Marsha: This too is very interesting...
"Emptiness too, does not exist by way of its own being, as it is without an essential nature. Emptiness is an absence, not an essence. When a person discovers that what he or she thought existed does not, the realization is a stunning absence. We think that things correspond to their appearance and exist in this same way. We take objects to be exist as their own things, including the self of persons and when such identity, when the establishment of true entities cannot be found, its absence is astonishing. "During meditation, emptiness is experienced as non-conceptual and without subject-object duality. However emptiness teachings resist reification, turning this absence back into an independent essence. And so it is said that emptiness too, is empty. Emptiness is not the substance of phenomena, not its “filler,” substratum or indicative of the absence of all phenomena. Emptiness is not an independent entity, but is inseparable from form and countless dependent conditions, though all empty ones. "Nothing stands alone, even though at the time of abiding in emptiness, there is no conceptual mediator present. Many things are not conceptually mediated, such as being startled, despite there being a recognition of what occurred. This is why there is some ability to talk or write about the experience of emptiness afterwards, although the words are not the same as the non-conceptual experience. Emptiness then, is dependent upon perception. For what cannot be perceived cannot be known. "Emptiness then, is the absence of inherent existence, but not all existence. Everything is an interconnected web of both thing and no thing, neither existent nor non-existent, neither one nor many. Emptiness teachings are about freedom from the burden of believing that things inherently exist, not about finding an ultimate truth to try and feel free in." http://www.emptinessteachings.com/Emptiness.html Sent from my iPad Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
