Buddhists talk a lot about emptiness. I want to talk about it more. Trungpa said, “This seminar is on shunyata, although we are quite uncertain what shunyata actually is. It seems that shunyata means not that, not this. So we shouldn’t have a discussion at all. If it’s not that, not this — what else? We could sit around and scrounge up something to discuss, but it seems to be insignificant, totally irrelevant.”
So let’s call our investigations here “Totally Irrelevant.” Every Friday morning, we’ll contemplate emptiness, we’ll discuss emptiness, we’ll map the language and understanding of various meditators and philosophers and poets, and we’ll see if in the process we can’t deepen our own realization.

The emptiness principle is at the center of my view. But, in a way, it’s an unfortunate word — emptiness — to be at the center of one’s view. Its connotation in English is hollow and cold and melancholic. If you say, “I feel empty” to a friend, she is likely to think you are a little depressed. In the song “America,” when Paul Simon sings, “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why,” I don’t think he’s talking about shunyata, the Sanskrit word for emptiness.
Meanwhile, in Buddhism, emptiness is understood through experience, often first pointed out or discovered during the practice of meditation. This experience of emptiness is clear and open and luminous.
So, there is a linguistic dissonance here, in the word emptiness, in what it connotes in English versus what it means in the meditative traditions. But the fact is we’re stuck with the word. Emptiness is the main teaching of the Mahayana view. Emptiness is the cornerstone of the prajnaparamita, the Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form.” In short, emptiness is really important. And that the word is so easily misunderstood bothers me. So I want to talk about it. I want to study the various representations of emptiness both within the Buddhist tradition and also outside of it. I want to share my own analytical understanding and direct experiences, and also to hear the analytical understandings and direct experiences of others. I want to deepen my experience of emptiness.
But where do we begin if the whole idea of a discussion of emptiness is in a way totally irrelevant? Why does Trungpa say that? What does he mean? I always hear a deep sense of irony in Trungpa. Here, he says talking about emptiness is irrelevant and futile, yet he goes on to talk about emptiness for 75 pages! So there is something funny going on here. In his tone, Trungpa seems to fully embody the view, namely, to just let go and let be. Though that language is a little loose for my taste, to just let go and let be seems to be at the heart of shunyata. So, while letting go and letting be, Trungpa goes on to teach a full seminar on emptiness. So, perhaps, in that vein, we could have a discussion here. A totally irrelevant discussion.
We could start perhaps by trying to define emptiness. If a non-Buddhist asked you what shunyata was, what would you say? I might say:
Emptiness is: not this, not that.
Or, if I were speaking with a more analytically minded individual, perhaps I would cite Nagarjuna’s tetralemma:
Emptiness is: X; not X; both X and not X; neither X nor not X.
In other words, nothing — not self, not phenomena, not even the concept of emptiness itself — is solid, independent and permanent. All things are without svabh?va, without “own-nature” or “self-nature.” All things are empty.
But what does that mean? And what does such a view mean in any real and practical sense?
And why does Trunpga say that having a discussion on emptiness would be totally irrelevant?