Shunyata Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Śūnyatā, शून्यता (Sanskrit, Pali: ), or "Emptiness," is a term for a concept or set of concepts playing an important role in some versions of the Buddhist metaphysical critique, but also having important implications for Buddhist epistemology and phenomenology. Shunyata is most often associated with Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka school, which is usually counted as an early Mahayana school, but according to a number of accounts within the Mahayana, modern Theravada Buddhism, and also Western scholarship, Shunyata, at least in the hands of Nagarjuna, follows directly from (or simply summarizes) the older doctrines of Anatta (Pali, Sanskrit:Anātman – the rejection of Ātman;), and Paticcasamuppada (Pali, Sanskrit: pratītyasamūtpāda;) (Interdependent Arising).Shunyata signifies the nonsubstantiality or lack of essential nature of everything one encounters in life. (i.e., that everything is empty of substance, being, soul, essence, etc.) Everything is inter-related, never self-sufficient or independent; nothing has independent reality.
It should be noted that the exact definition and extent of shunyata varies within the different Buddhist schools of philosophy.In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, detailed dialogs between the perspectives of the various schools are preserved in order to train students.
The scholar Walpola Rahula explains that once Ananda the attendant asked Gautama Buddha, "People say the word Sunya. What is Sunya?" The Buddha replied, "Ananda, there is no self, nor anything pertaining to self in this world. Therefore, the world is empty."
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The Heart Sutra declares that the skandhas, which constitute our mental and physical existence, are empty in their nature or essence, i.e., empty of any such nature or essence. But it also declares that this emptiness is the same as form (which connotes fulness)--i.e., that this is an emptiness which is at the same time not different from the kind of reality which we normally subscribe to events; it is not a nihilistic emptiness that undermines our world, but a "positive" emptiness which defines it.
For , who provided the most important philosophical formulation of , emptiness as the mark of all phenomena means is a natural consequence of dependent origination; indeed, he identifies the two. In his analysis, any enduring essential nature (i.e., fullness) would prevent the process of dependent origination, would prevent any kind of origination at all, for things would simply always have been and always continue to be. That things happen is proof that things lack the kind of nature attributed to them in mainstream Indian metaphysics.
An interesting consequence of this is that this enables to put forth a bold argument regarding the relation of and sasāra. If all phenomenal events (i.e., the events that constitute sasāra are empty, then they are empty of any compelling ability to cause suffering. For , is neither something added to sasāra nor any process of taking away from it (i.e., removing the enlightened being from it). In other words, is simply sasāra rightly experienced in light of a proper understanding of the emptiness of all things.
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In the Heart Sutra
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