This episode is the first of a series on the major concepts Buddhists have employed to describe Reality – what these concepts mean, and how they relate. Teachings like Emptiness, Buddha-Nature, Suchness, Absolute and Relative, and Mind-with-a-capital-M are challenging, and sometimes people wonder if they’re all just terms for the same thing, more or less, or whether they’re part of a long list of difficult-to-comprehend concepts we need to master as Buddhists . It may be helpful to realize that each of these classic Buddhist concepts describes Reality-with-a-capital-R, and there’s only one Reality. The concepts, therefore, are intimately related to one another, and each one emphasizes different aspects of Reality in a very useful way. In this episode I discuss Buddhist descriptions of Reality in general, and then talk about Sunyata, or Emptiness.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Fundamental Point: Waking up to Reality
Descriptions of Reality
The Buddha’s Teachings on Sunyata, or Emptiness
Evolution of the Concept of Emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism
Emptiness Doesn’t Mean What We Think It Does
Chan Celebration of Emptiness
The Fundamental Point: Waking up to Reality
From the very beginning of Buddhism, the fundamental point has been waking up to Reality-with-a-capital-R (not that Buddhists tend to capitalize the word reality, but in this discussion I’m going to, to make it clear I’m talking about ultimate Reality). Buddhism is not about deities, supernatural powers, the afterlife, the cultivation of special spiritual capacities, or the achievement of transcendent states. It is purely and simply about seeing what’s true.
The promise of Buddhism – the reason it encourages you to seek the truth – is that the truth is a wonderful thing to wake up to. Contrary to what we might fear, Reality is not scary, bleak, hellish, or devoid of meaning. Instead, once we wake up to how things really are, we realize that it’s our delusions which cause suffering, not Reality. Seeing Reality clearly is liberating. It gives us access to unconditional peace of mind, equanimity, compassion, and even joy.
The tricky thing is waking up from our self-centered delusions, which are deeply ingrained. Part of Buddhism is pointing us toward Reality, but most of it is aimed at helping us see through our delusions and then align our lives with what’s really true.
Over the millennia, Buddhism has employed many different teachings meant to point people toward Reality. Simply hearing a description of Reality doesn’t cause us to awaken to it ourselves, but it can open us up to the possibility there’s something to awaken to. We’re unlikely to set out on the path of practice unless we’re willing to consider that what we currently perceive as reality might be an illusion created by a complex web of self-centered narratives, coming between us and Reality like a thick, colored filter. For most of us, our practice begins with an intuitive sense that we’re missing something important, coupled with an encounter with Buddhist teachings that describe Reality in a way that makes sense to us, or intrigues us. Then we set about trying to awaken to Reality ourselves.
Descriptions of Reality
Before I begin my discussions of Buddhist ways to describe Reality, starting with Emptiness, I want to say something about descriptions of Reality in general.
There’s a famous Zen metaphor for teachings about Reality, which compares them to a finger pointing at the moon. The moon in this metaphor is Reality. The finger – Buddhist teachings and practices – are a way to point us toward Reality. If someone didn’t point out the beautiful full moon visible between the trees, we might never even notice it. And yet the finger is not the moon itself – the finger doesn’t matter at all except in its utility in helping us see the moon for ourselves. Similarly, teachings like Emptiness and Buddha-Nature are irrelevant and worthless except for how they help us awaken to Reality. As fascinating and apparently profound as teachings and concepts can be, understanding them intellectually, without personally awakening to the Reality they’re pointing to, is – from a spiritual perspective – a waste of time. Dwelling too much on the concepts themselves is like getting fascinated by the finger pointing at the moon.
There’s another metaphor I like to employ for Buddhist teachings, or really for any kind of expression of truth, including something like this podcast. Let’s say you’re witnessing a beautiful sunset. You want to convey the reality of this sunset to others – maybe to a loved one you wish could have seen it with you. There are countless ways you could describe this sunset. You could send someone data on the timing of the sunset, the amount of cloud cover, and intensity and color spectrum of the light. You could write a poem about it, to convey your subjective experience. You could take a photo of it, which would require a host of decisions about angle, exposure, field of view, and timing. You could paint a picture of it, which would involve choices about media and which of the infinite aspects of the sunset to focus on. Every one of these descriptions of the sunset convey something different, and there is something true, sincere, and valuable about all of them. None of them, of course, actually captures the reality of that sunset you had the opportunity to experience.
The various Buddhist descriptions of Reality I will cover in this series of episodes are like different portrayals of a sunset. Each concept points to an aspect of Reality it is essential for us to wake up to. There’s only one Reality, however, not a whole bunch of them. True, it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of things for us to wake up to in practice, but ultimately we realize it’s just this. All the different descriptions – in the form of teachings and concepts – describe something true and important, but none of them can possibly convey the entirety and fullness of Reality. Nor do they claim to!
Hopefully, this explanation makes it clear that my series of episodes on Buddhist descriptions of Reality are not going to result in you walking away with a clear, academic understanding of which each concept means. My linear and organized way of thinking would love to give you a list of neat, mutually exclusive definitions you could use to decode obscure teachings, but that’s impossible. Just as different portrayals of the same sunset overlap in meaning, composition, and color, the various Buddhist teachings relate, overlap, and contain parts of one another.
That said, here’s my attempt to parse out the main Buddhist descriptions of ultimate Reality. Another teacher might define and differentiate these concepts differently, and I myself will probably revisit them someday. Still, there are so many Buddhist concepts that we can start to lose their meaning if we don’t at least attempt to define them. Here goes:
Sunyata, or Emptiness, points to the falseness of the self-nature we project onto all phenomena, including ourselves. All things and beings share the quality of Sunyata, or being empty of self-nature.
Tathata, or Suchness, points to the luminous, miraculous quality of all things in and of themselves, which we perceive once we awaken to Emptiness.
The Absolute (Li in Chinese), paired with the Relative (Ri), points to different ways we interact with Reality, and the importance of expanding our experience beyond the Relative.
Buddhata, or Buddha-Nature, celebrates the existence of all beings and things, without which there would be no awakening.
Mind-with-a-capital-M (not the discriminating mind) points to the fact that we are not separate from anything in the universe, and that it’s possible to partake actively in a much more expansive Reality than we usually do.
Although I’m inviting you to wrestle with these concepts intellectually, I hope that immediately afterwards you will try to evict these definitions from your mind and avoid getting attached to them. Frankly, that’s why Buddhist masters through the ages have sometimes seemed deliberately obscure or cagey about the teachings. Grasping them with the intellect does not result in spiritual liberation (although it can be inspiring), and in fact, attachment to intellectual understanding can be a major obstacle in practice.
I’ll wrap up my discussion of Buddhist descriptions of Reality in general with a passage from Zen master Keizan’s (1268–1325, Japan) essay Zazen Yojinki, which poetically reminds us of the impossibility of capturing Reality in words:
What is this? Its name is unknown. It cannot be called “body,” it cannot be called “mind.” Trying to think of it, the thought vanishes. Trying to speak of it, words die. It is like a fool, an idiot. It is as high as a mountain, deep as the ocean. Without peak or depths, its brilliance is unthinkable, it shows itself silently. Between sky and earth, only this whole body is seen…
This has always been so but it is still without a name. The third patriarch, great teacher, temporarily called it “mind,” and the venerable Nagarjuna once called it “body.” Enlightened essence and form, giving rise to the bodies of all the Buddhas, it has no “more” or “less” about it.[i]
The Buddha’s Teachings on Sunyata, or Emptiness
Most of the concepts I will cover in this series on describing Reality are from the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, but as you probably realize if you listen regularly to the podcast, I like, whenever possible, to ground my discussions in the original teachings of the Buddha. In my discussion of Emptiness, then, I’ll start with the Buddha.
The concept of Sunyata, Emptiness, appears in the Buddha’s teachings, but not often. In a few places he uses the term suñña, which is a Pali word meaning “empty” or “void” of svabhava, which is essence or self-nature.[ii] This is the first essential thing to know about the concept of Emptiness. Most of us, when we hear the word “empty,” immediately think of something being empty of meaning or worth. This is very unfortunate, because that’s not what the Buddhist concept means at all. Sunyata is very, very specific – there’s only one thing that something described as suñña is empty of, and that’s an inherent, enduring, independent, autonomous self-essence. Here’s the Suñña Sutta from the Pali Canon (translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu):
Then Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?”
“Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ananda, that the world is empty. And what is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self? The eye is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Forms… Eye-consciousness… Eye-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.
“The ear is empty…
“The nose is empty…
“The tongue is empty…
“The body is empty…
“The intellect is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Ideas… Intellect-consciousness… Intellect-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Thus it is said that the world is empty.”[iii]
As I mentioned earlier, in the Pali Canon – the texts that are believed to convey the original teachings of the Buddha himself – the terms suñña and Sunyata are rarely used. It was far more common for the Buddha to describe things as being marked by anatta, or not-self. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu discusses in his essay No-self or Not-self?, the teaching of anatta was not intended as a metaphysical or philosophical observation about the nature of Reality. It wasn’t a statement about there being no self.[iv] Instead, it was a method of practice for dismantling our powerful delusion about self-nature. Practitioners would methodically examine their own minds, bodies, and experiences in order to recognize the impermanent, ungraspable, not-self nature of each identifiable component. In doing so, their attachments to such components would disappear and their dukkha would be relieved.
Evolution of the Concept of Emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism
A few hundred years after the Buddha’s death, there were further developments of the concept of Sunyata, and it became central in Mahayana Buddhism. The teachings began to identify Emptiness as a quality of all beings and things, of all manifestations. One of the most important Buddhist texts on Emptiness is the Heart Sutra, a short work that dates from 1st century CE and is part of a much larger body of texts called the Prajnaparamita scriptures – “prajna paramita” being the perfection of wisdom, which can be seen as synonymous with “awakened to Reality,” including the truth of Emptiness. Here are a few stanzas from the Heart Sutra (this is a version by the Soto Zen Translation Project):
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajna paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.
Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.
Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.
Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight … no realm of mind consciousness.
There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance… neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.
As I discussed in Episodes 19 and 20 – The Heart Sutra: Introduction to the Most Common Mahayana Text, all the things listed here as being “empty,” or as not existing because of Emptiness, belong on established Buddhists lists. Form, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are the five skandhas, or “heaps,” which include every component of a human being. Then we have the list of sense organs, the objects of the senses, and realms of consciousness associated with the senses, including the mind. Then the Heart Sutra lists, in abbreviated form, the twelvefold chain of dependent origination – a core teaching of original Buddhism – the Eightfold Noble Path, and enlightenment (attainment) itself!
What does it mean when the Heart Sutra says that, because of Emptiness, there is no form, no perceptions, no eyes, no mind consciousness, no path of practice? This may sound very negative, as well as contrary to what is obviously true in our own direct experience. Our body exists, perceptions exist, the path exists, all that other stuff exists. Is the Heart Sutra saying all of these things are illusions?
Yes and no. Mahayana Buddhism takes the original Buddhist observation of suñña – empty of self-essence – and explores the spiritual implications of this state of affairs. If something is empty of self-essence, svabhava, there is a sense in which it cannot be said to exist at all – at least, not the way we usually think about it.
To try to get our minds around the concept of Emptiness, as futile as that effort might be, let’s use the example of a chair. There is no enduring, independent, autonomous essence inhabiting the chair. The chair comes into being when all of its component parts are assembled in a certain way. The chair is not synonymous with any one of its parts, nor can any “chair” essence be found separate from the component parts. The parts were once other things, and one day will no longer compose a chair. The designation “chair” is temporary and functional, referring to the utility of this useful and recognizable assemblage of parts which allows a human being to sit down and rest on it.
A chair most definitely exists. There it is before our eyes. We can see it, touch it, use it, talk about it, and identify the point at which it became a chair and the point at which it can no longer be called a chair because it is lying in pieces on the floor. However, we generally do not imagine there is a “chair essence” that sprang into existence when the chair was assembled, and that can be mourned if the chair is destroyed. We may feel sad about the loss of a nice chair. We may miss the presence of the chair. But we usually don’t project an enduring, inherent, independent, autonomous self-nature into the chair. We don’t think of the chair as having died, or of its chair essence as enduring somewhere after its component parts disintegrate, in some chair heaven, or taking rebirth in the form of another piece of household furniture.
We may be able to get our minds around the idea that a chair is empty of self-nature, but it is very difficult for us to face the reality that we are no different than the chair in terms of Emptiness. We also exist. We function. We live because a whole host of component parts are assembled in the correct configuration. There was a point when this assemblage came together, and there will be a point when this assemblage falls apart. Unlike a chair, however, we imagine ourselves to have an enduring, independent, autonomous self-essence. When our body formed, we were formed. As we live our life, we experience it. As we contemplate our inevitable death, we worry about what will happen to me. Will I cease to exist? Will I continue to exist?
The point of the Heart Sutra is that the whole question of existence and non-existence the way we usually conceive of these states only makes sense in terms of beings and things that possess inherent self-nature. When a chair is assembled, no self-nature is born. When our miraculous human lives come into being, no self-nature is born. Therefore, no self-nature can be threatened, and the no self-nature can be said to die. This is why the Heart Sutra says the bodhisattva who practices prajna paramita – who awakens to the Reality of Emptiness – has a mind with hindrance, and without fear. They realize nirvana, complete liberation and peace.
Emptiness Doesn’t Mean What We Think It Does
The absence of inherent self-nature does not mean what we think it does. We’re so attached to the idea of our inherent self-nature – and to the inherent self-nature of all beings and things we care deeply about – that Emptiness may sound threatening or nihilistic. However, Emptiness is a quality of existent things. No existent thing, no Emptiness, which is why the Heart Sutra says form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness – all the aspects of a human being – do not differ from Emptiness. Existent things are the manifestation of Emptiness, and when we realize that we’re liberated! You might say awakening means we realize we are free from inherent self-essence, the belief in which turns out to be an enormous burden and a source of great suffering.
Note that when the Heart Sutra says there is “no [physical] form,” for example, it’s pointing to the way in which “our body” is a creation of our own mind. This does not mean we conjured up our physical form through the power of our mind! It means that “body” is a concept we project onto this physical phenomenon. Which parts of your physical body do you consider “my body?” Presumably, you mean all the parts contained within your skin and contiguous with other parts. If one of your limbs, or an organ, was removed, you might still have a sense of ownership or connection to it, but would no longer consider it part of your body. At what point does the food you consume become your body? At what point does the waste you produce become something other than your body? What about the bacteria that live in your gut and allow you to live? Genetic material you inherited from your ancestors? Gravity and air pressure make it possible for you to stand up, but they aren’t part of your body, right? What about the air you breathe? At what point in the molecular exchange does the oxygen become part of your body? What about the fact that the atomic edge of your body is mostly space?
If you look carefully enough, you realize that your discernment of “my body” versus “not my body” is quite arbitrary, fluid, and self-centered. It’s not that “my body” as a physical, functioning manifestation doesn’t exist, it’s that “my body” as I conceive of it – something that belongs to and is animated by my inherent self-essence, something inherently separate from and independent of the rest of the world – doesn’t exist. This is why Kaz Tanahashi sometimes translates Sunyata as “boundless” instead of empty. I think an even better term is boundarylessness.
If all this talk about emptiness and boundarylessness fails to make you feel free from hindrance and fear, as the Heart Sutra promises, it’s because this is a truth we need to awaken to in our own, direct experience. Intellectual understanding alone is not enough. We awaken to this aspect of Reality by examining our inner life with the patience and determination of a passionate scientist looking for an answer. It’s not that we work ourselves into a transcendent state and then look out over the world and see something that is hidden from the view of ordinary mortals. It’s that we face our direct experience moment to moment, drop our mental map of Reality, and see clearly, to our great surprise, that we are empty! Then we look around and realize we share this remarkable quality with all beings and things.
Of course, concepts like “my body” are also essential to life. It’s not that such concepts are wrong, or sinful, or irrelevant, it’s just that if we don’t appreciate Emptiness as well – at the same time! – we get trapped in self-concern. Preserving my body. Terrified about the change, illness, old age, dissolution of my body.
When we clearly see/experience the way in which our body is boundless, how the concept is a figment of our imagination, a useful conceptual overlay that can be set aside at will, then what is it that ages, gets ill, or dies? Similarly, all other phenomena, including sensations, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, even the Dharma, cannot be said either to exist or to cease to exist.
The Buddha speaks to the Reality of Emptiness in the Mahayana text the Lotus Sutra:
A bodhisattva who wants to practice and study the gateway to the Dharma of innumerable meanings should observe that all things were originally, will be, and are in themselves empty and tranquil in nature and character; not large or small, not subject to arising or extinction, not fixed or movable, and neither advancing nor retreating. Like empty space, they are non-dualistic.[v]
Dualism is separation, distinguishing between self and other, mundane and divine, this and that. Practically speaking such discriminations can be useful, but ultimately, they are approximate descriptions of only one aspect of reality. Reality-with-a-capital-R is not limited by our mental discriminations; life is infinitely complex, constantly changing, and can be viewed from infinitely many angles and described at infinitely many different levels.
Another metaphor I like to employ when discussing Emptiness is a forest. In one sense, a particular forest can be said to exist – to be in a certain area, composed of certain kinds of trees and other plants, perhaps with unique characteristics compared to other forests. But where does the forest begin and end? Humans may draw an arbitrary boundary around it, but does it reflect nature? Probably not, unless humans have artificially carved away at the forest and given it sharp edges. There is no place in the forest you can point to and say, this is the essence of the forest. There is no inherently existing essence of this forest that can be located.
Nevertheless, even without an inherently existing, independent self-essence, a forest can be magnificent – alive, with its own character and internal systems. It can contribute to the live around it, and it can regulate and sustain itself. In some senses, a forest is just as much a person as a human being. No soul required. It’s only our human attachment to the idea of inherent self-nature which imagines the lack of it to be any lack at all.
Chan Celebration of Emptiness
In China, Buddhists further emphasized Emptiness, seeing it as the characteristic of manifested things which makes everything possible. Instead of a lack of inherent self-nature meaning you are like an organic machine with no operator, Emptiness means you are a miraculous unfolding of causes and conditions imbued with possibility and choice. In Mahayana Buddhism, Emptiness became something to be celebrated.
Later developments in Buddhism, particularly in Chan Buddhism, tended toward the poetic. I personally appreciate poetic expressions of the Dharma, even when they’re difficult to comprehend intellectually, because they acknowledge we’re talking about human experience, not something that can be captured in words. Earlier I talked about how we can describe a sunset countless ways but never actually capture the experience of it. Art and poetry, however, are good at evoking our memories or intuitions while denying our intellects anything to grab hold of. In a Dharma context, this invites us to examine our own, personal experience for something that resonates with what is being said. Even if our experience of a profound Dharma truth is quite limited, chances are good that something inside us will stir when we hear Reality-with-a-capital-R described.
Here’s a passage that mentions Emptiness from one of my favorite Chan teachers, Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157, this translation by Taigen Dan Leighton):
Emptiness is without characteristics. Illumination has no emotional afflictions. With piercing, quietly profound radiance, it mysteriously eliminates all disgrace. Thus one can know oneself; thus the self is completed. We all have the clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation. With boundless wisdom journey beyond this, forgetting accomplishments. Straightforwardly abandon stratagems and take on responsibility. Having turned yourself around, accepting your situation, if you set foot on the path, spiritual energy will marvelously transport you. Contact phenomena with total sincerity, not a single atom of dust outside yourself.[vi]
There is way too much in this brief passage for me to explicate here. However, I think it’s especially important to note Hongzhi’s words, “We all have the clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation.” The bright field is the field of freedom and possibility that opens up when recognize our inherent self-nature is a sad and burdensome delusion that tyrannizes us and causes us suffering. We are only separated from that bright field by our own delusions – which means that it lies within our power to see through those delusions and be free.
When we awaken to Emptiness, we become capable of perceiving the other aspects of Reality-with-a-capital-R: Suchness, Buddha-Nature, Mind… these luminous aspects of Reality are obscured from our sight when we are lost in a self-centered dream.
How do we awaken to the reality of Emptiness? Many aspects of our practice are aimed at just this. When we study Buddhist teachings, like listening to a podcast, our current ideas and assumptions get challenged. Hopefully, our curiosity is aroused: What do I not yet see? Then we can try to hold the question, lean into it, build up our courage to face Reality-with-a-capital-R even though we may be filled with trepidation about what that will mean. We learn to be more attentive to right here, right now, through our meditation and mindfulness practices, and become able to see how everything we identify as self or belonging to self is, in fact, impermanent, ungraspable, and not-self. Gradually we become less attached to our mental map of reality, and at certain points we can glimpse Reality-with-a-capital-R through temporary gaps in that map. Seeing what is true, even for a moment, changes us forever.
Endnotes
[i] https://antaiji.org/en/classics/english-zazen-yojinki/
[ii] Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Michael S. Diener (Michael H. Kohn, Translator). A Concise Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston: Shambala Publications, 2010. (Original copyright 1991.)
[iii] “Suñña Sutta: Empty” (SN 35.85), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.085.than.html .
[iv] “No-self or Not-self?”, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 24 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html .
[v] Reeves, Gene. Translated. The Lotus Sutra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic. Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition. (Location 591)
[vi] Leighton, Taigen Dan (translator). Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi. Boston, MA: Tuttle Publishing, 2000
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