Saturday, November 14, 2020

"Then said Jesus unto them plainly" - Everything is Empty but the God Exists




Tokyo

Everything is Empty but the God Exists


One of Buddhist scriptures most well-read by Japanese people is the Heart Sutra that can be translated as "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra)

The most well-known phrases in the Sutra are as follows:
Everything is empty and emptiness is everything.

It is said that this Sutra denies everything in this world, but it recommends to learn true and sacred words, leave this world, and reach nirvana, the space of paramount peace of souls.

However, this teaching is paradoxical.  If everything is empty, how can true and sacred words exist?  So, it is said that due to this antilogy or inconsistency, Buddhism launched by the Buddha or Siddhattha Gotama around the 5th century BC was absorbed into Brahmanism or ancient Hinduism as time went by to be part of Hinduism, and Buddhism disappeared from India till the end of the 19th century.

It is also interesting to know that the concept zero was first developed in India: 
The concept of zero as a written digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, presumably as early as during the Gupta period (c. 5th century), with the oldest unambiguous evidence dating to the 7th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0).
   
Indeed in India in the 5th century, Buddhism still prevailed.  So, the emptiness in the Sutra might lead to discovery of the concept of zero.  However, "the earliest extant dated text of the Heart Sutra is a stone stele dated to 661 CE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Sutra)," so that it can be thought that the discovery of zero led to establishment of the Heart Sutra.  Otherwise, it can be estimated that Buddhism allowed for discovery of zero, and zero allowed for the Heart Sutra.  Anyway, Buddha must have seen zero at the core of everything in this world, which caused pain in human minds, so that Buddha advised to give up everything in this world and try to come to nirvana, the space of paramount peace of souls, which became the underlying theory of Buddhism.

However, if the Buddha is correct in his ideology, it does not necessarily deny existence of the God who created everything including zero and who is the sole source of existence of everything including zero.

Because there is a law that anything that can exist can exist, this world including zero, the spiritual world, and even the Buddha and his theory can exist.  It must mean that the God exists and therefore everything that can exist exists.  Without the God or His intention to give existence to everything that can exist, this world including us must not exist.

Japanese people do not like to think of the one God, but they like the phrases in the Heart Sutra: Everything is empty and emptiness is everything.  It must be related to the Japanese view of life and death.  Indeed, if one dies, only emptiness remains.  However, this emptiness is only in the minds of people who are left behind.  Dead men might still live vividly in Heaven or ghostly in the hell.   
 
Everything is empty but the God exists. 

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John 11  King James Version
14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.
15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.
16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.
17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.
18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:
19 And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.
20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.
21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.
23 Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.