Okay, here is an important question. It pertains to those new to Buddhism and even some old timers. How do they understand the following passage below which is taken from the Heart Sutra?
Here, Sariputra, form is voidness and the very voidness is form; voidness does not differ from form, form does not differ from voidness; whatever is form, that is voidness, whatever is voidness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.
Ding dong! Time is up. They grasp this particular voidness in either one of three ways: 1) voidness is fundamentally apart to the five skandhas begining with form and ending with consciousness; 2) voidness negates things; 3) voidness is something determinate. But all that this tells us is that they have reified voidness. In plain English, the abstract term ‘void’ has been made into a reality in its own right. But this is wrong.
The voidness of the five skandhas mentioned in the Heart Sutra, namely, the voidness of form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness, according to Vimalamitra’s commentary (Arya-Prajnaparamita-tika), is likened to the voidness of the ‘city of gandharvas’ including the voidness of a dream, the moon in the water, etc. (Lancaster, Prajnaparamita and Related Systems (1977), p. 142). Essentially, this means that voidness stands for illusion.
Form, the first skandha, is then an illusion as are the rest of the skandhas. Turning to the older Pali canon form is, by the Buddha, likened to foam, feeling to a bubble, perception to a mirage, impulses to a hollow plantain trunk, and consciousness to a magician’s illusion (S. iii. 142). Judging from this, not a single skandha is other than insubstantial. It is through these skandha that our world comes into view, a world that is like a holodeck simulation to use a great image from the television series Star Trek.
I see "voidness" as the way things are, and not the way we think or like them to be.
Posted by: Account Deleted | November 18, 2010 at 12:31 PM