Sunyata Quotes

“Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events.”
― george kubler

“Without the pieces there can be no whole and without the whole the pieces have no place. What the hell does that mean?
Did you know that it requires the time and effort of approximately 10,000 individuals to get the coffee from the plant to your coffee pot each and every morning? That's just your morning cup of coffee! Expand that outwards to all the other products you pick up from your grocery store, to the water, sewage, and power systems hooked up to your house. In order for you to maintain your lifestyle, it requires the efforts of millions of individuals you don't even know exist. Suddenly the concept of independence sounds kind of absurd!
If you are special, it's not because of you as an individual, it's because of your compatibility within the whole. Become a source of dysfunction within the whole and suddenly your importance wanes, folks try to avoid you.
This is the philosophy of sunyata which some refer to as the theory of emptiness but which I choose to think of as the theory of the pieces and the whole.”
― Bryan Oftedahl

“... the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum.”
― Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play

“To this I replied, "I still think that my body is not merely a sensory appearance, for surely it came from my parents, who were its cause and condition."
He said, "If you think that your body came from your father and mother, then what are the beginning and end of these parents? What are their source, their location, their final destination? Tell me!"
I answered, "I think that they exist, but I am not aware of what they are. It seems to me that a physical body without parents is not possible."
He retorted, "Consider this. Who are the parents of the body in a dream, in the bardo, and in the hell realms?" With that, I arrived at the decision that this body has never existed, being simply a sensory experience.”
― Dudjom Lingpa, Buddhahood Without Meditation: A Visionary Account Known As Refining One's Perception

“Neither from itself nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause, does anything whatever, anywhere arise.”
― Nāgārjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

“Those who ignore or belittle karmic cause and result are followers of the nihilist heretics. Those who base their confidence only upon the view of emptiness will plunge lower and lower toward the extreme view of nihilism. Those who catapult into this negative direction will never find freedom from the lower states of existence and will be far removed from the higher realms. They say that doctrines emphasizing conventional meanings such as cause and result, compassion, and meritorious accumulations will not bring buddhahood, whereas the uncontrived definitive meaning that resembles the sky is what the great yogis must meditate upon. Among nihilistic views, that is the epitome; and among lower paths, that is the lowest of all. How amazing to claim that, by blocking the cause, a result can be accomplished.”
― Longchen Rabjam, Dudjom Lingpa's Chöd: An Ambrosia Ocean of Sublime Explanations

“The horns of a rabbit do not inherently exist because they do not exist at all. The mere realization of their non-existence reveals that the horns of a rabbit do not inherently exist; therefore, the non-inherent existence of the horns of a rabbit is not an emptiness. An emptiness is not understood through realizing the mere non-existence of an object; it is known through comprehending in an existent object the absence of the quality of inherent or objective existence.”
― Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness

“Motion does not begin in what has moved, nor does it begin in what has not moved, nor does it begin in what is moving. In what, then, does motion begin?”
― Nāgārjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

“Inasmuch a real mover does not move, and a non-mover does not move, apart from a mover and a non-mover, what third thing could move?”
― Nāgārjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

“The quantum world is as objective as our own: different people taking the same viewpoint see the same thing, but the quantum world is not made of objects (different viewpoints do not add up). The quantum world is objective but objectless.”
― Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality