Shunyata

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Śūnyatā, शून्यता (Sanskrit, Pali: suññatā), 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 Nāgārjuna 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."

śūnyatā in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras

In the Heart Sutra

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.

• "The noble bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara, engaged in the depths of the practice of the perfection of wisdom, looked down from above upon the five skandhas (aggregates), and saw that they were empty in their essential nature."
• "Here, O Sariputra, emptines is form; form is just emptiness. Apart from form, emptiness is not; emptiness, form is not. Emptiness is that which is form, form is that which is emptiness. Just thus are perception, cognition, mental construction, and consciousness."
• "Here, O Sariputra, all phenomena of existence are marked by emptiness: not, arisen, not destroyed, not unclean, not clean not deficient nor fulfilled."

śūnyatā in Nāgārjuna

For Nāgārjuna, who provided the most important philosophical formulation of śūnyatā, 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 Nāgārjuna to put forth a bold argument regarding the relation of nirvāṇa and saṁsāra. If all phenomenal events (i.e., the events that constitute saṁsāra are empty, then they are empty of any compelling ability to cause suffering. For Nāgārjuna, nirvāṇa is neither something added to saṁsāra nor any process of taking away from it (i.e., removing the enlightened being from it). In other words, nirvāṇa is simply saṁsāra rightly experienced in light of a proper understanding of the emptiness of all things.

See also

• Nagarjuna
• Madhyamaka
• Mulamadhyamakakarika
• ākiñcañña
• Foundationalism

External Links

• Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (log in with userID "guest")
• Advayavada Buddhism
• Atman in Sunyata and the Sunyata of Atman An attempt to reconcile the alleged difference between Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta on the nature of the Self.
• A View on Buddhism

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