I find a little bit annoying that some people criticize my asking questions as a sign of unwillingness to learn. I do not ask questions for which I do not want answers. I ask questions exactly because I do want answers and do want to understand. I am not afraid of difficult answers. But I am not satisfied with shallow ones. If my questions are hard to answer, the person I am questioning is free at any time to say so. I don't mind. But if all I get is some "it is what it is, kid" answer, I'm not afraid to express my dissatisfaction, and I see no reason why I should be.[/color]
This entire post supports my last. You expect a pat answer that matches your expectation of the meaning of "emptiness." BSB must reconcile his meaning of the term with your expectation. He must do it in a manner acceptable to you. BSB apparently doesn't view this as his responsibility. I think he is right.
This reminds me of a situation I ran into when I was taking a literature class in college. There was one man who, in pretty much every session, insisted the instructor give a direct answer to questions about meanings of poems, their quality, etc. She (the instructor) kept asking the class for their opinions, and would not make a final arbitration on the matter. I specifically remember him citing Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" as an example of a great poem. He said "Everyone knows this is a great poem. It's understood. Now I want to know if (whatever we were discussing) is a great poem, too." Her answer was "Do you think it is?" As it happens, while very popular, "Trees" is not a very good poem. In fact, ironically in the creative writing course I took the next semester the instructor cited that poem as an example of a well-known poem with very little substance. But she did not call him on that. She just put the question back to him. She was trying to teach us how to analyze literature - looking for symbology, metaphor, allegory and such. She was not concerned with whether we nailed the author's original meaning (which was sometimes obscure anyway). She WAS interested in whether we could rationally support our interpretation. She allowed free discussion and didn't shoot down any ideas. This drove the man crazy. He was aggressive in his opinions and flat out angry that she would not confirm or shoot down arguments. He and I frequently clashed with each other about meanings. I absolutely loved the class - and I learned a ton. He hated it, and learned very little. At the end of the semester, we talked about our instructor evals. I had given her high marks. He had given her low marks. His complaint was that she never really taught anything, since she wouldn't give pat answers to questions. He completely missed the point of the class.
Pretty much every answer you gave in that post quoted your "I am only asking how a = b" construct. I guess you were trying to hammer home the idea that you just want a simple answer to a simple question. But I do not think that is the case. I think you want an answer that reconciles your meaning of emptiness with the concept of shunyata. You want it given in exactly the format you prescribe. BSB is a bad teacher, you imply, because he isn't teaching using the method you think appropriate. But that does not indicate a bad teacher. It may very well indicate a poor student. Or it may just indicate a difference in personality between two people. BSB has provided a link to an explanation of the concept and challenged you to read it. I haven't taken the time to look yet though I'll probably read it at some point because this conversation has whetted my interest. But I am not demanding answers - you are. So if you have read the link, has it answered your question? If you haven't, why not? If it hasn't answered your question have you asked follow up questions? If you haven't looked at that link (and that before your last post) you have failed to fulfill your responsibility in the learning process. Learn is a verb. If you have not already looked at the link, it would indicate to me that you are more interested in "winning" the debate than actually learning about the concept. If that analysis is valid, BSB is right not to engage you in your chosen manner.
Moreover, it may very well be that BSB isn't teaching you the way you want to be taught because that is not the way Buddhism is taught. Way back in my scouting days we had a concept called "Guided Discovey." The idea was that you did not directly teach a principle to a boy, but you pointed things out to him and let him make his own discoveries about them. A person learns far more deeply when he makes a discovery himself than when it is spoon-fed to him by a teacher or textbook. That's because more senses and thought processes are involved. I doubt that such lofty concepts as eastern philosophy has developed over millenia can be spoon-fed to someone and make any kind of sense. Some things need to be experienced to be learned.
There is also a concept that is universal in such debates. Christ referred to it as "casting pearls before swine." There are some very sacred things that are difficult to understand without that kind of experience I talked about. When presented to someone without such experience, they can be an object of ridicule (which is frankly offensive) or completely misunderstood (which can lead the student to reject correct principles on the same basis that"guided discovery" process taught them to accept things). You can't expect someone to understand trigonometry without first understanding basic arithmetic. My eldest daughter cannot get math. It drives her crazy. She is currently carrying a 3.98 GPA after two years of college and most of her classes she breezes through. But math she has to struggle with every time. I didn't understand why this was until she angrily described a problem to me. "This doesn't make any sense!" she told me. Then she showed me the concept that confused her. It was the condition "greater than or equal to." She couldn't understand why such a statement needed to be made. Greater than or equal to three, she reasoned, could just as well be expressed as greater than two. She ranted and raved for an entire evening about the ridiculousness of this concept. I tried to explain that there are times when this condition is necessary because of the nature of the problem. She wouldn't hear it. I told her it was analogous to the musical idea that sometimes A flat is appropriate and sometimes G sharp is appropriate depending on the key. She then told me that was ANOTHER example of something that made no sense. AAARRRGGHH! Because she had an underlying need for absolute order she insisted (and still does) that these concepts made no sense. It simply meant they make no sense to her. Trying to explain them is pointless, because she cannot get beyond the ideal that there should be on pat way to express something to avoid confusion. She's wrong. Sometimes there has to be more than one way to express something in order to avoid confusion.
So, at the risk of having them trampled under foot, here are my pearls. When I read the scriptures, sometimes at first glance they can be pretty obscure. When I have supplementary texts that provide historical context or footnotes that cross-reference other scripture, I get more sense out of the passage in question. I use these tools when preparing a class. I have a lesson manual, my own chosen reference texts, the scriptures themselves and my own experience. But I have one more tool which is far more important than any of those - including the scriptures. I have the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I never read the scriptures without first praying for that guidance. Invariably, the Spirit opens my eyes to new meanings in scripture - even scriptural passages i have read hundreds of times. I frequently find myself saying "How could I ever have missed that?" when such revelations come. I know the answer, though. The Spirit only gives such insights when the receipient is ready. My wife likes to quote something from one of the many books on eastern philosophy she has read: "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." The Spirit works that way. In fact, when I was 37 I had a spiritual revelation so profound it changed my entire life in a way I cannot describe. It wasn't like "finding Jesus" or converting to another religion - I had already had those experiences much earlier. It was more like "finding myself" and this is one of those occasions where words truly do fail. I can say that this occurred while in prayer, and was a direct revelation. It took me over four years to put my life back on an even keel or to even begin to trust myself again. It lead me on a path that even included rejection of God for a period while I reevaluated. In a way that is very difficult to explain, I knew that God knew that I needed to reject him as part of the reevaluation process. There is so much about forgiveness and love in that experience that I can never touch in words. I would never even try. It would make no sense, or at least seem trivial and silly to some if I just expressed it in words. Nobody could possibly understand it but me - even those who have had similar experiences - because it was specific to me. This is the height of the concept of personal revelation.
Now the ability to access that kind of spiritual experience informs my learning and my teaching. As I have taught, I have had more access granted - even to the point of visions. I know that immediately brings thoughts of the psycho ward to some. That's the "pearls before swine" part. I am not talking about seeing God in His Glory or strange creatures with "666" stenciled on their foreheads. I am talking about very short but very spiritual journeys to places I need to go. I did not really believe that kind of thing was accessible to me. But I have found in the last couple of years that it is. Further, I had sacred experiences in the temple of God that I would never discuss outside of it. Someone who has attained the point of entering the temple will understand what I mean when I talk about the general experience, but could still never understand the specifics - and wouldn't try. This is why we do not discuss the things that go on in the temple. There are some who have published the temple rituals (and some are amazingly inaccurate, which is kind of weird anyway) but they have only revealed the physical. It's like saying "Christians eat bread and drink water or wine in church." To an outsider that just seems like a really bad snack. You would have to understand the origin of the sacrament, the symbolism behind the bread and water and the relationship it refers to before you would begin to "get" the concept. What happens in the temple is incomparable to what happens in the world, and many outsiders view our "secretiveness" about it as some kind of weird, cultish thing or a desire to hide some dark ritual. And some insist, much as you do about "emptiness" that we explain in concrete terms these experiences. We just can't - they must be arrived at gradually and individually - but we are usually dismissed as being unable to explain the concepts which makes them obviously false and foolish.
The ability to discern the teachings of the Holy Spirit begins at a much lower level - or perhaps it is better to say an earlier point - in a spiritual journey. Anyone who will exercise a very little portion of faith can ask of God and receive answers. It is so easy and natural, but for those without faith it can seem silly. Trying to describe even that experience, though, is very difficult when talking to those without faith. I have heard it described as like trying to explain "red" to a blind man. There is just no frame of reference. Joseph Smith once described the experience as a "burning in the breast." That is a woefully inadequate description, and that from a prophet of God, but those who have the experience get the reference. When I began to try to explain that to my skeptical brother, he quickly cut me off and said "So you changed religions because you got heartburn?" That kind of conversation is not only offensive, but pointless. Why try when a person is at that point? When I bowed out of the conversation he accused me of being unable to rationally support my arguments and running away from a challenge. How do you argue with that mindset? There is no idea in the world that a determined skeptic cannot convince himself is unsupportable.
To bring this rambling road back to its intended course, I believe you have fixated on the idea that "emptiness" could not possibly equate to "interdependence of existence" and you simply will not be moved until someone can put together the right kinds of words to reconcile your understanding of those terms. In short, you will not be moved until someone moves you - and that is impossible because you have put up impenetrable intellectual barriers. Whatever BSB's shortcomings may or may not be as a teacher or a person, I believe it is not his lack of ability to teach on this issue that is the problem. It is your lack of ability to learn on this issue. That is completely a matter of will on your part, because you lack no other quality necessary for learning.
I intended to post my ideas on the issue of emptiness last night before I feel asleep, but I am not sure that is such a good idea now. I might better be able to express a potential relationship in terms acceptable to you than BSB can at this point, but that may well be offensive to him, or it may be so far off the mark that - if it moves you at all - it takes you further away from the meaning intended by Buddhism instead of closer and does both you and Buddhism a disservice. Plus that would be just one more longwinded Pooch post that bores most people and burdens everyone else. So I'll just keep my tortured analysis to myself at least for now.
The sad part about this late-night diatribe is that I just got up to pee. Now I have to again. Stupid old age.
