One way to understand the Buddhist idea of “emptiness” is to borrow the concepts of modern cognitive science. In that sense, we can come to grips with “emptiness” like this: the notion of emptiness points to the neurolinguistic and neurosemantic construction of reality, where concepts and words concatenate to make what is real for us.
In other words, nothing including ourselves exist in their own right as standalone objective entities. Everything is constituted by the content of concept and meaning in the canopy of language that is the consensual intersubjective context for reality-making. We and all things as felt and experienced are but sprays of coalesced words and ideas in context.
Words and ideas are not mere mental events in a small human brain. It’s the other way around. Brains and everything else including this entire cosmos are but phenomenal appearances constructed by words and ideas of empty transparent consciousness without measure and qualification, without duality and dimension, unborn and undying, devoid of being “this” or “that” — ineffable and ungraspable.
And you guessed it. This consciousness is not “you” or “yours” or anyone else’s. It simply is. Or not. Speak of it at your own peril. Cosmic dreaming carries on for all until each microcosm awakens and ends it, each for themselves. And then, placeless awareness can dream again — knowingly in responsive love.
Image credit: Sadhguru Sadhana.
