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Emptiness is form and form is emptiness

Mayflow

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This will be mostly from Buddhist philosophical standpoints but in truth it is either as true and real from any standpoint or it is not.

'I am not, I will not be.
I have not, I will not have.
This frightens all children,
And kills all fear in the wise.'
- Nagarjuna
 

Scott N Denver

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Ummm, what is the point of your thread here? To quote from the heart sutra and its peers [diamond sutry, ashtavakra gita, etc]? To assert "non-dual truth" [a la ramana mahrshi, nisargadatta mahahraj, papaji, etc]? To get posters responses? Something else?

Also, why did you pick that Nagarjuna quote?
 

sculpting

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um, well so an empty space by definition is the boundary surrounding the empty space-it is defined by it's boundaries, by the abscence of things inside that space.

So the form is the boundary that contains the emptiness.

Seems like this would hold true in two or three dimensions in standard-shit-wtf-eucleidian geometries?

However I am not certain This would hold true in higher dimesnions or not. That would be topology, so not sure where it would go as I think the boundaries get really odd there and actually can exist inside of one another???

So that might disprove your argument.
 

Scott N Denver

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your first post doesnt sound like an assertion, it sounds like a hypothetical [it is either true and real or it is not]. Are you familiar with the two truths doctrine of buddhism, relative truth and absolute truth? "In relative truth you exist, in ultimate truth you do not" for example.

I still dont understand why you picked that nagarjuna quote? I agree that it is a statement from truth, but like many statements of zen it doesn't tell you HOW to get there. If you want to make "pointing out statements", why not make them instead of what sounds like an assertion that your treating as a hypothetical.

Also, as various people [the buddha, jaggi vasudev], believing in something gets you little or nothing, what really matters is to have it as your experience. Whats the Buddha's quote, "dont believe because it is written down, don't believe it because I said it, believe something only because you have seen it for yourself"?

You, or I for that matter, could stand here and assert the experiences or teachings of Buddhism all we want, "karma holds, reincarnation/rebirth/whatever-you-wanna-call-it" occurs, after death states look like_____, but you, or I, asserting them doesn't mean that all of the sudden other people are going to believe it. And even if they do, its at best a belief founded upon us saying it, not something that they have personally experienced.

Oh, and picking a quote that involves scaring children ["this frightens all children"], that hardly seems the way to open the minds of others who might have some interesting in Buddhism and its like. Again, I either don't see the point of your thread, or I do but think your not achieving it very well. I could say "Ommm ram ram" but its not like that's all of the sudden going to make people become Hindu. And if I wanted to state what I thought were meaningful, insightful, penetrating, or whatever points of Hinduism, I'd probably quote powerful lines of advanced people or from the whatever religious books.

I kind of feel like you were going to keep adding posts that contain additional quotes,
ones that I hope don't involve scaring children. I have an INTJ friend, whose a research scientist, and strongly Catholic. When I go see him he makes a point to tell me how Buddhism makes no sense to him whatsoever. He talks about "Buddhists always go around claiming they don't exist, or don't have a self, or somehow aren't real or something, its stupid and makes no sense to me. What a dumb non-sensical religion!" Do you somehow think that by posting lines referrring to lack of self that people are going to line up to be like "Yeah, that is so true! Right on Buddhism" or something? Sure there are people who have an interest in Buddhism and you might pique their interest, but come on there aren't THAT many people who fit that bill. And if you do want to teach THOSE people, I'd suggest getting training in some Buddhist group and then teaching in that group. Unless your trying to do some sort of general proselytizing? I agree, some people have "predispostions", and perhaps your hoping one of them will come across this and get "kicked" into practicing or something, but again there aren't THAT many of those people out there.

And if you are proselytizing, do we really want every religious group out there to start using this forum for that purpose???
 

Scott N Denver

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um, well so an empty space by definition is the boundary surrounding the empty space-it is defined by it's boundaries, by the abscence of things inside that space.

So the form is the boundary that contains the emptiness.

Seems like this would hold true in two or three dimensions in standard-shit-wtf-eucleidian geometries?

However I am not certain This would hold true in higher dimesnions or not. That would be topology, so not sure where it would go as I think the boundaries get really odd there and actually can exist inside of one another???

So that might disprove your argument.

Ok, I was a math major, and I'm trying to disect this. Admittedly, I never did take a topology course, but I've read some about it and such. I don't remember EVER seeing a definition of "empty space." Empty set yes, complement yes, boundary yes, but "empty space" no.

Let me ask a frank question, do you know what you are talking about??? For example, in math we don't define terms in reference to themself, "empty space is by definition the boundary surrounding the empty space". There are questions about "what is the boundary of the boundary" which I believe Poincare asked in the 1900's and the answer is zero. I've read descriptions of that but forgotten them. There are also questions about complements, and it gets a little odder when you talk about complements and the empty set.
 

Mayflow

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I kind of feel like you were going to keep adding posts that contain additional quotes...


Quite right on!:D

CONVENTIONAL AND ULTIMATE WISDOM
Albert Einstein:

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest
- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affectation for a few people near us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

From Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh:

"Enlightenment for a wave in the ocean is the moment the wave realises that it is water."
Wisdom in Buddhism can refer to two types of insight: conventional wisdom and ultimate wisdom:

Conventional wisdom relates to understanding the conventional world, or the world as we know it. Traditionally it refers to understanding the way in which karma functions; to understand which actions bring us happiness and which bring us suffering. Conventional wisdom covers all understanding of the world as it functions, including science, with the exception of ultimate wisdom.

Ultimate wisdom (jñana in Sanskrit) refers to a direct realisation which is non-dualistic, and contradicts the way in which we ordinarily perceive the world. The experience of ultimate truth or emptiness is beyond duality.

It is important to remember that emptiness here does not refer to nothingness or some kind of nihilistic view. Emptiness refers to the fact that ultimately, our day-to-day experience of reality is wrong, and is 'empty' of many qualities that we normally assign to it.

Describing this non-dual experience in words is not really possible, as language is based on duality and contrasts. Trying to explain this experience - which contradicts our normal perception - is a bit like explaining colours to someone who is born blind; difficult to say the least.
 
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