This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Apr 2008, by Larry Keiler.
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29 Mar 13
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17 Apr 08
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Buddhist practice is fundamentally about change. That is, Buddhism is about transforming—by means of ethical conduct, meditation, ritual, mindfulness and so forth—unskilful mental events into skilful mental events.
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If entities were not empty—if they possessed an independent existence unaffected by any alterations in other things—they would be unchanging and unchangeable. And, thus, if we were autonomously existing beings, we would be unable to gain enlightenment, or indeed to make any spiritual progress at all. We would be stuck, spiritually speaking, with the way we are at present.
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The teaching of emptiness is actually an affirmation of the dynamic interconnectedness of all things.
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In other words, the whole world of dependently originating entities is simply a phantasm, a show, a mental creation, a mere appearance. So, the absence of inherent existence, the emptiness, of all things in the final analysis means, for Madhyamaka, not simply that all things dependently originate. It means, furthermore that all these dependently originating things are mere mental fabrications.
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Arguably, an entity may be a mind-independent reality, but nevertheless depend for its existence on a variety of external conditions and essential components.
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A tree, for instance, may exist independently of the mind even though it is dependent on numerous external conditions and components for its existence. An entity is not necessarily simply a concept, entirely reducible to the intrinsic and external factors on which its existence depends.
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This disagreement about the meaning of emptiness entails, or is entailed by, quite divergent and incompatible understandings of Madhyamaka philosophy. On the one hand, there is the understanding of Madhyamaka as asserting that reality is simply the lack of inherent existence of all entities. On the other hand, there is the understanding of Madhyamaka as advocating, in addition, a further Reality—the higher emptiness—which is quite beyond all conceptual and linguistic categories. It is undefinable and indescribable. Madhyamaka understood in this latter way is, it might be argued, not nihilism for, even if the conditioned world is envisaged by them as totally fabricated, there is for the Maadhyamika an entirely unfabricated Unconditioned Reality. However, it might be objected that such a version of Madhyamaka simply combines nihilism with regard to the fabricated, conditioned world with an eternalistic belief in a permanent and blissful nirvaa.na. If this objection is correct, far from treading the Middle Way, such a Maadhyamika appears to fall into both extreme views simultaneously.
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