Sky Dancer
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- Jan 21, 2009
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- #61
Suffering is life, emptiness is the lack of suffering, therefore emptiness is death. Call that not nihilism if you want, but it will only make sense if you can think in circles and end up somewhere you aren't going.
No, that's not what it means. You've mixed up the Four Noble Truths with nihilism.
I refer you to the Heart Sutra, also known as the Prajnaparamita. The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom sutra. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.... Primarily, it points to a mistake all beings make in perception of self and others as separate and of our world as permanent, inherently self-existing, solid.
This cannot be understood intellectually. Not fully. It can be approximated, somewhat, through an understanding of quantum physics.
To realize emptiness, you have to contemplate the topic, pray to lineage masters who have gone before you, the victorious ones who have realized the truth of how things abide, meditate and then finally have an experience of rigpa, or non-meditation, pure awareness itself, primoridal, pristine, unborn and unceasing.
Once you have that recognition, then you train in it.
The Buddha did not teach, to start out with, because he wasn't sure it could be conveyed in words. The oral traditon is only one way, teachings on emptiness are conveyed. Symbolism and mind to mind are the two other lineages.
Emptiness is form.
Is that like freedom is slavery and war is peace?
Unless, you contemplate it, meditate on it, and then relax into the nature of mind, all "emptiness" will seem like is a silly riddle.