What is "everything is empty"

This is the basic view of Buddhism, but it has made many people misunderstand Buddhism. Many people call Buddhism an empty door, and some scholars regard Buddhism as a pessimistic philosophy of life. This is also a difficult point of view. Some Buddhists use ambiguous metaphors to talk about this problem, such as life is like a dream, so "when the body is empty" and so on. This explanation is hard to convince. Look up the Buddhist dictionary to explain "body empty time": "it means not analyzing all regular things, but directly realizing body empty time." The law born of reason is like a dream, but it is not real. " In Buddhism, the original meaning of "Fa" is opposite to meaning root and consciousness, in which meaning root refers to the organ that produces psychological activities, consciousness refers to the ability to produce psychological activities, and "Fa" refers to the content and object of inner activities opposite to consciousness and meaning root. Later, "Fa" was given the meaning of categories, such as color method and mental method. Color method is "the big category of color" and mind method is "the big category of mind". The "law" here is equivalent to what modern people call categories and categories. The "everything" in the title refers to everything. There are two main points in the above explanation in Buddhist dictionaries: first, "body and space" means that everything is born of karma, so there is no entity; The second is that the understanding of "this is not an entity" should be realized directly without thinking, that is to say, intuition is emphasized here, not thinking or thinking. Only by intuitively realizing that all things are "empty in body and time" can we truly understand the above proposition. Let's look at the first point first. As far as the basic situation is concerned, human understanding of things can be roughly summarized into two ways: one is to regard things as "entities"; Another way is to regard things as "relationships". The former regards things as "real" and exists independently. This is the view of most people on things. Why do people firmly believe that things are "real" and exist independently? The main reason is that people can draw the conclusion that self is "real" and independent from the perspective that things are "real" and independent. In other words, it is the substantive concept of "self" in most people's minds that leads to the concept that things are real and independent. The fundamental feature of the world outlook of substantive things is "dualism", which divides life and the world into opposing parts, such as self and others, subjective and objective, material and spiritual, parts and whole. This world outlook will inevitably produce or even create confrontation, division, confrontation and war, which will inevitably become the biggest "culprit" that produces inner delusions and troubles. Different from the above-mentioned concept that things are regarded as "entities", Buddhism believes that there is no such thing as "entities" in the world. Everything in the world is interrelated-mutually causal and mutually conditional. For example, there is "you" in "I" and "I" in "you"; "I" and "you" are mutually causal and mutually conditional-there is no "I" without "you" and vice versa. The relationship between "I" and "you" is like the relationship between host and guest. No host, no guests; Or conversely, Dallas went to the auditorium and popularized it. All good things must come to an end, and all good things must come to an end. This is the idea of "Karma Theory" in Buddhism: "If you achieve something here, you will achieve something, and you will achieve something in this life. There is no reason for this, this is destruction. " "karma" means "relationship" in modern terms. "Relationship" means that everything is mutually causal and mutually conditional. Let's look at the second point: people's understanding of the "noumenon emptiness" of things should be realized directly without thinking. Why is this? Can't we rely on speculation? Yes, you can't rely on abstract speculation, but you must realize it directly in your heart. Speculation is just an abstract symbol or language system, not a real inner activity. Abstract speculation belongs to consciousness, which is the surface of internal activities, not the whole of internal activities. If expressed in psychological terms, speculation is only consciousness, which includes neither the subconscious nor the unconscious of life. The unconsciousness of life is the core of the whole life and inner activities. People's abstract thinking, no matter how eloquent, is not the same as real wisdom in their hearts. Abstract speculation and wisdom are two completely different things. Only when you don't think in your mind and realize it directly can you understand the connotation of the thought of "body and space". In order to better understand the above thought, we will explain it from another angle. In the concept of modern people, "dualism" is a deep-rooted way of thinking. Many people regard the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity, matter and spirit, society and self, and part and whole as self-evident "truth". Is that really the case? Is there any evidence to "prove" dualism? Not at all. The falsification theory of modern science shows that it is impossible for people to prove that a theory is correct, but only that it is wrong. The reason for the dualism is that people's hearts are divided. Contrary to the imagination of many philosophers in many fields, it is not the understanding of things that determines people's ideas, but the internal concept of "self" that determines people's views on things. This situation eloquently proves the correctness of Buddhism's omniscient thought. "Knowing everything" means that it is not external reflection theory that determines people's inner activities, but people's self-mind, and it is the internal structure that determines people's views on things. To improve the realm of life, we must start from improving our hearts. The "knowledge" of "knowing everything" here refers to the inherent ability to distinguish. One of the most important characteristics that distinguishes Buddhism from other thoughts and religions is that it regards man as the master of life, not an external thing or god. Other religions and thoughts in the history of human thought either regard "God" or God as the master of life, or regard the external environment opposite to human beings as the master of life. The former is Christianity and Islam, while the latter is like many people's deep-rooted mechanical materialism and various external determinism. In the eyes of most people, the responsibility for different situations in life is not themselves, but external things, such as the environment or God. Isn't it ridiculous that life is not decided by yourself, but by something other than yourself? To put it bluntly, modern people's worship of material is actually to regard material as the master of life, which is equally ridiculous. Not to mention whether matter can solve the main problems in life, the concept of "matter" alone illustrates the opposition between human heart and the world. Man opposes himself to matter, in fact, he opposes himself to the world. People put forward this concept itself, which shows that their hearts are "curled up"-full of fear and fear of the outside world. It is impossible to build a happy life in this inner world. In the history of world thought, people's understanding of "existence" can be roughly divided into two kinds: the existence of things or the existence of a certain relationship. The former regards things as the main body of existence, simplifies and abstracts the complex phenomena around things to the maximum extent, and deeply explores the main factors or laws governing things. This is mainly western culture. Therefore, western culture attaches great importance to using logic as a tool. Different from western culture, the latter focuses on inner experience and epiphany, and fully grasps the rich connotation and relationship of things. The latter is mainly the oriental cultural tradition represented by ancient India and China. Compared with western culture, eastern cultural tradition emphasizes inner feelings and life realm. In the former definition, the subject of existence is something, even if the environment around something disappears completely, something still exists. Obviously, in this understanding of existence, the world must be composed of countless particles that are separated from each other. This is the philosophical basis of western "particle theory" thought. And "particle theory" is the philosophical basis of identity (A=A, or a is not equal to non-a) in western cultural formal logic. This world view holds that since the world is made up of countless independent points or particles, people's self-life must be independent and equal to each other. The slave commodity trade in the ancient Mediterranean was very developed, which required both sides to be independent and equal, and each side should strive for its own economic interests. This way of life in ancient Greece greatly promoted them to put forward the "particle" theory of the world and the concept of equality between free people. It can be said that the ancient Greeks constructed the philosophy and tradition of "particle theory" based on the authenticity of their own lives and the concept of mutual equality, or based on their own way of existence. In the latter definition, existence is a relationship: something must depend on other things around it to exist. For example, what is self? Oriental sages say that "ego" can't exist alone without environment, and even the simplest fact that people realize life can't be separated from the prompt of environment. If we compare this statement with the ancient Greeks' understanding of "self", we will find that the understanding of "self" in eastern cultural traditions is very strange. How can people regard "self" not as an independent existence, but as an inseparable relationship with others? The reason is that the internal experience of oriental culture and the social environment they live in are family-based agricultural societies. In the agricultural society, the stability of interpersonal relationship and the demand for this stable relationship are far greater than those in ancient Greece, which adopted slave trade. In this way, it is easy to understand. Oriental culture has also built a "karma theory" with its own way of existence and inner feelings as the model. When we sum up the above discussion, we will find that the fundamental problem people are always facing is that the concept of "entity" represents the divided inner world, while the idea of "being empty" represents the harmonious inner world. The core of "body and space" is to emphasize the relationship between things and the organic whole of self and the world. Obviously, only people with extremely rich and broad hearts can reach the height of understanding the ideological connotation of "body and space". Understanding the difference between these two viewpoints is helpful to practice, which is why we discuss this topic.