Emptiness – what’s the big deal?

                 This observation is of course subjective, but it seems to me people hear the word emptiness and immediately start spinning their mental wheels. The concept of emptiness as used in most modern Buddhist teachings was expounded or elaborated on by Nagarjuna.

        Emptiness is the English translation of the Sanskrit word Sunyata. Sunyata means to have no inherent existence or Svabhava in Sanskrit. Now before you go tilting off on a tangent what dose it mean to “inherently exist”?

To have or be Svabhava:
(1) An inherently existing entity exists in splendid isolation without the need to reference any other entity. It is completely defined by its own nature.
(2) An inherently existing entity is uncaused.
(3) It is indestructible.
(4) It is eternal.
(5) It is unchanging when viewed externally.
(6) It cannot undergo any internal changes of state.
(7) It either has no constituent parts, or if it has parts those parts are inseparable.
(8 consequently, nothing can be ejected or removed from it.
(9) Nothing can be added to it (this would change its definition).
(10) No change in external conditions (up to and including the destruction of the entire universe) can affect it.

                 To be empty of inherent existence means “you” are not any of the above 10 things.

             So, now that you have a clear idea of what it means to “inherently exist” I must ask if you ever really believed that you or anything else did or dose inherently exist?

            Nagarjuna said that everything that exists by the nature of reality dose so dependant upon prior causes and conditions.   Everything is both a cause and an effect. He rejected the idea of a primary or first cause and took the position that reality was by its nature an infinite progression/regression: i.e. to be without beginning or end. He said that we suffer from a misperception caused by the psychological tendency to grasp at all objects of perception as if they really existed as independent entities. This is to say that ordinary beings believe that such objects exist "out there" as they appear to perception.

  Now that’s not such a big deal is it? Welcome to the middle –way.