When those of us who live in the West hear Buddhists and Taoists talk about "emptiness" as the foundation of the phenomenal world, we have a tendency to misunderstand the meaning of the term. Thinking it implies a nihilistic denial of meaning, we quite often avoid it. However, in the East, "emptiness" actually has a dynamic feel; it is a sort of "pregnant spaciousness" or "sky-space" that is constantly giving birth to "the ten thousand things."
David Hinton, a scholar of the Chinese language, points out the fact that in China, the three elements of sky, emptiness and consciousness are closely related. For example, he speaks of the Chinese ideogram that is often translated as "empty" or "empty mind" or the "opening of consciousness." It is that wide-open field of awareness out of which the ten thousand things - i.e., the phenomenal world - all arise magically, of their own accord.
As the source of the ten thousand things, this empty sky-mind is innately dynamic. Tracing the "empty mind" ideogram back to its original pictographic form, Hinton reveals how it is composed of three different aspects: a pair of mountain peaks, the sky above those peaks, and - within that sky - a tiger. Thus, emptiness translates literally as "mountain-tiger-sky." Here, the tiger represents "chi," the fundamental energy of life, a vibrant force that is active in manifesting all things from the sky-space of consciousness.
Hinton concludes that "Consciousness is emptiness, Absence alive, an elemental ch'i-sky, . . . dynamic 'tiger-sky . . . It is the opening through which the Cosmos is aware of itself . . . , the boundless breath of the planet's empty mind." Thus, emptiness is not something static. Instead, it contains a dynamic energy - a "tiger-sky" - that gives birth to all of life.
Photo: A "tiger-sky" spreads its fire above Bingham Hill; Larimer County, CO; December 22, 2012
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