The Message of Emptiness

"The vacuum is a sacred silence filled with profane noise.
The noise that echoes in its emptiness is the voice of randomness,
the signature of chance made manifest. This is the inner meaning of chance. Its utter fickleness gives it absolute freedom, making it the very root of creativity, the inexhaustible source from which all structure is drawn and into which all structure returns.

So the message of emptiness is simple;
where nothing is present as form,
everything is present as possibility;
all order is the gifi of chanbce,
all song is the gift of silence."

"Music of the Mind
- an adventur into consciousness"

Darryl Reanney

Sunyata!

It is because there is nothing that something can fill it's place. Being devoid of form is a form- all in relation. Being empty of the ego. What is everything around us painted on? A blank canvas.

Letting go of things, you can just seem them flitter by, empty of value or effort. Quit forcing perspectives, motives and actions and you find the true underlying emptiness giving rise to everything else. Empty yourself out, and you get filled with it. You can always take away from it- it never ends and always gives.

These words aren't it, but they dance around it. The letters change around and the semantics play with each other- but it cannot be contained.

"Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech."

Originally posted by Taoman
"The vacuum is a sacred silence filled with profane noise.
The noise that echoes in its emptiness is the voice of randomness,
the signature of chance made manifest. This is the inner meaning of chance. Its utter fickleness gives it absolute freedom, making it the very root of creativity, the inexhaustible source from which all structure is drawn and into wh ...[text shortened]... gift of silence."

"Music of the Mind
- an adventur into consciousness"

Darryl Reanney

As many people have pointed out, my brain can't parse things that don't make logical sense. So you are probably saying something completely different from what I read. But anyway, take my comments as you will.

How can a vacuum have noise? Noise is caused by vibration of matter. Space is silent.

Very little in this universe is truly random. All matter and energy is subject to fundamental forces and laws which guide it and give it shape. Although quantum mechanics apparently tells us that many events have essentially random components, they never the less do follow specific patterns.
I am basically saying that order is not the gift of chance, order is the gift of the laws of physics.

Originally posted by Taoman
"The vacuum is a sacred silence filled with profane noise.
The noise that echoes in its emptiness is the voice of randomness,
the signature of chance made manifest. This is the inner meaning of chance. Its utter fickleness gives it absolute freedom, making it the very root of creativity, the inexhaustible source from which all structure is drawn and into wh ...[text shortened]... gift of silence."

"Music of the Mind
- an adventur into consciousness"

Darryl Reanney

What is it supposed to mean?

Originally posted by Palynka
What is it supposed to mean?

The "emptiness" from which all phenomena spring. It is the giver of all.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
The "emptiness" from which all phenomena spring. It is the giver of all.

Tread carefully, you are close to describing the God-shaped hole.

Originally posted by JS357
Tread carefully, you are close to describing the God-shaped hole.

God-shaped.lol! thats a good one!

Originally posted by Palynka
What is it supposed to mean?

The emptiness or sunyata of Buddhist philosophy that is referred to does not mean nothing at all. It may be seen as a simile of the "field of probabilities" in the superposition (one way of describing the phenomenon of subatomic wave-particles before the "collapse" into a particle-like aspect) associated with quantum musings.

The superpositions are no-where to be actually located, but it is the field of all potential from which the collapse occurs and a particle appears.
The writer of what I think is a beautiful passage, uses the terms of chaos and disorder, but to me, as tw intimates this may be a convincing surface appearance, because we cannot grasp or identify the underlying perfect (in the sense of 'complete and all functioning as a whole'😉 order.

But though perfect in this sense, it is not a fixed order, it has undefined edges as with quantum phenomenon.
This lack of definition or "hardness" actually allows manifestation, as ua expresses so well.

Recently I read that molecules could not actually bond without this quality inherent in the wave-particle electrons. In other words, if that is true, all of the manifested worlds requires emptiness or absence of hard edges if you like for it to work.

Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist philosopher, stated the exact same thing, thousands of years ago. "Without emptiness nothing can manifest..
This is also why Buddhists refer to things as neither existing nor not existing, but in the middle of those two and presenting as emptiness.
Despite tw's probable protestations, this is a phenomenon alluded to also by the early great quantum physicists and some modern ones, as they grappled with this mysterious phenomenon.

Originally posted by Taoman
Despite tw's probable protestations,

I protest, because you use word, to mean something quite different from their dictionary meanings. I would have no problem with that if the new definitions were given and clear, but I tend to find Buddhists and like minded people do not give definitions and change their meaning over time and tend to imply that a definition must be experienced not given. This always leaves me totally lost.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I protest, because you use word, to mean something quite different from their dictionary meanings. I would have no problem with that if the new definitions were given and clear, but I tend to find Buddhists and like minded people do not give definitions and change their meaning over time and tend to imply that a definition must be experienced not given. This always leaves me totally lost.

I am (perhaps) only slightly less literal in my first interpretation of what people say. The world needs people like us, to keep them from going into Las Vagueness.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I protest, because you use word, to mean something quite different from their dictionary meanings. I would have no problem with that if the new definitions were given and clear, but I tend to find Buddhists and like minded people do not give definitions and change their meaning over time and tend to imply that a definition must be experienced not given. This always leaves me totally lost.

Since Buddhism is grounded solely on the evaluation of the mind, there is not the slightest vagueness regarding the definitions they are using: whatever does not hold is discarded at once, and discarded as well are all the speculations regarding everything that has to be analysed.

Therefore, sunyata, often translated as “emptiness”, is a central notion of Mahayana Buddhism which deals with the fundamental nature of the universe. Sunyata tells us that all phenomenal existence, all the “things” and the events we experience, are empty of any inherent/ independent existence. This does not mean that the world in which we live does not exist; it exists in a radically different way than we normally experience it. While we experience individual and seemingly separate events and ideas and persons and things, sunyata simply points to the essential interdependence of all these things
😵

Originally posted by twhitehead
I protest, because you use word, to mean something quite different from their dictionary meanings. I would have no problem with that if the new definitions were given and clear, but I tend to find Buddhists and like minded people do not give definitions and change their meaning over time and tend to imply that a definition must be experienced not given. This always leaves me totally lost.

I am trying (did I hear you say 'very'?). There is an inherently and oft stated problem in defining the indefinable. We are seeking to point to that which has nothing by which to define it. The word is ineffable. The closest approach that can be done is to state what it is not. It neither exists nor does it not exist .. etc.
There are similes in quantum physics too, the principal one being expressed in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

I can understand how this is a problem for you, as you are, to me, a very defining person-not that that is a bad thing in itself-but in some circumstances it gets in the way. We have a bicameral brain, one side is linked to our our analytical powers, the other helps with more abstract and intuitive and holistic thinking. Coming at things from both sides can help. Our brain has this structure for a reason.

I am trying, perhaps you could try also, (whether you agree or not), to grasp something of this aspect of Buddhist philosophy, if you are interested in understanding as well as opposing. You don't appear to do much reading on it, I may be wrong. That would help, as another person can explain it better, or be more on "your wavelength" so to speak. That is, as far as it can be "explained".

Originally posted by Taoman
There is an inherently and oft stated problem in defining the indefinable. We are seeking to point to that which has nothing by which to define it. The word is ineffable. The closest approach that can be done is to state what it is not. It neither exists nor does it not exist .. etc.
There are similes in quantum physics too, the principal one being expressed in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

In science, we use Occam's razor. We essentially say that if it cannot be defined then it doesn't exist. You can only describe it as far as it can be defined.

Originally posted by Taoman
The emptiness or sunyata of Buddhist philosophy that is referred to does not mean nothing at all. It may be seen as a simile of the "field of probabilities" in the superposition (one way of describing the phenomenon of subatomic wave-particles before the "collapse" into a particle-like aspect) associated with quantum musings.

The superpositions are no-whe ...[text shortened]... tum physicists and some modern ones, as they grappled with this mysterious phenomenon.

Quote: "a simile of the "field of probabilities" in the superposition (one way of describing the phenomenon of subatomic wave-particles before the "collapse" into a particle-like aspect) associated with quantum musings."

Ah, yes -- the musicle. 🙂

Originally posted by Taoman
The emptiness or sunyata of Buddhist philosophy that is referred to does not mean nothing at all. It may be seen as a simile of the "field of probabilities" in the superposition (one way of describing the phenomenon of subatomic wave-particles before the "collapse" into a particle-like aspect) associated with quantum musings.

The superpositions are no-whe ...[text shortened]... tum physicists and some modern ones, as they grappled with this mysterious phenomenon.

Thanks. Not sure I still understand it, though.

Seems to me a lot of such excerpts are deliberately contradictory to illustrate the errors of duality (or hard edges, if you will). But I still find it hard to wrap my head around it exactly because of the contradictory nature of those metaphors. Does this make sense to you?

I'm comfortable with the "hard edges" of classical logic, but I appreciate the notion that many of the taxonomies we use to get our head around reality create an illusion of edges that do not exist. We draw lines in continua because our language is inappropriate to describe them. Much like we look often look at quantiles or moments to describe distributions. I just don't think that this is a good enough reason to so a wholesale rejection of any edges, which it seems to me is implicit in such passages. I am often told that wholesale rejection is not the point but it still feels like that whenever I read them.