Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism > Emptiness is a central teaching of all Buddhism, but its true meaning is often misunderstood. If we are ever to embrace Buddhism properly into the West, we need to be clear about emptiness, since a wrong understanding of its meaning can be confusing, even harmful. The third century Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna taught, Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake by the wrong end. In other words, we will be bitten! < Ari Goldfield, a Buddhist teacher at Wisdom Sun and translator of Stars of Wisdom , summarizes these two aspects as follows: The first meaning of emptiness is called emptiness of essence, which means that phenomena [that we experience] have no inherent nature by themselves. The second is called emptiness in the context of Buddha Nature, which sees emptiness as endowed with qualities of awakened mind like wisdom, bliss, compassion, clarity, and courage. Ultimate reality is the union of both emptinesses. Finally, since emptiness seems so difficult to understand, why did the Buddha teach it at all? fc03.deviantart.net/images3/i/2004/179/1/1/the_emptiness.jpg
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:05:02 +0000
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