Empty

• Empty as in possibility, before name and form. The matrix of all phenomenon.
  • Empty like a cup before it’s filled.
• Existing only by convention. Not fixed, permanent, separate.
• Unity of form and emptiness.
• Between opposites lies emptiness, creative potential.

The chariot simile

From a Buddhist story about Nagasena and King Milinda, an illustration about not-self (anatman).

• The chariot is not one of its part.
  • You can’t take one part and say “this is a chariot.”
• The chariot is not all of its parts.
  • You can remove (at least) one part and still say “this is a chariot.”
  • If you start removing parts, at what point does it stop being a chariot?
• The chariot is not something separate from the parts.
  • There’s no no-part part you can point at and say “this is a chariot.”
• The chariot exists by convention, in aggregate, only.

Gathered notes

Empty as in:

• absence, not as in nothing or null.
  • Things, forms, don’t disappear or cease existing.
• ready, as in possibility.
  • Like an unplanted garden, like an empty cup.
• nothing in it, not as is in not there.
• not independent, not separate, not autonomous, not unchanging, not inherent.
• not fixed, permanent, separate.
• before content. Before names and forms.
  • Form is employed to make things clever. Emptiness is employed to make things useful.
• fluid, relative, transient, ungraspable, flexible, open.
• relative, transient, unbroken continuity.
• existing only by convention.

There’s no separation between form and emptiness, purity and impurity, sacred and profane, spiritual and material, perfection and imperfection. In between any two opposites lies emptiness, creative potential.

Form is a magnificent expression of emptiness, bursting with love.

Raw notes

From lots of other pages

• Not quite like nothing or null.
• Empty as in absence, the possibility of presence.
• Like a garden before anything’s growing in it. Like a cup before you put your drink into it.
• Empty as is before names and forms.
• Empty as in free, free of the habits of the expert.
• Empty like ready. Ready to observe. Ready to learn.
• Self and all things exist, but – contrary to our assumptions – they are empty of any inherent, enduring, autonomous self-nature.
• Empty as in: no sides, no bottom, no top.
• Even though the experience of something as empty is nonconceptual, it nonetheless doesn’t disappear or cease existing.
• Emptiness and suchness are the answers to two different questions about the same entity. Our everyday minds cannot make sense of this.
• When there are no things on the mind, that is called mindlessness. It is like an empty jar being called an empty jar because it has nothing in it, not because the substance of the jar itself isn’t there.
• If you become fixated upon “emptiness” as a principle or as a state of mind, this gives the sense of something there, which obstructs penetrating illumination of insight.
• Enlightened to the one-sided truth that the ego is empty and has no real substance.
• Enlightened by the realization that the ego and the Dharma are both empty.
• As long as you are conscious of your wish to be empty, you will never succeed in becoming empty.
• It is this very being, this very body-mind, which is empty of inherent, enduring, autonomous self-nature.
• Emptiness and boundarylessness are meaningless without something to be empty or boundaryless. The first step toward awakening to emptiness or boundarylessness is full acceptance of your very body, mind, and life.
• “Empty” as in fluid, relative, transient, ungraspable, flexible, open.
• In Buddhism, ‘emptiness’ is not nothingness, it is the fluidity of existence. It may be defined as the relativity of things, the transience of things, the totality of things, the ultimate ungraspability of things: the unbroken continuity of everything.
• The emptiness in which flux takes place is constantly filled by our memory and thoughts, and this is why things seem solid and constant to us.
• We see that everything is empty, nothing has a fixed, permanent, separate, “self”.
• Emptiness as in non-identification.
• Emptiness as in nothing existing independently of what forms it.
• Empty of self-existence.
• Empty means not grasping, not identifying. It doesn’t mean no thoughts, no sensations, no emotions.
• There’s no separation between form and emptiness, purity and impurity, sacred and profane, spiritual and material, perfection and imperfection.
• The whole appearance is empty of inherent, objective, observer-independent reality.
• Form is a magnificent expression of emptiness, bursting with love if only we can wake up and realize it.
• As Thich Nhat Hanh so beautifully explains, every apparent form contains the whole universe, which is the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, interdependence or interbeing.
• All phenomena are empty, aggregates, exist only by convention.
• It’s open, spacious, empty, luminous, formless, boundless.

From one-shots

• Empty as in absence, the possibility of appearance.
• In between any two opposites lies emptiness, creative potential.
• Emptiness means not independent, not separate, not unchanging.
• Form is employed to make things clever. Emptiness is employed to make things useful.

Added 2025-01-01, last updated 2025-01-11.