Connection 8
Buddhist Philosophy: Emptiness (continued)
Emptiness vs Nihilism
Notwithstanding the middle way as articulated by Nagarjuna, the concept of emptiness carried with it a negative connotation that was susceptible to devolving into nihilism.
A subsequent Mahayana school of thought, the Yogacara school, sought to articulate the concept of emptiness further so as to remove the danger of universal denial of existence.
For the Yogacarins, emptiness actually does exist, as does our consciousness or awareness of emptiness.
Immanent Experience
The Yogacara school identified “three natures” of experience: the appearance or conceptual nature, the process or dependent nature and the empty or consummated nature of experience.
The conceptual nature of experience is based in the appearance of things in terms of subject-object dualism. It is saṃsara, the perception of the false, and does not really exist.
The dependent nature of experience is based in the causal flow of phenomena, but remains false to the extent that any particular event is viewed from the perspective of having independent existence and hence understood in terms of subject-object duality.
The consummated nature of experience is the complete absence of objects of a conceptualized nature. From this perspective, experience is stripped of its dual nature:
It is pure, immediate and direct experience of reality without the mediation of any concepts; and it is empty.
For the Yogacarins, there is no distinction between within and without. The world, including our consciousness of it, is a purely immanent causal flux devoid of any concepts.
Mind and body dualities are an illusion. Subject and object dualities are an illusion. The world and our experience of the world exist, but in a continuum, or immanent field, in which all of reality participates in the same process.
Immanent Holism
The concept of emptiness continued to be re-interpreted and debated throughout the history of Buddhism. In China, the Tiantai school viewed emptiness and dependent origination is inseparable from their view of the interfusion of phenomena:
The idea that ultimate reality is an absolute totality of all particular things which are neither-same-nor-different from each other.
Tiantai metaphysics is an immanent holism, which sees every phenomenon, moment or event as conditioned and manifested by the whole of reality; every instant of experience is a reflection of every other.
The Huayan school understood emptiness and ultimate reality through a similar idea of interpenetration or coalescence. Huayan holds that all phenomena are deeply interconnected and mutually arising.
Buddha Nature
Central to Chan Buddhism is the doctrine of “Buddha nature,” that the awakened mind of a Buddha is already present in each sentient being. Buddha nature was initially considered to be the nature of mind, but later Chan Buddhism avoided the dangers of essentialism and abstraction by reinterpreting Buddha nature as an immanent expression of the Buddha, a process of awakening in all sentient beings.
Zen Buddhism would go on to equate Buddha nature with emptiness, the true nature of all things being impermanence.
Buddha nature developed in China in part as a means of reconciling Buddhist belief with Taoism. The Tao, or way or path, is the one which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course, or unfold.
The Tao has also been referred to as the immanent flow of the universe.
The universe is viewed as in a constant process of re-creating itself, and everything that exists as being an aspect of qi, which if condensed, becomes life; if diluted, it is infinite potential.
Emptiness and Impermanence
Emptiness, then, is not nothingness. Emptiness refers to the emptiness of being. The 14th Dalai Lama, who interprets from the realist Tibetan Gelug school, articulates emptiness as follows:
According to the theory of emptiness, any belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent existence is simply untenable. All things and events, whether ‘material’, mental or even abstract concepts like time, are devoid of objective, independent existence … [T]hings and events are ‘empty’ in that they can never possess any immutable essence, intrinsic reality or absolute ‘being’ that affords independence.
But throughout Buddhist history, emptiness has also been interpreted as having a positive or affirmative quality in relation to a process that goes beyond being. A positive concept of emptiness also informs the Engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhất Hanh.
While emptiness has taken on several interpretations, at its core it is a warning against the temptation of seeking permanence and limited truth, in a world informed by impermanence.
Emptiness does not refer to a reality without meaning or to an idealism that denies or negates the real or the experience of reality. An empiricism of direct perception and intuition remain core ideas in Buddhist philosophy in terms of how we experience the world.
Emptiness is a positive concept that attempts to open us up to the reality of experience and life as process and flux. The function of emptiness as a concept is to assist us to stop grasping at transcendence.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2023 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
