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A few weeks ago, I brought before you some excerpts from a conversation between a particle physicist and a Buddhist monk dealing with emptiness and impermanence. They talked about string theory and other scientific propositions. At the end, I said I was willing to accept a characterization of emptiness that could be summarized as follows:
- Nothing has an inherent existence apart from its living vibrations in the moment. That is, every “thing” is empty of an inherent existence. Every “thing” depends upon every other “thing” that is, every “thing” that vibrates in the field of existence.
- Nothing is permanent. Everything can and will change based on the conditions existing at any given moment.
- Now you see it, now you don’t.
But somehow, that summary seems to leave a solid definition kind of up in the air, and I’m still reading about and sitting with the notion of emptiness. Perhaps you’re still unsure about it, too.
Recently I ran across an article about emptiness in Lion’s Roar magazine. This article, “What Is Emptiness?” (https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/emptiness-sunyata/), touches on the Heart Sutra – one of the essential teachings of Mahayana Buddhism – and its presentation of the notion of emptiness. (The article is part of a larger treatment of the Heart Sutra https://www.lionsroar.com/a-friendly-guide-to-the-heart-sutra-one-of-buddhisms-key-texts/.) It offers the following definition:
Emptiness means that all things lack—are empty of—inherent or independent existence. Neither we, other beings, nor any phenomenon in the universe has a permanent, separate, and independent core, soul, or identity. Nothing exists in isolation or on its own—everything is interdependent and exists only in relation to other causes and conditions. This includes physical objects, mental states, and the very concept of self.
… When we see ourselves and all phenomena as impermanent and empty of inherent reality, we realize the futility of attachment and holding onto things and discover joy in the ever-changing, interdependent nature of reality.
And that’s the point of Mahayana Buddhist teachings about emptiness: they help us “realize the futility of attachment and holding onto things and discover joy in the ever-changing, interdependent nature of reality.” This is liberation. This is enlightenment.
The translation of the Heart Sutra used in our Zen lineage is by the late Robert Aitken, founder of the Diamond Sangha. It asserts a lot of “no this” and “no that,” which many of us struggle to reconcile with the obvious facts of our physical being. It says there is “no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind…” and on and on. Well, obviously we have eyes and ears and noses and tongues and bodies and (in most cases, anyway) minds. In some quarters, people see this manner of expression as tending toward nihilism – the proposition that nothing exists or has meaning. As it turns out, emptiness is as far from nihilism as any notion can be.
“Emptiness does not mean nothingness. Emptiness means that something is empty of a separate self.” That quotation comes from the Foreword to a book by the late Vietnamese monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 – 2022). This book, The Other Shore (© 2017, Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA), presents Thich Nhat Hanh’s own translation of the Heart Sutra.
His translation dispenses with the stark “no’s” of earlier translations and clarifies the language to say that phenomena exist, but they are not separate self-entities. That is, nothing exists without everything else. He’s not talking about non-being or non-existence; rather, he’s talking about the interdependence of all phenomena, all forms. Everything is interconnected; nothing is separate from anything else. And that, he says, is what emptiness means, what emptiness is.
To understand how this is true, just look around you: you see the table because it’s defined by the space and the objects around it. You experience your own body because it’s one object among the many objects of which you are conscious, your surroundings. And on and on. Check it out on your own to discover how this is true.
Be careful, though. Try to resist the all-too-human temptation to cast this definition in marble or bronze, to take it as fixed belief. Experience this emptiness – the essential interdependence of all phenomena – on your own, in every moment. Watch the flower flower. Watch the water wet its surroundings. Watch yourself watching the flower and the water. And discover how you and the watching and the flower and the water are not separate from each other. You and they are all of a piece, in every moment you and they are.
And that’s where you’ll find the truth of emptiness (the essential nature of things) and form (the manifestations of that nature). Maybe in the world of physics, string theory and the possibility of living vibrations can explain things. But Thich Nhat Hanh’s expression may be something more immediate that we can bring into our personal, conscious experience. Just be with this, and see.
Thank you.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 