Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00226)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Katinka Hesselink" <mail@k...> 
wrote:


> Your explanation of sunnyata brings it close to Nihilism, which is 
one
> of the extremes Nagarjuna tried to avoid, as I understand it. But it
> is why I relate emptiness to maya: the idea that everything we see,
> feel, think and can imagine is illusionary in nature and temporary 
as
> well. Still, sunnyata itself is the one constant. 


According to common usage Nihilism implies rejection and/or denial of 
the views of a certain philosophical school or position. From my 
limited understanding of the doctrine of Sunyata, it is a clear 
perception of the relativity, conditionedness and non-ultimacy of all 
views, which include all "dharmas". The source for this teaching 
seems to be in the Buddha's dialogue with Vacchagotta as recorded in 
the Majjima-nikaya: "The Tathagata, O Vaccha, is free from all 
theories."


> The mahatmas weren't classical buddhists - I think that much is 
clear
> from the Mahatma Letters. They revered Buddha, but that doesn't mean
> they were main-stream Tibetan Buddhists. On the other hand, atma as 
it
> is taught in the Mahatma Letters isn't really the same atma that
> Buddha denied in the an-atma (= anatta = no soul) doctrine. A useful
> article on this is, I think:
> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/atmsun.htm . Another way of
> showing this is that in Mahayana Buddhism we all have a Buddha-
nature
> and this Buddha-nature is in everything. Sounds like Atma, doesn't 
it? 


Not really. There has been interminable debate on this point, 
Katinka, and I am sure we will not solve it. The link you posted 
certainly doesn't. The nature of Sunyata, as presented in the works 
of Nagarjuna and other Buddhist masters, does not harmonize with what 
the Indian teachers say about Atma. For exemple, in the 
Vivekachudamani by Sankaracharya, there are quite a number of 
aphorisms describing the nature of Atma in quite categorical and 
positive terms. But if Subba Row and HPB could be both chelas of the 
same Master, even when belonging to different schools, there is hope 
for other students as well!

There seems to be, imo, a kind of unspoken consensus among students 
of HPB's writings that makes them to look down on Krishnamurti's 
teachings. Well, if Sunyata is a core teaching of Esoteric Buddhism, 
then Krishnamurti was quite close to it. In his statement "The Core 
of the Teaching" (1980) he affirms:

"Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man's 
pretense that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure 
observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. 
Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution 
of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation 
one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the 
choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. 


Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which 
are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological 
enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so 
man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we 
live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological 
evolution.


When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will 
see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and 
the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover 
that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure 
observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of 
time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in 
the mind.


Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation 
of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, 
only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence."

A few days before he died, in February 1986, he told some of his 
colleagues and friends: "You don't know what you have missed. That 
vast emptiness."

Surprisingly, some traditional Buddhist teachers have declared that 
Sunyata is universal compassion. 


Pedro