Śūnyatā
Śūnyatā is an Indian philosophical concept In Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and other Indian philosophical traditions. The concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context; an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience.
In Theravāda Buddhism, ' often refers to the non-self nature of the five aggregates of experience and the six sense spheres. ' is also often used to refer to a meditative state or experience.
In Mahāyāna Buddhism, śūnyatā refers to the tenet that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature ", but may also refer to the Buddha-nature teachings and primordial or empty awareness, as in Dzogchen, Shentong, or Chan.
Etymology
Śūnyatā is usually translated as "devoidness", "emptiness", "hollow", "hollowness", "voidness". It is the noun form of the adjective śūnya, plus -tā:- śūnya, in the context of Buddhadharma, primarily means "empty", or "void", but also means "zero", and "nothing".
- -tā is a suffix denoting a quality or state of being, equivalent to English "-ness"
Development of the concept
After the Buddha, emptiness was further developed by the Abhidharma schools, Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamaka school, an early Mahāyāna school. Emptiness is also an important element of the Buddha-nature literature, which played a formative role in the evolution of subsequent Mahāyāna doctrine and practice.
Early Buddhism
Pāli Nikāyas
The Pāli Canon uses the term śūnyatā in three ways: as a meditative dwelling; as an attribute of objects; and as a type of awareness-release.According to Bhikkhu Analayo, in the Pāli Canon "the adjective suñña occurs with a much higher frequency than the corresponding noun suññatā" and emphasizes seeing phenomena as 'being empty' instead of an abstract idea of "emptiness".
One example of this usage is in the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta, which states that on close inspection, each of the five aggregates are seen as being void, hollow, coreless. In the text a series of contemplations is given for each aggregate: form is like "a lump of foam" ; sensation like "a water bubble" ; perception like "a mirage" ; formations like "a plantain tree" ; and cognition like "a magical illusion".
According to Shi Huifeng, the terms "void", "hollow", and "coreless" are also used in the early texts to refer to words and things which are deceptive, false, vain, and worthless. This sense of worthlessness and vacuousness is also found in other uses of the term māyā, such as the following:
"Monks, sensual pleasures are impermanent, hollow, false, deceptive; they are illusory, the prattle of fools."The Suñña Sutta, part of the Pāli Canon, relates that the monk Ānanda, Buddha's attendant, asked,
It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?" The Buddha replied, "In so far as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty."According to the American monastic Thanissaro Bhikku:
Meditative state
Emptiness as a meditative state is said to be reached when "not attending to any themes, he enters & remains in internal emptiness". This meditative dwelling is developed through the "four formless states" of meditation or Arūpajhānas and then through "themeless concentration of awareness".The Cūlasuññata-sutta and the Mahāsuññata-sutta outline how a monk can "dwell in emptiness" through a gradual step-by-step mental cultivation process, they both stress the importance of the impermanence of mental states and the absence of a self.
In the Kāmabhu Sutta S IV.293, it is explained that a bhikkhu can experience a trancelike contemplation in which perception and feeling cease. When he emerges from this state, he recounts three types of "contact" :
- "emptiness",
- "signless",
- "undirected".
The term "emptiness" is also used in two suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya, in the context of a progression of mental states. The texts refer to each state's emptiness of the one below.
Chinese Āgamas
The Chinese Āgamas contain various parallels to the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta. One partial parallel from the Ekottara Āgama describes the body with different metaphors: "a ball of snow", "a heap of dirt", "a mirage", "an illusion", or "an empty fist used to fool a child". In a similar vein, the Mūla-Sarvāstivādin Māyājāla Sūtra, gives two sets of metaphors for each of the sensory consciousnesses to illustrate their vain, illusory character.Other Sarvāstivādin Āgama sutras which have emptiness as a theme include Samyukta Āgama 335 - Paramārtha-śunyatā-sūtra and Samyukta Āgama 297 - Mahā-śunyatā-dharma-paryāya. These sutras have no parallel Pāli suttas. These sutras associate emptiness with dependent origination, which shows that this relation of the two terms was already established in pre-Nagarjuna sources. The sutra on great emptiness states:
The phrase "when this exists..." is a common gloss on dependent origination. Sarvāstivādin Āgamas also speak of a certain "emptiness samadhi" as well as stating that all dharmas are "classified as conventional".
Mun-Keat Choong and Yin Shun have both published studies on the various uses of emptiness in the Early Buddhist texts. Choong has also published a collection of translations of Āgama sutras from the Chinese on the topic of emptiness.
Early Buddhist schools and Abhidharma
Many of the early Buddhist schools featured śūnyatā as an important part of their teachings.The Sarvastivadin school's Abhidharma texts like the Dharmaskandhapāda Śāstra, and the later Mahāvibhāṣa, also take up the theme of emptiness vis-a-vis dependent origination as found in the Agamas.
Schools such as the Mahāsāṃghika Prajñaptivādins as well as many of the Sthavira schools held that all dharmas were empty. This can be seen in the early Theravada Abhidhamma texts such as the Patisambhidamagga, which also speak of the emptiness of the five aggregates and of svabhava as being "empty of essential nature". The Theravada Kathavatthu also argues against the idea that emptiness is unconditioned. The Mahāvastu, an influential Mahāsāṃghika work, states that the Buddha
"has shown that the aggregates are like a lightning flash, as a bubble, or as the white foam on a wave."One of the main themes of Harivarman's Tattvasiddhi-Śāstra is dharma-śūnyatā, the emptiness of phenomena.
Theravāda
Buddhists generally take the view that emptiness is merely the not-self nature of the five aggregates. Emptiness is an important door to liberation in the Theravāda tradition just as it is in Mahayana, according to Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal. The classic Theravāda text known as the Patisambhidamagga describes the five aggregates as being empty of essence or intrinsic nature. The Patisambhidamagga also equates not-self with the emptiness liberation in a passage also cited by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga :"When one who has great wisdom brings to mind as not-self, he acquires the emptiness liberation" -Patis. II 58.The Visuddhimagga '', the most influential classical Theravāda treatise, states that not-self does not become apparent because it is concealed by "compactness" when one does not give attention to the various elements which make up the person. The Paramatthamañjusa Visuddhimaggatika of Acariya Dhammapala, a 5th-century Theravāda commentary on the Visuddhimagga, comments on this passage by referring to the fact that we often assume unity and compactness regarding phenomena or functions which are instead made up of various elements, but when one sees that these are merely empty dhammas, one can understand the not-self characteristic:
"when they are seen after resolving them by means of knowledge into these elements, they disintegrate like froth subjected to compression by the hand. They are mere states occurring due to conditions and void. In this way the characteristic of not-self becomes more evident."The modern Thai teacher Buddhadasa referred to emptiness as the "innermost heart" of the Buddhist teachings and the cure for the disease of suffering. He stated that emptiness, as it relates to the practice of Dhamma, can be seen both "as the absence of Dukkha and the defilements that are the cause of Dukkha and as the absence of the feeling that there is a self or that there are things which are the possessions of a self." He also equated nibbana with emptiness, writing that "Nibbana, the remainderless extinction of Dukkha, means the same as supreme emptiness." Emptiness is also seen as a mode of perception which lacks all the usual conceptual elaborations we usually add on top of our experiences, such as the sense of "I" and "Mine". According to Thanissaro Bhikku, emptiness is not so much a metaphysical view, as it is a strategic mode of acting and of seeing the world which leads to liberation:
Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.
This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present. Thus they get in the way when we try to understand and solve the problem of suffering.
File:Flickr - DVIDSHUB - Giant standing Buddhas of Bamiyan still cast shadows.jpg|thumb|The empty space where the Western Buddha of Bamiyan resided prior to being destroyed by the Taliban
Some Theravādins, such as David Kalupahana, see Nagarjuna's view of emptiness as compatible with the Pali Canon. In his analysis of the Mulamadhyamikakarika'', Kalupahana sees Nagarjuna's argument as rooted in the Kaccānagotta Sutta. Kalupahana states that Nagarjuna's major goal was to discredit heterodox views of Svabhava held by the Sarvastivadins and establish the non-substantiality of all dharmas. According to Peter Harvey, the Theravāda view of dhammas and sabhava is not one of essences, but merely descriptive characteristics and hence is not the subject of Madhyamaka critique developed by Nagarjuna.
In Theravāda, emptiness as an approach to meditation is also seen as a state in which one is "empty of disturbance." This form of meditation is one in which meditators become concentrated and focus on the absence or presence of disturbances in their minds; if they find a disturbance they notice it and allow it to drop away; this leads to deeper states of calmness. Emptiness is also seen as a way to look at sense-experience that does not identify with the "I-making" and "my-making" process of the mind. As a form of meditation, this is developed by perceiving the six sense-spheres and their objects as empty of any self, this leads to a formless jhana of nothingness and a state of equanimity.
Mathew Kosuta sees the Abhidhamma teachings of the modern Thai teacher Ajaan Sujin Boriharnwanaket as being similar to the Mahayana emptiness view.