Emptiness in the Pali Canon

People's happiness depends upon their awaking. Contradiction, harmony, war, and suffering have cause from misunderstanding the world, which you are living. In the Buddha's teachings, he taught us the way of look at the world that is the doctrine of emptiness. Patrick Carré, a famous French Scholar, says about doctrine of Śūnyatā: ―This is a truly strange concept. If the world and ‗oneself', colorful entities are presenting, existing cannot deny, but in fact, they are empty, merely hollow, it must be cruelly mad that can advocate this unreasonable thing! Certainly, this respectable concept, the nihilism of the East may be merely ‗a Modern Movement' bringing temporary character in our homeland. Due to it is still searching for itself a way in the forest which contents all empty concepts to discover a position obviously and establish the entirely new truth.‖ Most people believe that the doctrine of emptiness was arisen from Nagārjuna but in fact the notion of emptiness was begun from the Buddha time. Nagārjuna merely received and developed it became the doctrine of emptiness. It is demonstrated by the Buddha's discourse in Pāli Nikayas. Afterwards, the doctrine developed in the Abhidharma schools. Besides, the system of Prajñāparamita Sūtras is place an importance role in this doctrine Last but not least, the period of the Madhyamaka School is the pinnacle period of emptiness philosophy. In this essay, Writer depended on the Buddha's teachings that recorded in Pāli Nikāyas to search origin for this doctrine.

Interpreting “non-self” as no subject (or mental entity) of “awareness” by regarding the five aggregates as “awareness”, leads to an original three-tier structure (“subject”, “be aware of” and “object”) to summarize the progressive stages of “emptiness”, bridging various Buddhist schools in a unified analytical framework.

Théologiques, 2012

Abe Masao’s contribution to late twentieth-century Buddhist-Christian dialogue was important in opening new avenues of interfaith understanding. However, some clarity in this dialogue was sacrificed when Christian participants were given to believe that they encountered « the Buddhist view » in Abe’s presentations. The present article contends that in significant ways Abe represented only the Kyōto School philosophy that drew on earlier Japanese philosophers of Absolute Nothingness and their appropriation of Zen enlightenment as the locus for all religious understanding, a place where all negation and affirmation are simultaneously affirmed and denied. The present article contends that Abe’s Kyōto School philosophy does not represent the broad classical traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, wherein emptiness does not mean absolute nothingness, but the dependent arising of all places and all philosophies.

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2016

In recent decades, there has been growing assimilation of ancient Buddhist practices and principles into Western research and applied psychological settings. One Buddhist principle that is currently receiving an increasing amount of scientific interest is emptiness. Emptiness asserts that all phenomena-including the "self"are empty of intrinsic existence. This paper examines how logical inquiry and evidence from diverse psychological and scientific disciplines appear to be gradually adding credence to the notion of emptiness. The paper explicates how, if emptiness theory continues to be validated and accepted by Western psychologists, it will become necessary to reexamine some established beliefs in relation to the workings of both the psychological and physical world. Examples of how emptiness might develop and/or complement psychological and wider scientific understanding in this respect include coming to the acceptance that: (i) what is currently understood to be waking reality is effectively a shared dream, (ii) the "self" does not inherently exist, (iii) the underlying cause of mental illness is an individual's belief that they inherently exist, and (iv) maladaptive psychosocial functioning and the absence of mental illness are not necessarily mutually exclusive occurrences. It is concluded that there is a clear need for greater research into the validity and applications of emptiness. However, if supportive empirical findings relating to emptiness continue to emerge, it is possible that some of the next important scientific "discoveries" concerning mind and matter will emerge at the intersection of ancient Eastern contemplative practice, empirically-grounded Western psychological insights, and quantum mechanics.

Translation of an article by 葉少勇 Shaoyong Ye：佛教哲學‘空觀’的起源與沿革 uploaded 14.6.2023

2016

To link the artists' works, exhibition curator Linda Michael has focused on the Buddhist concept of 'Emptiness' or Sunyata. Unlike the negative connotations this concept often carries in Western contexts, 'Emptiness' in a Buddhist milieu connotes a space rich in possibility and spiritual liberation. As Michael explains, the concept emerges from an understanding that, ' ... all entities are part of an ever-changing causal chain of growth and decay. All things emerge as "dependent arisings" from a matrix of conditions, in turn becoming part of another momentary cluster of causes and effects and so on to infinity. All dharmas (every mental and physical entity, even the Buddha) are interconnected and therefore without essence .. . Emptiness is thus the unbroken ground of being that is egoless, conceptless and unobjectifiable ... Things exist, yet without endurance or inherent substance.'[1]