Insight Into Emptiness

Author:Khensur Jampa Tegchok
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Body, General, Religion, Buddhism, Mind & Spirit, Meditation
ISBN: 9781614290223
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2012-07-10T01:45:57+00:00

NO PARTLESS PARTICLES

According to the ancient Indian formulation of the form aggregate, all matter is a mass comprised of the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—and its derivatives. The four derivatives of the elements are visual form, smell, taste, and tactile objects—the five sense objects excluding sound.

The Vaibhashikas and Sautrantikas argue that the tiniest particles of matter are partless in that they lack directional parts. This means that they do not have a north, south, east, or west side, a top or a bottom. The Chittamatrins and Madhyamikas refute this. Imagine a tiny particle surrounded by ten other tiny particles in the ten directions.39 Do any of the particles in any of the directions touch the central particle? If we say yes, then we have to accept that where the particle in the north touches the central particle is different from where the particle in the south touches it. Therefore, there is a part of the central particle that the northern particle touches and a part that it does not. So the central particle obviously has parts. If it didn’t have parts, the surrounding particles would touch it in the same place, all these particles would collapse into the central particle, and there would never be anything large enough to appear to our coarse sense consciousnesses.

If we instead assert that the particles do not touch each other, we must accept that they couldn’t join together to form a larger mass. But since we know this is not the case, we must conclude that even the smallest particles must at least have directional parts. They cannot be totally partless. Thus all physical objects and everything that is considered form, however small, is made up of parts. All forms depend on parts and therefore are not partless, because partless and having parts are a direct contradiction. This reasoning is found in A Dose of Emptiness, by Khedrup Je, one of Je Tsongkhapa’s chief disciples.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.