[MD] What's Emptiness?

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Mark [DMB quoted]--



Your post to dmb of 10/13 is a superb rationale.  Naturally, I am most in 
harmony with what you said about Emptiness (which I equate with 
Nothingness.).

> As I have said in previous posts, the term "Emptiness" is not
> very useful unless one understands its meaning.  In fact,
> the notion of Emptiness often leads one in the wrong direction.
> Emptiness does not mean that things such as reality do not exist.
> It means that such things do not exist of themselves.  For a cup
> to be empty, both the cup and the space within must exist
> together.  One cannot have an empty cup without the cup.
> One cannot have an empty cup if it is full.

The concept that "things do not exist of themselves" is so crucial to 
metaphysics that I wish it had been stated in Pirsig's writings.  Nothing 
exists by its own power -- even nothingness itself.  When you say "things 
such as reality do not exist," I fully expect someone to ask, "What is 
reality, then?"  And that dramatically demonstrates the failure of words to 
convey meaning.

Not only do we not understand the meaning of "emptiness", but we constantly 
use words such as "existence", "dynamic", "static", "patterns", 
"unpatterns", "experience", and even "quality" in assertions that lack 
comprehensibility.  Most of these terms have Pirsigian translations that 
bear little resemblance to common definitions.  To put it crudely, we speak 
a sophisticated language without communicating our thoughts, and sometimes 
(I suspect) without knowing what we're talking about.

I was particularly impressed with your reference to the Buddhistic notion of 
"co-dependent arising" which we hashed around a bit under a previous thread:

> This is the concept of co-dependent arising, yin and yang if you wish.
> In Buddhism this concept is extended to the personal mind.  There is
> no inherent existence (existing on its own) of the self.  In this way the
> mind is described as Empty.  As I have posted recently, applying the
> notion of Emptiness to one's participation in this world, has tremendous
> results: selfless compassion for all sentient beings.  So, if nothing else 
> it
> can result in societal harmony.

I know very little about Buddhist teachings.  Would you oblige me by 
explaining, possibly with an example or two, how "the notion of Emptiness" 
leads to compassion and societal harmony?

Lastly, there is David's statement, and your response, regarding the 
"essence of mind":

[DMB]:
> One may argue that lack of inherent existence of objects does not
> imply the same for natural phenomena and beings. In case of a
> human being, there is a body, a mind, a character, a history of
> actions, habits, behaviour, and other things we can draw upon to
> describe a person. We can even divide these characteristics further
> into more fundamental properties.  For example, we can analyse
> the mind and see that there are sensations, cognition, feelings, ideas.
> Or, we can analyse the brain and find that there are neurons, axons,
> synapses, and neurotransmitters.  However, none of these
> constituents describe the essence of the person, the mind, or the brain.
> Again, the essence remains elusive.

[Mark]:
> To provide opinion towards your last statement on essence of the
> mind, one could say that there it has no essence on its own.  Again,
> obviously the mind does exist (as we define it), but only as a
> composite of arisings outside of it.  And of course these arisings
> are composites themselves, and so on.  One big cluster #@&*!
> as Marsha likes to say.

In one sense, I disagree that the mind "has no essence of its own."  I 
believe that the mind, or what I prefer to call "cognizant sensibility", can 
in fact be defined as "essence on its own". David is right that "the essence 
remains elusive", but in my ontology Sensibility is essential; that is, it 
is an attribute of Absolute Essence, as is Value.  In existential 
(experiential) reality these attributes are differentiated so that one is 
cognizant of Value as the objective world.

> In my opinion, co-dependent arising can fit well with the metaphysics of
> Quality but requires the use of a  transformative constant.  What I mean
> by such a constant is similar to what is commonly used in physics.  To
> equate two sides of an equality of two systems of measurement requires
> units of conversion to harmonize the variables.  This is termed a 
> constant.
> For example, for Energy to be related to Mass (one is in joules and
> the other in grams, for example) a constant which is the units of the 
> speed
> of light (E=(m) x (c) x (c).   A similar example would be transforming
> pressure (psi) and volume (liters) into temperature.  The equation is
> PV=nRT, where R is a transformative constant of fixed value.
>
> In order to equate Quality (as understood by MoQ) and Emptiness (as
> understood by Buddists) a translational constant is needed.  Thus we
> can say that Emptiness and Quality are equal provided we transform
> one of these with a constant which causes the units of measure of each
> to agree.  Such units are provided in philosophy through the use of
> adjectives and conceptual transformers, which is obviously not as neat
> as with physics.

The application of physical constants to metaphysical premises is an 
intriguing idea, although this is far beyond my expertise.  Clearly 
something is needed to make sense of the propositions we are discussing, and 
the constant may well serve this purpose.  While I would hate to see the MoQ 
converted to equations and symbols, I'm willing to collaborate with you (and 
others) on such a project if that is what you have in mind.

Thanks for a very insightful post, Mark.

Essentially yours,
Ham