Differences between Daoist and Buddhist understanding of emptiness
"Engaging some comments made by Francois Jullien in A Treatise on Efficacy serves well to begin articulating a Daoist sense of emptiness. According to Jullien:
There are two ways to understand emptiness. One is an emptiness of inexistence, seen from the metaphysical point of view of being or nonbeing: this is the emptiness of Buddhism (sunya in Sanskrit; cf. kong [空] in Chinese). The other is the functional emptiness of Laozi (the notion of xu [虚])… The two are radically different, although some people have been tempted to confuse them, and, as a result, they have become contaminated. (It is well known that, in part at least, it was on the basis of that misunderstanding that Buddhism… penetrated China. That is, after all, perfectly understandable, since the only way to assimilate thought from outside is by misunderstanding it)."
What follows in the spoiler is an in depth examination of Jullien's statement by Ryan Shriver, especially focusing on the meaning of 'kong' and 'xu' from section II in Shriver's paper here.
There seem to be these two different ideas about the goal of Daoism. One is emptiness, one is immortality. To say that emptiness (even if qualified in some way) is the goal seems to be missing some major portion of Daoist thought.
Livia Kohn, Ph. D., Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies whose specialty was the study of Daoist religion and Chinese long life practices and who has written 12 books on Daoism writes:
Spiritual immortality, the goal of Daoism, raises the practices to a yet higher level. To attain it, people have to transform all their qi into primordial qi and proceed to refine it to subtler levels. This finer qi will eventually turn into pure spirit, with which practitioners increasingly identify to become transcendent spirit-people. The path that leads there involves intensive meditation and trance training as well as more radical forms of diet and other longevity practices. Immortality implies the overcoming of the natural tendencies of the body and its transformation into a different kind of qi-constellation. The result is a bypassing of death, so that the end of the body has no impact on the continuation of the spirit-person. In addition, practitioners attain supersensory powers and eventually gain residence in wondrous otherworldly paradises.
Livia Kohn, Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way
This is a Daoist site, why is this not being recognised as Daoism?
