Emptiness
In Early Buddhism, Emptiness was synonymous with the non-self nature of the five aggregates and the six sense bases. In Mahayana, the concept was expanded to also refer to the tenet that all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature. The doctrine of emptiness equates the emptiness of phenomena with their dependent origination and Impermanence and thus with their being devoid any permanent substance or primary, substantial existence. Emptiness is thus in direct opposition to essentialism and eternalism. Since things have the nature of lacking true existence or their own being, all things are mere conceptual constructs because they are just impermanent collections of causes and conditions. It requires the right hemisphere to be aware of emptiness, because the right hemisphere is able to integrate individual aspects of things into a coherent whole whereas the left sees only separate entities. Also because The right hemisphere is better at dealing with fluidity and motion, whereas the left is better at dealing with things in stasis
This also applies to the principle of causality itself, since everything is dependently originated. If one is unaware of this, things may seem to arise as existents, remain for a time and then subsequently perish. In reality, dependently originated phenomena do not arise or remain as inherently existing phenomena and yet they still appear as a flow of conceptual constructs. Thus both existence and nihilism are ruled out. Any enduring essential nature would prevent the process of dependent origination, or any kind of origination at all. For things would simply always have been, and will always continue to be, without any change. This is why nothing can be fully understood without its opposite, and if a single set of views were to dominate society, the world would be static and dull. The doctrine of emptiness is an attempt to show that it is neither proper nor strictly justifiable to regard any metaphysical system as absolutely valid. It doesn’t lead to nihilism, but a Model Agnosticism.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Philosophy / Epistemology / Ontology Status:☀️