[Buddha-l] Emptiness

[Richard Hayes]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 10:06 -0400, Jackhat1 at aol.com wrote:

> From a practice standpoint, I don't see a difference between Thera's  
> teaching on no-self and Mahayana's on emptiness. However, I don't know much  about 
> Mahayana. What do you see as the difference?

In Nagarjuna (and I leave it to others to decide whether he was Mahayana
or not--I think not especially) "empty" means two things.
Metaphysically, it means nothing more than dependent on conditions. From
a linguistic point of view it means conceptualized through attachments.
The insight seems to be that our ideas arise in accordance with our
perceptions of our wants and needs. No desire, no ideas. (That's why
Buddhist practice results in death to philosophy.) Dharmakirti (who may
also have been a Mahayanin) also had a view that all speech is
ultimately rooted in desires. Societies give names to things about which
they have desires (and aversions, which are just desires with a negative
valence) and leave other things pretty much unnamed.

All of this certainly seems fully compatible with the doctrine of
non-self at the doctrinal level. At the level of practice, quien sabe?
What does the practice of non-self look like? What does the practice of
emptiness look like? In both cases, I reckon the practice consists in
abandoning attachment. From non-attachment flows the cultivation of
everything skillful and the elimination of everything unskillful. Thus
have I guessed. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico