Form, Emptiness, and What Is Substantial
Forma, vacuidad y lo que es sustancial
A student asks about the relationship between form and emptiness, and whether recognizing that "form is emptiness" also means that "emptiness is form." The conversation explores ponderability versus substantiality, and what it means to experience the world as oneself.
Form, Emptiness, and What Is Substantial
A student asks about the relationship between form and emptiness, and whether recognizing that "form is emptiness" also means that "emptiness is form." The conversation explores ponderability versus substantiality, and what it means to experience the world as oneself.
I've been contemplating: what is the world? What is the object? I'm sort of in and out of real recognition, in lived experience, that there are no objects. Sometimes that's really my experience, and sometimes it's just a thought. It goes back and forth. So I've been trying to contemplate that. And something was said yesterday that stuck with me: all we perceive is change. That makes a lot of sense to me in terms of space and time, but with something that seems to be a material object, I'm less sure. So I'm starting to see that form is empty, but the other direction, that emptiness is form, I'm stuck on. I was wondering if it has something to do with what Franklin Merrell-Wolff talks about: ponderability is inversely proportional to substantiality. Is emptiness form because it's substantial?
Well, when you recognize it both ways, it is substantial.
So "form is emptiness" and "emptiness equals form." It's not just an equal sign between the two. They're exactly the same thing, right?
It is that, but you can also go both ways in the sense of a translation. If we step into something like math and science: E=mc² says that if you have mass, you can convert it to energy in a certain quantity according to a formula. But it also means mass is energy. It's just a form of energy.
Right. But energy is not always mass.
No, it's not always mass.
That's what I mean. So is there some sort of difference between emptiness and form in that way?
Yes. I would say emptiness doesn't always have to be form.
Right. But form is always empty.
Yes.
Ponderability and substantiality
So does that mean substantiality and ponderability don't map onto this that well?
I think what that clarifies, and I'll share my interpretation: Franklin Merrell-Wolff was a teacher I respect. I would say he was very much in the Advaita space. He was a mathematician, a philosophy professor at Stanford, an extremely brilliant mind. He used a lot of logical pointings, and he expressed a realization as: ponderability is inversely proportional to substantiality.
What he means, or what I interpret it as pointing to, is this: what we think is substantial (appearances, matter, thoughts, sensations), the more that appears to be substantial, the more it's not. Ponderability is that which appears to be a thing in itself. The sense of objects being absolutely real, matter being absolutely matter: that is ponderable, but it's not substantial. The essence of it is not the thing in itself.
So what it's pointing to is that form is emptiness, and what's actually substantial is emptiness. But it's only going one way, because it could then suggest that once you recognize what is ponderable, the emptiness of it is also the substance.
I think what he's referring to by "ponderable" is illusion. The more you believe that an object is a separate thing, real in and of itself, that's what is ponderable, and that is actually not substantial. The more something appears to have its own objective essence, an essence that belongs to itself (the self, the body-mind, the objects in the world), the more that appears to be that with its own source, the more it is actually insubstantial. Substantiality refers to what is essentially real.
The pull toward a separate self
Do you think it's a better investigation to simply look at what makes me want to create a separate self?
What you're exploring is valuable too, but yes, I think that's a really interesting exploration: to see what the pull is. Why am I tempted? What's the gain? That was part of the earlier meditation. Instead of trying to push away from thought and come into presence, and then noticing you've been taken by thought, just let that happen and notice what's happening. Why is it so tempting? What's the pull into thought, into identification, into stories? What is that helping with? Not as a philosophical exploration, but the actual experience of the sensations. Is it a discomfort? A pain? An anxiety? A restlessness? An emptiness that thought helps to resolve?
Experiencing the world as myself
Would it be helpful if I intended to experience the world as myself?
It really depends on what you refer to as "myself," but I would say yes. I would frame it differently, though. The world, therefore thoughts, sensations, appearances, what you see, taste, smell, hear: how is it different from that which knows it, meaning yourself? I'm being picky on the "myself" part, because "myself" might refer to the body-mind, and that's not what I mean. The laptop is not the table, and that would be a futile experiment. But if it's the knowing of it, then: that which knows, how is it different from what is known?
Francis Lucille defines consciousness as the reality which is hearing the words I'm speaking right now. That which knows what is happening, that which knows these words, is what is real. How is it separate or different from what is known? That is how I would frame what you described as seeing that you are the world.
So to hold both?
No, it's not both. It's exactly not both.
So it's to see that the knower and the known are the same.
Yes.