Emptiness Teachings

We live in a confusion. The world does not exist the way it appears to. Sensory appearances give the impression that objects stand as separate things. Conceptual language deepens this surface impression and appears to grant the sense of a independent, fixed nature into what it names, including a self.

At an early age, a view of the world as a collection of separate objects is deeply assumed. To conceive of phenomena existing in of themselves and as if powered by their own nature or essence 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 as interconnected, relational, “as like moons in water.”

Conceptual language appears to cover what it names with a sense of distinction, creating the belief that things exist autonomously, rather than relationally. Through this effect, phenomena are granted their own “thingness,” The belief in a separate self and all other phenomena are so ingrained, so automatic and pervasive, that it is difficult to recognize.

For example, people will say, “my mind, “my body,” as if there exists a separate self that is their owner. This sense of an I or self appears to claim these parts, to fuse them together into an independent self, into its own thing, when nothing is its own thing.

Inherent existence then, is a mental trick, an illusion in which a concept or label is seen as a representation of the way things truly exist. The realization of the absence of inherent or independent existence, is the realization of interrelated existence. As nothing exists in and of itself, everything is related to and dependent upon everything else.

Buddhist emptiness teachings are profoundly nondual. Objects of every kind, apples, cars, planets, as well as people and subtle mental objects such as thoughts, feelings and consciousness, are a web of interrelatedness. One cannot point to one thing without pointing to everything.

As nothing exists independently, nothing is produced independently either. Even what is taken to exist so fundamentally such as fire, requires fuel and does not burn itself. Despite our understanding that everything changes depending upon causes and conditions, objects are believed to have an inborn nature that remains the same.

“When we imagine change, we imagine one thing retaining

its identity, but changing its properties.” Jay Garfield

To see through this falseness is very important, because the belief in inherent existence is the root error that leads to suffering. However, one must first clearly identify the target of misconception to aim the arrow. To pierce this mental fiction is to unburden a person from believing and behaving as if one is a truly separate self living in a world of separate people and things, and then needing to protect and defend this self.

Those who assert dependent phenomena
As like moons in water,
As not real and not unreal,
Are not tricked by views.
Nagarjuna

To see that there are no true things.

Is to fall through crevasses,

Through the appearing bedrock

And into emptiness.

One lands in freedom

And wanders among vast fields

Of neither thing nor no thing.

Seeing through the appearance

Of a grounded world,

Is to realize that no true separation

Can be found.

And because nothing stands alone

But as a veil of empty names,

The barren desert blooms.

“When it is said that beings
are like the moon reflected in limpid water
rippled by a gentle breeze,
the reflection and its watery support
are alike in being, at every moment,
impermanent and empty in their nature.”

Chandrakirti

No True Things

An Introduction to Buddhist Wisdom

Conventional and Dependent Existence

In emptiness teachings, conventional existence refers to how things are named by way of their dependent existence and as established through ordinary, but valid perception, cognition and function. Conventional existence does not mean usual existence. For the way that things usually appear is inherently, as distinct entities. Because phenomena do not have inherent being, they can only be named in a relative and linguistic way.

As everything lacks “own essence,” conventional existence is a nominal existence, is merely a naming, because there is no thing, no independent nature to be singled out. Differences between the character and functioning of things are valid, conventionally speaking. An apple is not the same as a rock, but it is not different either. It is not the case that things exist without characteristics, but this need not imply essences, need not imply an independent nature. Things are neither the same nor different from each other. Properties are essenseless, nondual associations that cannot truly be pinned down. Because everything exists dependently, everything is empty.

For instance, an apple is produced in dependence upon clouds, water, sunlight, air, insects, wind, seeds, etc., none of which exist as their own things either. An apple is made of “non-apple” elements, and so it exists dependently and not with its own essence. Apples are neither the same nor different from of its other conditions. So what is an apple really? It’s an mental abstraction, a mental construct. An apple is a conventional naming of what cannot truly be defined because it is not a thing in itself.

This same is true for subtle phenomena such as thoughts, emotions and sensations, none of which stands alone either (see “Selflessness”). This is why death too, is merely relational. For nothing can be born or die as its own thing.

“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

Because we say hello, we say goodbye. In being born, death arises. The belief in inherent existence creates the appearance that everything is solid and unchanging. However, what is, is already what is not. A cause is dependent upon an effect to be a cause, but gives the impression of time as a continuous, independent flow. Birth and death are in each moment. And so death is as much a part of life as birth. Even emptiness, not being a thing in itself, but the absence of independent existence, shows us that loss and gain are interconnected, a part of each other. Nonexistence does not exist. Where in this can fear be sustained? Beneath superficial appearances, coming and going arise dependently.

Emptiness too, does not exist by way of its own being. Emptiness is the realization of an absence. It is not an essence. When a person discovers that things do not exist the way they superficially appear, when the establishment of separate entities cannot be found, emptiness is realized.

During meditation, emptiness is experienced as non-conceptual and without subject-object duality. However, emptiness teachings resist reification, resist turning this absence back into an independent essence. And so it is said that emptiness too, is empty.

Emptiness is not the substance of phenomena, not a substratum or essence. Emptiness is not an independent entity. It is a realization. It is the realization of inherent existence as a misconception. It is seeing that nothing exists autonomously, fundamentally.

Nothing stands alone, even though at the time of abiding in emptiness, there is no conceptual mediator present. Many things are not conceptually mediated, such as being startled or the taste of an apple, or the awe of a beautiful sunset, despite there being some perception of what occurred.

This is why there is some ability to talk or write about the experience of emptiness afterwards, although the words are not the same as the non-conceptual experience. For what cannot be perceived cannot be known.

Emptiness is the absence of inherent existence, but not all existence. Its not the case that non-existence exists. Everything is an interconnected web of neither thing and nor no thing, neither existent nor non-existent, neither one nor many. Emptiness teachings are about freedom from the burden of believing that things inherently exist, not about finding an ultimate truth to try and feel free in.

Emptiness

Primary references for this website include the founding Middle Way philosophy and works of Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti and Aryadeva, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama. References also include the writings and influences of Jay Garfield, Jeffrey Hopkins, Richard Rorty, Greg Goode and Scott Kiloby. Writing, poetry and all original website contents © 2010 by Susan Kahn.

Central to emptiness teachings is the importance of seeing through the myth of am inherently separate self. This sense of a self is usually seen as a distinct entity that can be assigned an individual value, that is born and dies and that steers itself through life of its own volition. When this self is thoroughly investigated using emptiness teachings, it is realized that no such self, no such inherent containment or separation can be found.

This realization transfers to all phenomena. The illusion of inherent existence is then revealed like the magician who knows his or her own tricks. One comes to see that the way conceptual language projects the appearance of separate things is a deeply conditioned, but unnecessary misconception.

In recognizing that an intrinsic self and other phenomena cannot be found to exist in and of themselves, it is seen that there is nothing to defend or attach to. There is the understanding that you are everyone and everyone is you and so, the realization of emptiness is the realization of compassion, the fruit of its wisdom.

One sees that as even emptiness is empty of absolute existence, there is no inherent separation to be found, no mountaintop view, no ultimate truth to be claimed, including a “view from nowhere.” There is no leaving nonduality, as all is a web of empty, dependent interrelatedness. And with the realization that there is no true place to stand, arrives the deep conviction that there is no place to fall.

Freedom