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 deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 52,515
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 Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall.
#15795805 - 02/11/12 11:41 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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 Just found this amazingly insightful bit somewhere on Reddit: "The Heart Sutra puts it nicely: 'Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.' No distinction between the two. If you think you are going to kill all desires because the world is an empty illusion, you are ignoring the second half of that formula. Someone who does that is called a 'void-dweller.' It's almost as if they take 'nothingness' to be a thing itself, and they cling to that thing, which is to miss the whole point." So don't be a void-dweller! Clap not your hands over your ears while muttering incantations that "it's nothing but Samsara, nothing but Samsara!" Reject not the Many in favor of the One, nor the One in favor of the Many! Merely accept both as perspectives, nothing more. Condone not the suffering of others nor the evils of mankind as naught but illusion spawned from Demon Mara! From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig: "But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange. Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up." As Phædrus finds out later, however, giving up is hardly satisfactory. The question then remains: how to reconcile such contradictory perspectives that form is emptiness and emptiness form? All I can say on the subject is "Mu."
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
  
Edited by deCypher (02/11/12 11:55 PM)
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 r72rock
Learning to Grow
Registered: 01/06/09
Posts: 577
Loc: Chicago 
Last seen: 3 months, 13 days
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 Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: deCypher]
#15797476 - 02/12/12 11:57 AM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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That first one was great.  I know I fall into the trap of void-dwelling. 
Just curious though, what sub-reddit where you found that post? That seems like a reddit page I'd wanna visit. 
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现在
Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it. - Dōgen
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oojijimoo
OouuruguruuoO
Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 11,775
Loc: ATL GA
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: r72rock]
#15797567 - 02/12/12 12:13 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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ya i've done some voiding in my time 
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http://soundcloud.com/ufhwhomp like music?
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Kickle
A Growing Hope
Registered: 12/16/06
Posts: 11,340
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: oojijimoo]
#15798182 - 02/12/12 02:06 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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The question then remains: how to reconcile such contradictory perspectives that form is emptiness and emptiness form?
Reconcile? I don't see what is contradictory here?
Emptiness in the heart sutra refers to there being no intrinsically existing thing.
Forms exist but are not intrinsically existing, says the heart sutra. And that which does not intrinsically exist, is form.
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 c0sm0nautt
Registered: 05/19/08
Posts: 9,433
Loc: NY
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: Kickle]
#15798785 - 02/12/12 03:50 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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Don't really understand what all the fuss is about. The problem is when people start talking about it and conceptualizing it.
"We use words to get away from words."
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astralsun.blogspot.com
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant, and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein
  
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Sleepwalker
Overshoes
Registered: 05/07/08
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: c0sm0nautt]
#15799607 - 02/12/12 06:27 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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The problem arises when people try to conceptualize a concept? Sorry, what?
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oojijimoo
OouuruguruuoO
Registered: 08/09/07
Posts: 11,775
Loc: ATL GA
Last seen: 19 minutes, 40 seconds
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: Sleepwalker]
#15799638 - 02/12/12 06:34 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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well, ya, that's true
i think we've kinda passed that point a while back though
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http://soundcloud.com/ufhwhomp like music?
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c0sm0nautt
Registered: 05/19/08
Posts: 9,433
Loc: NY
Last seen: 8 minutes, 57 seconds
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: Sleepwalker] 1
#15799655 - 02/12/12 06:38 PM (3 months, 15 days ago) |
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Quote:
Sleepwalker said:
The problem arises when people try to conceptualize a concept? Sorry, what?
Exactly, the concept can only point to it.
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astralsun.blogspot.com
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant, and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein
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soldatheero
lastirishman
Registered: 03/09/07
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Loc: 
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: deCypher] 1
#15800556 - 02/12/12 09:28 PM (3 months, 14 days ago) |
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Good post, nice to see you interested.
Quote:
The question then remains: how to reconcile such contradictory perspectives that form is emptiness and emptiness form?
The very concepts of emptiness and form are de-pendant upon each other and only exist in relation to one another. They are dualities, there cannot be up without down and vice verse, the same with form and emptiness. The essence of any real dualities must be a singularity.You cannot say emptiness exists without implying there is a form there to be empty.
By default, the average ego mind perceives reality to be forms and takes them to be concrete and self-existing instead of realizing all forms can only exist because they have the capacity to change, they can change because they have no inherent existence, they are empty.
Take a tornado for instance, it appears to exist as something of its own but we know it is only sustained as long a long list of conditions endure and than it vanishes into nothingness.
A child believes a cloud to be something real but on his first flight as he passes through one is dis-hearted to find it is just water, which he is already familiar. From a distance it appears real and solid but with a new perspective the illusion is dissolves like mist before the sun.
Do you think your body is any different than other phenomenon in nature? any more concrete? Do you think anything empty of it's own existence can create anything of REAL substance? It cannot. This is why those who believe themselves to be the body come to the conclusion the self is an illusion.
On the contrary you do exist, the self exists, the self is neither empty nor of form. It is a reality and reality is always beyond all dualities, all opposites.
Meher says the original state of God in the beyond-beyond state (before the universe, before the big bang) is neither conscious nor unconscious because these dualities do not apply. In the beginning-less beginning there is neither form nor emptiness, these are no dualities because dualities are the work of maya and are of the created universe.
The first whim was the initial urge to know who it was, so the world of dualities was created because in the beginning (beginning-less beginning because this is not in time) there was nothing but ourselves and with nothing apart from ourselves we had no way of knowing or gaining SELF consciousness.
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The sole purpose of creation is for the soul to enjoy the infinite state of the Oversoul consciously. Although the soul eternally exists in and with the Oversoul in an inviolable unity, it cannot be conscious of this unity independently of creation, which is within the limitations of time. It must therefore evolve consciousness before it can realize its true status and nature as being identical with the infinite Oversoul, which is one without a second. The evolution of consciousness requires the duality of subject and object — the center of consciousness and the environment (that is, the world of forms).
I've been arguing against the no-self concept for a long time on this forum, see my thread 'The cause of the no-self perspective'
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/14693798#14693798
All of these topics are linked. The self vs no-self, interdependence, emptiness and form, impermanence, and all of them when grasped fully lead on to see immortality as a reality.
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..and may the zelda theme song be with you at all times, amen.
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Jessica Swift
यन्त्र
Registered: 01/13/12
Posts: 1,723
Loc: 
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: soldatheero] 1
#15800746 - 02/12/12 10:00 PM (3 months, 14 days ago) |
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There sure is a whole lot of nothing.
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cbub
thread killer
Registered: 10/17/10
Posts: 769
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: Jessica Swift]
#15801094 - 02/12/12 11:10 PM (3 months, 14 days ago) |
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The way I got the duality explained in my inward journeys was - do not try to remove the negative poles. the minus gives existence to the plus and the other way around. Fear IS courage, without fear there is no concept of courage. Isn't this obvious? Therefore: "Love hate, for hate itself is existence of love." and duality starts dissolving, light dispells darkness.
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Humility
Working on it
Registered: 10/07/08
Posts: 4,854
Last seen: 39 minutes, 4 seconds
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Re: Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall. [Re: cbub]
#15801658 - 02/13/12 03:19 AM (3 months, 14 days ago) |
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Quote:
cbub said:
The way I got the duality explained in my inward journeys was - do not try to remove the negative poles. the minus gives existence to the plus and the other way around. Fear IS courage, without fear there is no concept of courage. Isn't this obvious? Therefore: "Love hate, for hate itself is existence of love." and duality starts dissolving, light dispells darkness.
That really helped a lot. Thank you, brethren.
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