Below is an excerpt from an article comparing the concept of Emptiness in Daoist and Buddhist thought. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the complete article. It's interesting reading.
"The most common misunderstanding people have about the Tao is that 'Emptiness' in the Tao has a similar meaning to 'Emptiness' (Sunyata, Chinese: Kung, Japanese: Ku) in Buddhism. This is because different words in Buddhism and Taoism were all translated as Emptiness in English.
Several different Chinese characters are used for Emptiness in the Tao, but Chinese Buddhists mostly use the character on the right (pronounced 'Kung').
'Taoist Emptiness' is completely different to 'Buddhism Emptiness'. The Emptiness in the Tao is about restraint, patience, frugality, simplicity, lack of worldly desire etc. These are all good things for Buddhists, but they have nothing whatever to do with Buddhist Emptiness, which is about the inaccuracy of our 'externalist' perceptions of reality and the fictional objects that are created from that misunderstanding."
Hi,
ReplyDeleteInteresting article on brief history of two philosphies and variations of the concept of emptiness.
I think there is a tendency to lump Daoism and Buddhism (particulary Zen) together, when they are really different things.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see much of an article when I clicked on the title. Is there something I missed?
ReplyDeleteSeems that emptiness to the buddhist is an attained state of freedom. With the daoist, emptiness is the active, important space between this thing and that thing and is a thing in itself.
I can see where the zen buddhists wanted to use terminology that was familiar to the locals in order to get a foot in the door in China. It does muddy the waters as we look at the texts during the integration/introduction era. You'd think current authors would have had this straightened out for a long time by now.
I think what really muddy's the water is that the English word "empty" was chosen to represent two different concepts.
ReplyDeleteI can't begin to describe how interesting the study of kanji has become; getting at the root meanings of words.
when i studied medical terminology (yes i wanted to work as a medical transcriber, don't ask me why) it's all about the roots. word etiology is fascinating, regardless of which language. that book of chinese idioms is also fun to look at. a language's idioms say a lot about its culture.
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