Realizing interdependence leads us to the naked understanding of reality beyond the extremes of existence and nonexistence—reality empty of all conceptual contrivances. A disciple of the Buddha once asked him, “What is emptiness?” The Buddha then entered the nonverbal state of meditation. Manjushri explained that this was the Buddha’s expression free of all contrivances, a state of non-grasping and freedom from shenpa. There is not much to say about the nature of emptiness. The only characteristic you could say it possesses is a freedom from all characteristics. If you want to know more about the meaning of emptiness, you’ll have to sit on your cushion and find out for yourself ~ Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Amazing post thank you. I have understood emptiness to be that something is Empty of its own and independent existence. All that we have is completely dependent on millions of factors intertwined. Does this fit for you?
Thank you for your comment. Yes! from my understanding Emptiness is not a ‘void’ rather realisation that everything is intervened/ interdependent with no independent origin. Like a stack of wood leaning against each other in a born fire – you remove one and the pile collapses. Keeping this in perspective helps us all to build more acceptance & understanding towards others
It’s really too bad that colonial christians have twisted emptiness in their translations of the sacred texts to be so nihilistic and void of joy. It is an amazing subject to discuss in detail as some of the different Buddhist traditions do see it differently. Do you have any more thoughts on the subject?
QP
QP