Thank you Alex,  

i am still troubled about the nature of 'boundaries' & the root of our
cravings/suffering...

--- In [email protected], Alex Bunard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm afraid you are confusing emptiness with
> formlessness, 

i think this may be correct.  
it is certainly true that 'emptiness' is problematic for me.

> Emptiness, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of
> the form/formless combo. Emptiness not only means
> absence of any attributes attributable to a form, but
> also absence of any attributes attributable to an
> absence of form (i.e.formless). That's why it's
> emptiness -- it is empty not only of attributes, but
> also of any essence, any substance.
> 

but i have trouble with this view of emptiness. 

this sounds to me too much like a denial of 'existance' - but my sense
is that emptiness has more to do with 'putting down' what we 'project
onto' existance.

sort of like your story of the farmer - emptiness seems to refer to the
lack of <farmer/man/direction-giver> as simply an illusion.
this doesn't mean that there was no 'substance' there - simply that
a conditioned view 'wrapped that substance' with an illusory context.


> Same as the farmer in the above example wasn't really
> there (he was merely imagined), the 'form is
> emptiness, emptiness is form' teaches that anything
> that we may discern is equally not there. It is merely
> ascribed, erroneously imputed. All the 'objects',
> 'forms', 'formless stuff', 'concepts', everything.

this is useful to me to the extent that 'the object of our
discernment' is not there.  but this becomes problematic for me if you
try to take it past the 'discernment' into the 'substance' that that
conditioned view is being projected onto.

i am resistant to the idea that practice would be about a denial of
existence...







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