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Sunyata (shunyata)

"Emptiness"? Spacious Sky?

This concept is central in Buddhism but there is no good English equivalent. “Emptiness” has been most frequently used, but is unfortunate in that it sounds nihilistic. A better way of thinking of it is “spaciousness”; it’s an understanding of underlying spiritual reality as a vast field of potentiality, where all our concepts are inadequate, all “things” — as our mind likes to think of reality — do not actually have any existence in their own right, as the “things” we think of, but only in complete interconnection. Thich Nhat Hanh has coined a much better term, “interbeing.”

Cohen uses another term recently proposed for sunyata: “transparency.” She concludes her essay with the thought that being ill makes more clear the opportunity our bodies give us: to realize that wisdom comes embodied. "Your body is the only way that you can experience the transparency of all things and their interrelationships" (p. 14).

Larry Rosenberg, in his book Breath by Breath, uses the term "Silence"; see his wonderful chapter 7, "Breathing ino the Silence." (Just finished reading it, don't know whether it'll go on the booklist, but had to mention this chapter.)

The sky that a dakini frolics in is sunyata.

© copyright Catherine Holmes Clark, 2001; last updated 29 June 2004