Meditation and Emptiness

It's hard to figure out what you're emptying before you start meditation. Page 437 of DeBary and Bloom's Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume One illustrates emptiness within a Western context is something pessimistic and existential. *Buddhism instead follows that if all phenomenological events, or events based on sensual perception, are unreal, then the only reality is Emptiness (sunyata).

"The ultimate Emptiness was here and now, everywhere and all- embracing, and there was, in fact, no difference between the great Emptiness and and the phenomenal world (samsara).  Thus all beings were already participants of the Emptiness that was nirvana; they  were already Buddha if only the would realize it."  (DeBary and Bloom 437)

The sunflower also illustrates sunyata.  My apologizes for forgetting the source, but the logic goes like this:  What is a sunflower?  Is it the water that quenches it's thirst?  Is the the sun that gives it warmth?  Is it the nutrients?  These are all necessary, but insufficient conditions that define the sunflower.  The sunflower is all and none of these things at the same time.   Our personal sensory and mental frame that defines the existence of the sunflower in this particular way.  Emptiness is not the lacking of something or negative space, it's a state of non-being, lacking identity and context.

When I meditate, I imagine myself as a raindrop in a vast ocean.  My monkey mind loves to imagine itself rising to great heights and crashing to the earth.  But once I sink deep into the ocean, I encounter the great void of the great dark ocean.  It's that feeling of staring across the dark ocean at night.  A sudden visceral truth about nature puts me into shock, but I can't rationalize or explain this experience.

For the curious beginner, Australian Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm gives a simple and light-hearted take on breathing meditation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCUQdIbfWwQ

Give it a try!  No purchase necessary!

Citation:

De, Bary William Theodore, Irene Bloom, Wing-tsit Chan, Joseph Adler, and Richard John Lufrano. Sources of Chinese Tradition. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. Print.

*If you want to be nit-picky this is from The Three-Treatise School.

Money is the Catalyst to Culture

Citing Ayn Rand irks many people, but she did make a strong point about the role of money. In Atlas Shrugged,  Rand claims money isn't evil.  Money is a stack of semi-precious metal and paper.  She defines it as the representation of one's work, and people define through consent the numerical value behind money.

Some argue that because money is the instrument that can acquire weapons and illegal narcotics, it must be the root of evil.  But money also commissions art and creates incentive to research medicine.  The way we use money defines our culture.

Let's consider the modern yuppie.  Said person pursues a position in banking to accumulate wealth so that the person may enjoy front row tickets to see Beyonce or eat expensive steak.  We claim that this person is living excessively with little to no regard to the rest of society.

Backtrack to 11th century Northern Song China.  A businessman trades his goods at a profit so that he may cultivate his fields for the best tasting tea.  The emperor offers the grand prize of exclusive rights to sell him tea.  Everyone competes and refines their methods until someone wins.  Again, tea has little to no utilitarian value to society.  Is it wrong to enjoy a cup tea?

Is it because of the recentness of modern culture that we can say it lacks "cultural" value?  Imagine if something we now consider lowbrow, like Justin Beiber's lyrics, became classical canon for future English textbooks centuries from now?

Regardless of what your taste is for tea or Justin Beiber, we can't deny that both were the products of the movement of money.  All elements of culture require human energy to produce.  If the definitions of human morals are also the product of human energy, couldn't I make the touchy claim that morals are also made of money?