What does emptiness mean to you?

[DaoChild]

What does being 'empty' mean?

 

What does it mean to practice 'emptiness' ?

 

Interested to see what others think,

 

have a lovely saturday night

[Sunya]

no-thing has inherent existence. this is the typical Buddhist response,, it points to no object existing independent of its surroundings, everything is interdependent, and constantly changing. every 'thing' in the universe is also compounded, made up of other 'things', which are equally interdependent.

 

so emptiness points to reality being composed of interdependent, compounded, fluxing forms. all of these forms are empty of true existence, it is the dualistic mind that creates distinction, separation. emptiness is a philosophy that points you beyond the mind, towards the illogical non-dualistic nature of reality. something the mind can not understand until duality is eradicated. until the emptiness of mind is realized, that there truly is no perceiver, no doer, no subject. when the ideas of subject and object are gone, what is left? emptiness. but to describe what is left in language is difficult since words are dualistic

 

to practice emptiness i think is to give up selfish dualistic notions such as fear, anger, hatred, jealousy...compassion and unconditional love are actions that are selfless, that reflect the empty nature. to no longer grasp and cling to the physical form (body) and its pleasures, to no longer attach to fantasies of what could be, to practice emptiness is to practice freedom

Edited February 22, 2009 by mikaelz

[Spirit Ape]

Like my bank account!

[Aetherous]

Emptiness is where absolutely everything seems to disappear. Being empty means not even be-ing. Practicing emptiness is being in that state, which is completely effortless.

 

Kinda philosophical.

 

It's better to say: just practice and see.

[exorcist_1699]

Man is accustomed to dealing with something and being , emptiness and nothingness definitely are alienated from most of them , yet there were some small groups of people , the ancient Chinese and Indians, who were good at such kind of challenging job . Different from the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese and Indians cleverly knew that emptiness and nothingness couldn't be handled by reasoning , but by intuition , an ability that most humans do not know how to make use of . After a whole day's work or in the Winter, when all agricultural jobs were done, people sat beside their bonfire, looking at the dim emptiness /nothingness before their eyes, a strange idea might accidentally come into the mind of few genius that , like a pool of still water, like condensed ice , the emptiness /nothingness in front might not not so simple as we thought...?

 

Exploring emptiness is like peeing off the skins of a crystal -clear onion, never do you know how many layers you will go , how deep you can go. At the beginning , it is tasteless and boring , yet after having entered deeper, you start to taste its sweetness, its benefits... However, is entering into emptiness /nothingness also implies entering into our mind , making our mind bigger and bigger ,free of daily-life trivial, free of categories such time and space.. and making it into a much bigger, everlasting , magnificent Mind that unifying with the emptiness outside ?

 

The difference between Taoist and Buddhist way is that the Taoists ,in this process , never think that a small , trivial mind can suddenly jump to become a bigger Mind , simply like moon reappearing from behind of the cloud , you need to have something more powerful to help you completing so many triple jumps ahead ....

Edited February 22, 2009 by exorcist_1699

[Spectrum]

zero

[Stigweard]

What does being 'empty' mean?

 

What does it mean to practice 'emptiness' ?

 

Interested to see what others think,

 

have a lovely saturday night

[Apech]

For me emptiness is the underlying nature of everything, although even this is a way of speaking only. It is not dependent on the cessation of thoughts or perception as both the nature of the mind and the nature of phenomena is empty.

 

Dependent origination and other Buddhist philosophy are intellectual ways of approaching this key realization. Analyzing phenomena as temporary, made of parts and dependent on causes is a way of thinking which can help lead to true insight or realization. But this understanding is not the same as the realization.

 

A good metaphor for emptiness is space. If we look at the atom as the basic building block of matter we see that it consists of two minute vibrational entities (the nucleus and the electrons) and a vast expanse of space. So matter consists mostly of 'empty' space, whilst appearing to us to be solid and 'real'. In the same way, phenomena which appear to be distinct and real are actually empty.

[Bruce]

Fullness. Because everything is empty, everything is full. That's interdependence or interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh says.

Edited February 22, 2009 by Bruce

[rex]

Limitless potential and the impermanence that liberates.

[Bruce]

Limitless potential and the impermanence that liberates.

Yes!

[goldisheavy]

What does being 'empty' mean?

 

If you mean the Buddhist definition, then being empty means not having a stable identity, or having a dynamic, ever shifting identity which for some intents and purposes can work as an identity, but for other intents and purposes works as a non-identity.

 

What does it mean to practice 'emptiness' ?

 

It's meaningless. You can't practice something that you already are. Again, I assume you mean the Buddhist meaning.

 

Instead you can realize that empty is what everything is. How? You ask yourself something like this in contemplation, "What does it mean to say that 'this is a table'?" In what sense is a table itself? Investigate this deeply, and look for the basis of it being called a table or even just being a table. Eventually you might discover that there is indeed no basis for any identity, and that its meaning is something you feel intuitively, but cannot establish in any way. Or not. But it is said that if you realize that identity cannot be established, you have realized emptiness. But that's not something you can practice though. It's similar to realizing that you live on a planet Earth. You cannot practice it. You were born here and have always lived here on Earth, conventionally speaking. You cannot practice the fact that you live on Earth. In the same way you cannot practice emptiness.

Edited February 23, 2009 by goldisheavy