Is Reality Real?
by frankiespeakin 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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designs
The universe wasn't finished. The Time Bandits....
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New Worldly Translation
As Woody Allen once wrote if reality isn't real and everything is an illusion I definitely overpaid for my new carpet.
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fulltimestudent
Umm!
Yesterday, in the first lecture of my new topic, India, China, Tibet: Cultural Relations, which focusses on Tibet, the lecturer asserted that according to Mahayana Buddhist theoretical notions, the subject does not exist.
So I looked up some thoughts on emptiness and impermance:
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"When it is said that beings are like the moon reflected in limpid water rippled by a gentle breeze, the reflection and its watery support are alike in being, at every moment, impermanent and empty in nature."
Chandrakirti
In emptiness teachings, conventional existence refers to our everyday perception and understanding of things. ...
To exist conventionally then, is to exist dependently and as there are no entities that can ultimately be singled out, whatever is identified, can only be conventionally designated. This is why conventional existence is also called nominal existence. This does not mean that everything is just a name as in a mental fabrication, but that there are no inherently existent things. Instead everything dependently exists, which is why everything only conventionally and nominally exists.
For instance, an apple is produced in dependence upon clouds, water, sunlight, air, insects, wind, seeds, etc., none of which exist as their own things either. An apple is produced from what is considered to be non-apple elements, and so an apple does not have its own nature. If the conditions that an apple depends upon were removed, there would not be an apple left over. An apple lacks its own being. A cloud or sunlight are not considered to be an apple. So what is an apple really? An apple is a practical and valid description of what can conventionally and dependently but not ultimately be established, because an apple does not independently exist. It is in this sense that it is said to be empty.
"Empty things are born from empty things." - Nagarjuna