Śūnyatā

All right, these structures became especially associated within, uh, Japanese esoteric Buddhist traditions such as Shingon and, uh, Tendai, T-E-N-D-A-I.

Uh, but Buddhist philosophy takes it even deeper through the concept of sunyata.

Sunyata in Buddhism is emptiness, and emptiness points toward the idea that phenomena does not possess completely independent, permanent, self-existing essences, that everything arises through conditions and relationships.

So think about it like this.

Think about a wave.

What are we to make of such a claim, right? That we're not conscious, we're not subject to karma, to cause and effect.

What are we to understand by this? Well, if we remember one of the, the things that Nishitani said, I think it will be helpful here that from the, the standpoint of Sunyata, we are to understand that appearance is just an appearance.

The representation, just a representation.

It's like an optical illusion in that way.

So the beautiful one with auspiciousness, that's the meaning of her name, or his name.

So he represents the transcendental wisdom of Shunyata, emptiness, in the Heart Sutra we talk about.

Actually, they all have the same compassion, wisdom, uh, practices, and all this, but we're just saying, like, it's like a, something like a s-symbol, okay? Manjushri is here.

Yeah.

Heraclitus also conceived of the ordering principle of the cosmos as a child at play.

And yet Nishitani says, quote, they cannot be said to have arrived at the authentic self-centeredness of absolute emptiness that holds all dharmas in its grip that master wherever it is makes wherever it is true however one looks at it theirs remains a standpoint of will not the standpoint of samadhi end quote so nietzsche and heraclitus are not other directed enough to be truly self-centered Again, from the understanding, the very paradoxical understanding that we have put forward from the standpoint of Shunyata here, neither Nietzsche nor Heraclitus take things through to that field, which I would agree with.

I guess, you know, we would, Nishitani and I would disagree on whether or not we need to take things through to that field, I suppose, but I'll leave my own opinions aside.

Nietzsche confronts nihility, he goes through the purgative fires of mechanization in which the real logic of scientific rationalism makes itself manifest, but Nietzsche's will, his conception of will to power, doesn't gather together all things.

...

I feel like we haven't actually really explained what emptiness-

Emptiness is

... like is.

Correct.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Emptiness of what? Empty...

Form is empty.

Emptiness is form.

Emptiness is not other than form.

Form is also not other than emptiness.

In the same way, feeling, discrimination, composition, and consciousness are empty.