I'm grateful for life this morning, and grateful to be here on the internet!

Nāgārjuna:
All is possible when emptiness is possible.
Nothing is possible when emptiness is impossible.

Shunyata — Gregory

This (shunyata) is a concept that has always been to me what a flame has been to a moth - a light by which I may find a way to truth but alas the moth will be forever misled by the flame for it is not the sun.

I don't know if there's a clear unambiguous counterpart in western philosophy to shunyata but mysticism or esoteric forms of other religions come quite close what shunyata, as I understand it, is about viz. that the ultimate truth of reality isn't something comprehensible but like Aesop's grapes is clearly there, hanging from the boughs, in such inviting splendor but, unfortunately, lies just beyond the fox's reach. It's been quite some time since I gave up on the grapes of shunyata but I don't think they're sour although it seems quite paradoxical that there should be anything worthwhile in emptiness.

People have trouble thinking of something coming from nothing because they think of this materially, instead of like Buddhism, in which nothingness is higher than the universe, instead of parallel. People try to think of this as nothing "causing" something, but that's a material way of thinking. I like Buddhism because nothingness is spiritual for them. It is higher than all "humans and gods". One way to get there in thought is to mull about the reality that the only thing "potentially infinite" about an object is that it's infinity of parts can potentially be pointed out. Aristotle basically said that things have parts only potentially. That has no meaning. "Epoche" is the Greek form of meditation. "Ataraxia" is the Greek form of nirvana I think.

Epoche" is the Greek form of meditation. — Gregory

Also the phenomenological method of eliminating or suspending naive judgements in order to see the essential nature of things. Could be likened to the Buddhist concept of Samsara.

Wikipedia says Pyrrho went to India and that there was probably a certain influence between Greek skepticism and Indian thought via the empire of Alexander

The use of koans is the exact opposite of what Thomism tries to accomplish. For a conservative Catholic, the goal in the beatific vision in which the intellect perceives truth itself, and the will can do nothing but love it. This is an ego theology. Hegel at least thought there was some reasoning still within mystic states. But still I think the goal is absorption into nothingness and your own nothingness.

Here is more reading on this general topic: http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/08082b.htm

One last paragraph:

Thomism is the exact opposite of this Sunyata stuff. I think Aquinas may have been the first to propose the contingency argument for God. In modern times Peter Kreeft has use it a lot, but I think he ultimately fails. He never proves the universe is contingent in the sense that it needs something necessary. It's just his premise. So it's a premise without an argument. The world is neither contingent nor necessary. Why can't the world have the "reason for it's existence" within itself? It all depends on how you look at it. Grateful

自分を、

Why can't the world have the "reason for it's existence" within itself? — Gregory

Because it is empty of own-being ~ Nāgārjuna

‘The world’ is the interplay of sense-experience therefore lacks intrinsic reality.

People have trouble thinking of something coming from nothing because they think of this materially, instead of like Buddhism, in which nothingness is higher than the universe, instead of parallel. People try to think of this as nothing "causing" something, but that's a material way of thinking. I like Buddhism because nothingness is spiritual for them. It is higher than all "humans and gods". One way to get there in thought is to mull about the reality that the only thing "potentially infinite" about an object is that it's infinity of parts can potentially be pointed out. Aristotle basically said that things have parts only potentially. That has no meaning. "Epoche" is the Greek form of meditation. "Ataraxia" is the Greek form of nirvana I think. — Gregory

I don't know how far this is true but a Buddhist acquaintance once told me that shunyata, despite it's obvious meaning - the denial of everything - doesn't lead to nihilism. All shunyata wants to achieve, he said, is to emphasize that eternalism is false.

Although this doesn't in anyway elucidate the meaning of shunyata it gives us some idea about the ultimate goal of Buddhism - to not fall to extremes and stay on the so-called middle path. This brings us to Aristotle doesn't it? His golden mean.

I find it intriguing that in Buddhism, though nirvana equates with an understanding of shunyata it chooses to emphasize the middle path and encourages us to avoid where shunyata naturally leads, nihilism. Perhaps it has to do with some kind of incompatibility between the truth (shunyata) and living among those who don't realize that truth. Whatever the case, Aristotle, despite not having commented on shunyata, seems to have understood the essence of Buddhism, the middle path, which to him was the golden mean.


I don't know how shunyata came to be part of Buddhist philosophy but I think Nagarjuna played an important role in its history.

Because it is empty of own-being ~ Nāgārjuna — Wayfarer

Is it just me or does this sound very similar to Sartre's "essence". I find that nihilism, existentialism and everyone from that neighbourhood (jungian psychology as well but I'm not too familiar with it) come closest to Eastern philosophies/religions. But they all sort of "slipped" and ended on an extreme. Nihilism "slipped" in that it saw the lack of "essence" or "own being" of things as a reason to denounce the world and thought that mere fact was the cause of human suffering.

Existentialism got closer by recognizing that the world doesn't "owe" us to have its own self being and that our suffering is not due only to that fact but but more so to our "lack of purpose" and we can create our own puposes to solve the issue. It didn't notice that this "creating of purpose" would never end. Despite acknowledging that our source of suffering is failing to achieve our purposes, it didn't go the extra step of advising people to have no such rigid purpose which is what Zen and Buddhism preach.

Thanks for all the great comments!

Hegel believed the substantial Absolute gives birth to nothing and being, which in turn sublate each other into the universe. The universe is thus, for Hegel, becoming or shunyata. The basis of it though is substance and not void (like in Buddhism). I love the Beatles song Tomorrow Never Knows, especially the Anthology version. Anyways, some philosophers say everything is made of negations of nothing. I don't know yet how this works out mathematically

The Daodejing says "tranquility is returning", "return to the state of infancy", and "return to the state of the uncarved block". This is the opposite of futuristic Christianity. Laozi being born an old man is not that he was a man as a baby, but a baby as a man (throughout his life). This is non-dualism.

Where do people get this idea, though, that babies think their mothers are themselves?