Buddhist philosophy: What is Emptiness?

thousands of years ago the buddha talked about the concept of emptiness particularly emptiness of self which is a very misunderstood idea today but what does it actually mean our identity exists on our head he says it has many facets ideas of who we are how we think others see as our relations or job etc but if you look closely you'll see that the content is always changing it's never the same at any time you can be preoccupied with one facet one day only for it to disappear the next but what does this say about the self this is why the buddha said that the psychological self is empty it's not a real entity that you can point at you can add thoughts and remove thoughts to it and the media does this it adds thoughts as do the people around us so yes the mind is an amazing instrument but the psychological self as buddha said is empty but then what about the body buddhists also say that this is empty they say that the body simply consists of a series of sensations feelings and appearances well all these sensations only occur in our own consciousness and the body cannot be separated from consciousness thus the buddhists also see the body as being empty but even if we go to science a scientist will look at the body and tell you that the cells are always being replaced over time every single cell will die off and be replaced by new ones it'll be wholly a different body made up of different cells it's empty of any solidity so our mind and body have this amazing quality of emptiness but who we are is beyond both of them emptiness it sounds like a depressing and nihilistic thing but that's only because in the west emptiness is not understood it's just seeing the emptiness of our phantom self but if you then ask the buddha who am i he was usually silent on this matter because consciousness is impossible to put into words

Channel: Infognostica

Views: 34,876

Keywords: buddhism for beginners, buddhism for dummies, buddhist emptiness, buddhist concepts, buddhist ideas, buddhist religion explained, buddhism science, emptiness meditation

Id: lMlX0gb-lUA

Length: 2min 7sec (127 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020