"Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Emptiness is first and foremost a condition in which we dwell, abide and live.

Emptiness thus seems to be a perspective, a sensibility, a way of being in this poignant, contingent world.

Rather than being the negation of self, emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human.

Such emptiness is far from being an ultimate truth that needs to be understood through logical inference and then directly realized in a state of nonconceptual meditation. It is a sensibility in which one dwells, not a privileged epistemological object that, through knowing, one gains a cognitive enlightenment.

To dwell in emptiness means to inhabit fully the embodied space of one's sensory experience, but in a way that is no longer determined by one's habitual reactivity. To dwell in such emptiness does not mean that one will no longer suffer. As long as one has a body and senses, one will be "prone to the anxiety" that comes with being a conscious, feeling creature made of flesh, bones and blood.

For Gotama, the point is not to understand emptiness but to dwell in it. To dwell in emptiness brings us firmly down to earth and back to our bodies. It is a way of enabling us to open our eyes and see ordinary things as though for the first time. As the Buddha instructed his student Bahiya, to live in such a way means that "in the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed only the sensed; in that of which I am conscious, only that of which I am conscious.

How, in the course of Buddhist history, did the concept of emptiness evolve from a way of dwelling on earth unconditioned by reactivity into an ultimate truth to be directly cognized in a nonconceptual state of meditation?" 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"Emptiness means that everything changes according to conditions."

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 175

"When you look for the mind and examine introspectively, you cannot find it. We could call the inability to find anything 'emptiness'. What emptiness means is that there is nothing graspable. "

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 46

"The buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna refers to shunyata, emptiness, as "the exhaustion of all theories and views." Those who make shunyata into a theory are "incurable". Reifying it into something is grasping a snake by the wrong end." 

The world is made of stories - p. 38

"Tudo depende de condições para existir e nada tem existência própria independente. Tudo está conectado e condiciona a tudo. "Vazio" é a palavra utilizada para descrever o fato de que nada tem verdadeira natureza própria. 

Tomemos um pedaço de algodão como exemplo. Uma vez que tudo é interconectado, dizemos que o pedaço de tecido é "vazio". O tecido não tem realidade própria, é simplesmente condicionado por outras coisas. O tecido é feito de fio de algodão, o qual é produzido a partir do fruto do algodoeiro. Antes disso houve as sementes de algodão, que dependem de solo, ar, luz, água e nutrientes para se transformar em plantas que produzem o algodão. Assim, o tecido de algodão relaciona-se com tudo no universo, não pode existir de forma autônoma. Sem o restante do universo, não existiria. Analisando o tecido sob tal perspectiva, vemos que sua natureza essencial é vazia, ele não existe sozinho, de forma independente. Por isso dizemos que o vazio gera todas as coisas."

Budismo: significados profundos - p. 97-98

"Awakening too is a shunya concept. Nirvana is not something objectively real, for the distinction we make between samsara and nirvana is another example of dualistic thinking that we project onto our experience. Instead, Nagarjuna referes to nirvana as "the end of prapanca (conceptual elaborations)", which includes the end of such dualistic ways of thinking. I experience the world as it really is when I let go of the ways of thinking that I am normally stuck in.

Nagarjuna never actually claims that "samsara is nirvana". Rather, he says that no diferrence can be found between them. The two terms simply refer to different ways of experiencing the world. Nirvana is not another realm or dimension but the deep peace experienced when our mental turmoil ends, because the objects that we have been tryng to identify with - including the sense of self - are realized to be shunya. If things arise and pass away according to conditions, they have no reality of their own that we can cling to. When we do not cling to names and concepts, we can experience things as they are. This includes buddhist names and concepts, even the concept of nirvana and the very notion of  "a Buddha".

Lower truths are needed to point to the "higher truth". Yet, as Wittgenstein put it, after you have climbed up the ladder you must kick it away. Fortunately, buddhism is very good at helping us let go of such ladders."

Money, sex, war, karma

"People confuse two different levels of truth, the relative (or conventional) and the ultimate (or absolute). The conventional is not ultimately true, but it's needed to point to the ultimate, and the concept of shunyata is one of the conventional truths that help us realize the ultimate, which is something that cannot be expressed in words. In other words, shunyata is itself empty: it has meaning only in relation to something that is not-empty - that is, it is useful only for pointing out that things have no self-existence, to help pry us free from our attachment to things. Ultimately, there are no such things and therefore no shunyata either. We need to let go of the concept of shunyata too, just like the Buddha's raft."

Money, sex, war, karma

"Shunyata does not mean non-existence, or a void, nor does it describe some transcendent reality such as God or Brahman. Acording to Nagarjuna, shunyata simply refers to the fact that things have no essence of self-being of their own. All things arise and pass away according to causal conditions, which means they are dependent on other things that also arise and pass away."

Money, sex, war, karma

"For Buddhism our real problem isn't inability to keep living forever. The more basic problem is right here and now: that our sense of self isn't real, which gives us, again, a sense of lack that manifests as insecurity and ungroundedness. Since we don't feel real enough, and nothing we acquire ever makes us feel real enough, we long for immortality as a kind of substitute reality that can postpone the problem indefinitely."

Money, sex, war, karma

"Buddhism is about awakening, which means realizing something about the constructedness of the sense of self and the nothing at its core.

Usually that void at our core is so uncomfortable that we try to evade it, by identifying with something else that might give us stability and security.

The point isn't to get rid of the self: that's not possible, for there never has been a self. Nor do we want to get rid of the sense of self: that would be a rather unpleasant type of mental retardation. Rather, what we work toward is a more permeable, less dualistic sense of self, which is more aware of, and more comfortable with, its empty constructedness."

Money, sex, war, karma

"We can think of ourselves spiritually as being somewhere on a continuum between one and zero. One is the full embodiment of the "I" separate from all things, and zero is emptiness and the unconditioned. Spiritual practice is supposed to move us from one to zero.

This continuum can also be thought of in terms of time, with zero abiding within the timeless and one firmly entrenched within the ideas of past and future."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 215

"Por natureza-própria não se entende algo substancial. Não se trata do último resíduo que fica depois de se eliminar tudo o que é relativo ou condicional da noção de ser individual. Não é o eu (self), nem a alma nem o espírito, como se costuma considerar. Não é algo que pertença a qualquer categoria do entendimento. Não pertence a este mundo de coisas relativas. Nem se trata da realidade suprema atribuída a Deus, Atman ou Brahma. Não se pode descreve-la ou defini-la de modo algum, mas sem ela não existiria o mundo que vemos e usamos no cotidiano.


A natureza-própria é a natureza de Buda: aquilo que constitui o estado de Buda. É o vazio absoluto.


Quando a natureza-própria em-si é reconhecida, essa compreensão leva imediatamente a pessoa ao grau de Buda."

A doutrina zen da não-mente - p.103, 107

"The core insight of the buddhist tradition - the relentless emptiness of phenomena - has profound implications for all of us who are trying to understand the nature of life. It points to the disturbing fact that all nouns are arbitrary constructions. A person, place, or thing is just an idea invented to freeze the fluid flow of the world into objects that can be labeled and manipulated by adroit but shallow modes of mind. Beyond and behind these snapshots we take for ourselves is a vast and unnamable process."

Unlimiting mind - p. 131

"O eu é o mesmo que memórias, pensamentos, conceitos, emoções e atitudes. Reunindo todos esses fatores, obtém-se um eu. E se retirarmos tudo isso - no Budismo, o fazemos como exercício - se nos dissociarmos completamente de nosso corpo, de nossas memórias, pensamentos, emoções, atitudes, antecedentes e experiências, o que permanece? Nada. Somos algo ou alguém precisamente porque temos essas coisas. Elas formam um agregado. Sem elas, não somos nada. Isso é o vazio."

A essência do budismo - p. 215