The School Of Emptiness

While reading the Vedantasara, the author mentioned a prolific school - the school of the Shunyawadis or emptiness. This philosophy is often followed by the Buddhists and a prominent scholar of those times (when the ancient sages lived) Nagarjuna who favoured this path. 

While reading his scriptures carefully one would find that Nagarjuna majorly negates the existence of everything, even the Buddha of that matter, further stating that the Buddha too is empty. Often the Buddhist put forward this view that states - anityam, anityam sarvam anityam, kshanikam, kshanikam sarvam kshanikam, shunyam, shunyam, sarvam shunyam. 


The English translation of that would be temporary, temporary, everything is temporary, momentary, momentary everything is momentary, empty, empty, everything is empty. Now, as you would note in my blogs that all this while I have been majorly following Advaita Vedanta and even being a follower of Advaita Vedanta, I can say candidly that this school of emptiness appeals to me greatly. 



Consider the momentary phase - I can say that this is what appeals to me the most, as I wouldn’t be too sure of the temporary and empty windows. But, I can definitely place my views for the momentary bit and I’d love to elucidate it with the help of examples. Consider having pizza or a cheesecake on the weekends and no matter how long you want that feeling of happiness to last, it’s only going to last no more than fifteen minutes. 


And then when you are done with the pizza or cheesecake, you actually begin to think if it was that great in reality? I feel the same, having experienced it for quite some time and can safely conclude that the feeling was momentary indeed. 


Now, back to the school of emptiness and Nagarjuna. When I try contemplating or begin thinking of the intensity behind that philosophy that could be so profound so as to even neglect the Buddha himself, I can safely say that this was some great philosophy that Nagarjuna and his team practised. 


How deep does one have to go to declare his own and everything else around him to be false and negate everything? Even though the core of the Advaita philosophy says “Brahma satya, jagat mithya” which means that Brahman alone is real and everything else is false, or just an appearance, this school of thought might even negate that as a whole. 


How astonishing, or should I say, very wonderful? Considering this inquisitive nature of mine, I’d perhaps choose the latter. Even though I would not fully be able to let go of my attachments to all the mortal, tangible and intangible things, perhaps I would strive to look deeper inside and proceed towards this emptiness quest. 


Image courtesy: MabelAmber on Pixabay

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