Upāsaka Cattasallā (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cattasalla) wrote2018-11-04 02:42 pm
cattasalla) wrote2018-11-04 02:42 pm
a note on the doctrine of emptiness
I think most people with a basic understanding of Buddhist philosophy also have a basic intellectual grasp of the concept of "emptiness", one of the central concepts in Mahāyāna: All things in the Universe only exist in relation to other things, and are therefore empty of any inherent self-existence or essence. A great deal of the practice in Mahāyāna meditation systems, like Zen or Tantra, are primarily concerned with bringing that realization to the practitioner on a concrete, intuitive and emotional level, beyond the mere intellectual understanding. There's usually some additional stuff thrown in there about one's own true nature being empty.
This teaching of emptiness is building on the earliest teachings of the tilakkhaṇa, the "three marks" of all conditioned things: anicca (impermanence or transience or instability), anatta (lacking a separate, inherent existence), and dukkha (unsatisfactory, and will bring suffering if clung to). So why did that get expanded into the doctrine of emptiness? Because the abhidhammists took their work way too seriously.
After a few generations of passing the teachings down, many of the early Buddhists decided to take the words very seriously as technical terms constituting a complete and comprehensive philosophy, including ontology, epistemology, and metaphysics. Thing is, that's probably not what the Buddha presented with his "handful of leaves". He was not setting out a philosophical system. He was offering a set of teachings meant to be therapeutic, not authoritative. I'm reminded of SN 36.19, in which the monk Udāyī and the carpenter Pañcakaṅga get in an argument about whether the Buddha taught that there were two kinds of feeling, or three. Ven Ānanda heard this argument and asked the Buddha about it, and the Buddha basically said, "Oh yeah, I taught both of those things, and also I taught there were five, six, eighteen, thirty-six, and one hundred and eight types of feelings." The Buddha taught what he felt he needed to teach to best help the person listening reach Awakening and liberation, and that's at: He only taught dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.
But then the abhidhammists went over all of the suttas, and compiled lists of lists, and--possibly aided by their own meditation experiences--broke experiential reality down into its atoms, the dhammas, and then declared those dhammas were what really existed, and not the illusory objects of our daily deluded experience. And then the various schools got in arguments about the nature of that existence.
So then, the Mahāyānists stepped in and said, "No!" They offered the philosophy of emptiness, but also tried to revive what was becoming an increasingly stale and scholastic tradition with life and practice. And that, there, is a pretty basic internal dynamic pushing forward Buddhist philosophy. Practices are given, along with teachings to guide the practices, those teachings are turned into a concrete and comprehensive philosophy while the practices are neglected, and then a next generation comes along and brings the practices back to life, and devises a new set of teachings meant to blast apart the previous set. And this cycle takes us from the Buddha to the Abhidhamma, to the Mādhyamaka, from there to Yogācāra, then to Hua-Yen to Zen, or to the Tantras, and so on. (And, of course, external concerns, such as interaction with political systems, also shaped the development of these philosophies.)
Personally, I do find value in the later teachings. Even the Abhidhammist lists can provide an interesting framework for navigating elements of consciousness, as long as they aren't taken as absolute truths. The insightful way Zen cuts through a lot of the bullshit of the world to get at the basic truths of liberation is fantastic. But I'm also just fine with going over the original suttas, and just reading the Buddha's words (or the closest approximation we have) for themselves. And as long as I keep the perspective of those teachings as meant to guide practice on the way to liberation and awakening and not meant as authoritative, absolute philosophical statements, I think I'll be doing just fine.
This teaching of emptiness is building on the earliest teachings of the tilakkhaṇa, the "three marks" of all conditioned things: anicca (impermanence or transience or instability), anatta (lacking a separate, inherent existence), and dukkha (unsatisfactory, and will bring suffering if clung to). So why did that get expanded into the doctrine of emptiness? Because the abhidhammists took their work way too seriously.
After a few generations of passing the teachings down, many of the early Buddhists decided to take the words very seriously as technical terms constituting a complete and comprehensive philosophy, including ontology, epistemology, and metaphysics. Thing is, that's probably not what the Buddha presented with his "handful of leaves". He was not setting out a philosophical system. He was offering a set of teachings meant to be therapeutic, not authoritative. I'm reminded of SN 36.19, in which the monk Udāyī and the carpenter Pañcakaṅga get in an argument about whether the Buddha taught that there were two kinds of feeling, or three. Ven Ānanda heard this argument and asked the Buddha about it, and the Buddha basically said, "Oh yeah, I taught both of those things, and also I taught there were five, six, eighteen, thirty-six, and one hundred and eight types of feelings." The Buddha taught what he felt he needed to teach to best help the person listening reach Awakening and liberation, and that's at: He only taught dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.
But then the abhidhammists went over all of the suttas, and compiled lists of lists, and--possibly aided by their own meditation experiences--broke experiential reality down into its atoms, the dhammas, and then declared those dhammas were what really existed, and not the illusory objects of our daily deluded experience. And then the various schools got in arguments about the nature of that existence.
So then, the Mahāyānists stepped in and said, "No!" They offered the philosophy of emptiness, but also tried to revive what was becoming an increasingly stale and scholastic tradition with life and practice. And that, there, is a pretty basic internal dynamic pushing forward Buddhist philosophy. Practices are given, along with teachings to guide the practices, those teachings are turned into a concrete and comprehensive philosophy while the practices are neglected, and then a next generation comes along and brings the practices back to life, and devises a new set of teachings meant to blast apart the previous set. And this cycle takes us from the Buddha to the Abhidhamma, to the Mādhyamaka, from there to Yogācāra, then to Hua-Yen to Zen, or to the Tantras, and so on. (And, of course, external concerns, such as interaction with political systems, also shaped the development of these philosophies.)
Personally, I do find value in the later teachings. Even the Abhidhammist lists can provide an interesting framework for navigating elements of consciousness, as long as they aren't taken as absolute truths. The insightful way Zen cuts through a lot of the bullshit of the world to get at the basic truths of liberation is fantastic. But I'm also just fine with going over the original suttas, and just reading the Buddha's words (or the closest approximation we have) for themselves. And as long as I keep the perspective of those teachings as meant to guide practice on the way to liberation and awakening and not meant as authoritative, absolute philosophical statements, I think I'll be doing just fine.