One truly sees any kind of form at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; solid or subtle; inferior or superior; far or near: all form—with right understanding: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’

Rāhula asks how to see so that conceit no longer occurs. The Buddha teaches him to investigate the five aggregates in terms of not-self.

Some philosophers have pushed against such reductive approaches and argued for a framework that recognises the complexity and multidimensionality of persons.

As long as one remains with a tenet system that accepts outer [objects], it is not tenable for the object and the [apprehending] consciousness to be of a single substance. In that case, the [object that is] the cause that casts an aspect [upon the consciousness] is called the apprehended object.

In this excerpt from “The Word-By-Word Commentary on the Treasury of Valid Reasoning,” Jamyang Loter Wangpo, an important Rime Sakya master, explains that knowable objects are those that can be apprehended by the mind. He distinguishes between object generalities and non-existent clear appearances, arguing that while both can appear to the mind, they lack substantial existence and are not valid objects of cognition. Though a non-sectarian thinker, he respectfully examines competing views from other schools, critiquing their reasoning to clarify and strengthen the Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka position.

The free, bilateral movement between “not one” and “not two” characterizes Zen’s achievement of a personhood with a third perspective that cannot be confined to either dualism or non-dualism

A lengthy introduction to Zen Buddhist practice and thought in Japan with a particular focus on their view of enlightenment.

Once a person understands the rise and fall of all phenomena, then experiencing the worst that human life can give does not make one tremble.

Ajahn Brahm explains the meaning of emptiness, or nothingness, as he puts it, as the self-less and impermenant nature of all phenomena. After this detailed explanation, the Ajahn points out that not realizing this emptiness causes most people’s suffering; therefore, one should strive “to still the mind and see the most beautiful jewel there could ever be—nothingness.”

How does being a woman have anything to do
with a well-collected mind?

Greed is to be abandoned neither by body nor by speech…

Some things are to be abandoned through wisdom.

Such absence can be specific, in the sense of the absence of a particular mental condition. It can also take on a general sense, in that certain meditation practices that involve mindfulness can take as their object the notion that there is nothing at all. Besides being the standard approach for cultivating one of the immaterial spheres, a pre-Buddhist form of practice, the same notion that there is nothing can also be related to insight.

Then the Blessed One, realizing his own abandoning of the perceptions & categories of objectification, on that occasion exclaimed…

I do not dispute with the world; rather, it is the world that disputes with me.

The Buddha explains that he doesn’t teach that nothing exists.

… freed by not grasping: they are well freed. Those who are well freed are consummate ones. For consummate ones, there is no cycle of rebirths to be found.

How the Four Noble Truths illuminate the Five Aggregates.

Seeing rightly, they grow disillusioned. When relishing ends, greed ends.

Right view is seeing the aggregates as they are: impermanent.

But that which is called ‘mind’ and ‘sentience’ and ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another by day and by night.

An ignorant person might become free of attachment to their body, but not their mind. Still, it would be better to attach to the body, as it is at less changeable than the mind, which jumps about like a monkey.

Where will stops, there is freedom.

Ajahn Brahm explains his belief in “Free Won’t.”

‘This contemplative Gotama whom you praise is a nihilist, one who doesn’t declare anything.’
‘I tell you, venerable sirs, that the Blessed One righteously declares that “This is skillful.” He declares that “This is unskillful.”’

The householder Vajjiya Māhita visits some wanderers and the Buddha praises his defense of the Dhamma, explaining in detail what religious practices the Buddha does praise.

Madhyamaka is thus conceived of as a means, with liberation as its ultimate end. But the question remains, how does philosophical argumentation lead to spiritual goals?

This article explains the basic tenets of Madhyamaka thought found in Nagarjuna’s Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikās, and then, focusing on chapter 23, proceeds to show how such philosophical inquiry and its resultant understanding lead to final liberation (nibbana).

You will never let go of the things you love. So you don’t have to worry.

In this talk, followed by questions and answers, Yuttadhammo explains the different categories of meditation and their common factors, such as mindfulness and concentration.

The body is like a robot. The mind is the one who directs and tells the robot what to do. So, whatever happens to the body, the mind should stay clear.

This essay is in particular a response to Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi’s thoughtful critique of this position.

Aho ye! When looking at these outer appearances…

A translation of Lachung Apo’s short poem on attaining Great Perfection (Dzogchen/Mahamudra).

The reason the teaching of anattā can serve as a strategy of liberation is precisely because it serves to rectify a misconception about the nature of being, hence an ontological error. It accomplishes this task by promoting a correct comprehension of the nature of being…

This essay is a response to Ajahn Geoff’s “The Not-Self Strategy”.

Bhikkhu Bodhi agrees with his contention that “the Buddha’s teachings on self and not-self are strategies” but disagrees strongly when he says that “true and false can be put aside.”

For Ajahn Geoff’s reply to this essay, see “The Limits of Description.”

Those who have awakened don’t talk of what they’ve awakened to, because it lies above and beyond all words.

A collection of pithy teachings from a notoriously reticent, modern-day “Zen Master” of the Thai Forest Tradition.

The author moves through the premises, inferences, and conclusions of the conservative conception of objects and also the eliminative and permissive views, problimatizing each one. The analysis ends with a brief discussion about which objects may exist fundamentally.

If something is interdependent, it is necessarily emptiness.

In this short teaching, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo summarizes five logical arguments of Nagarjuna’s Mādhyamaka (Middle Way).

suññatā is a term pregnant with meaning and of central significance in all Buddhist traditions.

An introduction to the semantics, philosophy, and soteriology of “emptiness.”

If we can bring all this inwards and investigate it, we will see that the birth of a tree and our own birth are no different. This body of ours is born and exists dependent on conditions, on the elements of earth, water, wind and fire

A selection of ten dhamma talks by Venerable Ajahn Chah that covers various topics, such as meditation, opening the dhamma-eye, and right view.

If the sense of self is doxastically anchored, then it will be anchored in the sort of belief that is ascribed along an action-based rather than judgement-based avenue.

A Western-philosophical exploration of the different levels of the “self” delusion.

He should not conceive [I am] the all, should not conceive [I am] in all, should not conceive [I come] from the all, should not conceive, ‘All is mine.’

Being stirred by craving is painful, so the Realized One lives unstirred, not identifying with any aspect of sense experience.

There is no eye, Phagguna, by means of which one describing the Buddhas of the past could describe them…

Worth keeping in mind that the suttas (like Iti 61) enumerate three kinds of eye: “The flesh eye, the divine eye, and the eye of wisdom.” The Buddha here says that not even the heavenly eye or the dhamma eye can describe the past Buddhas.

The ultimate condition in which the two truths cannot be separated,
That is the yoga of the Great Middle Way.

A medium length peom by a modern Tibetan master on realizing the fruit of the Middle Way: non-duality.

Householder, the limitless release of the heart, and the release of the heart through nothingness, and the release of the heart through emptiness, and the signless release of the heart: do these things differ in both meaning and phrasing? Or do they mean the same thing, and differ only in the phrasing?

Venerable Godatta asks Citta the householder a difficult question about the meditative attainments.

I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion”. As the Prajnāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases.

This connection opens the door to reading the Heart Sutra, and the early Prajnāpāramitā sutras more generally, along the lines of Sue Hamilton’s epistemological approach to the Pāḷi suttas; i.e. as focussed on experience and particularly the meditative experience known in the Pāḷi suttas as “dwelling in emptiness.” In this view, the Heart Sutra makes sense on its own terms without having to invoke paradox or mysticism.

Astikāya is merely a formal variation of the same word we know as sakkāya. So it seems clear it was a term the Buddha drew from the Jains, or from the ascetic teachers more generally.

Astikāya means “existent substance” or “ontological category”.

We can draw upon this, and keep a broad consistency with the handling of astikāya in Jainism, by rendering sakkāya as “substance” or “substantial reality”, and sakkāyadiṭṭhi as “substantialist view”

The scope of the six fields of contact extends as far as the scope of proliferation. When the six fields of contact fade away and cease with nothing left over, proliferation stops and is stilled.

What is there when the senses cease?

… sexuality in its various manifestations is among the urges that are not intrinsically directed at specific objects and activities. Objects and activities come to play a role [only] because the mind has the tendency of keeping a record of objects and activities rather than of the states which are the real causes of satisfaction.

An admirable attempt to square Western psychological theories (especially those of Freud) with the Buddha’s experience of jhāna. The two essays in this volume provide novel psychological models which neuroscientists and meditators alike will find provocative as they grapple with the implications of this incredible state of consciousness.

… no coming or going or remaining or passing away or reappearing. It is not established, does not proceed, and has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.

The nature of Nibbāna especially as differentiated from the (other) attainments of Samādhi.

… for a long time you have learned the teachings, remembering them, reciting them, mentally scrutinizing them, and comprehending them theoretically. But a disciple should value following the Teacher, even if asked to go away …

A group of mendicants have taken to socializing too much, so the Buddha teaches on the importance of seclusion in order to enter into emptiness.

Bhikkhus, just as a pot that has been turned upside down gives up its water and does not take it back…

Wisdom doesn’t get itself entangled, bogged down…

A small collection of three Dhamma talks on how to orient our thoughts and practice in the right direction.

the Buddhist reformulation of the annihilationist tenet can indeed serve as an inspired utterance for those aspiring to become arahants by annihilating even the subtlest forms of clinging in the form of any traces of conceit.

A comparative study of how no-self combats ideas of annihilation

Allow me, venerable sir, to answer Citta the householder’s question.

Discussion questions:

1. What does this sutta reveal about (Theravāda) monastic etiquette?
2. Why do you think the sutta ends the way it does?

Whoever should take to himself certain views, thinking them the best…

The conceit that comes from clinging to practices or views—even if they’re supreme—is a fetter.

By a misperception of emptiness
A person of little intelligence is destroyed.

A translation of a select seventy verses from Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

… a bhikkhu develops right view, which is based upon seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, maturing in release

On the kind of right view necessary to attain Nibbāna.

Rather than seeking to put forward a philosophical view about the nature of reality or knowledge, Nāgārjuna uses arguments for emptiness to purge Madhyamaka Buddhists of any view, thesis, or theory whatsoever, even views about emptiness itself.

I went in search of the world’s gratification, and I found it.

The Buddha became awakened by understanding gratification, as well as its danger and escape.

… for all of its rhetoric about not relying on words and letters and functioning compassionately as a politically detached, iconoclastic religion, Zen has generally failed to criticize ideologies–and specific social and political conditions–that stand in tension with core Buddhist values.

Yet a close examination of Zen theory and praxis indicates that the tradition does possess resources for resisting dominant ideologies and engaging in critique.

… a noble disciple who has four things is said to be rich, prosperous, and wealthy.

The four factors of stream-entry are said to be true prosperity.

Data analyses showed that Buddhists were more likely to attribute bad outcomes to internal, stable, and global causes, but their well-being was less affected by it. Thus, these results indicate that the “depressive” attributional style is not that depressive for Buddhists, after all.

This paper identifies and responds to the four main objections raised against Buddhist environmentalism.

When a mendicant meditates rightly contemplating a pair of teachings in this way—diligent, keen, and resolute—they can expect one of two results: enlightenment in the present life or, if there’s something left over, non-return.

Not all dualities are misleading. This sutta teaches ways to contemplate the duality of the origination and cessation of stress and suffering so as to reach awakening.

… the practicer will become like a dead man who, while following others in their normal activities, does not give rise to the least differentiation or attachment

The extraordinary life and teachings of the modern-day Chan Master “Empty Cloud”.

When we guard our mind, the thinking is unable to continue, unable to proliferate.

In reality there are only three things: mind, matter, and Dhamma.

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

An approachable and clear commentary on this famous Chinese poem explaining how Chan can be understood as a merging of Taoism with Buddhism.

Only a few have heard that “painted rice cakes do not satisfy hunger” and none have really understood what it meant. I’ve asked several of these skin bags about it and everybody was quite certain without even bothering to look into it.

A classic sermon from 1242.

But when discourses spoken by the Realized One—deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness—are being recited the mendicants do want to listen. They pay attention and apply their minds

… language, concepts, and meanings are embodied through our dispositions, abilities, comportment, and actions

After identifying two related, Zen “dogmas”—(1) that language obscures reality and that (2) Buddhist practice is about cultivating the experience of emptiness—this essay sets about to refute these by examining the way that concepts are enacted and embodied.

… in a future time there will be mendicants who won’t want to listen when discourses spoken by the Realized One—deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness—are being recited.

… that is how the discourses spoken by the Realized One—deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness—will disappear.

As an ancient drum has disintegrated, so too will the true teachings eventually be forgotten.

If anyone, bhikkhus, should speak thus: ‘Having rejected this all, I shall make known another all’—that would be a mere empty boast on his part.

The Buddha makes clear that the senses are really “all” there is.

… for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Venerable Kaccānagotta asks the Buddha about right view.

This sutta, brief but profound, became renowned as the only canonical reference named in Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, perhaps the most famous philosophical treatise in all of later Buddhism.

This small Sutta deals with the veneration in which the Buddha held the Dharma, the doctrine which he had discovered on the night of his enlightenment and which he had chosen as his teacher. This text throws some light on the nature of the Buddha and the Dharma as they were conceived by the first Buddhists.

On the five pure and impure Skandhas and on the subtle reversal of paṭicca-samuppāda in the prajñāpāramitā

… the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix

If you’d like to share your, or read other people’s, thoughts on this, be sure to check out the lively discussion on SuttaCentral about this article.

Three sūtras in the SA which deal with emptiness especially attracted the attention of the author of the Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa

Those who wanted to uphold the radical non-substantialist position of early Buddhism were faced with the dual task of responding to the enormously substantialist and absolutist think­ing of the non-Buddhist traditions as well as to those within the Buddhist tradition who fell prey to such thinking.

… a consolidation of thirty years of research and reflection on early Buddhism as well as on some of the major schools and philosophers associated with the later Buddhist tradi­tions

Bad things are easy to think about! It’s the good things that are difficult, because the kilesas don’t like them.

An afternoon chat about emptiness.

… all pathways for verbal expression, terminology and designation converge on this whirlpool between name-and-form and consciousness

The Nivane Niveema are a series of thirty-three sermons on Nibbāna, originally delivered in Sinhala during the period 1988–1991 and given to the assembly of monks in Nissaraṇa Vanaya, Meethirigala, one of Sri Lanka’s most respected meditation monasteries in the strict forest tradition.

The English translations were released in 7 vols. between 2003 and 2012 and continue to brilliantly challenge the traditional Theravāda exegesis.

You can get the lecture notes here and can watch the lectures on YouTube here.

… slender citrine lip onto which I place, gently, this first handful of hair

I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas.

In this famous and much-celebrated sutta, the Buddha teaches how to properly grasp Buddhist philosophy so as not to lead to more suffering.

He doesn’t assume consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness.

The Buddha gives a long discourse on the five aggregates ending in his own repudiation of the idea that not-self contradicts the law of karma.

Be free from even so much as a single thought that is deceived

A short admonition to transcend the concerns for gain and loss, etc and to attain the true aim of “non-dual” practice

This article translates the seventh fascicle of the Saṃyukta-āgama, which contains discourses 139 to 187.

… indeed there is no thing there

A beautiful reading of this wonderful and profound sutta on realizing the essence of emptiness.

Whatever does not belong to you and does not belong to others, these things should quickly be eradicated and relinquished.

A clever Bhikkhu quickly understands a pithy teaching.

Reverends, all things are rooted in desire. Attention produces them.

The Buddha gives an extraordinary ten-point summary of the path from things to the cessation of things.

Insofar as it disintegrates, it is called the ‘world.’

To be female is to have the dukkha of a female. To be male is to have the dukkha of a male. […] If we deludedly think ‘I am happy’ then we must suffer accordingly.

In these three dhamma talks on emptiness delivered at Siriraj Hospital (Bangkok) in 1961, Ajahn Buddhadasa cuts right to the heart of Buddhism, encouraging us in plain and vivid language to stop identifying as or clinging to anything at all.

… the Nikāyas do not see Nibbāna as a form of consciousness, including such exceptional kinds of consciousness as anidassana viññāṇa and appatiṭṭhita viññāṇa. Nor can Nibbāna be regarded as equivalent to mind, or any particular state of mind.

Western writers too readily described Buddhism as a nihilistic doctrine teaching annihilation as its highest goal, a view these writers condemned as philosophically absurd and ethically reprehensible. Similar statements still sometimes appear in prejudiced non-Buddhist literature. The pendular reaction to that view was the conception of Nibbāna as existence. It was now interpreted in the light of already familiar religious and philosophical notions [such] as pure being, pure consciousness, pure self or some other metaphysical concept.

A short booklet on seeing Nibbāna as the ultimate expression of the middle way between existence and non-existence.

Yeah, we’re locked up in ideas
We like to label everything
Well, I’m just gonna do here
What I gotta do here
‘Cause I gotta keep myself free

A fun anthem on ignoring the haters, and on not taking words too seriously.

For a more detailed, comparative analysis including a practice guide, see Bhikkhu Analayo’sarticle: “Gradual Entry into Emptiness”.

Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with the eye, sights, eye consciousness, eye contact, feeling, and craving. Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed.

It is wrong perception that leads to the concepts of being and nonbeing.

Suppose a person was to catch six animals, with diverse territories and feeding grounds, and tie them up with a strong rope.

A mendicant goes to a series of teachers and asks how vision is purified. Dissatisfied with all their answers, he complains to the Buddha, who illustrates his quandary with the famous simile of the Kiṁsuka tree.

Now suppose that in the autumn—when it’s raining in fat, heavy drops—a water bubble were to appear & disappear on the water, and a man with sight were to see it. To him it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance could there be in a bubble? In the same way, a man with wisdom sees a feeling. To him it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance could there be in a feeling?

The Buddha gives a series of similes for the aggregates: physical form is like foam, feeling is like a bubble, perception is like a mirage, choices are like a coreless tree, and consciousness is like an illusion.

They focus on the cessation of identification, and their mind is eager, confident, settled, and decided about it. You’d expect that mendicant to stop identifying.

A rare sutta about cessation attainment and the final leap.

For those who have one love, they have one suffering.
For those who love nothing, they have no sorrow.

Lady Visākhā wished for many grandchildren.

Monks! All is aflame!

The “all” consisting of the six interior and exterior sense fields, that is. This is the famous “third sermon” taught at Gayā’s Head to the followers of the three Kassapa brothers.