tldr
tl;dr there’s this dude named Siddhartha, 550BC, India. He proposes a form of radical nominalism, arguing that nothing is discrete, everything is made up of parts, history has no beginning or end, and everything is a murky smear. Language, thus, is inherently flawed. This doesn’t mean that we can’t know things, but that ultimately we can only trust empiricism and lived experience as a means of judging the validity of linguistic claims (You and I both agree on what a “dog” is, but what about perro? 狗? No one word encapsulates the entirety of what an actual dog is). He proposes an ascetic practice (it’s ascetic by modern Western standards) that alters “you” in such a manner that you continue existing in a fundamentally changed way such that you are no longer subject to the pains of causality (tl;dr everything good must end, that is sad). Naturally, such a state is beyond our understanding, and language is already flawed, so we can achieve glimpses of this state through meditation. Siddhartha then lays out exactly how to achieve that, in incredible detail, because he did it, and “Buddhism” is his guide to how you can too.
About 1,200 years later, a dude named Shankara came along and disagreed with that. See, one of Buddha’s arguments was
if you propose that there is something that doesn’t change, how can it ever interact with anything? If it started doing X and stopped doing Y, that would be change. If it did something to Z, it would be changed by having done that.
Shankara’s response was to argue that there is just one single thing (Atman, which is Brahman), and that it is only ever doing one thing (being aware of itself). It never does anything else, and nothing else exists. You, me, the computer, 4chan, shitposts, soijacks, all of it is just Nothing, it doesn’t exist.
This, obviously, drew Shankara a lot of criticism from the rest of the Hindu world. Shankara’s thought never really caught on, but disagreement with it is directly responsible for the two more important Hindu schools of thought, tl;dr one argues that Vishnu is the body AND soul of the universe, the other argues that he’s just the soul.
Dependent arising 1
Sentience is nothing without an object of sentience. If a consciousness were to be left with nothing to observe it would be the same as being non-existent.
Basically name-form refers to the names assigned to apparent forms. The mind differentiates things from each other and assigns names to them. The point of realizing emptiness (mainly Nagarjuna’s conception) is that words have no inherent existence and do not actually describe an object (ex: the word red does not actually tell you what red is). This is in part because words only have their meaning in relation to other words and that objects exist in relation to other objects. The interdependent relationship between objects and the interdependent relationship between words makes it difficult to actually describe when one “thing” ends and the other begins. Something is there, but it has no self-nature, meaning it is dependent on other things, making it empty of an essence. Like that other anon said: emptiness is not a substance, it is a descriptor (a descriptor that is also empty).
This is important in Buddhism vs Hinduism, as in Hinduism, the universe actually operates according to Sanksrit grammatical principles, so the Buddha is doing something that’s importance is really easily lost here.
Dependent arising 2
If something can only arise dependent on other conditions, it cannot be said to have independent existence/essence of its own.
In Buddhism, Consciousness (viririäna) and name-and-form (nämarüpa) are said to be co-dependent. Name-and-form essentially consists of all observable phenomena (physical phenomena as well as mental phenomena). The point is, that you will never catch the arising of phenomena, without the arising of awareness/consciousness OF the phenomena. Conversely, you will never catch the arising of consciousness/awareness, without phenomena for the consciousness to be conscious OF. This goes for everything. ‘Material’ bodily/physical phenomena, even ‘immaterial’ phenomena like thoughts, emotions, feelings, or even deeply blissful states of Samadhi, deep concentrative meditation. All of this phenomena only arises with consciousness to be aware of it, and consciousness is only ever known through the phenomena it is conscious OF.
The issue, is that due to delusion, we assume that both of these things, the consciousness and the phenomena, exist INDEPENDENTLY of each other. We assume that they exist strictly and separately from each other. But they are NEVER known on their own. They cannot be known on their own. All consciousness is only known depending on phenomena for it to know. All phenomena is only known dependent on consciousness to know it.
We assume that the phenomena is inherently existent, exists on its own, in some imagined objective public world “out there,” apart from consciousness. We assume that our consciousness exists inherently, independently, on its own “in here” independent of the “outside world.” We imagine that there is an outside objective world independent of the phenomena, not realizing that, phenomenologically speaking, anything you might ever imagine about the “outside world” is too just phenomena arising on the level of your experience."
Emptiness
“Emptiness” isn’t a “what”. Things aren’t “made” of Emptiness. Emptiness is “how” they exist. Things exist Emptily. Things change, and everything changes, and it can change because it is made out of parts. All of existing is just a bunch of Ship-of-Theseus processes (the tl;dr is that a thing actually has to operate this way; if it didn’t change, you couldn’t see it, let alone interact with it).
So yes, your understanding is correct here. The Two Truths doctrine comes up here and allows us to say things like “everything is made of parts”, despite the fact that as you correctly point out, doesn’t that lead to a kind of atomism? The parts are made up of parts. Even if you get to the theoretical minimum (Buddhism is focused on soteriology so “okay but what is the smallest unit of reality” isn’t really necessary), as the Abhidharma school did (they postulate that reality is made up of “Dharmas”, but these aren’t just physical; if you see something blue then there is a “blue dharma”), then an individual atom, a dharma, is just the result of itself a second ago and anything that bumped into it to get it where it is. Even if you could find the “minimum”, the minimum is still changing.
The Two Truths doctrine, however, holds that we can make Ultimate statements and Conventional statements. We can connect the two, but ultimately, because all speech is just contingent (definitions change, etc), we don’t really need to. I can say “all dharmas arise and fall” and “nothing actually begins or ends”, and these two statements are totally in agreement because I can write up a twenty paragraph effort post linking the two. But you’re clever enough to sit down and come up with the answer on your own
Cessation
It seems you are making the easy mistake of thinking that the cessation of rebirth means literal annihilation for an awakened being. This is not the case. This is essentially the apex of what level Nirvana can be discussed at. Conceptually, we can’t help but conceive of it in in terms of eternalism (the tendency when Mahayana is wrongly understood) or total annihilation (the tendency when Theravada is wrongly understood). We think either all experience/phenomena ceases, never to arise again, or it continues in some sort of ‘awakened state.’ Both are misleading. The honest answer is you will not understand why it is neither annihilation nor eternalism until you glimpse Nirvana yourself (in stream-entry). Here it may be helpful to explore some Mahayana teachings, such as the Heart Sutra (though again, be extremely careful to not interpret it as eternalism or any continuation of existence/being). Coming and going, being and non-being, existence and non-existence, birth and death, world and self: these are all just concepts, all just perceptions. The problem is that we are convinced that these perceptions are objective, true, solid, fundamental, ultimate, when they are in fact just perceptions, just views.
Language propositions
Anatta made sense to me after pondering it in the shower every day for a few weeks
The unifying trait held between materialist atheist, Thomists, and Advaita Vedantins in these threads is that they absolutely and aggressively REFUSE to even entertain the idea of knowledge held in any format other than as a statement following a natural language proposition. Reality is just a summation of easily understood, easily repeatable phrases. Knowledge can only be obtained by being told it in natural language, it can never come about from discovery, or be ineffable. You can see Thomists and Advaita Vedantins seriously reifying the idea that the world works off of the principles of Hebrew and Sanskrit grammar (respectively).
The notion that you need to get off your computer and actually engage with the world is entirely absent, and in fact, in these traditions (we can hardly call materialist atheism a tradition but it still holds), that’s actually completely antithetical to the acquisition of knowledge. Being able to correctly state a series of propositions is knowledge or recall a codified list is knowledge, as opposed to knowing how to cook a meal or knowing what makes you angry. It’s very reddit, and it’s reinforced by the American university system. Being “smart” means that you are able to regurgitate arbitrary lists of information when told to. I’d wager that this is why reddit loves Thomism and Advaita Vedanta, and why whenever they adopt anything from Buddhism that is actually Buddhism (no, “Buddhist Modernism” is not Buddhism), they adopt hyper-scholastic Theravada, which is just memorizing lists of abhidharma shit.
Non-dualism
There is a tremendous difference in the spiritual realizations of Buddhists vs those of the traditions that expound “oneness.”
For a tradition like Advaita Vedanta, “non-duality” means that subject and object, self and word are fused together and become one Real Absolute substratum. They are “not two, but one.” There is disidentification with transient, passing phenomena, and identification with consciousness, or as they say “Pure Awareness,” which operates like a permanent, eternal mirror in which all of life and phenomena are reflected while the mirror itself remains unaffected. This Awareness is also said to be a Transpersonal self, an existing metaphysical substratum which is the Source for all of existence, God, Brahman: this Awareness is said to be the same for all beings (my awareness is supposedly the same substance as your awareness, so we are all one).
This is NOT the realization of the Buddha. In Buddhism, it is not subject and object which are non-dual, but Buddhism teaches freedom from the duality of EXISTENCE AND NON-EXISTENCE. This applies to both Subject and Object. Subject and Object don’t become “one,” they aren’t supposedly unified by being of the same substance (God, Brahman, whatever): it is that NEITHER OF THEM are reified as “existing or non-existing.” They are both realized as Empty, lacking inherent independent existence.
The illusion in Buddhism, is that Subject and Object have inherent essence, true independent existence. The truth is that they are entirely dependent on each other, both appear and disappear, arise and pass away, and so they cannot be said to have any permanent inherent existence: they are EMPTY of such essence.
The illusion in Advaita Vedanta is that there is multiplicity, that things are separate from each other. The supposed truth in Advaita Vedanta is that all things are one, of one substance: Brahman, God.
So you see, there is a very very very clear difference.
Against Shankara
Second of all its co-dependent MUTUAL arising of conditions which are in flux and becoming, there is no substantial tree at all and the difference between it and a tiger are so slight as to be trivial and overcome easily when we realize that conditions carry over karmically from one manifestation to the next; next all the steps in the causal chain are simultaneous, Shankara and the idiot shitskin on this board who shills for him haven’t studied buddhism thoroughly beyond theravada bug philosophy, not to speak of Madhyamaka and Zen where most of these are dealt with. All things collapse into one instantaneous delusion that is self-same and continuous through experience, there is no time, memory is an illusion of seemingly similar becomings, neuroscience supports the idea we do not have strong imprints of long term past events, we have becomings which approximate them and which come from our substance changing with us to accomodate the necessitated memory, the idea of dependent arising and sudden appearance compliment one another, there is absolutely no way that things could be codepenently mutually arising all at once and not be instantaneous and without Svabhava. This poster is purposefully segregating the logical conclusions of emptiness, mutually dependent arising, karma and the implications of nirvana-samsara (again dealt with by more mature higher iq races in Asia, bugs cannot parse this) all of which guarantee momentary appearance of realities and the necessity that this appearance is implicated in all other appearances and they too in every appearances that’s been or will be, which of course are indecipherable, and totally unanalyzable which makes each point-instance of appearance impenetrable and substanceless and collapses the causal chain, logic and dual identity. You’re a fucking charlatan and the fact you don’t realize budhism is a way of organizing catalysts, kindling and ignition sources for excavating and condemning diseased faculties like causal perception and the idea of a Self is DAMNING and should expose Hinduism as a self-satisfied fop religion