Sunyata
The Buddhist Doctrine of Emptiness
by Yin DeThe last time I spoke here, I gave a quick introduction to the Four Noble Truths which are the foundation of the Buddhist religion. My talk focused on the Second Noble Truth; the truth of the cause of suffering. That was a fairly dark topic but I think it turned out okay and some people came away with a new understanding of what the Buddha meant.
Today I want to take another subject which has been viewed as somewhat misanthropic and see if we can bring a greater understanding and even maybe appreciation to it.
Buddhism frequently gets a bad rap as being life negating, pessimistic, or even nihilistic. Frequently the ammunition for such claims is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of 'Sunyata'.
It seems like a lot of people mistranslate Sunyata as simply 'emptiness', which if accurate would seem to support the negative perception some people have of Buddhism. But emptiness only scratches the surface of the true meaning of the concept of Sunyata. Sometimes words cannot be adequately translated from Sanskrit to English or from any single language to another non-related language without going into great detail to describe a complete concept. This is one such case.
While Sunyata is a complete concept, it cannot be fully explained or comprehended by way of study or explanation. We can however become familiar enough with the subtle qualities of Sunyata so that we might actually be able to recognize it when we experience it, and not come away with a false understanding of what has been experienced.
We can start by understanding that there is an element of emptiness within Sunyata, but it doesn't stop there. There is also an element of potentiality - a state where literally anything and everything is possible. Some have defined Sunyata as being 'pregnant with possibilities'. I think that this comes a little closer than mere emptiness.
Let me give you an example story from Buddhist folklore; I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but bear with me. In this story, a Zen Master meets with a student who has come to learn about Zen. While they are talking, the Master offers the student some tea. They continue chatting, as the Master begins pouring the tea. He keeps pouring and pouring, until the teacup is full and begins overflowing. Distracted, the student interrupts the Master to point out that the cup is full. "Master," he says, "The cup is overflowing. No more will go in." The Master gently replies to him, "Like this cup, you are full of your own judgments and habits and opinions. In order for me to show you Zen, you must first empty your cup, empty your mind and create space for new ideas and possibilities." In this story, the student is told that his mind needs to be "empty", but the Master doesn't mean "empty" as simply lacking any content but rather full of the potential to learn and understand.
This state of emptiness is very different from the vacuum that the word often brings to mind. It's vibrant, alert, and fully conscious. In this state, there can be thoughts, but no thinker. There can be words, but no speaker. There is no separate and individual entity in Sunyata.
One of the most beloved texts in Mahayana Buddhism is called the Maha Prajna Paramita Hrydaya Sutra, or simply, the Heart Sutra. This monumental text of Mahayana Buddhism is said to have been an attempt by one of the Buddha's disciples to explain Sunyata to another who has less experience on the path. Listen to these lines, and then I will explain them a little:
"When the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was coursing the deepest Prajna Paramita, he perceived that all five skandhas are empty and was saved from all suffering and distress. Oh Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness."
First of all, for those who are not familiar, a Bodhisattva is a person who has achieved a degree of Buddhist liberation or awakening, but has made a vow not to enter final Nirvana until he has helped every other sentient being to do so first. So, Avalokitesvara is a great disciple of the Buddha who has taken this vow. The verse tells us that Avalokitesvara was "coursing in the deepest Prajna Paramita"… what does that mean? Prajna means wisdom and Paramita means perfect. In this context what we are being told is that the Bodhisattva had attained a very deep and perfect level of meditation in which the ego had been bypassed. While in this state of perfect wisdom, he had a realization. He realized that "all five skandhas are empty". The word skandhas can be literally translated as heaps or piles or aggregates. What it refers to here are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses or volition, and consciousness.
These five Skandhas or aggregates, make up the world as we experience it. But Avalokitesvara has discovered that each of these aggregates is empty. Empty of what? Empty of a separate and identifiable reality or nature of its own. None of the five aggregates can exist on its own, without other elements. If there is form, like this paper for example, it does not exist as far as we are concerned unless we perceive it with our eyes or our fingers or our ears, or whatever. And in turn, we cannot perceive if there is no consciousness. So, all five skandhas are empty of separate selfhood.
Is it beginning to make sense? No. Not likely. Let's take a look at another example, to borrow an analogy from Thich Nhat Hanh; again using our piece of paper. We say the paper is empty because it is made up of non paper elements. We can't have paper just by wanting paper. There first needs to be wood pulp. In order to have wood pulp, we need a logger and a tree. In order to have a logger, he needs a father, mother, grandfather, grandmother and so on. In order to have a tree, it needs to have sunshine, rain, soil, and other non-tree elements. The rain in turn cannot be rain without non-rain elements such as ocean, heat, evaporation, cloud, and so on.
By now we are beginning to see that everything is empty of individuality, and yet full of all other things. This begins to give us an idea of the Buddhist concept of Sunyata.
In order to gain a little more understanding of this concept, we must also have a basic familiarity with the Law of Dependent Origination. The Law of Dependent Origination is another Buddhist concept that we may want to dig into on another occasion, but for now I'll just tell you that the Buddha said:
"When this is, that is This arising, that arises When this is not, that is not This ceasing, that ceases."
You see, the emptiness spoken of with regard to Sunyata is really a way of saying that nothing can exist by itself, independent of all other things. It's a way of understanding interconnectedness. Things exist due to causes and conditions and do not have a real and unchangeable identity in themselves. Thus, they are "empty" of a separate self, but full of all of their causes, components, and conditions.
This kind of emptiness is actually quite beautiful, and can be understood only through a combination of study and practice. If we encounter Sunyata through practice alone, we may not understand what is happening, and if we study but don't practice, we can only intellectualize the concept of Sunyata, we cannot experience it, and therefore cannot truly understand it.
There are many excellent sources of opinion on this concept available. One that I found particularly useful comes from a gentleman named Sean Robsville. He says in part; "Buddhism regards the persistent delusion of 'inherent existence' as a major obstacle to spiritual development, and the root of many other damaging delusions. One of these delusions is the materialist belief in an objective reality existing independently of mind. By asserting that the universe exists inherently as a brute fact, materialism denies that subjective experience has any relevance to or influence on the universe, or indeed any existence at all".
"The delusion of inherent existence is deeply ingrained in our culture. It was embedded into western philosophy by the Greek philosopher Plato, who was born about sixty years after Buddha's death."
"Plato's view of reality is that for any class of objects there is a defining ideal form which is fixed, permanent and unchanging. All physical instances of objects tend to be imperfect. For example the rotting, mildewed oranges in my back yard are imperfect instances of an ideal orange which exists in a perfect realm of eternal forms. It is only by reference to this authoritative 'specification' that my mind is able to identify and name the transient physical phenomena, which 'participate' in the ideal form's attributes."
"The Buddha died in 483 BC. Plato was born in 428 BC. Yet it is most unlikely that Plato was aware of his predecessor's teachings. In those days there was little contact between Greek and Indian philosophy. This had to await the eastward advance of Alexander the Great around 328 BC. The first recorded contact between Greek civilization and Buddhism is the conversation between the Greek King Milinda of Bactria, and Nagasena, a Buddhist chariot dismantler."
"King Milinda was a Greek and an experienced soldier who thought he knew a chariot when he saw one. But Nagasena demonstrated that if Milinda's chariot were gradually dismantled - knock a spoke out of a wheel here, a plank off there, then a bit of the frame and so on - there was no way for Milinda to decide at exactly what step in the procedure he should stop imputing 'vehicle' and start imputing 'heap of firewood'."
"Nagasena said this was because the chariot had no power to define itself from its own side. Nor was there any ideal chariot form 'in the sky' which engaged and disengaged with the timber at definite stages of assembly and disassembly."
"Milinda's mind was the only thing that could make the distinction between vehicle and firewood. And there were no logical rules or stepwise procedures or decision trees for Milinda to decide when to cease imputing one thing and impute another."
"As with chariots, so with cars. Everyone knows what a car is. A car is an assembly of parts. But what makes those parts into a car is surprisingly difficult to pin down. At what stage on the production line do the components finally become a car?"
"Does it temporarily cease to be a car when it's in for repairs and the transmission is several yards away from the rest of the vehicle? Is my car still a car when I wake up one morning to find it supported on bricks with the wheels missing?"
"Or, could I say that the essential feature of a car is that it performs the functions of a car? So does it cease to be a car when it won't start? And does it return to the state of being a car when I cure the problem by spraying some ether into the carburetor? Does the true essence of being a car therefore reside in an aerosol can?"
Sean goes on to discuss varying degrees of interconnectedness and the three levels of dependant relationship; gross dependant relationship, subtle dependant relationship, and very subtle dependant relationship. This very subtle dependant relationship is the dependence of phenomena on imputation by mind. It's Quantum Sunyata. We have to remember that the mathematical equations of quantum physics do not describe actual existence - they describe potential for existence, what forces the range of the potentials to assume one value is the act of observation.
It's my hope that you now have the beginning of a new appreciation for Sunyata, the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, or at least the curiosity to want to practice Buddhist meditation so that even if you can't fully intellectualize it, maybe you can experience it. If all of this sounds too deep and makes little sense, you can take the more direct approach like I do… just sit down and shut up.