WHAT ACTUALLY IS EMPTINESS
Sunyata or Emptiness
There is an interesting Chinese expression concerning Buddhist scriptures which says, "Seven kong, nine bu, twenty one wu". It refers to the appearance of seven times the mention of "emptiness" (kong), nine times of "not" (bu), and twenty one times of "no" (wu) in the Heart Sutra comprising 260 words in Chinese. Those who have only a superficial understanding of the Heart Sutra or of Buddhist philosophy, may conclude from this profusion of "emptiness" and "not" that Buddhism is nihilistic and negative. This conclusion is of course incorrect.
Emptiness or void, known as sunyata in Sanskrit and kong in Chinese, is not total nothingness, as some people may believe. Emptiness here means emptied of phenomena as we normally see them. This great cosmic truth is difficult for many people to conceptualize. This concept of emptiness or void has been described in numerous ways in many sutras, and the following are some examples.
In the Udana Sutta in Theravada Buddhism, the Buddha says:
There is that condition where there is no earth, water, fire or air, where there are not the Spheres of Infinite Space, Infinite Consciousness, Nothingness, or the Sphere of neither Consciousness-Nor-Unconsciousness, where there is not this world, the world beyond or both together, no sun and no moon, where there is no coming to birth or going to death, no duration and hence no falling or arising. It is not something fixed, it does not move, it is based on nothing. This indeed is the end of suffering.
Here the Buddha is referring to nirvana, which he describes as a "condition" where there are no earth, water, fire or air -- which are the four fundamentals of dharma; and no spheres of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither consciousness-nor-unconscious¬ness -- which are the highest attain¬ments of self. In other words, nirvana is emptiness, emancipated from the illusion of dharmas and of self.
In an important passage in the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika Sutra), the well-known but little understood sutra where the Buddha explains what emptiness is, he says:
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All forms of sentient beings -- whether they are born from eggs, born from wombs, born from moisture, or born from transformation; and whether they are with form, without form, with thought, without thought, not with thought, or not without thought -- I have caused them to attain the nirvana without residue with the extinction of the need for reincarnation. However, although I have caused boundless, countless, limitless sentient beings to accomplish the extinction of reincarnation, actually no sentient beings have attained the extinction of reincarnation.
In the Flower Ornament Sutra (Avatamsaka Sutra), well known for expounding the Mahayana doctrine of totality where everything in the universe inter-pene¬trates with everything else, emptiness is described as the Buddha's Dharma nature as follows:
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The Buddha's Dharma nature body is without obstruction;
It appears at every place in the universe.
And like a light and a shadow it penetrates all lands.
The Dharma nature is ultimately non-origination:
When the Buddha assumes the body of the Dharma nature, of Suchness,
Without moving, he eternally purifies all of the lands in the ten directions.
Direct Experience in Zen
It is understandable that despite the above descriptions, many people may still not comprehend what emptiness is. The difficulty is not so much with the language, but with the concept itself. Often the language is clear and direct, but because the listeners or readers lack the understanding or experience of emptiness, which actually refers to the transcendental aspect of cosmic reality, statements of great cosmic truth appear illogical to them. Zen (Chan) Buddhism abounds with many such instances, preserved for posterity as gong-ans, or koans in Japanese, which are public records of the masters' extraordinary means to help students attain a cosmic glimpse of ultimate reality. The following is a celebrated example.
A monk asked the Zen master Wei Kuan, "Where is Tao?"
"It's right in front of your eyes!"
"Why is that I can't see it?"
"Because I am here, you can't see it," the master replied.
"Because I am here, I can't see Tao. Can master see it?"
"Because you and I are here, Tao has disappeared."
"If I and you are not here, can it still be seen?" the monk asked the master.
"If you and I are not here, what need is there to see Tao?"
If you understand what emptiness is, the above conversation as well as other Zen stories, will be clear. The monk asked the master where or what Tao was? Tao, here, refers to the Supreme Reality, or emptiness.
Emptiness is everywhere, but the unenlightened are unable to perceive it. Emptiness refers to ultimate reality, which is undifferentiated and unseparated, and therefore devoid of all phenomena. When the monk saw the master, the master was manifested as a differentiated and separated phenomenon to the monk. Because of the presence of this phenomenon, the monk therefore could not experience ultimate reality as undifferentiated and unseparated. Similarly, if the master chose to see the monk as a phenomenon, i.e. the master chose to exist in the phenomenal dimension, he would lose sight of ultimate reality as emptiness. If both the master and the monk did not exist as phenomena, i.e. if they had liberated themselves from the illusion of self and phenomena, there would be no need to ask what emptiness was, because both would have attained Enlightenment, i.e both would be an inseperatable, integral part of emptiness.
Zen masters often go beyond language to help their students not just to understand what emptiness is, but more importantly to experience it directly. They may use extraordinary, non-verbal means like shouting, hitting their students, or performing what to ordinary people appears as meaningless antics. The following example is deeply spiritual. Can you make any sense from it?
When the Zen master Bo Tan was a student, he asked the famous teacher Ma Zu, "What is the meaning of the Patriarch coming from the west?"
"Come closer and I'll give you an answer."
When Bo Tan came close to Ma Zu, the great teacher gave his student a slap on his face, and said, "Your senses are in disharmony. Come another day."
Bo Tan waited for a few days, then went to the lecture hall to ask the teacher again, "Please, master, enlighten me."
"Go away!" the master shouted at Bo Tan, "Certify to me when I ascend my seat to give lectures."
This triggered off Bo Tan's enlightenment. He prostrated before his teacher to thank him.
Ma Zu Dao Yi (Baso Doichi in Japanese), who lived in the Tang Dynasty in 8th century China, was one of the greatest Zen teachers the world has ever produced. Students who attained enlightenment due to his train¬ing, numbered more than a hundred, about forty of whom later became masters themselves! Ma Zu is well known for his extraordinary methods in helping his students to attain enlightenment.
Asking for the meaning of the Patriarch coming from the west, is a Zen jargon for asking the meaning of ultimate reality. "The Patriarch" refers to Bodhi¬dharma, the great Indian master who initiated Zen Buddhism in China in the early 6th century. Zen Buddhism is well known for transmitting transcendental wisdom directly from mind to mind, without verbal explanation, and the above is an example.
Ma Zu's slap was one of his ingenious ways to awaken his students to the fact that Zen, or empti¬ness, is to be experienced, not just to be intellectua-lized. As Bo Tan failed to grasp the intended meaning, Ma Zu asked him to come again another day. His mention that Bo Tan's senses were disharmonious, was meant to suggest to Bo Tan not to think about emptiness, but to experience it directly.
When Bo Tan approached Ma Zu in the lecture hall, the special place in the monastery for giving lectures, i.e verbal intellectualization, the great master asked him to go away, i.e. not to depend on words or reason¬ing in his quest for enlightenment. Asking Bo Tan to certify to him before he verbalized in his lectures, was another of his subtle and effective ways of pushing the student to experience ultimate reality directly, instead of depending on words for explanation or speculation. This time Bo Tan grasped the opportunity, and in an instant saw his "original face", i.e. experienced emptiness and attained enlightenment.
The Scientific Explanation
Interestingly, modern science provides a very helpful way for us to comprehend this elusive but exceedingly important concept of emptiness. Once you understand what it means, you are "enlightened" in the "wisdom of language". All at once, many ideas or statements that have been a great puzzle to you, become meaningful; suddenly you are awakened to the fact that all this while the masters have been explaining the greatest spiritual truth to you in clear, simple language. Irrespective of the religion you profess, you now realize the spiritual path that lays in front in all its glory and magnificence.
Suppose you look at the world through a gigantic and powerful electron microscope, yet to be constructed by scientists. What you will see are not the familiar things like people and houses, clouds and hills, but just patterns of sub-atomic particles. This is easily comprehensible because we know from science that all things, from bacteria to elephants, from tables to distant stars, are made of atoms, and atoms can be broken down to sub-atomic particles.
Modern science has given us a useful, classical picture of an atom. An atom is of course very small, but suppose we enlarge an atom to the size of a foot¬ball field; then its nucleus is like a grain of sand in the middle of the field, and its electrons like specks of dust about 1800 times smaller whirling around at fantastic speeds at the periphery. The colossal distance between the nucleus and the electrons, and between the electrons themselves is mere "nothingness".
The new physics gives us an improved or, according to some people, absurd picture of the atom. The electrons of the atom are not particles but waves of energy at different orbits around the nucleus, and the waves "collapse" into particles when and where scientists choose to perceive them. Significantly, this philosophy that phenomena are a function of perception is typically Buddhist, except that scientists know about this truth only recently and at the sub-atomic level, whereas Buddhist masters have known it for centuries at levels ranging from the minute to the galactic.
Thus, if you look at your hand through a powerful electron microscope, you will not see you hand as you normally see it with your naked eyes, but you will see particles moving about in great speed, and many of these particles disintegrate into nothingness, while at the same time other particles come into existence from nothingness. You will be amazed that there is no boundary delimiting your hand (actually there is no hand): you cannot tell which particles mark the line separating the so-called inside of your hand from the outside.
Similarly when you look at your whole body, or at any body, you will find that there are no bodies at all! What you, in your ignorance due to your very gross sense perception, regard as your personal self, is an illusion. You will, probably to your great astonishment, become aware that there is no real separateness between you the knower, and everything else you know. You have awakened to the great cosmic truth that you are actually the universe, that you simply cannot find any boundaries separating you with anything else!
Now, suppose the microscope is even more powerful. When you look at the world through this super gigantic and super powerful microscope, you will not even see sub-atomic particles, because the particles have been broken down to energy. What used to be differentiated objects to your naked eyes are now a continuous spread of cosmic energy, though the energy, like the "collapse of the wave function" in quantum physics mentioned earlier, may manifest into phenomena if your mind chooses to perceive them. But if you purify you mind of gross sensual perception, when you look at your own body or any other body, you will find it emptied of phenomena; you will find an undifferentiated, unseparated spread of Universal Mind. This gives us a gross idea of what Avalokitesvara meant by emptiness when he experienced it directly in his enlightenment.
This analogy is gross because the wisdom-eye of Avalokitesvara or of any enlightened being is many, many times more powerful and refined than the supersuper electron microscope. Moreover, the wisdom of an enlightened being involves not only the emptiness of form, like what is shown in the analogy, but also the emptiness of feeling, thought, activity and consciousness.
Where have your body and other objects disappeared into, when you look at them through the super-super electron microscope or your wisdom-eye? They have not disappeared; they were not there in the first place. What you saw with your naked eyes, what you thought was the objective world out there, was actually an illusion of your mind. Why do these particles or energy appear to you as phenomena such as houses and people, stars and mountains? This will be explained later by the doctrine of dependent origination.
The Phenomenal and the Transcendental
Reality can be experienced at two dimensions, the phenomenal and the transcendental. The phenomenal dimension is experienced by ordinary people, where reality is relative and is differentiated into separate entities. The transcendental dimension is experienced by enlightened beings, where reality is absolute and is undifferentiated, i.e. the illusory separateness between entities, and between the knower and the known has disappeared. In other words, at the phenomenal level, you and I and everything else are separated; but at the transcendental level, you and I and everything else are holistically integrated.
Phenomenal reality is not only illusory, but also relative because different minds perceive the same ultimate reality as different illusion. For example, the mass of sub-atomic particles you regard as your physical body, may be a whole universe to a cell living inside it, or it may be "shadow matter" to a being vibrating at a different frequency. On the other hand, transcendental reality is absolute; all enligh¬tened beings perceive ultimate reality as the same emptiness.
The latest sciences are saying the same thing. For example, the great modern physicist David Bohm, reminiscent of the philosophy of inter-penetrating and mutually arising of all phenomena as taught in the Flower Ornament Sutra, classifies reality into two orders. The level of reality in which particles appear to be separated is called the explicate order, and the deeper substratum of reality in which separateness vanishes and all things become an unbroken whole is called the implicate order.
Another world known scientist, Michael Talbot, reports that:
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Even the world we know may not be composed of objects. We may only be sensing mechanisms moving through a vibration dance of frequencies. Pribram suggests that the reason we translate this vibrating dance of frequencies into the solidity and objectivity of the uni¬verse as we know it is that our brains operate on the same holographiclike principles as the dance of frequencies and is able to convert them into a picture much the same as a television converts the frequencies it receives into a more coherent image.
A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion, of his consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures, and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The speaker is one of the greatest scientists of all time, Albert Einstein. The two qualities that stand out in the above quotation also happen to be what many people call the two pillars of Mahayana Buddhism -- wisdom and compassion. Compassion is closely linked with wisdom: as the Mahayanist knows that everybody is holistically connected in transcendental reality, attaining enlightenment becomes a cosmic rather than merely a personal responsibility.
These twin concepts of wisdom and compassion are ideal¬ized in the Bodhisattva, and poetically expressed in his motto in Chinese, shang qiu fo tao, xia du zhong sheng, which means "aspiring for Buddhahood above, saving all sentient beings below". Compassion is exemplified by Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva who chose to return to samsara from nirvana to help all sentient beings to overcome suffering and calamity, although he has attained Buddhahood through his enlightenment.
In other words, having broken through all illusory separateness and differentiation, Avalokitesvara realizes that he himself is intrinsically the Eternal Buddha, or the Supreme Reality. The separateness between different entities that ordinary people see is actually an illusion. If he likes, Avalokitesvara may remain in this tranquil, undifferentiated state of infinite, eternal bliss, with which he has become an organic whole. Yet, out of great compassion, Avalokitesvara chose to come out of this infinite, eternal bliss, and return to the phenomenal world to help suffering beings.
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