We are taught, 'All dharmas are empty.' This sort of statement, along with the negations in the Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra must be very confusing to newcomers to Zen. As well they ought be. What could the Buddhas mean when they say, "No birth, no death..."? The language used doesn't help make the dharmas understandable at all, yet we recite these words on a daily basis with great confidence that they are true. Let's talk briefly about this.
The word that gives rise to the confusion is "empty." For English speakers the word means without content. The cup is empty means there is nothing in it. In a way that's one way of understanding the word as used in the sutra. But in a specific way. If the cup is empty it has no meaning as a "cup." But to get to what "empty" means to Zensters we must go a little farther.
Technically, "empty" means without independent existence. From a Buddhist perspective all things are "conditional," meaning, as Buddha said, "this is because that is." In other words everything comes about due to the conditions for which they are able to come about. All things are connected, or better, interconnected. So to say life and death are empty is to say life is conditional, as is death.
Now to the "No birth, no death..." stuff. In the Zen Buddhist world, in the world of so-called "Big Mind," everything is one with no separations. My body is your body is the chair, and in my case right now, my MacBook Pro."
From such a vantage point there could be no birth or death as these "concepts" would be meaningless, just as, if everything were one, one would cease to exist because its existence is dependent on "two."
From such a vantage point there could be no birth or death as these "concepts" would be meaningless, just as, if everything were one, one would cease to exist because its existence is dependent on "two."
This flies in the face of the empirical world, however. From an empiricist's vantage point, all things are separate: this tool versus that tool; this person or that person. This understanding is what we call "Small Mind" or the mind that exists in the relative world. But Zen practice teaches us that both "minds" inter-are. They are not separate. The separation is a delusion.
More to come in Part Two
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