A Final(?) note on Emptiness or Spiritual Poverty
When the secret of emptiness is revealed,
though empty, it is the unsurpassed,
devoid of every contingent stain,
and free from every deception.
--Karma Trinley
This was something that tripped me up for a long time. The constant refrain in Buddhism about emptiness, nirvana, the void can sound bleak. As a younger seeker I had a love-hate relationship with the teachings of Buddhism. There was clearly something uplifting, insightful, and compassionate there, an expression of profound truth. But it could also sound rather depressing.
It took my own sense of opening to finally see beyond my own mental block and recognize that that “emptiness” is actually filled with life and delight amidst vast spaciousness. It is not empty as in a suffocating vacuum, but rather it is free from the idea of separate and distinct things and beings. Within this blissful nondual space of being, there is only a living wholeness and, therefore, nothing (no objectified thing) exist there. It is empty, yet it is the unsurpassed.
--Ivan M. Granger
Poetry Chaikhana Blog
Above is a fragment of a longer poem, "A Song on the View of Voidness." by a late 15th/early 16th Century Tibetan Buddist monk, followed by a piece of the commentery that appeared in the Poetry Chaikhana Blog a few months ago. There is nothing i could possibly(?) add to it.
Love, peace, joy ... and Emptiness to all.
though empty, it is the unsurpassed,
devoid of every contingent stain,
and free from every deception.
--Karma Trinley
This was something that tripped me up for a long time. The constant refrain in Buddhism about emptiness, nirvana, the void can sound bleak. As a younger seeker I had a love-hate relationship with the teachings of Buddhism. There was clearly something uplifting, insightful, and compassionate there, an expression of profound truth. But it could also sound rather depressing.
It took my own sense of opening to finally see beyond my own mental block and recognize that that “emptiness” is actually filled with life and delight amidst vast spaciousness. It is not empty as in a suffocating vacuum, but rather it is free from the idea of separate and distinct things and beings. Within this blissful nondual space of being, there is only a living wholeness and, therefore, nothing (no objectified thing) exist there. It is empty, yet it is the unsurpassed.
--Ivan M. Granger
Poetry Chaikhana Blog
Above is a fragment of a longer poem, "A Song on the View of Voidness." by a late 15th/early 16th Century Tibetan Buddist monk, followed by a piece of the commentery that appeared in the Poetry Chaikhana Blog a few months ago. There is nothing i could possibly(?) add to it.
Love, peace, joy ... and Emptiness to all.