Ajata: The Emptiness Teachings

At twilight, a piece of rope might be mistaken for a snake. You look again and recognize that it is actually a piece of rope. Yet neither object is real in the ultimate sense. Both are merely unreal worldly objects, appearing to have reality.

Reasoning itself is a phenomenon within the "worldly" dream, as are all that could be reasoned about, and the reasoner too. In other words, logic as well is not real, but then none of the things it supposedly applies to are real either. The fact of emptiness shows that logic too is empty, so it cannot answer any "why" or "how" questions one might expect to pose.

There is an approach that can lead us to the fact of the emptiness of the world: investigating its reality is its negation. The emptiness of the world presents that opportunity. Emptiness has no intention for us to discover it; it is the world of forms that points the way to the "why?"

Why is the world an "illusion"?; because it is empty of reality. Emptiness renders the world illusory; the illusion and its "why" question lead us into the ultimate truth.

Appearance of form causes us to assume that we are perceiving "reality". But paradoxically, reality is actually the lack of "reality".

What we think of as real things, we think of as arising with their reality. But ultimate Reality does not "arise". Anything which arises also departs; meanwhile it is changeable. Ultimate reality, being changeless, does not "depart"; neither does it arise, being "without beginning or end".

Though true reality is permanent, it does not disallow impermanent appearances, phenomena or forms. However, illusory forms cannot lay claim to ultimate reality, "arising" and "departing" as we suppose they do.
That all things are empty means that they are all the same. Even from this standpoint, "co-dependence" can be seen to be problematic because there are not really "co's".

The point of ajata is that all things are empty of reality, since every "form is emptiness" from its formation. Dependent arising, therefore, is a roundabout analogy for the means of explaining emptiness to those unwilling to accept that no forms have ever actually been formed, from the start.

All "things"-form, phenomena-can be seen to be co-dependent, and as such are impermanent; "things" change.

Ultimate reality cannot be something which changes. It is the changelessness of ultimate reality that makes it really Real. "Things", then, are empty of reality.

Ajata shows us that both nonexistence and seeming existence are elements of all of the universal objects. Emptiness and phenomena (objects, actions, events) are two names for the same presentation.

[Excerpted from the book]