Today's Gate is the reflection on there being no self ( in essence 'Emptiness'.)
In keeping with that I'd like to share a commentary from:
THE TREATISE ON THE GREAT VIRTUE OF WISDOM
OF NAGARJUNA (MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASASTRA)
by ETIENNE LAMOTTE
gassho 
sattoday
In keeping with that I'd like to share a commentary from:
THE TREATISE ON THE GREAT VIRTUE OF WISDOM
OF NAGARJUNA (MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASASTRA)
by ETIENNE LAMOTTE
Faced with the emptiness of beings and things, the attitude of the sage is to do nothing, to say nothing, to think nothing: that is the secret of peace.
Emptiness. - Some western interpreters have wanted to see in emptiness (sunyata) an absolute negation, but
when the Mahayanists say that beings and things are empty, they attribute no nature to them. They refuse to
hypostatize an emptiness that is nothing other than what is (akimcid), a 'simple non-existence'
(abhdvamatra). It is not by virtue of an emptiness that beings and things are empty; they are empty because
they are not. The very notion of emptiness is only a provisional expedient: it is a raft that one abandons
after having crossed over the river, a medicine that one rejects after being cured. This is why the
Mahayanists are not nihilists: nihilists deny what they see; Mahayanists, not seeing anything, affirm
nothing and deny nothing.]
Emptiness. - Some western interpreters have wanted to see in emptiness (sunyata) an absolute negation, but
when the Mahayanists say that beings and things are empty, they attribute no nature to them. They refuse to
hypostatize an emptiness that is nothing other than what is (akimcid), a 'simple non-existence'
(abhdvamatra). It is not by virtue of an emptiness that beings and things are empty; they are empty because
they are not. The very notion of emptiness is only a provisional expedient: it is a raft that one abandons
after having crossed over the river, a medicine that one rejects after being cured. This is why the
Mahayanists are not nihilists: nihilists deny what they see; Mahayanists, not seeing anything, affirm
nothing and deny nothing.]
sattoday
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