Thank you for this, Jati! Such a comprehensive and thoughtful exposition on emptiness. You showed me ways of looking at śūnyatā that I'd never considered before.
I'm curious — which resources have been most formative in your journey of understanding emptiness?
Well thanks! Spent a long time stumbling around it so it's encouraging to know the piece spoke to you (i know that it's a bit messy 😂)
As for resources, i remember my "stages" of understanding being pried open by a few key ones:
1. Brasington's book "Dependent Origination and Emptiness", in particular the Nāgārjuna section. At this point śūnyatā began to make sense but there was still a baggage of fear/misunderstanding of that it's void-flavored. It was primarily a theravada book.
2. Jed McKenna's trilogy - this helped to identify aversions to nonconceptuality precisely because they were written in an incendiary way. For example, me wanting awakening to be placed within *somewhere* or a set of instinctual defensiveness towards subtle metaphysical positions.
3. Roaring Silence - IMO the best book about Great Perfection. Very apophatic. There's also some great contemplative techniques described in plain language which I appreciated b/c Nyingma/Kagyu stuff could be a bit labyrinthine.
4. Cutting through spiritual materialism - Trungpa's a controversial figure, but the book itself is super good and helped in integrating Emptiness.
Hope this is useful. Also love your śūnyatā series dude!
Thanks so much for this. I've read Brasington and Trungpa, had not heard of McKenna before today, and have Roaring Silence at the top of my list. Excited to check these out!
Thank you for this, Jati! Such a comprehensive and thoughtful exposition on emptiness. You showed me ways of looking at śūnyatā that I'd never considered before.
I'm curious — which resources have been most formative in your journey of understanding emptiness?
Well thanks! Spent a long time stumbling around it so it's encouraging to know the piece spoke to you (i know that it's a bit messy 😂)
As for resources, i remember my "stages" of understanding being pried open by a few key ones:
1. Brasington's book "Dependent Origination and Emptiness", in particular the Nāgārjuna section. At this point śūnyatā began to make sense but there was still a baggage of fear/misunderstanding of that it's void-flavored. It was primarily a theravada book.
2. Jed McKenna's trilogy - this helped to identify aversions to nonconceptuality precisely because they were written in an incendiary way. For example, me wanting awakening to be placed within *somewhere* or a set of instinctual defensiveness towards subtle metaphysical positions.
3. Roaring Silence - IMO the best book about Great Perfection. Very apophatic. There's also some great contemplative techniques described in plain language which I appreciated b/c Nyingma/Kagyu stuff could be a bit labyrinthine.
4. Cutting through spiritual materialism - Trungpa's a controversial figure, but the book itself is super good and helped in integrating Emptiness.
Hope this is useful. Also love your śūnyatā series dude!
Thanks so much for this. I've read Brasington and Trungpa, had not heard of McKenna before today, and have Roaring Silence at the top of my list. Excited to check these out!