The Mystery of Emptiness
tian tan buddha hlantau island
Originally uploaded by peri_ann.
mirror and see a reflection
of your face,
You think that’s *real*?
Before your birth
What face you really had?
After your death,
What face will you have?
If you could only find the answer,
(and i also haven’t figured it out yet)
In that remains the mystery of emptiness,
the grand teaching of Emptiness by Gautama.
© MysticSaint // Dover, Singapore
Jan, 2006
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| posted by Sadiq Alam @ 10:11 AM
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9 Comments:
could you elaborate a little more about the emptiness taught by Budhha? Maybe you can provide with some weblink?
emptiness has been with me since more than i can rememebr. And it keeps getting deeper. I'm pretty much sure it is very different from what the great Budhha taught.
The nature of emptiness according to Buddha is simply that all beings are incomplete on their own. This means that you alone are not a complete being but a result of the complex cause and effect process. With your karma(actions) you initiate further causes and effects in turn however if you just stop and look at your life you may find it incomplete or rather empty because of its completely interdependant nature. What i make of it is that we have to realize the all-present reality beneath our material world which for me as a Muslim is Allah because the Quran says "Wheresoever you shall turn, there is Allah." It is not a question of what faith you belong tom because the theory of everything, as according to me is LOVE.
exists in me a whirlwind of confusion
i seek to be
But exist not,
I try to be but i am not
interestingly enough,
even some of muslim mystics interpret the name of God in arabic, Allah as Al-Lah ... where Al means THE
La points to Emptiness.
Thus hidden inside the name Allah is hidden the code that God is THE ULTIMATE EMPTINESS - That encompass everything and nothing enocmpasses IT.
Emptyness for me is state of thoughtlessnes. it is a state you attain complete peace with yourself. This is possible only when you do your duty selflessly and with complete detachment.our lives are there only once. We shuould not do anything to regret later.
After my first encounter with emptiness i was left wordless in my mind and with my tongue for many days. What is it this emptiness i wondered , how was it able to wipe away everything i thought i was. Had i dissolved into this void. But yet i am still here, i am something yet i have no self.
As i looked around i saw all was perfect. It had even been perfect while i was so convinced of the reality of this hellish world and its strange people. What is this strange emptiness that has so gently taken me from myself?
The hooks in me that attached have been removed and i walked without being caught in any net.
This has passed but i am changed somehow. I am not a religious person , i do not belong to any group but i have always sought to transcend myself and that great emptiness has cradled me in its arms without judgment. So warm and welcoming i was received. in this emptiness i found so much.
It was not me who found the emptiness but the emptiness that found me. The emptiness has a presence. I'll stop here before i go on forever about it.
The emptiness is alive and loves all life equally.
Hi Syed Asim,
"The nature of emptiness according to Buddha is simply that all beings are incomplete on their own."
I'm afraid to say this is absolutely *not* what emptiness is pointing to. Sorry!
before the emptiness, there is Something exists...which can not be named or said even explain about it.
The Kabbalist call it Ein Sof
The Sufi call it Ahadiyyah
Hi bayu ZPO,
if we are actually discussing what the Dharmic notion of emptiness points to ... then, no .. there is no *thing* which exists prior to emptiness. That *is* the point. There is nothing behind or above what appears.
Whatever this 'something' is that you suggest, if it is directly seen, it will be also seen to be empty. If the notion of 'exist' itself is directly seen, it too will be seen to be empty.
There is no 'ghost in the machine' whatsoever. All such dualistic notions are long left behind to the mystic who directly knows things as they are.
I'm not denigrating your tradition in any way. However, it is important not to make comparisons based on intellectual understanding or analysis, otherwise only confusion results.
One has to train fully in a discipline in order to directly perceive what the tools of that discipline enable. Then one will know, without confusion.
best wishes to you, in a spirit of helpfulness,
Chodpa
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