To These

I would guess that you must think at least somewhat highly of these ideas or you would not have presented to us these opinions. Unfortunately I have to say that I am in disagreement with many of these opinions.

First of all the notion that emptiness is dependent upon relation-ality is not what I have found. Rather I have found that emptiness is in fact emptiness: no thing there, or here if you prefer. This is what I have experienced, first hand.

Secondly, the notion that enlightenment is merely focusing on one’s life here and now in the physical world is in my viewpoint short shrift indeed. There really is such a thing as being awake, truly awake. Where the state of one’s consciousness beforehand seemed as if it were asleep, the contrast is so great. And when one lives as an awakened one, then one experiences first hand ultimate truth while living within the beautiful mundanity of daily physical life.

These words are not merely semantic conventions. And, to my mind, the current fad of interpretting them, as I have seen so often in the manner that some do, is a good example of pop Buddhism at work.


These typify the kind of teachings that you can read in books by authors who have little depth of experience themselves, and are settling for the cookbook guide to Buddhism: Add karma, stir well, blend with compassion, and here and now.

I would like to encourage you to go beyond the simple answers and into your own deepest experience of the truth and discover for yourself emptiness and enlightenment. Then come back and explain to us what they mean to you.