The Emptiness of Everything
Synopsis: The Emptiness of Everything — watching the workings of our mind, and noticing how we try to invent meanings, and how doing this gets us into trouble, is the point of the Heart Sutra
Of Wayne’s many books, the one closest to today’s topic is: Half Asleep in the Buddha Hall
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Last week I did a riff on death and “gone.” And I mentioned that the line I quoted was from the Heart Sutra, a key Buddhist text.
Much like many things Buddhist, the concepts are tricky and counter-intuitive.
Rather than get into a line-by-line analysis, let me instead toss out some more global interpretations. This curious things in this Sutra have to do with emptiness, dependent origin, and that bodhi, or enlightenment, has to do with being present, rather than “understanding.”
We’ve had quite the few weeks worldwide, what with terrorism, Brexit, the killing of two men by police, and the killing of 5 police officers by an assassin with an automatic rifle.
I really worked at writing that sentence, by the way, as a “reporting,” rather than adding in personal judgements.
My first go at it, I wrote, “… by a nut-bar with an automatic rifle.” The nut-bar part is the imposition of me on the situation. Which is what the Heart Sutra addresses.
Because we are so proud of our reasoning abilities, we take it as gospel that we can understand, or make sense out of, that which is before us.
“If only we could figure out (fill in the blank.)” “If only you would see it my way…”
It’s not like this is the first time through this topic for us, but here goes. The concept of emptiness might just be the Buddha’s greatest insight… if there was such a thing as greatest, and if my opinion has anything to do with anything. And that’s the point.
When we look at the first line of the Heart Sutra, and read, as it is usually translated, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” it’s easy to go “huh?”
The first time I came across this, way back in a religion class at Elmhurst College, circa 1968, I know I was puzzled. And being who I appeared to be back then, (as far as anyone is anything…) being a white, 17-year-old liberal Christian, my “belief” was, “Yikes! Those Buddhists were kinda dumb. No wonder their religion isn’t as good as my religion.”
Sigh.
Emptiness goes with dependent origin
The idea being presented is that nothing has a pure essence. Nothing has a meaning. One way of saying that is,
“Everything is related to something else, so therefore one cannot attribute a fixed meaning to anything.”
So, emptiness means that things do not have fixed, clear, precise “meanings.”
Illustrations abound. Take size. You look at a van, and say “big car!” But compared to what? A Prius? A Hummer? Clearly, the size is relative to something else. This is the dependent origin part. The van’s size, for example is not a fixed quantity; it’s not “big, small,” etc. As we can say is, “That van certainly is!” Or, “That specific van is bigger than a Prius and smaller than a Hummer.”
The Buddha’s great insight about all of this was developed as he studied the workings of his mind. Let me describe this again.
We come into the world as tabula rasa (blank slates.) Over the years, we are taught… well… everything. And we are initially taught to label.
Which is handy. Knowing which mushroom to eat is a good thing. Knowing my name is Wayne is a good thing, especially when being called for dinner. Knowing that I am an individual and not an undifferentiated mass is helpful.
And labelling–being able to place our van in between a Prius and a Hummer as regards size–is necessary to do science, for example. So the issue is not “labelling” per se.
The problem comes when we add judgements to labels.
All (fill in the blank FITB) are bad.
People with (FITB) can’t be trusted.
Women who (FITB) are heartless.
Now, these stereotypes (which are often accurate in general, but useless specifically) are taught to us. We don’t develop them naturally. Depending upon how were were brought up, we either hold them gently, or rigidly.
Example: Costa Ricans (in general, see above) tend to hold dim views of Nicaraguans. They’re not blatantly racist, but many have negative judgements. Also, Nicaragua is not viewed well by many from the US of A. While considered one of the safest countries in Central America, many warn that the country is overrun with ladrons (thieves.)
I just presented a global stereotype about an entire country, or class of people.
It may or may not be true, but it is prevalent. However…
We just spent our second week in Nicaragua, and I can say, (from personal experience,) that every Nicaraguan we met was kind, interesting… and we didn’t get robbed even once. 
