[MD] What is SOM?

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
Mahayana Buddhism rejects that things have an essence.  I have written that the concept of Emptiness is the lack of independent existence, inherent existence, or the essence of things.  Emptiness IS being empty of essence. Nagarjuna argues that phenomena are 'fabricated by virtue of acquiring their identity as particulars through conceptual imputation.'  This is anti-essentialism, is it not?   This would be the same as the MOQ saying that it's all analogy.  And RMP stating in the Copleston paper, 'The MOQ is not opposed to materialism as long is it is understood that materialism is a set of ideas."   Right?

dmb says:
Yes, I think that's right.

But I'm still having trouble with "essence" in terms of "independent existence" or "inherent existence". Whenever I saw those phrases I could only wonder what they meant. I mean, even from the perspective of an SOM-type essentialist, in what sense is anything "independent"? And how is "inherent existence" different from regular existence? In this case, the unknown "essence" is described in terms of two other unknowns. And if Emptiness is the lack of an "essence", I'm left wonder what Emptiness doesn't have. And even now that I see how these relate to concepts I am familiar with, the idea of an essence strikes me as quite bizzare and impossible. Its so goofy that it hardly seems worthy of rejection. It amounts to the claim that the truest and most real thing can never be known in experience, which is exactly the opposite of what seems most true. 

So anyway, don't blame yourself. These same type of explanations didn't work for me when Paul tried either and everybody knows he's a rock star. But thanks all the same.




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