[MD] What's Emptiness?

[MarshaV]

dmb,

Marsha:             
Emptiness is that self and things are empty of inherent, or independent existence.  

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Wiki:
Śūnyatā:

"Emptiness is the concept that all objects are empty of inherent existence."

"According the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy which is central to Mahāyāna Buddhism, ordinary beings misperceive all objects of perception in a fundamental way. The misperception is caused by the psychological tendency to grasp at all objects of perception as if they really existed as independent entities. This is to say that ordinary beings believe that such objects exist "out there" as they appear to perception. Another way to frame this is to say that objects of perception are thought to have inherent existence (svabhāva) — their "own being" or "own power" — which is to say that they are perceived and thought to exist "from their own side" exactly as they appear."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śūnyatā  

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My statement:              
Middle Way is that self and things arise into being dependent on causes and conditions.  This means no "no things at all exist" and no "everything exists as independent objects."  
 
  

Do you have a question concerning 'emptiness'?   Or the Middle Way?  Otherwise I do not see a point to this post.  Question?  Or point?   



Marsha




On Oct 13, 2010, at 4:46 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Marsha:
> Emptiness is that self and things arise into being dependent on causes and conditions: they are empty of inherent, or independent existence.  The Middle Way is that self and things arise into being dependent on causes and conditions.
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> In the context of the original story, where the Buddha's extreme conditions are princely luxury and abject poverty, the middle way is between hedonism and asceticism. In that context, the middle is BETWEEN full indulgence and total abstinence. 
> 
> In this more philosophical context, the middle way is between two philosophical positions. On one side we have things like Plato's idealism, which the article described as the idea that "there is an ideal essence of everything". On the other extreme, we have foolish nihilism. The middle way is BETWEEN essentialism and nihilism, between objectivity and relativism. In the language of the East, this middle way is famously expressed: Emptiness is Form and Form is Emptiness.
> 
> In the MOQ's language, this would be like saying DQ is sq and sq is DQ. And this is consistent with the MOQ's insistence that we need both, that our experience includes both and it's consistent with the idea that static patterns are derived from a more primary, pre-intellectual, undifferentiated experience. But the East, unlike the West, long ago figured out a way to integrate DQ and sq. In the West, we have long periods of stasis punctuated by revolutionary change but in the East.
> 
> 
> "In the West progress seems to proceed by a series of spasms of alternating freedom and ritual. A revolution of freedom against old rituals produces a new order, which soon becomes another old ritual for the next generation to revolt against, on and on. In the Orient there are plenty of conflicts but historically this particular kind of conflict has not been dominant. Phaedrus thought it was because DHARMA includes both static and Dynamic Quality without contradiction. For example, you would guess from the literature on Zen and its insistence on discovering the 'unwritten dharma' that it would be intensely anti-ritualistic, since ritual is the 'written dharma'. But that isn't the case." (Lila, p. 383-4)
> 
> "American writing on Zen during this period showed this confusion. Zen was often thought to be a sort of innocent 'anything goes'. ..To Japanese masters coming to this country this must have seemed really strange. Japanese Zen is attached to social disciplines so meticulously they make the Puritans look almost degenerate." (lila, page 303)
> 
> "...It all keeps changing, changing, changing. He'd wanted not to get stuck in some static pattern, but this was TOO fluid. There ought to be some half-way mixture of chaos and stability. He was getting too old for all this." (Lila, p. 320)
> 
> "That's what drives the really creative people - the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like - the feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse some body has built around them, they're going to die. But they're not being contrary in a way that is just decadent. They're way too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for some kind of Dynamic freedom from static patterns. But the Dynamic freedom they're fighting for is a kind of morality too. And it's a highly important part of the overall moral process. It's often confused with degeneracy but it's actually a form of moral regeneration. Without its continual refreshment static patterns would simply die of old age." (Pirsig talking about Bohemians, Hippies and other contrarians in Lila, p. 359)
> 
> "Lila's problem wasn't that she was suffering from lack of Dynamic freedom. It's hard to see how she could possibly have any more freedom. What she needed now were stable patterns to ENCASE that freedom. She needed some way of being reintegrated into the rituals of everyday living." (Lila, p. 386)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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