In reading Buddhist and Daoist materials, a significant problem for Western readers is the fact that there is a difference of value attached to quite basic things. Thus, in the West, full is good, empty is bad. An optimist sees the glass as half full and a pessimist as half empty. However, in oriental Buddhism and in Daoism, empty is good and fullness is suspect. Empty is clean, full is contaminated. This difference can cause a lot of misunderstanding.
Consider the following dialogue
- Did they pay you well for your work?
- I didn’t do it for the money, I did it for love.
- You mean that you did it for nothing?
- I was paid, but that was not why I did it. I would have done it anyway. It needed doing.
Or this one
- What he said sounded like good sense, but I had a feeling he was not coming clean.
- How do you mean?
- There was something he was keeping back.
- A hidden motive?
- Yes, something like that.
In these commonplace examples, we can see that there is a special kind of goodness in emptiness. To have nothing that one is clinging to, to not be seeking a reward, but to do things simply because they need doing, is the right spirit.
In Chinese Buddhism, this special kind of goodness is called Li. Li is the activity of enlightenment. When a person has no hidden selfish motive, he is said to be empty. His actions are then straightforward and honest. They follow the requirements of the objective situation. There is a natural modesty involved. Things are done because the situation requires them, not because they are self-serving. Things are not done for their extrinsic reward or benefit. There may be such benefit, but this does not affect the matter. The good doctor does what is necessary for his patient. He does not change the treatment in such a way as to maximise his own income. There may be income resulting from his work, but this is incidental to rather than formative upon his actions.
Thus, the actions of a Buddha are independent of karma. Karma is reward or retribution. A Buddha is not much concerned with whether he does or does not get such reward. He accepts what comes along, but his heart and mind are employed in doing things “for love”.
Li corresponds to the Indian idea of paramita. The “other shore” (param-ita) signifies a change of perspective. This change is conversion to what we call “doing things for love”. Love signifies nothingness. To do something for love is to do it for nothing. A prosaic extension of this linguistic usage is found in the scoring in tennis where scores such as “fifteen-love” indicate that one side has fifteen and the other side has nought. Real, spiritual love is action based on nothing. This is Li.
Many abstruse texts have been written about the meaning of emptiness (shunyata) in Buddhism, but if we keep in mind that emptiness is the foundation (or, we could say, non-foundation) of love then things become a lot clearer.
Prajña paramita refers to this way of seeing things. Material things then become “empty” because they are not the basis upon which one is living one’s life. The spiritual person is not a materialist. She lives with the material world and uses material things, but she is not obsessed with acquiring or accumulating.
We are only passing through this life. Things happen to us and benefits come and go but you can’t take them with you when you leave. Those who spend their lives chasing fame and gain are wasting this precious human rebirth.
When the bodhisattva is in the mode of prajña paramita, she sees all the skandhas to be empty. Thus she is freed from spiritual danger. They are empty for her because she does what she does for love, not for reward.
Reward here includes self-perfection. The person who takes the skandhas to be substantial is the person who is set upon self-development. For the bodhisattva, self-development is incidental and not the purpose of life. This extends even to Dharma practice. If one is intent upon achieving Buddhahood, it will elude you. The correct attitude is to be open to whatever the Buddhas have in store. If they want me to be a Buddha, so be it. If they don’t, no problem. It’s not about me.
Many people are obsessed with their own worth or their own guilt. They are trying to build a justified self. They are not empty. They perhaps think that making themselves perfect in some way is the spiritual path and essentially they think that this means filling themselves with good qualities. This is a mistake because enlightenment cannot be constructed. Everything that is constructed perishes.
Shunyata, the spirit of emptiness, does not perish because it never was dependent upon conditions. It is always available. True spiritual love is always an option. Actions based on a gaining idea cannot produce nirvana. Only those that are empty can do so.
To proceed in this way is an act of faith. Li is to do what the Dharma requires without further consideration. It is a simple path, but mostly people find it difficult. We can understand this difficulty in terms of attachment or in terms of faith. Freeing oneself of attachment is a long slow process. The arising of faith can be sudden and immediate. These are the two paths - self-power and other power - offered by the Buddhas.
Replies
So instructive. Thank you.
I agree.
Smile and bow.
Yes, in Amida Shu we make a distinction between the primary practice and secondary faculties. There are many ways to develop and improve secondary faculties and doing so tends to flow naturally as faith in the primary practice deepens. It is important, however, that this order of priority be maintained. If not, then it ceases to be a religion and becomes a self-development programme. The latter will certainly yield relative improvements in some areas of life, but it is a wheel that never stops turning, whereas the primary practice cuts through ideas about relative improvement, emptying the heart of any gaining idea. Generally speaking, many modern people have lost the sense of the importance of religious consciousness and think only in terms of personal gain, but the Buddha was pointing to something beyond all that.
I gave it another thought. Cultivating does not necessarily mean cultivating in order to attain or to get something. Rather it is a strengthening or developing or becoming vivid and alive, i.e. cultivating mindfulness or cultivating generosity. Actually practice can have a strong impact on the mind. However clinging to the practice in a goal-oriented way does not work. This is probably what you mean by "one cannot push the river".
I agree. Thank you for your interesting article and reply.
I suppose everybody is always cultivating the mind in one way or another, according to their lights, whether deliberately or implicitly, and some ways sustain better results than others.
Yet there is a difference between cultivating with a view to attaining and cultivating as a result of what is already realised. The former is understandable, but not likely to be notably successful. The latter is a natural process, not necessarily even consciously undertaken, though it surely involves sincerity and courage.
When one thinks about these things one soon falls into circular argument. The qualities that one needs in order to attain the result are themselves a result of the result and so are not available to one who has not attained.
The upshot is that one can do the best one can with what one has already, humbly accept and be grateful for it, but one cannot push the river.
Emptiness can be discovered, not developed. However, cultivating the mind is a bit like clearing the view.