In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte titled: and#8220;Talking About Sunyataand#8221; Nagapriya explores the style of thought involved in conceptualizing sunyata and#8211; speaking in terms of what it isnand#8217;t so as not to limit its definition.
Excerpted from the talk, The Philosophy of Emptiness given at Manchester Buddhist Centre, 2009 as part of the series Visions of Mahayana Buddhism.
(upbeat music) Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. I just want to come on to characterize the style of thought that is involved in the philosophy of Shinnita. I said a moment ago that it's actually more concerned with what there isn't than what there is. And if we think about the idea itself, Shinnita, emptiness, it's essentially a kind of negative idea. It's about saying that something isn't. Things are empty, it's not that they're full. They're empty. So it's a negative way of talking, we could say. And this is, in technical terms, this is sometimes called, well, at least I'm calling it, I'm sorry for all the techno speak, apofasis, or the use of negative language. Negative theology is called in some Western, Western theological tradition. So within the context of Christian theology, apophatic thought talks about God in terms of what God isn't. God isn't this, God isn't that, God isn't such and such. And the reason why it does that is because it's believed that, well, if one characterizes something in positive terms, then that's to limit it. So if, for instance, we talked about, let's say, the nature of awakening as being like a cool cave, which is actually a well-known simile for talking about it, it's like a cool cave. We think, oh, well, I know, kind of got a rough idea what a cool cave is. So awakening's just like that then, isn't it, really? It's not that great, it's quite pleasant, but nothing too special. So while on the one hand, it might seem useful to use this metaphor that positively characterizes awakening at the same time it limits it. And so to avoid that danger, to avoid that pitfall, some thinkers make sure that they don't make positive statements about the nature of the goal. They simply state what it isn't. So you speak about it in terms of what you're trying to move away from, what you're trying to let go of, rather than in terms of what you're trying to move towards. So this is kind of apathetic thought, and this is very much the nature of the perfect wisdom text and the philosophy of Shunya Ta. And we can differentiate this, we can distinguish this from a more positive way of speaking, which is found in some other Mahayana Buddhist traditions, indeed, some traditions that were to some extent critical, or at least cautious about the philosophy of Shunya Ta. I'm not going to really be able to speak about those traditions this evening, but just to give you a couple of examples, one of them is known as Yoga Chara. And Yoga Chara is concerned with trying to analyze the nature of the mind and to speak about a transformation of understanding or transformation of cognition away from a distorted way of seeing things to a purer, more complete way of seeing things. So we have a kind of more positive characterization of the goal and the path towards it, rather than the negative thought that's found in Shunya Ta philosophy. Just to complete my terminology, this more positive way of talking, if you're interested, is known as Cataphasis. So that's a positive way of characterizing existence, the goal, and so on. Another example of a positive tradition is Buddha nature thought. So Buddha nature thought basically says that in our deepest essence, in our deepest nature, we're essentially the same as the Buddha. We have a Buddha nature within us. We have a Buddha essence within us. And the spiritual path is about bringing that Buddha seed up to full fruition. So again, it's quite a positive way of talking about what we are, what we can become. But we're dealing with a more negative way of talking, at least conceptually negative. It's not negative in the sense of depressing, although I think sometimes it comes across that way. Yeah, just to read you a passage to kind of underlying the point that I've been making, really, about this use of negative language. This is also from the heart sutra. This is a passage from the heart sutra. In emptiness, there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness, no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind, no sight organ element, and so forth until we come to no mind conscious element. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to, there is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death, there is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, there is no cognition, no attainment, and no non-attainment. So that would appear to negate just about everything that you might ever learn about Buddhism. I don't know if all of you are picking up on that, but we had the negation of the Four Noble Truths there, we had the negation of the Five Scanders, we had the negation of the possibility of knowledge, we had the negation of even the possibility of ignorance. So the negation of all, well, all the basic Buddhist ideas, so none of these, according to this text, exist in Shunutah. So what on earth does this mean? That's a really quite strange idea. How can it be negating all of these fundamental Buddhist ideas? Well, that's what I think we need to try and get to grips with. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie, and thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You You
