Is Emptiness nothing? (Thay, Alan Watts)

Thich Nhat Hanh via BGC; Alan Watts; TEXT: Dhr. Seven, Ananda (DBM), Wisdom Quarterly

Emptiness is NOT nothing: a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh

O, Zen empty spot, there is nothing you are...

"Emptiness is not nothing," says Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) as he talks about shunyata, the impersonal or not-independent nature of all things. He emphasizes the interbeing of all things.

For a thing that is empty, what is it empty of? It is empty of separate existence, which is to say, every dependently originated thing may have the whole cosmos in it other than that thing it seems to be.

Why Zen? (Ioanna Salajan, Zen Comics)

For example, in a flower there are only non-flower elements: cloud (rain), mud (minerals), air (nitrogen), space, color, sunshine, fragrance, and so on.

The same is true of bread. In bread there are only non-bread ingredients: plant, cloud, leavening, heat, and so on.

Moreover, in a person, there are only impersonal (empty) elements: the Five Aggregates clung to as a separate "self," as a separate entity, as separate from these five components of which it is comprised. They are devoid of enduring essence.

Western Zen Buddhist Spiritual Entertainer Alan Watts: Emptiness

This emphasis on emptiness (shunyata) and suchness (tathata) is popular in Mahayana Buddhism. But it is made more of in Theravada Buddhism, which speaks of anatta, "not-self," the impersonal nature of a person, of I, me, or all that is imagined to be mine.

• [Aha, wait! Who imagines it to be "mine"? Isn't that the self, the soul, the atta or atman? No, not who but what? Form forms, feeling feels, perception perceives, volition wills, and consciousness is conscious without a true self in there. These are the Five Aggregates we cling to as if they were a self when there are only heaps. There is no homunculus.]

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva (Kwan Yin)

The historical Buddha (not the Mahayana buddhas/Gods like Amitabha and Vairocana) approached it in this way.

Everything may be empty, but that the viewer, feeler, watcher, experiencer is empty/impersonal, that is the mind blowing thing. That is what differentiates the enlightened from the unenlightened.

One will not win the first stage of enlightenment, called "stream winning," without that essential insight. It is actually what the Heart Sutra (the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra) is all about.

The Buddha gives many similes in the texts. The aggregates or "heaps" may be compared to an onion, layers of which can be peeled away, and yet no heart will be revealed. The Buddha used the trunk of a banana tree to make this comparison. There is no heartwood in it, only layers, just like the onion.

Although we like to think about it and debate, the realization attributed to Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva (Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion) is not won by thinking. It is won by direct realization, the culmination of calm and insight, of deep compassion and systematic mindfulness.