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.