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What it Emptiness?
Sometimes when students of Buddhism first learn about emptiness, shunyata, they get frightened or angry, as though emptiness was something that would suck all the warmth from life, the way a black hole sucks in light. Emptiness sounds a lot like nothingness, which is clearly not what ultimate reality is. Shantideva, the great Indian practitioner and teacher who lived in the eighth century, made it clear in his classic The Way of the Bodhisattva that nothingness is not the meaning of emptiness nor the intention of teaching it:
It’s not indeed our object to disprove
Experiences of sight or sound or knowing.
Our aim is here to undermine the cause of sorrow:
The thought that such phenomena have true existence.
Sometimes people think that emptiness is a Buddhist philosophical concept, but the Buddha did not create emptiness; even if the Buddha had never appeared in this world, the nature of phenomena would still be emptiness. We teach emptiness to remove the suffering that comes from clinging to fabrications. It is not presented to destroy appearances. What the teachings on emptiness destroy is delusion, and the suffering that arises from it. Shantideva goes on to say:
Whatever is a source of pain and suffering,
Let that be the object of our fear.
But voidness will allay our every sorrow;
How could it be for us a thing of dread?
What we really need to be afraid of is ignorance and delusion. These are the causes of suffering. Recognizing emptiness is the antidote for suffering. It is what we need to embrace.