Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Three stages of emptiness learning

According to Venerable, there is 3 stages to the learning and realisation of emptiness.

1) Physical things are empty
2) Name/Label is empty
3) Physicality is empty

In the previous Whatever-ness entries, I have already covered 1 and 2.
Ie, the bowl of laksa (physical thing) is empty (1), because there is no real laksa. Laksa is only laksa when you have all the correct ingredients, cooked in a certain way, etc.
Similiarly, the creator of this dish named it laksa. It could jolly well have been named penang belacan white noodles. In fact, it is named assam noodle in Penang(?). The name conjour up a certain impression of the dish, but it is nothing, means nothing to people who doesnt know laksa. Hence the name is also empty (2).

Moving on, physicality (physical form) is empty. Each component in itself is empty. Because it is dependent on a lot of factors, and "made up" of four elements/traits. Each trait varies in degree/composition, making up the component. The component (physical aspect) in itself is empty because it is dependent on the traits.

As such, everything, all phenomenon is empty. And it cannot be separated from our mind. Our mind, the one which labels, which sees only the superficial (which we were taught), which sees the form but does not recognise it to be empty.

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