by Greg Goode
Inherent Existence and the Realist Tradition
Most of the West’s teachings have not argued in favor of emptiness. Since ancient Greece, the Western tradition has been quite the opposite, offering one candidate after another for something that is truly or inherently existent. The claim that something truly exists is called a metaphysical claim. It is a claim about the true nature of reality.
Those metaphysicians who argue in favor of inherent existence are usually called “realists.” Most philosophers in the West have been realists about something. They just don’t always agree about what exists in this way. Their realism is a claim that whatever is truly existent is objective and mind-independent. It simply is. And it is what it is. Its existence (the fact that it is) and its nature (just what it is) don’t depend on mind, thought, language or convention.
The overall arguments of realists usually proceed in one of two ways. Some argue that there is something that truly exists on which everything else in the universe depends. Others start on the other side, by analyzing the world of objects and phenomena, and then arguing that it all really boils down to some one true thing.
Western realism has offered a rich variety of objects, forms, substances and essential properties as candidates for what truly exists. Reading the history of Western philosophy is like reading the succession of these claims about true existence.
For Plato, it is the ideal Forms of gross and subtle things that truly exist. For Parmenides, it is the One; for Democritus it is material particles existing in a void of space. For John Locke, it is material substance. For Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, it is some form of all-pervading substance such as God or nature. For Berkeley, it is God, minds and ideas. For Kant, it is our forms of intuition. For idealists such as Hegel and Fichte, it is consciousness. For philosophers of mathematics such as Bertrand Russell and logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap, it is the necessities of logic that exist inherently. For scientific realists, it is atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles and energy levels that exist inherently. In general, modern realism argues that true theories point to what really exists by “cutting nature at its joints,” and that this is how our language and knowledge accurately fit the world.
Cartesian Anxiety
This catchy phrase was coined by Richard Bernstein in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Bernstein 1983). The “anxiety” refers to the deep human desire to get in touch with something firm, fixed, immutable, certain, objective, and beyond time and chance. And the “Cartesian” refers to René Descartes, who gave this feeling such an articulate expression. Cartesian anxiety is a yearning for the inherently existent. In his Meditations, Descartes gives voice to this yearning.
Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences.
Meditation I, 1
In this meditation, Descartes expresses his desire to establish a firm and abiding superstructure by building from the foundation. But he wants to be sure that this foundation of knowledge is invulnerable. He wishes his knowledge to be so secure that he cannot possibly be wrong about it. As Descartes proceeds, he arrives at a solution. It is the notion that he is a thinking substance. “Cogito ergo sum,” he says. “I think therefore I am.” Descartes argues that even if there were an evil genius who could systematically deceive us about everything else in the world, we would still be able to be correct about this much.
With this thinking substance, Descartes had found his secure foundation. He had found the antidote to his anxiety. Descartes also treated the thinking substance as an essence, as the true nature of who we are.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida and others have challenged Descartes’ solution. In fact, this is what the emptiness teachings do – they challenge arguments that assert foundations and essences. Why? Because substances and essences are the basis for clinging and suffering. And when they are looked for, they cannot be found.
Descartes is credited as the founder of the modern philosophical and scientific tradition in the West. Virtually every major philosopher who came after Descartes responded to his anxiety-laden challenge, offering their candidates for a rock-solid foundation, a sure thing. This continued up until the twentieth century, and traces of it can be seen in academic philosophy even today.
Emptiness and the Dialectical Tradition
In addition to the dominant tradition of metaphysical realism, there is a dialectical tradition. This dialectical tradition takes issue with the metaphysical claims of the dominant tradition, and goes by different names. It can be called “anti-realism,” “anti-essentialism,” “anti-foundationalism” or the “anti-metaphysical” tradition. There are other “isms” included within the dialectical tradition, such as “perspectivism,” “pragmatism” and “skepticism.” Depending on the thinker, these approaches can be anti-realist about just a few things, about a wide variety of things or about everything. And sometimes they argue that we are freer and happier without metaphysics in the first place.
When you are examining whether a certain object, quality or phenomenon exists inherently, it doesn’t matter so much whether your philosophical guide is a partial anti-realist or a global anti-realist. It is your resonance with their approach that matters. You are always free to refute what they refute without accepting what they accept. Any good insight can help transform your limiting assumptions into a liberating freedom.
But Western Folks Don’t Call It “Emptiness”
Although the Western tradition doesn’t have a unified emptiness teaching, it does have many parallel arguments, some of which are very similar to Nagarjuna’s. These are arguments that seek to refute the inherent or objective existence of some kind of object, substance, property or essence. In the Western tradition, there are many names and phrases for inherent existence, such as:
Objective existence
Independent existence
Real existence
Ontological existence
The thing “in and of itself”
Essence of a thing
The thing as it is
The thing in itself
Beingness
Actuality
Self-sufficient being
Essential being
Subject of ontological commitment
The way something really is, regardless of the way anyone thinks
Reality of the thing, as opposed to appearance
Reality of the thing irrespective of culture or language or human consciousness
What science will agree on
The way God intends the thing to be
“It is what it is”
“It’s like that, ‘cause that’s the way it is’” (Run DMC)
Some Basic Terms
The equivalences between some terms in Eastern and Western traditions are shown below:
Eastern term: Inherent Existence
Western term: Objective existence, independent existence, the thing in itself. This is a mode of existence that things are said to have. A Rolex wristwatch exists inherently (or is “really real”)...
Eastern term: Conventional Existence
Western term: Existence by agreement, by imputation. A Rolex wristwatch exists conventionally (or is conventionally “real”) because we say it exists if it came from the Rolex factory in Switzerland and isn’t a knock-off....
Eastern term: Conception of Inherent Existence
Western term: This is a view of things rather than a mode of existence attributed to things themselves. When it is a natural way of thinking without being supported by an official philosophy, it may be called absolutism, realist intuition or naïve realism. But if this i
ntuition is bolstered and defended by philosophical argumentation, it becomes an official realist view. Sometimes called essentialism or foundationalism. When inherent existence (which doesn’t exist) is refuted, the conception of inherent existence (which does exist and which causes suffering) diminishes or disappears.
Eastern term: Emptiness
Western term: The opposite of objective existence. Quite often this kind of existence is called contingent, constructed, nominal or relational.
Eastern term: Emptiness Meditations
Western term: Rather than meditations, these would usually be referred to in the West as arguments – arguments against some form of absolute truth, transcendent being, true essences or universal substances. An important point for students of these emptiness teachings is that these arguments do not have to be merely abstract, but can be passionately engaged in a process of liberation and self-transformation.
Eastern term: Realization of Emptiness
Western term: The opposite of the conception of inherent existence. This is the realization that what you had deeply taken to be independently and inherently existent is instead dependent on other things. Other examples: What you thought was foundational turns out to be constructed. What you thought was independent turns out to be dependent. What you thought was a substance turns out to be a notion. What you thought was essential turns out to be contingent. What you thought was inherent in the world turns out to be contributed by the observer. This can be a shocking, thrilling and transformational realization. It can lead to freedom and great joy!
Eastern Know-How and Western Tools
For those who would like to study emptiness, Western style, there are many cues that can be taken from how Buddhists go about it. This is because Buddhism engages emptiness in a pragmatic way, as a relief from suffering; thus the motives and methods are soteriological. Over the centuries, there have been many helpful tips and pointers built into the path, some of which we will list below. These tips aren’t unknown in the West, they are just harder to find all in one teaching.
The soteriological approach is less commonly used in the West. Although many thinkers in the dialectical tradition meant their work to help promote peace of mind in those who engage it, the usual way you would encounter this work is in academia. At a college or university, these works are studied, but not often engaged with in a deep and transformative way.
So what tips and pointers can we learn from the paths that have been studying emptiness for centuries?
A Deeply Practical Issue
Meditating on emptiness isn’t designed to be a way to theorize or argue. When I (Greg) was in academia, the goal in the discipline of philosophy was to come up with better arguments than your interlocutors. I got very good at it, and others were even better! We were discouraged from engaging a philosophy in a transformational way, lest we lose our impartiality and objectivity. Studying and meditating on emptiness is vastly different The goal is to transform your experience so as to lose attachment to things which don’t exist inherently in the first place. It is soteriological.
Compassion, Love and the Realization of Emptiness Enhance Each Other
This can be a surprising insight. Developing a frame of mind that sincerely values the well-being of others actually lessens your feeling of separateness and makes the emptiness meditations easier to grasp. And on the other hand, realizing emptiness makes the seeming barriers between you and others lighter and less substantial. Compassion and emptiness both promote freedom and joy.
You Can’t Realize Emptiness if You Fall into Nihilism
This is another way of saying that one must walk the razor’s edge. Since there’s so much refutation and deconstruction involved in emptiness meditation, it is easy to begin to think that nothing exists in any way at all. Nihilism is just the flipside of essentialism, and where one is operative, the traces of the other are operative as well. In Buddhism, these pitfalls are avoided by becoming clearer and clearer about what to refute (inherent existence) and what not to refute (conventional existence). If you refute too much, you will cut into conventional existence, which was never a problem to begin with. This will lead to feelings of nihilism, such as the impression that nothing exists anyway, that there’s no point to anything and so why bother. Compassion can help here. Other things help too, such as friends and family, laughter, playfulness, hobbies, and an everyday comfort with getting around in the world.
Order Matters
This is another helpful insight from the Eastern paths. It’s more helpful to begin with meditations that are easier to understand. This way you accustom yourself to the form of meditation itself. In Buddhism, you might begin with the emptiness of an oxcart before you work on the emptiness of your self. Using Western resources, you would begin with the emptiness of painful self-labeling before tackling the emptiness of perceptual givens or the sense of presence.
The Meditations Apply to Self and to Other Things
This is a call for completeness. Everything is empty of inherent existence. It is especially important to realize this about your own self. Even so, you cannot stop there. In Buddhism it is said that we must realize the emptiness of the self, but also the emptiness of the body and mind. Because we base the self on the body and mind, we must also realize the body and mind as empty. If we don’t realize the body and mind as empty, then even if we realize the self as empty, the freedom from the sense of inherent existence of the self may not last. We will not have totally eradicated the tendency to consider things as inherently existent. The sense of inherent existence could re-attach itself to a new concept of self, perhaps a more subtle one, which is still associated with the body and mind.
Also, the body and mind consist of components that are repeatable. Because these components are findable elsewhere, such as in other people and other objects, we must meditate on the emptiness of these things too. Eventually, we must realize the emptiness of everything, even emptiness.
Emptiness Is Empty
The victorious ones have said
That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.
For whomever emptiness is a view,
That one will accomplish nothing.
Nagarjuna (1995) 13:8
The Heart Sutra and other prajnaparamita sutras talk about a lot of things, but their most fundamental theme is the basic groundlessness of our experience. They say that no matter what we do, no matter what we say, and no matter what we feel, we need not believe any of it. There’s nothing whatsoever to hold onto, and even that is not sure. So these sutras pull the rug out from under us all the time.
Brunnhölzl (2012) (emphasis added)
By realizing the emptiness of emptiness, you prevent the essentialist attachment to emptiness. Why is emptiness empty? It is empty because it isn’t inherently existent. It’s not inherently existent because it doesn’t stand on its own. It depends on other things. The emptiness of the cup depends on the cup. The emptiness of the self depends on the self. Emptiness depends on the teachings and definitions pertaining to emptiness. Nagarjuna provides a helpful antidote to the tendency to regard emptiness as a reified or truly existent property. It helps us to not to take emptiness so deadly seriously and in his Treatise on the Middle Way (22:11), he writes,
“Empty” should not be asserted.
“Non-empty” should not be asserted.
Neither both nor neither should be asserted.
They are only used nominally.
Cultural and Social Contexts Help
This is a question of availability. It is much easier to learn and meditate on emptiness where there are Buddhist sanghas (the community of spiritual practitioners), teachers, role models, success stories, temples, monasteries, teaching centers, books, articles and a commentarial tradition. The community aspect of a sangha is supportive and encouraging. It can be heart-opening, fun and inspirational. Whether you are Googling or driving to monasteries, it’s not too hard to tap into a current and find the various elements you need to stud
y and meditate.
These are some of the aspects of Eastern know-how that can be incorporated into a Western approach. The hardest one to incorporate may be the last one. There are no ready-made cultural settings where you can study emptiness Western style. We are hoping that this may change.
What Do I Do Next?
Do the exercises in these modules, including the metta meditations to cultivate compassion. You can pursue these investigations either by themselves, or in conjunction with a spiritual, therapeutic or transformational path you may already be following. You can follow your heart in this.
Discover Your Own Sticky Issues
After you go through the book’s modules, you might continue with the areas that you yourself feel very rigid about. The rigidity can be either pro or con. Is there a final truth for you? Or is there anything you feel must exist even if everything else perishes? Have you discovered an indubitable foundation, the kind of thing that Descartes was seeking? Do you feel immovable on attitudes about yourself? Do you feel immovable on issues about other people, whether individually or collectively in groups? The more intense you feel about these things, the easier it might be to try to locate the really-ness you might feel is present. This really-ness is the target of your emptiness meditations. When you refute it, you will be free of this sense of really-ness, and you’ll take a bite out of suffering.
Of course, there might be some things you feel so intensely about that you can’t find the clarity or space to examine them in the way required by your emptiness meditations. This is perfectly OK. This is a good sign actually, which means that you are getting clearer on the areas to examine. And there’s no hurry. You can begin with something else where there is more space. Later, you can come back to the very intense issue. By then it will be different, more pliable. You will have realized the emptiness of other things. Each time you realize the emptiness of one thing, it makes it easier to realize the emptiness of other things. Each time, you diminish the sense of inherent existence. Nothing goes to waste.