Reference: Course on Subject Clearing
The Heart Sutra in Buddhism defines EMPTINESS as no Birth no Death, no Being no Non-being, no Defilement no Purity, no Increasing no Decreasing. In other words, in emptiness there is complete absence of any lasting phenomena.
The viewpoint of emptiness is just that. It is totally fresh. It is completely clean. There are no preconceived notions, no fixed ideas, no bias, etc. In short, the concept of emptiness is not viewed through any filters. It is simply what it is.
From a scientific viewpoint, this is the ultimate reference point from which all phenomena is perceived objectively. No other reference point is required to understand emptiness. This is like the zero of a scale from which all values on that scale are measured.
A reference point aligns everything that follows, into order. In the absence of a reference point things devolve into confusion. It is common to assume an arbitrary reference point just to avoid the immediate confusion, even when it can’t resolve everything.
The Semitic GOD and the Scientology STATIC are arbitrary reference points. They are assumed to resolve the confusion of physical reality. But they cannot resolve the reality they represent. To understand the reality of GOD and/or STATIC a more basic reference point is needed.
Emptiness has that property of being inherently understood because it denotes the absence of lasting phenomena. From this reference point it is possible to give an objective meaning to any phenomena knowing that it may change. Emptiness itself is not a phenomenon, just like zero is not a value.
EMPTINESS is the ultimate reference point from which all phenomena can be understood objectively without any preconceived notion.
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Comments
Hubbard’s definition of a static is certainly inadequate, and it lead to such misconceptions as that thetans are something analogous to objects that can impact on each other. But I suggest he was talking about the same voidness, sunyata, as were Nagarjuna and other Mahayana masters. Hubbard’s gift was that in the midst of 20th century America he stumbled on the idea of emptiness.
Yes, Hubbard was quite insightful in spite of his many failings. His greatest contribution was to express spiritual concepts in sort of a scientific language if not entirely with scientific precision.
This is very interesting!
Great to see you here, Shashi.
I like this … it reflects many of the thoughts that came to me in younger days. And it makes sense … Thanks You Vinay
Anonymous?
Not being a mathematician, I still have been persuaded that zero is (or has), mathematically, a value from my reading. “Zero” differs from “nothing”.
Thanks.
Zero is relative to the scale. It has a meaning relative to scale it is used on.
Wouldn’t this absolute zero reference be unknowable? Time would not even exist.
Yes. It would be a reference point of zero awareness. Any awareness has positive inertia, though extremely small.