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Taylor Lapeyre's avatar

I have always been under the impression that the concept of "emptiness" in Zen Buddhism is not at all a reference to some sort of nihilistic image of nothingness, but rather references a state of mind where the practitioner overcomes their mind's habit of "objectifying" or "categorizing" the world into individual parts, and rather experiences the world "all at once" as a singular, unitary being which their mind is a part of.

The word "emptiness" is not a moniker for "nothingness", but a reference to a realization of existence as "empty" of the form which our minds impose upon it.

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Addison Hodges Hart's avatar

"I could have argued with him (I’m sure I made some feeble attempts), as I have in past posts here, that Zen – deriving as it does from a Taoist view of reality even more than it does from a Buddhist one – classically does have a transcendent aim, that its language doesn’t preclude what we might call “God,” that it is unapologetically a religious way of seeing the cosmos, that “emptiness” in its schema refers to a burgeoning and self-giving reality, and that scientism is not conceptually congruent with it — but I know it would have met with an impermeable materialistic wall of determined resistance."

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David Guy's avatar

One time I was on a retreat with Shohaku Okumura, who mentioned in a lecture that it was one thing to understand emptiness intellectually, another thing to experience it in your practice. Later, in dokusan, I said to him, “I think I understand it intellectually” (he said, “You’re lucky,” which made me wonder if I really did), but I hadn’t fully experienced it. But I said that, when I did encounter it experientially, it didn’t seem empty at all. It seemed full.

“You could just as easily call it fullness,” I said.

He said, “Yes, you could.”

I said, “You could also call it God.” That seemed a little daring, but that’s the way it seemed to me.

He smiled, and said, “Yes, you could.” Then he said, “You know, Uchiyama (Okumura’s teacher, and the author of what I consider the best book on zazen, Opening the Hand of Thought) didn’t just read the Bible when he taught at that Catholic school. (He had studied Catholicism early in his life, before he became a Zen monk.) “He read it all his life. He read it until he died.”

I hadn’t realized that. But it made me feel differently about everything. I resolved to go back to the Gospels and try to read them as if I had never seen them before. That’s very hard to do, of course, but I enjoyed it, and wrote about on my website (davidguy.org) as “A Buddhist Reads the Bible.” Most interesting for me.

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Addison Hodges Hart's avatar

Thanks for that insightful comment.

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David Guy's avatar

I agree.

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Addison Zeller's avatar

That’s correct.

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Addison Hodges Hart's avatar

I say as much above in the paragraph where I mention Taoism.

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Taylor Lapeyre's avatar

Thank you, I must have misread.

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Jason Schock's avatar

Addison, another bullseye hit! As a practicing Christian who has some interest (though less of late) in what Zen has to teach us, the one area of Zen I've struggled with is the implication of nihilism - the worst of all philosophies, especially if true. I realize Zen doesn't teach nihilism but I wonder about the implications of non-theism and non-self and how that cashes out in everyday life. To me, and I know I’m biased, the implications of non-theism and non-self point towards nothingness which I cash out in terms of despair, not hope. A grossly simplistic observation: my internal landscape seems to prefer a personal God which ‘guarantees’ victory and divine order and vindication in the end (think of the end of the book of Revelation) over the Buddhist concept of nirvana where the self is swallowed up into the whole (think of the self as a drop of water that is poured into the ocean). Existentially, Buddhism can lean towards ‘feeling’ nihilistic and without purpose to me, though I know intellectually this is not the case (or need not be), which your article nicely reflects - thank you.

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David Simpson's avatar

“True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us only as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques…” I pray that he is right 😊

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David Simpson's avatar

Whichever way, it will be heavenly 😊

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James's avatar

Thank you again for your taking the time to post this (and other recent posts which were exceedingly helpful—St Peter of Damascus comes to mind). I’ve read Merton’s books as well as Thomas Keating’s works on contemplative prayer—and as others have said here, I still lean more towards the concrete and personal Jesus Prayer. May God bless you and your family.

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David Simpson's avatar

While I generally concur with all you say (maybe we should stop talking about emptiness!) I do have a problem with the conventional Christian view of the person, and God. I think the person / persona only exists in this life, and that when “I” die, the drop returns to the infinite ocean of love that created and sustained that “I”. Christians seem very attached (or bound) to their individual eternal survival, despite Jesus praying that we may all be One, as he and his father are One - no more I/Thou. I think the idea of being locked up with little me for eternity is the closest thing I can imagine to the perpetual torment your brother so rightly condemns.

In this light I find NDEs very interesting. I have had one or two NDE like experiences (NDE lite perhaps). What is interesting about these accounts is how culturally and psychologically determined they are. I think we experience something of the ocean of love, but the experience is filtered and transmuted by our own faith, values and psychology. So feelings of coming home, of being completely and unequivocally accepted and loved, of experience of the One, may, for example, be modelled or imaged as meeting all our loved ones again. But they are at the threshold of the tunnel of light, our entry into and complete absorption by the One. What was so frustrating about my experiences was how transitory they were. I could literally feel my ego, my little I, rushing in and trying to possess or grasp the experience, to make it “mine”, which of course was instant death. So I meditate, rest in silence, in an attempt to at least push the little I to the side for a while, and to try to pray ceaselessly in all that I do - which is to say, no clinging, no aversion, no ignorance. Fail miserably, naturally 😂

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Addison Hodges Hart's avatar

The model is the Trinity, in which both complete union and hypostatic distinction do not cancel one another out. No one is arguing "that being locked up with oneself for eternity" is what is meant by eternal life. But neither is the Christian hope that of utterly disappearing as a created being into some vast undifferentiated "ocean" of Bigger Being. I am avoiding the word "person" here on purpose; it conjures up for Westerners the notion of "individualism." Certainly, no one -- either in this age or the next -- is truly "individual." We derive our existence from others and from the very root of created existence. In Christ we constitute "one Body" with the resurrected Christ. We are "united" truly with his death and risen life "in the Spirit" (this is repeatedly stated throughout the apostolic writings). When we participate *together* in his sacramental body and blood, we are renewing this identification both with him and all the members of his Body in every age. It is a faint foretaste of the perfect union we will share in our deification ("becoming God by grace") -- which means *both* a real union, a true oneness, and simultaneously the fulfillment of our distinct selves. As St. Sophrony of Essex put it, "His life is mine." We cannot imagine this intermingled life lived in God, in eternity, in "fellowship" with everything and everyone when God is "all in all" -- but it will not merely be some sort of erasure of our selves (a paltry expectation at most), but rather the expansion of them infinitely and all-inclusively.

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Todd's avatar

To knit-pick, and I know this is and has been used all the time, but the ocean fails as a metaphor here. Having been born and lived most of my life on the coast I find this especially annoying. My grudge here is against sloppy, lazy imagery, which does not really serve despite its seeming convenience. The ocean is not a single thing, but teems with and is dependent on life of all sorts and kinds (each of which has its own life), deeply exchanging with the land and its creatures, breathing with the atmosphere, moving with the celestial bodies above. If anything, the ocean as a metaphor or analogy is a better argument for a union of bodies pouring out and gathering together, serving and giving life to the low and the high, rather than a undifferentiated, singular, self existing mass - which as far as I can say, exists only as a possibility in the blankness at the limit of human attention. That said, I can now stand convicted myself of the same offense a thousand times over.

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