Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”

We are empty, or rather the matter of which we are composed is empty. But I must emphasize that emptiness does not mean nothingness. Some commentators have been mistaken when they have accused Buddhism of being nihilistic. We believe that the world in which we live is part of a flux, a stream of events. This does not mean it is nothing. Everything depends on everything else. Nothing exists on its own. On account of all the influences that come to bear upon them, things appear, exist, and disappear, and then reappear again. But they never exist independently. Form is therefore empty, by which we mean it is not separate and independent. Form depends on a multitude of different factors. And emptiness is form because all forms emerge from emptiness, from this absence of independent existence. Emptiness exists only to give rise to form. (p.341)

–from The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Inner Peace: The Essential Life and Teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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