Emptiness, Not Exists, and the Middle Way

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Emptiness, Not Exists, and the Middle Way

In fall of 2012, at a KTD retreat with Lama Dudjom Dorjee he was teaching the Heart Sutra which focuses on emptiness a lot. An insight I had (perhaps not correct) is that when Buddhist scriptures say that something does not exist, what they really mean is that it is temporary, not eternal. They say that anything that arises because of conditions and then goes away because of different conditions doesn't exist, but that is more what I would call temporary. A common example might be a table which is constructed from different materials and eventually is decomposed into other things. Just what is the table? For me, this is a useful insight as we should focus on eternal qualities rather than temporary conditions, but I found it a rather extreme to claim that all things temporary don't really exist. I am more comfortable with saying that they exist only at this time and place and are certain to change.

Likewise, the Heart Sutra refers to the middle way, the path between nihilism and eternalism. My insight is that we should avoid the hopelessness of thinking that everything is temporary and so nothing matters (nihilism) and the opposite extreme of everything is pre-ordained and so nothing matters (eternalism). I understand each extreme point of view, but don't find either satisfying (of course), so what is the middle way? For me it is feeling the joy of exploring and blossoming from our temporary state of delusion into our eternal state of bliss and compassion; it is following the practices to develop those feelings which are aren't dependent on chemicals and circumstances.

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This page was last updated on November 3, 2012