[MD] What's Emptiness?

[MarshaV]

What good is clinging alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band.
Come blow your horn,
Start celebrating;
Right this way,
Your table's waiting

No use permitting
some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret!

...

Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Only a Cabaret, old chum,
And I love a Cabaret!


 
 
 
 


On Oct 14, 2010, at 12:51 AM, 118 wrote:

> Mark:
> Now, I haven't read Wiki on this one, so please forgive me.  Middle Way is a
> path to travel to achieve enlightenment, not a thing or philosophical
> result.  It is like the Middle pillar of Qabalah (the Pillar of
> Consciousness).
> 
> Gautama tried everything to obtain enlightenment.  That everything consisted
> of extremes on all sides, starvation and over indulgence.  He found that
> extremes do not do a thing but dissatisfaction.  And yes, it is because he
> tended to cling to them, thus his universal philosophy.
> 
> When he talks about his concept of suffering, he isn't talking about water
> torture of having nails pounded into ones hands, he is talking about that
> which arises from clinging.  This clinging was of course a metaphor for
> something that he felt distracted him from seeing the way things truly are.
> Now, in my opinion Buddha was quite a clinger too, or maybe I am getting
> him confused with the cross-dresser on M*A*S*H* that fought the evil dudes
> on StarTreck, but whatever.  Anyway, if one doesn't cling then one doesn't
> suffer, according to his truly.  Reminds me once of a girlfriend I lost many
> many years ago.  I guess clinging can be seen as obsession at all degrees,
> even the obsession to stay alive.  So, in that case, long live suffering!
> 
> Well, I guess I've used the word clinging enough for now.
> 
> Still clinging,
> Mark
> 
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 3:17 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> dmb,
>> 
>> Marsha:
>> Emptiness is that self and things are empty of inherent, or independent
>> existence.
>> 
>> --------------
>> 
>> 
>> 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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81>
>> 
>> -------------
>> 
>> 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)
>>> 
>>> 
>>>