If the Five Aggregates, i.e., the panca skandhas, actually existed in the sense of being perdurable realities, they would be different than emptiness and therefore exist in emptiness (shunyatayan) instead of not existing in emptiness. It would, accordingly, be false to assert as the Heart Sutra does that “in emptiness (shunyatayan) there is no form (rupa), no sensation (vedana), no perception (samjna), no experience (samskara), and no consciousness (vijnana)”, all of which make up the Five Aggregates.
On the same score of the Heart Sutra, what seems at first sight to be almost paradoxical, viz., that the Five Aggregates are emptiness and then don’t at all exist in emptiness, is cleared up by understanding that the aggregates are Mind phenomena that have no real individual nature (svabhava) apart from Mind, itself, as if one might hold the opinion that there is a unique form-nature or a unique sensation-nature apart from Mind. In the Heart Sutra, where each aggregate is emptiness we should understand this to mean the absence of self-nature which makes the aggregates like an illusion. Hence their 'emptiness'.
This brings us to the operation of prajna-paramita, itself, which can be loosely translated as “wisdom-perfection” or the same, “perfection of insight”. Here the Bodhisattva is engaged in transcending the emptiness of the Five Aggregates reaching the contentless reality of absolute Mind this being another ‘emptiness’ in which there are no aggregates. This emptiness characterizes pure Mind that is pristinely empty.
One can say of prajna-paramita that it is Mind that is in the process of overcoming its former mass of non-enlightenment proclivities by distinguishing the emptiness (or lack of individual nature) of the Five Aggregates from the stark emptiness of pure Mind that contains nothing other than pure Mind.
As a caveat, without first initially awakening to pure Mind (bodhicitta) there can be no prajna-paramita. This is why Prajna-Paramita Sutras are not spoken to commonplace followers (prithagjana). They have not had a glimpse into pure Mind. And lacking such a glimpse they can easily fall into the belief that things like the Five Aggregates are eternal since they are 'emptiness' (believed to be absolute), or succumb to annihilationism which is the belief that emptiness means there is no absolute.
Capt. K'nuckle says
Les' you be givin' out da metaphysics of a system, den you ends up wit a buncha doofs who be turnin round ya system into some stoopid stuff like in zen.
Yo, like listen up yo, dats why Advaita and Platonisms wooord out (doctrine) be da' same now as it wuz back in tha day! Cuz both dem systemz had a detailed meta-physicalz
Fashizzle to da hizzle, out & peace yo!
Posted by: Capt.Knuckle&Flapjack | February 03, 2009 at 12:42 PM
Flapjack says: I hate your 'articles' 'cause they repeat themselves over and over and over; 'cept for you change the title.
Maybe you have one-track mind, or a lack of full-spectrum creativity like me in the arena of metaphysical dialectic.
*peace out home-boy
Posted by: Capt.Knuckle&Flapjack | February 02, 2009 at 10:57 PM