Emptiness
Diving into the Buddhist Middle Way
The concept of emptiness (Śūnyatā in Sanskrit) refers to the Buddhist tenet that all things are dependently originated and empty of intrinsic nature. At a glance, this does not mean much to most people and for a while it meant nothing to me at all. It was over the summer of 2022, that through a friend, I began to understand the deep philosophical consequences of this concept.
I can only describe this realization as some sort of mind hack that can be used to immediately feel grounded or to process feelings by understanding them for what they really are. Since then, I have experienced a deep sense of calm and the understanding completely transformed my experience of meditation.
The aim of this short piece is twofold:
- To formalize my understanding of emptiness by being able to explain it in simpler terms.
- Help others understand it better so that it may help them as it helped me.
I will first cover some of the events prior to discovering emptiness before diving a bit deeper into the philosophy itself.
Book of Life - the first read
In January 2022, my friend recommended the “Book of Life” by J. Krishnamurti (J.K.). I read the short meditations and watched some of his talks on Youtube. The concepts were interesting but they seemed hard to grasp. There were expressions like “the observer is the observed”, “a mind that is free”, “what is” or “putting aside screens”. This mostly revolved around seeing things for what they are. While there was an obvious “aura” of calm and peace about the man, I was not ready to read that book nor to understand his wise teachings. The first read left some lingering thoughts and that knowledge lay dormant; the book went back onto the shelf. In the meantime, I got a new job and the months went by…
Nature and deep work
During this time, I had been actively improving my ability to focus on demand by getting into the habit of doing regular deep work and making a conscious effort to be fully focused for uninterrupted chunks of time. I was training the “focus” muscle. As spring was coming to an end, I found myself increasingly interested in nature. Looking at birds, going on walks, watching sunsets, staring at the moon… I had begun to pay more attention to my surroundings through the concept of Quests / Awe walks - a type of guided, active meditation outside.
The Middle Way
Eventually, through some combination of the events above and a friend’s explanation, I finally understood the concept of emptiness. From the Buddhist standpoint, and particularly Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (The Root Verses on the Middle Way), all things are empty of intrinsic nature and arise through dependent origination.
What this means is that nothing exists independently or has a fixed essence. Everything we experience - thoughts, emotions, objects, even our sense of self - arises in dependence on causes, conditions, and our conceptual frameworks. When we understand this deeply, we can see through the illusion of solid, independent existence that normally dominates our perception.
Indeed, from Nāgārjuna’s standpoint the entire “everyday world” is non-existent.
There is a nuance in what we mean by “existing”. The Buddhists use this to mean “inherent existence” which is what Nāgārjuna is debating. This is opposed to “conventional existence” where we all are in agreement that things exist conventionally; but do things exist in and of themselves? Do they have an essence?
Nāgārjuna’s text develops on this thesis and eventually culminates with the assertion that emptiness is itself also empty. I plan to write some other short pieces around some of the chapters that I have found particularly interesting and to continue expanding on this.
Things and words
Before leaving for today let’s go through an analogy:
Picture a table. As an everyday object, it depends on us to be understood as well as on our concept of what a “table” is and has evolved to be. But it does not need our recognition to exist - when you look at a table and label it as such, you are taking an arbitrary slice of space-time where you, as the referent, perceive the table as a “table”.
“One has to realize that the word is not the thing - like the word tree is not the tree, is not the actual fact” (“Book of Life” - 19/05). The tree, just like the table only exists conventionally…
References:
- The Book of Life
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
I’m experimenting with writing about this topic which I have found fascinating. If you are interested in more texts of this kind, please do let me know and I’ll make sure to prepare some more. Thanks for all the support.