How does form arise out of emptiness?

[HoldorFold]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

[steve]

No

[Marblehead]

Singularity, presently undefinable, went BANG!

 

The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.

[C T]

Google Jayarava's Raves (buddhist blog) and search 'Emptiness for Beginners'. Very helpful, detailed explanation can be gleaned there. Dont think its ok as such to provide a link without the blogger's permission, but i am sure its ok to point it out in this way.

[Jainarayan]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

 

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

 

Said by whom? I think it depends on the direction you're coming from and who says it. A synonym for 'void' is 'nothingness', which according to the following philosophies, never existed. However, nothing/void is something, as was pointed out to me once upon a time.

 

Abrahamic: God is, was and always will be (so said Sister Mary Corrections Officer); God as First Cause created ex nihilo.

 

Buddhism and śūnyatā: Not what most people think. It's not total nothingness. It's inherent emptiness. Nothingness never existed.

 

Hinduism (Vaishnava specifically): "Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be." Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 2.12. This is not unlike the Abrahamic concept of God always having existed and will always exist. Except that in Vaishnavism nothingness never existed. Creation was not ex nihilo. Sikhism holds similar views.

 

Taosim: I don't know enough to speak about it, but my understanding is that again, there was never nothingness.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Jainarayan

[ralis]

I wish the Buddhists would actually put the term 'emptiness' in their own words. Actually speak from their own experience as opposed to parroting what they read.

[steve]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

 

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

Great article CT - I never read blogs but I may now have to change that...

 

That said, I don't think it answers the original question. Hopefully it does give the OP a clue as to the error in how the question is being asked.

 

While there are some very good explanations and descriptions of things like sunyata and pratityasamutpada out there, the op is looking for an explanation of God or a first cause - words like "source of all original creation" and "impetus to create" are embedded in a presumption of first cause and inherent existence.

 

Hence my answer - no.

[Marblehead]

... the op is looking for an explanation of God or a first cause - words like "source of all original creation" and "impetus to create" are embedded in a presumption of first cause and inherent existence.

 

Hence my answer - no.

This part of your post is worth repeating.

[steve]

I wish the Buddhists would actually put the term 'emptiness' in their own words. Actually speak from their own experience as opposed to parroting what they read.

Your wish may go unfulfilled rails. I try to avoid labeling myself as an ...ist of an sort - I despise labels. That said, the basic tenets of Buddhist thought are profound and point in the direction of reality when experienced directly (as do those of the other great traditions from slightly different perspectives).

 

The problem is that there is nothing so difficult to capture in words as one's direct and personal experience of reality. That applies as much to mundane experience like sight, touch, smell, and sound, as to 'mystical and magical' terms and concepts like sunyata and pratityasamutpada. I would challenge you to show me the color yellow in your own words, based on your own experience, without comparison. Or if you prefer, share with me what wet is, or sweet.

 

When we communicate experience, it is necessary to find a common ground that we can take as a frame of reference and then agree upon how our individual experience is like or unlike that referent. It's easy with sensory experience. In the case of emptiness and dependent origination, it is only possible to really communicate the experience with someone who has had a similar experience for comparison. When someone who has had direct non-dual experience reads a description written by another of a comparable experience, it is known instantly because of the shared frame of reference. When one is simply reciting phrases and descriptions without direct experience, it is equally obvious.

[RongzomFan]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

 

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

 

Are you talking about Buddhist emptiness?

 

If so, here are some quotations from 2 top books, Nagarjuna's Reason Sixty and Center of the Sunlit Sky:

 

Nagarjuna said "If I had any position, I thereby would be at fault. Since

I have no position, I am not at fault at all."

 

Aryadeva said "Against someone who has no thesis of “existence,

nonexistence, or [both] existence and nonexistence,” it is not possible to

level a charge, even if [this is tried] for a long time."

 

"I do not say that entities do not exist, because I say that they originate in dependence. “So are you a realist then?” I am not, because I am just a proponent of dependent origination. “What sort of nature is it then that you [propound]?” I propound dependent origination. “What is the meaning of dependent origination?” It has the meaning of the lack of a nature and the meaning of nonarising through a nature [of its own]. It has the meaning of the origination of results with a nature similar to that of illusions, mirages, reflections, cities of scent-eaters, magical creations, and dreams. It has the meaning of emptiness and identitylessness."

-Candrakirti

 

"Nagarjuna taught , "bereft of beginning, middle, and end," meaning that the world is free from creation, duration, and destruction."

-Candrakirti

 

"Once one asserts things, one will succumb to the view of seeing such by imagining their beginning, middle and end; hence that grasping at things is the cause of all views."

-Candrakirti

 

"the perfectly enlightened buddhas-proclaimed, "What is dependently created is uncreated."

-Candrakirti

 

"Likewise, here as well, the Lord Buddha’s pronouncement that "What is dependently created is objectively uncreated," is to counteract insistence on the objectivity of things."

-Candrakirti

 

"Since relativity is not objectively created, those who, through this reasoning, accept dependent things as resembling the moon in water and reflections in a mirror, understand them as neither objectively true nor false. Therefore, those who think thus regarding dependent things realize that what is dependently arisen cannot be substantially existent, since what is like a reflection is not real. If it were real, that would entail the absurdity that its transformation would be impossible. Yet neither is it unreal, since it manifests as real within the world."

-Candrakirti

 

Nagarjuna in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 1.1. states:

"Not from themselves, not from something other,

Not from both, and not without a cause-

At any place and any time,

All entities lack arising."

 

Buddhapālita comments (using consequentalist arguments which ultimately snowballs into Tibetan prasangika vs. svatantrika):

"Entities do not arise from their own intrinsic nature, because their arising would be pointless and because they would arise endlessly. For entities that [already] exist as their own intrinsic nature, there is no need to arise again. If they were to arise despite existing [already], there would be no time when they do not arise; [but] that is also not asserted [by the Enumerators].

 

Candrakīrti, in ''Madhyamakāvatāra'' VI.14., comments:

"If something were to originate in dependence on something other than it,

Well, then utter darkness could spring from flames

And everything could arise from everything,

Because everything that does not produce [a specific result] is the same in being other [than it]."

 

Candrakīrti, in the ''Prasannapadā'', comments:

"Entities also do not arise from something other, because there is nothing other."

 

Nagarjuna in ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' 1.3cd. states:

"If an entity in itself does not exist,

An entity other [than it] does not exist either."

 

Candrakīrti, in the ''Prasannapadā'', comments:

"Nor do entities arise from both [themselves and others], because this would entail [all] the flaws that were stated for both of these theses and because none of these [disproved possibilities] have the capacity to produce [entities]."

 

Nagarjuna, in ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' VII.17., states:

"If some nonarisen entity

Existed somewhere,

It might arise.

However, since such does not exist, what would arise?"

 

Nagarjuna, in ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' VII.19cd., states:

"If something that lacks arising could arise,

Just about anything could arise in this way."

 

Candrakīrti, in ''Madhyamakāvatāra'' VI.151., comments:

"It is not asserted that a chariot is something other than its parts.

It is not something that is not other, nor does it possess them.

It does not exist in the parts, nor do the parts exist in it.

It is neither their mere collection nor the shape—thus is the analogy."

Edited September 25, 2013 by alwayson

[forestofemptiness]

Personally, I don't see form and emptiness as two separate things. Whenever you have two separate things, you run into a problem: if they are separate, how do they relate? If they relate, how are they separate?

 

Also, I don't think there's any such thing as a "state of pure emptiness," which I take to mean absolute nothingness. An absolute nothingness would lack any characteristics, including existence, so by definition it doesn't exist. To some extent, with the discovery of particles arising from space and evidence of a Higgs field, the idea of a truly blank space is becoming outdated.

 

I like to think of emptiness in this way. Look at a table. It is solid, sure, but the table we see is only a small part of a larger process. Before it was a table, it was a tree, and after it will be mulched back into the earth. The table is "empty" that is to say "open", specifically, open to change. If it wasn't, it would always be a table.

 

Even more, the table doesn't even exist on its own. It needs the earth under it to hold it up, it needs the warmth of the sun so it doesn't fall apart, and so on. The table isn't even a tree, really, because many other things went into making that table. There needed to be table makers who learned their table art in a society, and the society needs a biosphere to support it. It sits on the earth, in an atmosphere warmed by the sun, in a universe with physical laws that support its structure. What you see as a table is an experience created by your consciousness.

 

Finally, if you take the table apart, you won't find anything that makes it a table. A table is a simple arrangement of parts, four legs and a top. How much of these do we need before it becomes a table? Two legs? Three legs? Two and a half? If you look at a table really closely, you may find atoms and space. If you zoom out from a table, you may find an entire planet.

 

So it isn't REALLY a table, it is really the entire universe coming together.

 

From my point of view, if you want to look into the mystery of form arising from stillness, which is a different thing than either "emptiness" or "nothingness", you can look directly into your own mind. Every night, the mind retreats into stillness. Yet every morning, it displays the world and myriad thoughts. How does that happen?

 

 

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

Edited September 25, 2013 by forestofemptiness

[thelerner]

I don't know. Further, what kind of answer would satisfy you?

Mystical, such as God?

Scientific, a singularity playing yoyo?

Existential, nothing really exists!

[Thunder_Gooch]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

 

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

I can.

 

 

 

 

This paradox arises because you think of nothing as nothing. Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something.

 

Empty space is as full as anything can possibly be. It is absolutely 100% totally full.

 

It is an ocean of electron/positron pairs which have been fused together.

 

Matter and antimatter combined as one.

 

 

Given infinite time random quantum fluctuations do occur which would cause these pairs to separate and generate a universe from "nothing".

 

At the edge of a black hole, the singularity's gravitational field is so strong that it rips apart empty space, breaking apart the bonds of the electron/positron pair, and absorbs the positron and emits the electron.

 

The positron being antimatter will combine again with the matter contained within and convert it back into an electron positron pair (empty space) thereby decreasing it's mass.

 

 

This is known an hawking radiation. Over eons black holes evaporate into nothing. Reseeding the universe with matter.

 

If this is confusing, think of this. When you dig a hole, you create a pile of dirt as well. Now you have a pile of dirt and hole. Yet if you return the dirt to the hole you wind up with the ground you started with.

 

Empty space is like the ground in this analogy, the pile of dirt like matter, and the hole like antimatter.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_sea

Edited September 25, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[steve]

 

I like to think of emptiness in this way. Look at a table. It is solid, sure, but the table we see is only a small part of a larger process. Before it was a table, it was a tree, and after it will be mulched back into the earth. The table is "empty" that is to say "open", specifically, open to change. If it wasn't, it would always be a table.

 

Even more, the table doesn't even exist on its own. It needs the earth under it to hold it up, it needs the warmth of the sun so it doesn't fall apart, and so on. The table isn't even a tree, really, because many other things went into making that table. There needed to be table makers who learned their table art in a society, and the society needs a biosphere to support it. It sits on the earth, in an atmosphere warmed by the sun, in a universe with physical laws that support its structure. What you see as a table is an experience created by your consciousness.

 

Finally, if you take the table apart, you won't find anything that makes it a table. A table is a simple arrangement of parts, four legs and a top. How much of these do we need before it becomes a table? Two legs? Three legs? Two and a half? If you look at a table really closely, you may find atoms and space. If you zoom out from a table, you may find an entire planet.

 

So it isn't REALLY a table, it is really the entire universe coming together.

 

From my point of view, if you want to look into the mystery of form arising from stillness, which is a different thing than either "emptiness" or "nothingness", you can look directly into your own mind. Every night, the mind retreats into stillness. Yet every morning, it displays the world and myriad thoughts. How does that happen?

 

 

A related perspective on emptiness... (not intended to be comprehensive)

 

Empty does not mean absent or non-existent.

It really means empty of inherent existent, that is not existing in and of itself as separate from everything else including "me".

 

A related way to look at this is the following.

Any "thing" you want to refer to has never been isolated from everything else around it in your personal experience. Look carefully at this and see if it is true.

 

So the table we're referring to has never been experienced in the absence of everything else in the realm of experience at any given moment. Every time I open my eyes and look at a table, I see everything else around it - chairs, floor, light fixture, room, myself in the mirror, neighborhood, street, galaxy, etc... depending on where and how I am looking. And I am always in the equation as well (Heisenberg demonstrated this for the science aficionados).

 

Our stubborn insistence on separating out a display of our senses from everything around it and from ourselves is completely gratuitous, arbitrary, and corrupts the reality that is so obvious. It is all always there, including the one doing the registering. And at the same time, none of it can be singled out and shown to exist in and of itself. All of our defining and dividing into component parts is artificial. And the separating of other from self is equally artificial. It is simply a convention that maintains our sense of relative existence. It is a natural consequence of our unique sensory apparatus and thought process including memory and the sense of time as a condition of the movement of thought, memory, and projection.

 

Very tough to talk about but very apparent when we look directly and deeply without our expectations and presumptions.

[ChiDragon]

It's said that all form emanates from the void. That emptiness/stillness is the source of all original creation.

 

Can anyone explain the dynamics of how there is an impetus to create anything from a state of pure emptiness?

 

I think the idea of "to create anything from a state of pure emptiness" was from the TTC. The visible(Tao) came from the invisible(Tao). When Tao was in the invisible state, it doesn't mean that Tao is non-existent but she is there and has a great potential power to create, When Tao is visible, all things are manifested by her creation. It was said to be the "state of pure emptiness" when Tao is in the invisible state. However, in your own terms, the "the state of emptiness" is not a very good choice for the description of Tao when Tao was in the invisible state.

 

 

 

[steve]

 

I can.

 

 

 

 

This paradox arises because you think of nothing as nothing. Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something.

 

Empty space is as full as anything can possibly be. It is absolutely 100% totally full.

 

It is an ocean of electron/positron pairs which have been fused together.

 

Matter and antimatter combined as one.

 

 

Given infinite time random quantum fluctuations do occur which would cause these pairs to separate and generate a universe from "nothing".

 

At the edge of a black hole, the singularity's gravitational field is so strong that it rips apart empty space, breaking apart the bonds of the electron/positron pair, and absorbs the positron and emits the electron.

 

The positron being antimatter will combine again with the matter contained within and convert it back into an electron positron pair (empty space) thereby decreasing it's mass.

 

 

This is known an hawking radiation. Over eons black holes evaporate into nothing. Reseeding the universe with matter.

 

If this is confusing, think of this. When you dig a hole, you create a pile of dirt as well. Now you have a pile of dirt and hole. Yet if you return the dirt to the hole you wind up with the ground you started with.

 

Empty space is like the ground in this analogy, the pile of dirt like matter, and the hole like antimatter.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_sea

While I agree that the scientific method is constantly making progress in understanding and explaining observed phenomena (and then realizing it's completely wrong and changing direction abruptly), the video and associated links do not answer the original question. In fact, at ~3:00, the presenter admits that we have no idea how to explain the observed energy that exists in empty space or its source. Scientists are expert at and notorious for making up numbers, like constants, to account for extreme variances in expected vs. observed results and then conveniently ignoring those adjustments as long as the variances are neutralized. While we may be able to put forth theories regarding the observation of an interactive dance of matter and anti-matter, this does nothing to posit an explanation as to "an impetus to create" which was the original question.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

The state of there being nothing would be a paradox, as there can't be a nothing which exists, as that would be a property.

 

Therefore, things must exist.

 

My opinion - reality has always been and always will be conducting cycles of creation (big bangs) and dissolution (?).

[steve]

 

I think the idea of "to create anything from a state of pure emptiness" was from the TTC. The visible(Tao) came from the invisible(Tao). When Tao was in the invisible state, it doesn't mean that Tao is non-existent but she is there and has a great potential power to create, When Tao is visible, all things are manifested by her creation. It was said to be the "state of pure emptiness" when Tao is in the invisible state. However, in your own terms, the "the state of emptiness" is not a very good choice for the description of Tao when Tao was in the invisible state.

 

 

 

I have to disagree here and it may just be your grammar.

I don't think the Dao De Jing really implies a time before and after.

I don't think the visible "came from" the invisible.

The visible and invisible are always already present, both aspects of reality.

 

The idea of a time before and a time after is a natural consequence of the human condition and the nature of thought and memory.

And I could also be projecting my own ideas and experience onto reality and, as MH likes to say, I reserve the right to be completely mistaken.

[Jeff]

I wish the Buddhists would actually put the term 'emptiness' in their own words. Actually speak from their own experience as opposed to parroting what they read.

 

Emptiness is like a chaotic primordial sea of clear light bubbling with potential. Kind of like the surface of the sun...

[Thunder_Gooch]

interactive dance of matter and anti-matter, this does nothing to posit an explanation as to "an impetus to create" which was the original question.

 

Sure it does.

 

It is common sense to think that the void of empty space is empty.

 

What I am saying is the exact opposite is true.

 

It is not empty space at all.

 

Rather it is 100% full space.

 

Filled to the absolute maximum, can't hold another drop, to the brim, full.

 

This is a complete reversal of all of our common sense.

 

How does form come out of this nothing or emptiness?

 

I gave two examples.

 

1st

 

Insanely powerful gravitational fields like at the edge of a black hole's event horizon, can split empty space (sea of electron/positron pairs) apart and pull the antimatter particle (positron) into the black hole, and emit the particle (electron) back into the universe. This is known as hawking radiation.

 

2nd

 

We know that over time random quantum vacuum fluctuations do also separate these electron positron pairs, given infinite time a universe like ours will be generated via such a random quantum vacuum fluctuation.

 

 

 

 

Why? Well your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps God, Shiva, Vishnu, The operators of the computer simulation, want it so.

 

I don't have an ultimate explanation for the cause of random quantum vacuum fluctuations other than that's what we observe.

 

 

 

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose."

 

-J. B. S. Haldane

 

Edited September 25, 2013 by More_Pie_Guy

[ChiDragon]

I have to disagree here and it may just be your grammar.

I don't think the Dao De Jing really implies a time before and after.

I don't think the visible "came from" the invisible.

The visible and invisible are always already present, both aspects of reality.

 

The idea of a time before and a time after is a natural consequence of the human condition and the nature of thought and memory.

And I could also be projecting my own ideas and experience onto reality and, as MH likes to say, I reserve the right to be completely mistaken.

 

This idea came from Chapter 40 in reference to Chapter 1 about "Wu(無)" and "You(有)"

 

Chapter 40

40

3. 天下萬物生於有，

4. 有生於無。

 

3. All things in the world are engendered from "You(有)".

4. "You(有)" was engendered from "Wu(無)".

 

Alternative translation:

3. All things of the world came from Visible.

4. Visible came from Invisible.

 

Notes:

1. "Visible" was a name given to Tao in the visible state.

2. "Invisible" was a name given to Tao in the invisible state.

 

 

PS....

Due to the language limitation, this the best I can do to transpose the idea across.

Edited September 26, 2013 by ChiDragon

[Marblehead]

I don't think the Dao De Jing really implies a time before and after.

 

You are right, it doesn't, as I understand it. But Chuang Tzu speaks to it. But he forms no opinion.

 

Emptiness is like a chaotic primordial sea of clear light bubbling with potential. Kind of like the surface of the sun...

Undivided Light, maybe?

[ChiDragon]

I don't think the Dao De Jing really implies a time before and after.

 

You are right, it doesn't, as I understand it. But Chuang Tzu speaks to it. But he forms no opinion.

 

How about these two statements:

Chapter 1

3. 無,名天地之始。

4. 有,名萬物之母。

 

3. Invisible was the name given to Tao at the origin of heaven and earth.

4. Visible was the name given to Tao as the mother of all things.

 

Tao was invisible before heaven and earth.

Tao becomes visible after all things were created.

[Marblehead]

How about these two statements:

Chapter 1

3. 無,名天地之始。

4. 有,名萬物之母。

 

3. Invisible was the name given to Tao at the origin of heaven and earth.

4. Visible was the name given to Tao as the mother of all things.

 

Tao was invisible before heaven and earth.

Tao becomes visible after all things were created.

I just knew you would hit me on that. Hehehe.

 

But Tao already existed so we can't say it became something out of nothing. The Mystery existed before the processes of Tzujan caused the Manifestation of things.

[C T]

Tao becomes visible after all things were created.

If one cannot even find any apt description of Tao, and cannot even pin down what it is exactly, how does Tao become visible?

 

Since things did not all suddenly manifest, the above is a mistaken assumption.

 

Sounds like a Christian premise. (for eg. "Oh, one can see God simply by looking at His creation.")