[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Jayarava]

Hi Richard

I'm quite suspicious of the whole _two truths_ thing - and I like what Jay seems to be saying through you. Relative truth just seems like a convenient lie, and absolute truth seems mostly to be invoked by Buddhists who are losing an argument.

> Now what I am wondering is this: ... How could
> one's observations of one's own behavior, or the behavior of
> another, indicate whether or not one is acting on emptiness?

My take on this has always been to reference the 10 precepts (aka the ten skilful actions) - well at least the body and speech precepts. I don't quite agree that we can't tell from what people say, because speech is also an action, and there are things like harsh speech, divisive speech, useless speech and their opposites.

I'm not entirely sure whether we can say in black and white terms whether someone is "acting on emptiness". There is no way that I know of to gain direct access to another person's mental states. So lacking ESP we can't establish without doubt what is going on behind those smiling eyes.

However we can comprehend someone who embodies our values more than we do. And this knowledge can come from close observation, over a period of time (months or years), and preferably in some kind of difficult or stressful situation. If after this time we have observed skilful behaviour then we can begin to assume that the person sustains skilful mental states. Thus implies that they are more in touch with the lack of svabhava in dharmas.

I think this last bit is really very important to spell out. I'm not so familiar with Nagarjuna but if he was paraphrasing Gautama then he was reminding us that dharmas lack svabhava, and dharmas are the objects of manas. Now something which is an object of the mind has no existence per se - it has no substance or ontological status. Otherwise we get into all kinds of bizarre contortions. I think Nagarjuna was on about this: existence and non-existence don't apply to dharmas because they are just mental phenomena. 

Someone acting as though dharmas really do lack svabhava isn't necessarily going to act in a stereotypical way. If we could say 'they do this and not that' then that denies anitya. However we might spot general qualities in their behaviour - and that brings me back to the precepts.

Pragmatically I don't think we can make absolute distinctions between someone acting from emptiness and someone not. Perhaps we might say that someone acts from a greater or lesser awareness of emptiness. Some people seem to embody that awareness more than others. The desire for absolute knowledge about another persons awareness of emptiness seems problematic - a messianic complex or something like that.

Best wishes
Jayarava




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