Introduction To Buddhist Emptiness

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We live in illusion. The world does not exist the way it appears. It appears that everything exists through its own separate nature or essence that makes each thing what it is, including a self. However, all phenomena are without such individual identity. To conceive of people and things existing in and of themselves, through their own core nature is called inherent existence. This is the target to be refuted on the path of emptiness teachings. The absence of inherent existence is referred to as emptiness and when realized, one sees all phenomena without an independent self or being.

What is taken to exist so fundamentally such as fire, requires fuel, oxygen, friction, etc., as fire does not burn itself. It does not create itself or endure in itself. Fire exists in dependence upon conditions that are not considered to be fire either. For example, fuel is not fire, nor is oxygen. However, if you remove the conditions that fire depends upon, there will be no fire remaining. Thus, they are called conditions. Fire and the conditions of fire are unfindable as things existing in and of themselves, as entities. Despite our recognition that everything changes, people and things are falsely assumed to have fixed, inborn natures that make them what they are.

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“When we imagine change, we imagine one thing retaining its identity, but changing its properties.” – Jay Garfield

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People will say my mind and my body, as if there exists a separate self hidden somewhere. A self is seen as the owner of the transitory mind and body complex, as an underlying, unchanging essence or core. However, there is no such independent self to be found within or apart from the mind and body. The self is a mere conceptual construct that is mistakenly believed to have its own intrinsic nature.

Objects of every kind, apples, cars, people and subtle mental objects such as thought, feelings and sensations, can conventionally but not ultimately be identified or located. An object can only be designated by characteristics that are relative to other characteristics, such as large is to small, fast to slow, coarse to subtle. There are no actual objects hiding behind these relative, relational characterizations. There are simply no independent objects that can be found to exist, no self-established things. This is the primary argument of emptiness teachings.

To see through the deception of inherent existence is critical, because it is the root error that leads to the endless grasping and aversion that underlies all suffering. However, one must first identify what inherent existence is as a clear target in order to aim the arrow. To then pierce this mental fiction is to be unburdened from the view of being a separate, contained self in a world of separate, contained people and things. It is to be free from a life of perpetual fragmentation, conflict and fear.

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“Those who assert dependent phenomena, as like moons in water, as not real and not unreal, are not tricked by views.” -Nagarjuna

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Conventional and Dependent Existence

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In emptiness teachings, conventional existence refers to our everyday perception and understanding of things, such as saying that the sky is blue. To exist conventionally also involves the understanding that since all phenomena depend upon conditions, they cannot substantively exist. To exist conventionally then, is to be conceptually constructed. For as there are no independent phenomena that can ultimately be singled out, whatever is identified can only be a dependent and conventional designation. This is why conventional existence is also referred to as nominal existence, as existing in name only. This does not mean that everything is only a name, but is the recognition that phenomena cannot exist inherently, in and of themselves.

For instance, an apple is produced in dependence upon clouds, water, soil, sunlight, air, insects, wind, seeds, ad infinitum, none of which exist as their own things either. An apple is produced in total dependence upon what are not considered to be apples. Yet if the conditions that apples depend upon are removed, there will be no apples. An apple is ultimately unfindable. It is not found independently, in and of itself, or in its conditions either. Water is not considered to be an apple, because you cannot find an apple in water. Nor is soil or light seen to be an apple. An apple lacks an intrinsic nature. So what is an apple really? An apple is a useful and valid description of what can be relatively and conventionally designated, but cannot ultimately be identified because an apple exists interdependently, not as an entity. It is in this sense that an apple and all phenomena are empty.

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“Empty things are born from empty things.” – Nagarjuna

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Conventional truth provides us with the only means we have to function and to understand anything. It is valid and necessary to conventionally recognize that an apple is not the same as a rock. However, emptiness teachings make the crucial point that they are not inherently different either. For neither exists as a separate entity from which an ultimate comparison of sameness or difference can be made. It is not that apples do not exist at all. Apples exist dependently and therefore conventionally. Their appearance is relative to function of the human organism and not an entity that we discover “out there.” Whatever arises in dependence upon conditions cannot exist essentially, substantially. What we call an apple falsely appears to be fused together by an “appleness,” as if an apple has an intrinsic nature or power to be an apple. To see this deception is to understand the emptiness of phenomena.

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“Empty things, reflections and the like, dependent on conditions, are not imperceptible. And just as empty forms reflected in a glass create a consciousness in aspect similar, so too all things, though empty, strongly manifest within their very emptiness and since inherent nature is in neither truth, phenomena are neither nothing nor unchanging entities” -Chandrakirti

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Emptiness