases you might want to look up: Perfection of Wisdom Shunyata (spellings in English vary) Prajnaparamita (spellings in English vary) Skandhas William Dalrymple - “From the Holy Mountain” Tetralemma Vajra slivers Prajñaparamita (sutras) Tathagata Edward Conze Manjushri I noticed that the language of Conze's translations that I quoted is gendered in a way we would probably not be comfortable with these days. Do remember that he was working on these materials in the middle of the last century. #Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Emptiness #Shunyata #Prajnaparamita Prajnaparamita as the Mother of all the Buddhas And I forgot to mention in the podcast itself, none other than... Nagarjuna
Hello dear listeners, perhaps I should say hello wise listeners, in the light of the topic of this episode of the Double Doge podcast. I'm Alex Worling, and in this episode, we are going to try to grapple with the general shape of teaching surrounding that essential point of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, that is to say, emptiness. Firstly, as ever, one call to action and one possibly helpful tip.
For the call to action, it would be great if you would take a moment to like, subscribe, or whatever you can to support this podcast. And for the tip, if your listening platform doesn't show you the extra material, such as the list of words you might want to look up that I almost always provide for these episodes, you'll find that on Podbean.
Podbean is where this podcast is hosted when it's first published. Who knows what might happen in the future, but that's it at the moment. Boy, am I glad that I never claimed to be your Buddhist teacher, either in an academic sense or a spiritual sense. It would be a brave person indeed who claimed to be able to give a final explanation of what emptiness in Buddhism is about.
Thousands of litres of ink have been used in that project, and people are still arguing about it. But at least it might be good to get a general handle on it and avoid traps like saying, Oh, everything is empty so it doesn't matter. Once when I was at a series of teachings being given by my lama, Karma Lundrup Rinpoche, I had prepared an envelope with a cash donation in it.
With experience you do learn that having a few such envelopes available at that kind of event is just what the Boy Scout is taught to do to be prepared. When I got home, I was checking through my stuff and found an envelope with just the amount of the cash donation in it. Ah, I had given him an envelope with no actual donation in it. How inauspicious. The next day I asked him about it.
Rumpachy, I said, after yesterday's teaching, did you find an envelope that didn't actually contain any money? He nodded. I think it must have been mine, I said, because I found the money in another envelope when I got home. He laughed and said it didn't matter, and that it was very auspicious because, well, emptiness. Basically, he didn't want me to feel bad about it. But that was a joke.
Abandoning ethics and compassion because, well, emptiness, is a bit of a disaster when it's done intentionally, as I'm afraid it sometimes is. I think one helpful way to draw near to this is to cast a quick eye over the history of the idea. In the very earliest layers of the Buddhist teachings that we have, the absence of a self is one of the key points.
I've often seen it referred to by the Pali name of anatta. It goes along with two other points, impermanence and suffering, but it's the absence of a self that concerns us here. One of many philosophical views that were current in the India of the Buddha's day is the thinking that we each have an individual, eternal self, an Atman.
Yeah, I do know there are all sorts of Atman theories, but the simple idea of an unchanging self is the one that matters here. I suspect that versions of this Atman idea could be found throughout history, East and West, But when we look at ourselves with a clear and steady eye, this kind of self is very difficult to find. We seem rather to be an assemblage, a bundle of bits and pieces.
The classic Buddhist teaching talks about the five heaps or the five skandhas. There are forms, feelings, perceptions, mental factors and so on. They all interact with one another. But where is the permanent self amongst them? The Buddha explicitly rejected the idea of an Atman that was current at the time.
It would be misleading to say that the idea of an Atman was a Hindu idea, because Hinduism as such didn't emerge until later. There was a melting pot of ideas and practices going on in the India of that day. The world has seen such intellectual and spiritual melting pots in other places. So let me just give a quick shout out to the work of William Dalrymple.
He has been a prolific author, and I've just been reading From the Holy Mountain, which I would recommend to anyone interested in how rich and varied the intellectual life of, for that matter, the Western world is. has been before it became flattened out by some very narrow later interpretations of Christianity and Islam. But I digress, as we used to say when I was at school.
The point is that the idea of a hard, moralist, eternal Atman was explicitly rejected. This line of thinking developed over time, and a number of Dharmas were identified. Unfortunately, I've got to digress again now to look at this word Dharma.
I did once hear that the famous Sanskrit dictionary by Monier-Williams lists 18 meanings of the word, but I could be wrong there, and even if I'm not, I suspect that might be an underestimate. Of these various meanings, two are particularly prominent in Buddhist literature. Firstly, we speak of the Dharma, meaning the Buddhist teachings.
When we take refuge, we take refuge in the three jewels, which are, of course, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the community. The word operates on multiple levels even there. It can be pictured as a stack of books, the Buddhist scriptures. And at the other end of the scale, Dharma refers to deep realization of the true nature of things.
Practicing the Dharma is another phrase used to refer to living in accordance with the teachings. The second group of meanings carried by the word Dharma could be described as the true elements of which reality is made up. As I just mentioned, we ourselves are made up of a bunch of bits and pieces. On the physical level, we are composed of the elements, and these are composed of tiny particles.
Our minds also contain thoughts and attitudes and emotions that together make up what we call our consciousness. So far so good. Or perhaps not. What indeed are these dharmas? Are these actually independent things? Or is it not rather the case that they all themselves only exist in relation to other things and other dharmas? Are the particles of earth, for example, themselves without parts?
Do they have an east and a west and north and a south? If they do, they're not partless and are therefore not ultimately real dharmas.
Reasoning along these and similar lines, questioning whether ultimately real dharmas could possibly exist, and even questioning whether cause and effect, essential as it is, has any ultimate reality, gave rise to libraries full of philosophical analysis and explanation. This is the background against which the idea of emptiness emerged.
Nothing exists in its own right, but things don't not exist either. We only have to drop a brick on our toe to know that in some way there is some kind of reality. This can be summed up in what is known as the Tetralemma, which was a common enough way of formulating things in Indian thought.
The four points in this tetralemma, put rather crudely, are that things don't exist, but that they don't not exist, and they don't both exist and not exist, and finally, that they don't neither exist nor not exist. And I think you'll agree that we've got to the end of logic here. Perhaps we've even gone over the edge.
Anyway, having rather radically swept away any positions or variations of positions about whether things exist or not, all summarized in the idea that things are empty, it must be clear that when we talk about emptiness, we aren't talking about some mystical void space somewhere else into which we hope to dissolve as we become enlightened.
It is this pencil in my hand as I write, this phone beside me, that pizza you're eating, that heartache he is feeling, and that toothache that's providing such a pain. These are the things that are empty. In short, all conceptual thinking actually misses the mark. Conceptual thinking is, of course, a wonderful thing. It's massively useful, but it's not the ultimate truth.
Trying to tease a logical truth out of this, then, is why so much ink does get used up.
In some corners of the Buddhist world, the idea rules of analysing and analysing and analysing again, running over all the theoretical intellectual proofs of emptiness, such as the Vajra slivers, which you can look up, until the practitioner enters a deep state of meditation where emptiness is understood or seen.
When this practitioner then emerges from that meditation and sees ordinary things again, it is held in that line of thinking that emptiness can no longer be seen and the practitioner must repeat this process again and again and again. Others, on the other hand, and I will admit that this is where my own sympathy lies, feel that this may be missing the point.
It is here and now in every perception that we can see, or fail to see, emptiness. The tension between these points of view, the one emphasizing the need for extremely thorough intellectual analysis, while the other emphasizes immediate perception, has got a long history, and there is no need to try to settle the argument here.
The traditional commentaries therefore contain a lot of analytical philosophy, but we mustn't overlook the importance of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, the Prajnaparamita Sutras,
Legend has it that these were given to various disciples by the Buddha himself, but were hidden under the care of a class of snake-like water spirits known as Nagas, until, in due course, they were recovered by Nagarjuna. I did just say perfection of wisdom, though this may not be an ideal translation.
Wisdom is perhaps not too bad for the Prajna part, but perfection is rather more doubtful, although finding a snappy translation isn't necessarily easy either. Things like liberating virtue have been tried, and I think that's quite good apart from being a full six syllables and so not exactly snappy. These little points do matter, I think.
I recall many years ago talking to someone who was a teacher of religious education in a secondary school. Now, the usual number of these liberating virtues is six, but due to the translation as perfection, the six perfections, he was effectively dissing them on the grounds that they were mere counsels of perfection, urging us to be perfectly generous, perfectly ethical,
perfectly disciplined, meditate perfectly and be perfectly wise. This is, of course, not terribly useful advice if it's given to a real human being. Such are the results of not actually studying the teachings but judging them on the basis of a not altogether well-translated title. You might be tempted to obtain translations of some of these sutras to study.
that is without doubt a good idea, and therefore good luck with it. However, you might meet one problem, namely that for modern people they turn out to be, forgive me for saying so, boring. The thing is that they were not composed to be engaging or entertaining, even in the sense of a well-written philosophy book, let alone of a novel.
To my mind, they are extended, highly ornamented and repetitive hymns to this transcendental, liberating wisdom. They are meant for recitation as a practice in itself. They've been used for that purpose in the past, and the practice continues.
One of the ways in which my own teacher makes a living is by reading these sutras in people's homes for hours or even days at a time as a way of generating blessings for the house and home. And almost a thousand years ago, Machik Labdron was doing the same thing. To put it simply, she was the founder of the Chö tradition that I touched on in episode 19.
In her younger days, before she went all yogic, she was well known as someone who could read such sutras with extraordinary beauty and correctness. To give you at least an impression, however, I hope you'll indulge me reading a couple of short extracts, all of them in the translations of Edward Kahn's The first is from the Perfection of Wisdom in 700 lines.
Just before I start, I'll explain that the word Tathāgata, which is used a lot in this passage, is an epithet for the Buddha. This passage is in the mouth of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who says, Through the mode of suchness do I see the Tathāgata. Through the mode of non-discrimination in the manner of non-observance, I see him through the aspect of non-production.
through the aspect of non-existence. But suchness does not attain enlightenment. Thus do I see that a targetter. Suchness does not become or cease to become. Thus do I see that a targetter. Suchness does not stand at any point or spot. Thus do I see that a targetter. Suchness is not past, future or present. Thus do I see that a targetter. Suchness is not brought about by duality or non-duality.
Thus do I see that a targetter. Suchness is neither defiled nor purified, thus do I see the Tartagata. Suchness is neither produced nor stopped, thus do I see the Tartagata. In this way the Tartagata is seen, revered, and honoured. The second extract comes from the Perfection of Wisdom for Surya Garba. Here the Buddha is speaking, saying,
Those people, son of good family, who will take up the sutra on perfect wisdom, the obstacles from their past deeds will become extinct. They will produce an equipment with merit. They will become endowed with a measureless equipment with wisdom. They will be endowed with mindfulness, morality and concentration. Once more again, son of good family, bodhisattvas should train in perfect wisdom.
Finally, if this isn't too much, a few words from the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 lines. I wanted to include a bit of this because it's probably the best known of the Prajnaparamita Sutras. Here, the Buddha says,
If a person who belongs to the vehicle of the Bodhisattvas does not seize on past, future and present Dharmas, does not mind them, does not get at them, does not construct nor discriminate them, does not see nor review them, if he considers them with the conviction that all Dharmas are fabricated by thought construction, unborn, not come forth, not come, not gone, and that no Dharma is ever produced or stopped in the past, future or present, if he considers those Dharmas in such a way
then his jubilation is in accordance with the true nature of those dharmas, and so is his transformation of the merit into full enlightenment. So, this is not literature that's going to fly off the shelves of the airport bookshop. It's intended, it seems clear to me, to wash over the listeners and readers.
Reminded again and again about this perfection of wisdom, they may become almost intoxicated with its subtle transcendental beauty. As a result of this essentially devotional approach to wisdom, Prajnaparamita also takes the form of a deity and bears the epithet of the mother of all the Buddhas. I include a picture in the comments. Summarising, Reality is ultimately beyond any possible concepts.
We can stop there, perhaps reciting the Heart Sutra every day and its mantra, OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BUDDHI SOHA. This mantra can be translated, perhaps more roughly, as OM, gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, awakening, swaha. That last word being a little bit like our men, or so be it.
Or, since appearances are indeed here, we can work with them, seeing them not as real things, but as expressions, or it's sometimes even said that they are ornaments of the empty luminous mind. This is of course a more tantric approach. One short answer to the question of what is emptiness is therefore that nothing exists in itself, but neither is there an absence of existence.
It is beyond ordinary thinking. So please remember to like, subscribe, tell your friends and all that stuff. And remember a saying whose origin I've actually been unable to identify with complete certainty. It may even be slightly apocryphal, but it does have a good ring to it. Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise. Bye.