Impermanence - What does it mean?

I'll leave this blog post short.

Impermanence: Sanskrit: anitya; Pali: anicca.. One of the most important tenants in Buddhist philosophy, along with not-self and unsatisfactoriness. We know what impermanence means from a "negative Buddhist" standpoint: There is nothing that has any inherent existence. Nothing exists permanently, but relies on dependent origination.

As is recorded in the Majjhima Nikāya regarding impermanence: "Whatever is subject to origination is subject to cessation."

- Siddhārtha Gautama Śākyamuni Buddha, Majjhima Nikāya 56.

Naturally, I agree with this. If it has to start, it will finish. Our perceptions rely on us, for example, having an eye and consciousness, and something to perceive, as is the way the "ordinary" saṃsāric world operates: rising and falling, this gives rise to that, which gives rise to the other.

I agree with them on this; to some extent anyway, that is. To be more specific, I side more with Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen and his idea of zhentong - "other emptiness" and relate that to impermanence, meaning that I see everything as impermanent that is saṃsāric, as opposed to the Nirvāṇic permanency, of which our essential Buddhic-natures are parts of.

Everything saṃsāric will not last - but there is a Nirvāṇic permanency within everything. That, dare I call it, is the Buddha-nature.

Emptiness, Part Two: My interpretation of Positive Emptiness

In my last post, I attempted to explain how śūnyatā works within Sikhism and how it correlates to the Absolute. In this post, I will attempt to relate how I see śūnyatā as a Positive Buddhist.

First, a bit of an etymology lesson. Sanskrit, śūnyatā. Śūnya - zero, nothing, tā - ness. śūnya comes from śvi, meaning hollow, or swollen.

With śūnyatā meaning "nothing-ness", however, it has a very nihilistic flavour. Although nihilistic forms of Buddhism have begun to take hold, Buddha does deny nihilism. He denies eternalism, too - but what concept of eternalism there was in the Buddha's time I will discuss in another post. The Buddha denied nihilism, saying he has never advocated the idea of a destruction of being as we can see in Samyutta Nikaya 4.400 - therefore, the idea of destruction of who we are would go against what the Buddha taught.

So what is this secretive, elusive emptiness? That which is everything? In my opinion, this can be found within the famous Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya, known in English as the Heart Sutra. Usually the Heart Sutra is used to show everything is empty, yet usually it's ignored that it also says emptiness is form. It also states within the Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya that within emptiness there is no defilement, no non-defilement, no seeing or non-seeing, and so on.

Emptiness is that there is nothing skandhic--that is--from a stance of body and mental aggregrates. There is nothing in the mundane that exists on its own and has its own self, yet at the same time when it comes to that which is Nirvāṇic, Emptiness is not nothingness, but it is emptiness of defilement and impermanence: that which rises is empty of its own existence, but the thing which does not arise, does not fall, does not decay is empty of defilement and suffering.

As a Sikh friend of mine would sum it up: There is nothing that exists that is you. It is all God: what is impermanent is ultimately illusionary and not who you are, nor does it exist on its own, and that which is ultimately a part of God. That is your true-Self.

I echo his view: I think there are two forms of emptiness, as mentioned by Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen, promoter of the Jonang sect of Buddhism: a skandhic, mundane emptiness (Tibetan, rangtong): that nothing has its own self , and an other-emptiness (Tibetan, zhentong) or a Nirvāṇic emptiness: everything has an innate true-Self, and is empty of all imperfections, finiteness, and all that one can deem false or anātman.

This, dare I say, is our "Buddha-nature", our true-Self, part of the Adibuddha, who as claimed in the Kulayalaraja Tantra, is the core and seed of all that exists.

Emptiness, Part One: Emptiness in other Dharmic religions

Emptiness, also called voidness; Sanskrit, Śūnyatā. Most who know a little about Buddhism know that it is a very important teaching. Some may know it exists in Taoism. Yet, did you know it exists in Sikhism?

How can two religions - one seen as “nontheistic”, one as theistic, hold a same core belief? It may be helpful to know how, exactly, emptiness is viewed in Sikhism before I discuss how I view emptiness in Buddhism. This post is dedicated to Sikhism’s view of emptiness so that I may write about my interpretation of emptiness within Buddhism.

Within Sikhism, emptiness [Gurmukhi ਸੁੰਨ, “sunn”] is found within the Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib, the holy book of the Sikhs. It appears about 82 times within the text, the majority of which are used to describe the Lord, known in Sikhism as Wahegurū; literally, “Wonderous Teacher”.

An example of the would be as the following:

ਅੰਤਰਿ ਸੁੰਨੰ ਬਾਹਰਿ ਸੁੰਨੰ ਤ੍ਰਿਭਵਣ ਸੁੰਨ ਮਸੁੰਨੰ ॥

The absolute Lord is deep within; the absolute Lord is outside us as well. The absolute Lord totally fills the three worlds.

ਚਉਥੇ ਸੁੰਨੈ ਜੋ ਨਰੁ ਜਾਣੈ ਤਾ ਕਉ ਪਾਪੁ ਨ ਪੁੰਨੰ ॥

One who knows the Lord in the fourth state, is not subject to virtue or vice.

ਘਟਿ ਘਟਿ ਸੁੰਨ ਕਾ ਜਾਣੈ ਭੇਉ ॥

One who knows the mystery of God the Absolute, who pervades each and every heart,

ਆਦਿ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਦੇਉ ॥

knows the Primal Being, the Immaculate Divine Lord. 

- Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib, page 857. Dr. Sant Singh Khalsā English translation. Emphasis added for illustrative purposes only. Source: http://www.srigranth.org

So, as we can see, it is entirely possible that within a religion “sunn” or “śūnyatā” does not necessarily mean “emptiness” in the Western sense of lacking, but also “the Absolute”; it is a term used in describing Wahegurū, the Sikh God.

Sikhism holds that when one is awoken by the teachings, one attains unity with the Void - and this is even possible while alive:

ਜੀਵਤ ਸੁੰਨਿ ਸਮਾਨਿਆ ਗੁਰ ਸਾਖੀ ਜਾਗੀ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥

In my very life, I am absorbed in the Profound Lord, the Guru's instruction has awakened me. Pause. 

- Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib, page 943. Bhāī Manmohan Singh English translation. Emphasis added for illustrative purposes only. Source: http://www.srigranth.org

So within this we see a striking similarity to Buddhist nirvāṇa [“blowing out” the candle] and parinirvāṇa [“final blowing out” of the candle] already. This may be seen as such because Sikhism and Buddhism are seen as theistic and “nontheistic” religions respectively. Sikhism holds that one cannot know the nature of the Unknowable-Natured One.

Then why is this deity called as “Void”? The reason is simply that this Void is void of any dualities or imperfections: it is Pure, beyond the mundane world that we are bound to on the course of reincarnation. Whoever attains union with that Void--that is--God in the Sikh sense, they go beyond all forms of duality. When one has attained union with God and their body expires, they will never be born into the finite and fleeting realms again.

How does all this fit in with how I see emptiness within Buddhism? Well, that’s for the next post.

Can non-violence become violence?

Buddhism, like Jainism and Hinduism, emphasise non-violence (Sanskrit ahiṃsā) as a fundamental tenant of the Dharma. Non-violence is, of course, a great thing in itself as we should all try our best to avoid harming others - yet can it be used to extremes, and become a form of violence in itself?

The most obvious example is:

Someone breaks into your house and attempts to kill you for whatever reason; maybe that they didn't expect anyone to catch them in the act, but nevertheless, they're coming at you with a knife. Your spouse and children are asleep upstairs, and you don't think if they kill you, they will just walk out but they will go for them. You have two choices: fight for your survival, even if meant killing the person, or die and risk your family dying, and this could happen again to another person.

Which is more violent?

My opinion, not fighting is more violent than fighting when it allows injustice and cruelty to continue. Sometimes fighting is necessary--in self defence, of course. I'm not suggesting you go out there and beat the shit out of some elderly person, with a cry of "Not fighting is more violent than fighting!"--that would be violent.

Most of us agree that we should do what we can to defend ourselves and our families if we have an attacker coming after us, yet there are some people who think that an "enlightened person" would not do that, that an enlightened person would not use force to defend themselves or their loved ones.

Of course, not everything is as threatening as this.

Yet is it still violence to walk past as an old woman gets attacked by someone for her money? What about violence to yourself, such as practising extreme forms of asceticism like keeping one's arms in the air so you end up becoming dependent on others to do your basic necessities, or starving yourself for months at a time? What about swerving out of the way for butterflies whilst driving, consequently endangering others? Are these violence to oneself?

I think they are all forms of violence. Violence does not always have to equal you hitting, stabbing, or punching something. This is direct violence, but I feel as though there is another level to violence--indirect violence: harming by not doing. It is not as bad as deliberately going out of one's way to harm someone, but I feel that there would most likely be negative consequences for not stopping what one can.

Non-violence, in my opinion is to not harm the innocent but also to preserve peace even if it means kicking the violent person's ass, of course, avoiding conscious excess: if you can stop the guy by shouting, then you don't need to hit him. If during a struggle you kill the attacker, is that wrong? I do not believe that to be the case; what would be wrong is not attempting to stop the violence.

The violent should not be protected by the rule of non-violence.
It was, after all, their choice to commit the crime.

If...

 God believes in Himself,

is He a theist?

If God doesn't believe in Himself,

is He an atheist?

If God knows He exists,

does it make Him gnostic?

What was the Self that Buddha denied?

The three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering (or stressfulness), and no-self. No ātman.

Yet, what actually is the ātman that Buddha denied? By default, most people automatically deny, because of this, the soul. Yet, is it? Some people will go a little further and try to understand the ātman of modern Hinduism, and say, “It must be denying that, and that sounds like the soul”. This, however, is modern Hinduism. Is it fair to say this is an accurate representation of the thing that Buddha denied?

I don’t think so. It is true that Buddhism disputes and denies the existence of an eternal, unchanging self - but what is this self? Pre-Buddhist Upanishads link the ātman of the time to the feeling of “I am” [Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad 1.4.1], and “I am this” [Chandogya Upanishad 8.11.1]. This is not, however, the same as the way the ātman is seen as within modern Hindu philosophy. Post-Buddhist Upanishads have a much different view as to what the ātman is: it is only the defiled individual ego that believes itself to be “I am” or “This is me”, as opposed to the Universal Self [Maitrī Upanishad], which does not have this belief. The distinction in this one, is between “self” and “Self”, that is, ego and soul: one thinks it is who the person is, the other is beyond such trivial things.

However, there is another religion which has a concept of ātman: one that is often overlooked. That religion is Jainism; a small but incredibly influential religion, at least that was the case historically. I am not sure about how influential it is in the modern society of the twenty-first century. Mohandās Karamchand Gāndhi, also called Mahātmā Gāndhi, is one of the influential people of the early twentieth century who was strongly influenced by Jain traditions.


It is widely believed by many, including myself, that there is every possibility that the Buddha spent his time an ascetic with practitioners of Jainism. Indeed, Buddha was probably a contemporary of Mahāvīra, the last Jain Tirthankara.

So what does Jainism say about the ātman, the self? How do Jainism and Hinduism differ, and how are they similar?

Jainism sees the ātman as the “living-essence”, yet something separate to the body. It witnesses birth and death, but is neither born nor created in reality; death and birth are merely moving from one body to another and the ātman does not experience anything in truth, only the temporal experiences of time, matter, and other things.

Jainism’s ātman is more similar to the soul than anything, however, there is a major difference: the soul is effectively a witness of events, going from room to room. It is eternal, and although it witnesses, it is not affected by the things. It does not grow or develop. It just is - and always is - the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow; it just witnesses things.

So the Jain soul is like a diamond, that is covered in mud - one’s fruit of karma. Jainism’s path to liberation is destroying all karma - because if anything happens, good or bad, it must bear fruit - and that fruit ripens into us living another life of existence, which in turn allows for more accumulation of karma.

Therefore, we have at least two forms of ātman around at the Buddha’s time with major prominence: the Pre-Buddhist Upanishadic Hindu, and the Jain. Both of them had a somewhat mystical idea, but they were often different to one another. They were also both dualistic, there was something about them that was inherent, eternal, and separate. Buddha denied these qualities - but did he really deny the soul?

Not necessarily. In the Samyutta Nikaya 4.400, Buddha is asked if there is no soul (nathatta). Buddha replied with: “Both formerly and now, I’ve never been a nihilist ("vinayika"), never been one who teaches the annihilation of a being, rather taught only the source of suffering, and its ending.” Traditionally this is seen as “any idea of self, even no-self, is tied up in a self”, but in my opinion it that Buddha did not deny the soul, but tried to get the idea of soul out of the “I am”-ness that Hinduism and Jainism had and to shift the focus on it: instead of being something separate from everything, the soul was something with everything: dependent origination builds our lives as we live them, but the aspect that makes us who we are is not illusionary, but beyond the idea of the mundane and ordinary fleeting world, instead of saṃsāric, it is Nirvāṇic instead.

This is my interpretation, anyway.

What is God?

“What is God?” Ask many a Western Buddhist this question and they will respond with, “a delusion”, or “imaginary”. They will continue, “There is no God in Buddhism. There is not even room for the belief of God in Buddhism.” - but I’m not so sure about that.

Before someone can deny there is room for God in Buddhism, define what God is. What comes to mind to most from these three little letters is a very specific form of God, probably owing due to the influence of the Abrahamic religions within the Western world - but is that a fair assessment?

Yes, they claim, because these religions are the biggest religions. Sure to some extent that may be correct, but the two largest religions in this world got there by coercion and proselytism. The two biggest religions, as we know, are Christianity, and then Islam. The forms of God most people in the West are used to understanding are Christian (specifically Catholic and Protestant forms) and from a Biblical reading of the Tanakh (what is known as the “Old Testament”) and taking everything at face value, ignoring some of the great teachings that there are within the Talmud and the way Jewish theology can be interpreted by intelligent Jewish scholars. Some may also be aware of the beliefs of Mormonism, and even still, Islam.

Yet what do all of them have in common? They are all Abrahamic religions: they all have Abraham as a prophet. He is the last uniting point of their religions, and their theologies tend to be rather similar to one another.

For example, all of the above mentioned religions have:

• An incredibly personal God
• Prophets
• A God who rewards and punishes
• A God who is omni-everything: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on
• Dualistic views
• A God who is willing to go to incredible lengths to do things: for example, the story of Noah’s ark and Sodom and Gomorrah, we have a God who is willing to destroy whole cities and even the whole world.

Within Islam and Christianity, we also have a God who is willing to send people to Hell for not believing in the message brought down. Christians tend to believe that God--yes--God--incarnated on Earth to be killed by people as a ransom for sin.

This God appears to have created people effectively to punish them unless they deny themselves of some pretty normal things, if we takes the Bible at face value and takes say, Islamic or Christian traditional theology, an entity who has made us only to worship him or suffer.

In my opinion only, of course, such concepts of God would go against the spirit of the Dharma as taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. Not only do they go against the spirit of the Dharma that Budda taught, but they also go against natural laws and common sense. So, in some ways, yes, there is no room for such a concept of God in Buddhism in my opinion--much less as the Supreme God, and I most certainly do not believe in such a type of God.

However, there are more views of God than just that of the Abrahamic---the traditional, personal and judgemental monotheistic concepts. We have the concepts of God brought forth within the Dharmic paths such as Sikhism and Hinduism--and different concepts of how God relates to the world such as dvaita (dualism), advaita (nondualism), dvaitadvaita, bhedabheda, and many more. Of concepts of God, there are monotheism, polytheism, Deism, polydeism, panentheism, pantheism, dystheism/maltheism, henotheism, and monolatry --- we have personal and impersonal conceptions of God, and even the transpersonal one at our disposal. We have beliefs of eternal gods, gods who emanate from the universe, the universe that emanates from god, God who IS the universe, a God who does not intervene in creation, who has died, who watches and ones who do not watch.

So why do people automatically shift to the Abrahamic, “do as I say or I’ll beat you up” concept of God? Simply, their upbringing, I guess. It seems that people often struggle to separate the God of their youth from other god concepts, so any belief in God seems to be judged like this one. That very word, God, brings up the concept of God that many held in their youth: the Cosmic Sugar Daddy, that man with the beard on a cloud throwing thunderbolts at bad people, whilst more or less bringing candy to his young followers.

What is to say that God is not an impersonal, Cosmic force? Does such a thing then become not-God? It seems as though many people hold a problem with calling an impersonal force as God, and say it is playing a game of semantics. But who, really, is playing semantics? Are they playing semantics by holding such a narrow definition of the word “God”, or is the one who believes God to be something else playing semantics by holding a far too broad definition of the word God? The claim that it’s wishy-washy and useless to use the term God for anything that isn’t a sky daddy is quite a narrow claim, in my eyes.

Is there room in Buddhism for a panentheistic view of God? Possibly. I think there is, depending on how such a kind of God is perceived: if one has more mystical inclinations, then it would not be quite as difficult. If one looks at some of the Mahayana sutras, some of them seem to be readable readable from a panentheistic perspective; the Kulayarāja Tantra and the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra immediately come to mind.


"I am the core of all that exists. I am the seed of all that exists. I am the foundation of all that exists. I am the root of existence. I am 'the core', because I contain all phenomena. I am 'the seed', because I give birth to everything. I am 'the cause', because all comes forth from me. I am 'the trunk', because the ramificationsof every event sprout from me. I am 'the foundation', because all abides in me. I am called 'the root', because I am everything.”
    --- Published as The Supreme Source, tr. by Adriano Clemente [1999] et al.

This is a text that is greatly respected within the Tibetan Dzogchen school of thought. If such a text, with its explicit teachings on what is panentheism can be accepted by the majority, then how do we know that there are or are not other texts which hint at there being some kind of God-entity or God-state? How do we know that it does not use superfluous language to avoid the anthromorphisation and personification of this entity? There are many scriptures out there, far too many for me to look through in my life, and so many different conceptualizations of the Divine.


So, what do I, as a positive Buddhist, think of God as? Of course, this is only my own view, but it is like this: To me, God is not a being - not a cosmic sugar daddy with a temper. If we were to play with terms, God is a verb, not a noun, and is present in everything within the universe, but transcends all of existence. It is genderless, and neither personal nor impersonal but trans-personal, beyond form and no-form and all dualities. I see God the way some would see Brahman, or the Tao: something indescribable.

Some may say, “But Keshin, that is not a God!”, but I disagree. It’s not my problem if people have such narrow views on what God actually is.

Hoo, boy. There’s a lot there. I think I’ll cut it short, now. I’ll try and come back to this another time, or cover it in other, somewhat related posts.