Emptiness

The teaching of emptiness was the last teaching of the Buddha and the one, according to sutras, he specifically asked his disciples to not forget. He also predicted it would be lost. But the teaching of the ultimate emptiness of existence has had other teachers throughout time, such as Chandrakirti, Nagarjuna, Shantideva and even the Dalai Lama. Here, Robert Wolfe, collects and condenses the teachings on emptiness (or ajata in Sanskrit and sunyata in Buddhist teachings) into a single book. He writes in the introduction: Sunyata-emptiness-is a Sanskrit word, older than Buddha. Advaita-"not two"-is another Sanskrit word. Since my awakening, thirty-one years ago, I have been teaching precepts of nonduality, or advaita.Advaita points one toward the deepest implications of spirituality, ajata (another Sanskrit word), which basically means "not born", or "no origination". So we go from nonduality's not-two in advaita, to not-even-one in ajata, and we see the writings of Vedanta blend into the texts of Buddhism. One who understands the principles of advaita is well positioned to comprehend ajata. Having seen a number of people awaken to advaita, I have begun teaching ajata. In preparation for my (second) website at ajatasunyata.com, I viewed more than eighty books relating to the subject of emptiness (and there are even a few more, which I couldn't locate). Most all had something worthwhile to say, but none told the complete story in a single book. As Edward Conze has said ("wisdom" means emptiness): In fact, those who want to learn about wisdom must of necessity draw on the traditions of the fairly remote past. For centuries, almost everyone has been silent on the subject. When Conze speaks of the remote past, he's referring to the writings of Nagarjuna (around the Second Century A.D.), his commentators (Sixth to Seventh century A.D.), and manuscripts uncovered around the Nineteenth Century A.D. In other words, not much has principally been said since Nagarjuna, because the impeccable logic of his presentation of emptiness has left little to be said for eighteen centuries. My monographs which follow have been written over the past few years, and each one discusses a different aspect of the subject. But all are on a single subject-sunyata-so there will necessarily be repetition. You might think of them as a series of separate talks, meant perhaps to be contemplated one each day. Not anything can be simpler than emptiness. (But as the saying goes, the game of golf is simple, but not easy.) When it is clear to you that not anything has ever come into existence, both duality and nonduality dissolve into emptiness. But then, for that matter, so do you. This is what makes it difficult to understand that "form is emptiness" we are forms. We are empty of reality. This is definitely not a book to reinforce your ideas of who you think you are. If anything, it is about who you aren't, to the ultimate degree. And it is about how one lives one's "life", despite the fact that we don't in truth, have one. The viewpoint of ajata literally turns one's "world" upside down. It reorients even our view of life and death.