Meditation on emptiness

Abstract

this book is merely abstract philosophy or whether it becomes relevant to everyday experience depends on gaining a sense of what inherent existence would be and then seeing that everything one perceives appears this way. The pivot of the practice of emptiness and of the generation of the wisdom that realizes emptiness is the identification that objects appear as if they exist in and of themselves. Then, an attempt is made to try to find these objects which so boldly appear to be self-existent; the mind becomes totally absorbed in attempting to find an object—among its parts, as the composite of its parts, as something separate from the parts, and so forth. If the search is done with keen interest, the significance of not being able to find the Introduction object will be earth-shaking. A yogi will then gain firsthand experience of the falling to extremes against which Buddha so frequently warned. Previously, the yogi took the independent existence of things as the very basis of his life; now that he cannot find anything to call an object, he falls to the opposite extreme of utter nihilism. The middle way, which is not a blending of these extremes but an utter refutation of both inherent existence and total non-existence, becomes relevant and comprehensible for the first time. The two extremes are identified in experience, and it is possible to realize a sense of valid, nominal existence through gaining the understanding that emptiness is an elimination only of inherent existence.