Empty?

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
from the Buddha according to Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now (2004) page 137

Those words shared by Eckhart Tolle in his wonderful best selling book, The Power of Now, are said to come from The Heart Sutras, an ancient Buddhist text about gaining wisdom. The words were believed to mean that the essence of all things is emptiness. (Tolle, 2004, page 137)

Are we and all things empty? Nothing?

Physicists would agree that within all matter there is more space than there is solid form.  There is space between molecules, space between atoms within molecules and space between the subatomic parts of an atom. That theory would go on to say that the  solidity of all matter is an illusion being that almost 100 percent of things that "appear solid" is actually empty space. So the phrase, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form,"  has become the chief premise behind the wisdom found in the heart sutras and in quantum physics .

For long...it was believed to mean that the body  and form did not exist...it was"nothing" but an illusion.

Is it "Nothing"?

This particular text is said to be over 2500 years old and like the Bible has undergone translation into several different languages including English  and has endured different interpretations because of that translation. 

In 2014, the original Vietnamese translation was disputed by the European Institute of Applied Buddhism in Germany. ( https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/)  That one line "form is emptiness, emptiness is form," was changed to " the body itself is Emptiness and Emptiness itself is this body" in the new translation. Another line was added in the third stanza, "no being, no non being."



Listen Sariputra,

this body itself is Emptiness

and Emptiness itself is this body.

The body is not other than Emptiness

and Emptiness is not other than the body.

The same is true of Feelings,

Perceptions, Mental Formations,

and Consciousness.

 

Listen Sariputra,

all phenomenon bear the mark of  Emptiness

There true nature is the nature

of no Birth no Death

no Being no Non Being

no Defilement no Purity

no Increasing no Decreasing.

 

from the 2014 translation of  Insight that Brings us to the Other Shore https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/

 

So how does that change things?

Well for practicing Buddhists it changes it a great deal. Thay,the disputer of the previous translation, wanted it clarified that it is not that form is "nothingness"...it is more precisely that form resides in emptiness. There is a distinction made, I believe, between being nothing and existing in emptiness. It is not that the body or other matter doesn't exist...it just means that worldly things like self, the body, feelings, thoughts, perceptions etc  exist in emptiness. What Tolle often refers to as the "spaciousness" that exists around form.

For many of us ...who do not practice Buddhism and probably never even heard of the Heart Sutra before now, but who are awed by the wisdom of the words often quoted...this change in translation can help us to  learn to see how we...who we really are...exist in that quiet space that surrounds us.  We are in that space, that emptiness temporarily before we become that space, that emptiness.  (Being and Non-being)

The body exists but not in the same solid way we assumed it did...as long as we are thinking from our human minds we will "feel' the body and experience life through the body senses.  The space that is in us or  around us is not "nothing"...it is so much more in this  emptiness of space where there is no contrast, no duality.

Hmmm!  Well that is how I understood this in my crazy mixed up way.  :)

All is well.

References/ Recommended Readings

Thich Nhat Hanh (September 2014) New Heart sutra Translation by Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum village: Mindfulness Practice Center. Retrieved from: https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/

Tolle, Eckhart (2004) The Power of Now. Novato: New World Library