Comments on “Terminology: Emptiness and form, nebulosity and pattern”

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Meaning Less or Ness

Sabio 2010-12-17

I totally agree with you that “Emptiness” is a poor translation to English because of the connotations not present in most of the Buddhist meanings.

But with you offer this new words with tons of caveats:
(1) Your term is influence by Aro
(2) Uncertain if it even equals the Aro version of emptiness
(3) No effort to equal any of the other multiple Buddhist theories of emptiness
(4) You don’t care to argue if your version of emptiness/nebulosity is correct

With all those caveats, what are we suppose to do?
a) evaluate it alone as yet another theory of emptiness
b) forget all the past “emptiness” debates and evaluate your writings independently and test them somehow – as if you are starting yet another brand of Buddhism?

I look forward more to seeing what you are trying to accomplish.

No Buddhism here

David Chapman 2010-12-17

I hope readers will take this site just as what it is, and evaluate it against their personal experience of struggling with problems of meaningness.

Importantly, this isn’t meant to be Buddhism at all. In fact, what I was trying to say in this piece is that I want to leave the relationship between Buddhism and what I’m doing undefined; and that’s why I’m avoiding using the word “emptiness.”

This strategic ambiguity is to avoid having to argue with two hypothetical responses from Buddhists:

(1) This is Buddhism; you are ripping off Buddhist ideas and presenting them as your own.

(2) This is not real Buddhism; you have a wrong understanding of Buddhism and your distortions will lead people to hell.

The answer to (1) is that I’ve explicitly said that I’m inspired by Buddhism and much of whatever is of value here comes from there. I’m not presenting any of it as original. (Some of it might be original, but I don’t want to bother figuring out exactly what. If I were trying to get famous or a philosophy job or something, I’d have to do that, and explain how fantastically important and brilliant my contribution is, but I’m not.)

The answer to (2) is that I’m not claiming that any of it is actually Buddhist at all. No one should come here looking for information about Buddhism, and if you take what I say as Buddhism, it will probably send you to vajra hell.

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I’m afraid that, at this point, I haven’t got enough of the introductory material up on the site for it to be possible to see what I am trying to do.

I got sucked into writing the metablog series about monism, because that’s what I’ve been studying myself in the past few months. Unfortunately, that derailed my work on the overview. The new pages about nebulosity are a return to that. More coming soon, I hope.

(But in the mean time, the last few pages of the monism series are languishing—not to mention my vampire novel. Aaack!)

Chapology

Sabio 2010-12-17

Laughing uproariously – that was fun!

I think I get it. Here is what I here you saying:

“Here is how I am seeing things today. Thanks to those who have inspired me ....
But every mistake here is my own fun creation. Enjoy the ride – I hope it helps one other person as I have fun exploring!”

'ad a giggle @ vajra hell.

Duckland 2016-03-09

‘ad a giggle @ vajra hell.

I’m wondering if you can say anything more about ‘I think that it is probably possible to give completely clear and precise explanations of “nebulosity” and “pattern.”’

That is a most intriguing claim.

Probably possible

David Chapman 2016-03-09
I'm wondering if you can say anything more about 'I think that it is probably possible to give completely clear and precise explanations of “nebulosity” and “pattern.”'

Mmm. Not much, at this point. It will/would take building up an enormously greater amount of background conceptual machinery. So far I’ve been trying to write the book for a hypothetical “general intelligent reader,” which makes getting to anything really difficult very slow. I may skip ahead at some point and present that part of the story in a form that assumes fairly deep knowledge of several branches of philosophy, mathematics, and physics.

Part of the story is foreshadowed in “Boundaries, objects, and connections, though.

Lotus Buddhas

Lotus Buddhas 2022-09-13

Emptiness is a wonderful teaching of Buddhism. It helps us to develop compassion for all sentient beings because nothing exists independently and separately, all are interdependent.

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