Offensive Content - Waddaya Think?

It really is interesting how this sense of self has been dead for 13.8 billion years, we're born and have a chance for living 120 years, and the entire time we're like "I don't wanna die!!!"

I love this piece of advice given to King Edwin of Northumbria, by one of his chief counsellors, in 627 AD. As recorded by the Venerable Bede.

"The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and Thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all."

Yes, I just love the poetry of the sparrow. I guess at one level he is saying that people use "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" as a crutch to suppress their emotions, rather than truly knowing emptiness and form, and this of course is unskilful and unhelpful. The extract does seem to show some clinging to non-existence though, which may be its own kind of suppression.

I would have thought the better view is to be able to say through knowing it directly that existence doesn't apply, as it is just a property of the grasper/grasped relationship. Better to go beyond grasper/grasped, and eventually utterly beyond. After all, there is no point clinging to emptiness, as emptiness is none other than form (i.e. emptiness is not only the source of form, it is also itself a fabrication). That may also be Kenneth's point, I suppose, in a roundabout kind of way.

Chris Marti wrote: Kenneth is getting at something more than the fact that our existence is ephemeral:

To protect ourselves from the unbearable cognitive dissonance of considering our own non-existence, we typically turn to a nonsense concept like "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" is simultaneously non-threatening and superficially clever. Generations of Buddhists have found comfort here. If you find your mind turning toward this idea whenever the topic of non-existence is raised, be suspicious.

Why is he calling the famous Buddhist phrase "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" a nonsense concept?

I think he's off in a bit of an intellectual, conceptual cul-de-sac. Maybe he's addressing unenlightened people who he has noticed clinging to the concept in this way?

I get a sense that he is poking at or exposing any form of clinging to eternity view in many of us, which is good! It's so true that many of us like the idea of existing forever, and will use Buddhist passages to try to support our cherished eternity fantasies.

This being said, there are a few passages in the Pali canon that seem to support the idea of Nibbana as a form of "unconditioned awareness", such as Vinnanam anidhasanam (trans: unmanifestative consciousnes) in Digha-Nikaya, and other such passages, yet other passages where Nibbana is presented as "extinction."

Also, there is also annihilation view which the Buddha rejects as well.

Sometimes I wonder about something that may be even more radical or "disturbing" about Nibbana than "oblivion": that even those who have "experienced" it don't know what it is, even though they are transformed by the cessation moment at whatever path level. There is no "subject-object" there so it cannot be known, nor described, even as a "nothing". Could "nothing", or "oblivion", be a metaphore for what is unknowable, just as "unconditioned consciousness" be a metaphore? Should everything we say about Nibbana, including "oblivion" and "nothing", be taken as metaphores for what is inexpressible and unknowable? This idea of "everything and anything we say about nibbana should be taken as metaphore" was advanced to me recently by a meditator friend of mine.

In such cases, for those who cling to eternity view, metaphores of "nothingness" could be the skillful mean needed. And for those who cling to annihilation view, perhaps talks of Nibbana as "the Unconditioned" is better suited.

I've read two books lately by Rodney Smith, in which he presents NIbbana as "Awareness without contents", and goes on to say that this awareness can never be experienced because it has no features by which it can be identified, and it is the very ground from which experiences arise. He says: "awareness is not an experience at all but the ground from which all experiences arise."
It reminds me of a metaphore from physics: Physics says that light can only be seen if there are particles of matter for it to land on. If we had a big ball of light, say a Sun, but no particles of matter anywhere around it, the whole place would be dark, even though there is full of light. The light would be unmanifested. So when awareness shines alone, with no formations/experiences to land on, it feels like complete oblivion: cessation.

I like this metaphore because it sides neither with eternity view nor annihilation view, it seems.

Anyway, I could be off track here.

Chris Marti wrote: I think Kenneth is saying that "form is emptiness and emptiness form" is a Buddhist refuge. Refuge meaning a place to hide from bad things.

Oh yeah - clinging to rites and rituals!

I'm going to go with a mix of Eric and Benoit... Throwing form/emptiness under the bus in the attempts to drag eternalist views with it, but poor old form/emptiness is a perfectly fine metaphor to the extent it's understood as a metaphor.

No rest for the living!

I would like to clarify that although Kenneth's view may sound like the annihilation view, I don't think it is. Strictly speaking from a canonical point of view, the annihilation view is that there is a self that is eventually annihilated. It is still a form of self-view in the end, which of course Kenneth does well to repudiate.