If I take all the change out of my piggy bank what is left is the emptiness or shunyata of my piggy bank. Now, if you shake my piggy bank you would probably say, “It’s empty” and you would be correct in your assessment. But keep in mind, the piggy bank is still there. It hasn’t disappeared into thin air. It is just empty of non-piggy bank small change.
On the same track, if I empty out everything that is not pure Mind what I have left over is pure Mind, that is, its emptiness or just its suchness as Mind-only. Let me add that even the act of emptying comes from pure Mind as it self-actualizes itself; returning to its native state of pure being.
Emptiness in this way is not a state of being like Mind. It is a syncategorematic term meaning that it cannot stand on its own. In other words, it must be joined to a categorematic term like piggy bank. Still it can be argued that emptiness from Sanskrit shûnyatâ is an abstract noun which means it can stand alone. But this is not so. As an abstract noun it simply expresses the hollow (shûnya) condition of my piggy bank when it is empty (shûnya) of my small change. This is not any different than saying, “The brightness of the signal flare was almost blinding,” brightness being an abstract noun which must be understood as brightness-relative-to-signal flare.
Tying this all together, the emptiness of my piggy bank is emptiness-relative-to-my piggy bank. On the same track, turning to pure Mind, emptiness means no perturbations or signs are in Mind—just Mind itself. The complete lack of perturbations or signs is thus emptiness-relative-to-Mind.
The idea of a state of emptiness that is something concrete and categorematic doesn’t exist in Buddhism, at least in the Buddhism of the Pali Nikayas. Especially in the Culasuññata Sutta (M. iii. 104) it is evident that the mind is being purified by the practice of negation or the same, the via negativa. As far as the praxis goes, the monk is removing all that blocks or obscures the final realization of Mind in a state of incomparably highest emptiness (paramanuttarsuññata).
As with the emptiness of my piggy bank, which means my piggy bank has no non-piggy bank things in it such as spare change, likewise the emptiness of Mind means that it is without wavelike agitations. Its full, sheer luminosity is finally revealed.
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