What is emptiness? Is it the feeling of a bottomless pit in your stomach, or is it the feeling of something physically or mentally missing? When people say they feel lonely, do they feel empty? Are they looking for that lost piece that will make them feel complete? What is emptiness exactly?
There are many views on what emptiness entails. Our human mind wants us to believe that emptiness is the feeling of missing something. According to Dictionary.com, emptiness is “containing nothing; having none of the usual or appropriate contents”, or “destitute of some quality or qualities; devoid”. There are several more definitions, but these two stand out to me the most. Even the dictionary tells us that emptiness is the feelings that nothing is there, that we are devoid of something. We are convinced emptiness is when something is missing. For example, a solid object such as a cup, is used to contain things, such as liquid. A cup filled with liquid is considered full, while a cup filled with liquid is considered empty because it does not have anything inhabiting its physical form. However, according to http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html, this cup is not empty. “We usually say that a cup is empty if it does not contain any liquid or solid. This is the ordinary meaning of emptiness. But, is the cup really empty? A cup empty of liquids or solids is still full of air. To be precise, we must therefore state what the cup is empty of.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) But our human mind is so one tracked that we only look at the cup in a physical sense containing physical matter. We classify things as empty or full depending on their physical form or state. When we feel empty, we feel that we are missing something from our lives. Something we believe will make our life whole again, whether it be a materialistic item or a certain someone. We search for that special something to make us feel whole again.
But what is emptiness according to psychologists? The great prophets advocate Buddha believes that “"form is emptiness; emptiness is form". Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) When reading this quote, I took this key concept to mean one important thing. We as humans need form to help us live; we need structure in our lives to help us feel organized. We keep planners or organizers to schedule our meetings and what we have to do that day. But Buddha says that “form is emptiness”, meaning our structure we so carefully put together for ourselves is nothing but emptiness. He’s saying we don’t need forms to live our lives, we can just live. “Emptiness is form” because we got rid of that daily structure, and now we are finally living.
Buddha also tells us that being empty means being devoid of inherent existence. (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) What exactly does this mean? Inherent existence means there is nothing inhabiting the cup. We are partly right when saying that a cup is empty when not containing any liquid or solid, but we mean that in the physical sense. Buddha says that this cup is always empty because it is devoid of inherent existence. This doesn’t mean Buddha doesn’t think the cup exists, he knows the cup exists, but to a certain extent. “The cup exists, but like everything in this world, its existence depends on other phenomena. There is nothing in a cup that is inherent to that specific cup or to cups in general…The cup's properties and components are neither cups themselves nor do they imply cupness on their own. The material is not the cup. The shape is not the cup. The function is not the cup. Only all these aspects together make up the cup. Hence, we can say that for an object to be a cup we require a collection of specific conditions to exist. It depends on the combination of function, use, shape, base material, and the cup's other aspects. Only if all these conditions exist simultaneously does the mind impute cupness to the object. If one condition ceases to exist, for instance, if the cup's shape is altered by breaking it, the cup forfeits some or all of its cupness, because the object's function, its shape, as well as the imputation of cupness through perception is disrupted. The cup's existence thus depends on external circumstances. Its physical essence remains elusive.” (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html) The cup exists because of all these external forces or circumstances, these conditions that make a cup a cup. Just like we as humans exist because of conditions that make us human. So is this cup empty? Yes, if it is devoid of these circumstances, but then it would not be a cup.
Buddha says that anger is nothing more then just that...nothing. We are so consumed by the feeling of wanting to feel something that we classify and label what we want to feel. When we have "feelings" of anger towards someone or something, we are feeding into the concept of anger. Anger is nothing but a concept we are trying to force ourselves into believing, a physical state we want our minds to believe we are in. By classifying our anger as "my anger" or telling ourselves "I am angry", we are labeling nothing. Buddha says that if we were to just let our "anger" pass through and not react to it, we will realize that anger is nothing but a void we are trying to fill with our own emotions. This plays into the sense of emptiness because we take what we think we are feeling and fill it with our emotions, causing our minds to over think what is really nothing all along. We get ourselves so worked up these feelings of emotions that we make ourselves believe what we are feeling is real, even when it is nothing all along.
But why do we as humans feel the need to fill this empty void we feel, instead of embracing it? We always want to be whole, to feel as if our life is complete. We look at our emptiness as a negative force acting against us, something we must get rid of as soon as possible. We don't embrace this feeling of emptiness as something good. We need to understand what Buddha says about emptiness, and understand that we are all empty unless we have all these conditions making us whole. It is not a bad thing to feel empty or have a life with no structure. It’s also not a bad thing to stop labeling things as “I”, because by not labeling ourselves using the word “I” we are taking away the concept that our perception is all that matters.
Links Used
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html
http://www.viewonbuddhism.org/wisdom_emptiness.html#6
http://www.hinduwebsite.com/buddhism/essays/emptiness.asp
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emptiness
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