[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Richard Nance]

Hi Richard -- you wrote:

>> That claim, made in
>> various ways by a couple of scholars, is that there is no way of
>> telling by what a person says whether or not she grasps the ultimate
>> truth.

This made me wonder in what context(s) it would genuinely be important
to tell whether someone has grasped the ultimate truth. The question
looks as though it's pitched from a third-person perspective -- i.e.,
on meeting someone who acts in a certain way, we might think that
his/her actions evince a grasp of the ultimate truth. But we might be
deceived about this. How can we know that we're not deceived about
this? Here's one answer (presuming, of course, that "grasp of ultimate
truth" = "awareness of emptiness"):

>> one who acts on emptiness is
>> compassionate toward all beings and responds to try to eliminate all
>> suffering wherever it may be and no matter who thinks (falsely, it
>> turns out) that the suffering is his.

But, as you go on to note:

> That answer also seems
>> inadequate, since universal love can be based on things other than an
>> awareness of emptiness

Inadequate for what purpose, exactly? Determining the extent of a
person's Buddhist realization, perhaps. But an answer like that makes
it sound as though the issue comes down to a perceived need to mark
terrain as Buddhist; I assume that such territorial pissing isn't the
sort of rationale you had in mind. So: let's say that it's true to say
that universal love can be based on things other than an awareness of
emptiness. If this is right, what drives the need to know whether
behavior that manifests universal love stems from the awareness of
emptiness or from something else? (Why not simply say, "I don't know
why this person acts has he or she does -- but one reason could
perhaps be that he or she has developed an awareness of emptiness. So
it's not a bad idea to cultivate such an awareness"?)

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Indiana