Layman Pang’s Emptiness

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Well, first of all, I am not a Buddhist (not yet but tending to be), but I am trying to understand what buddhist texts and concepts are saying. I will start with the concept of Sunyata or emptiness. Here is a poem attributed to Páng Yùn Jūshì or Layman P’ang (740-808) describing how to have emptiness. I’ve taken the poem from this site and this site and merged them into one poem. Páng is a lay Buddhist of the Zen/Seon/Chán/Jhāna tradition.

The Ultimate Attainment
The past is already past— don’t try to regain it.
The present does not remain— don’t try to hold on from moment to moment.
The future has not arrived— don’t think about it beforehand.
With these three realms non-existent, your mind is the same as Buddha-mind.

To silently function relying on emptiness— this is profound action.
Not the least truth exists— whatever appears, leave it be.
There are no commandments to be kept, there’s no filth to be cleansed.
With an empty mind, truths (dharmas) have no life.
When you can be like this, you have finally arrived.

This poem seems to mean that past, present and future must not exist as such in our minds, then we have a Buddha-mind, which I will provisionally treat here as functionally equivalent to having emptiness. And in the second stanza, emptiness is also practiced by leaving alone things that one encounters as they are, to be unaffected by these things, that there are no laws to be obeyed, possibly from a higher being, no cleansing to be done on oneself, possibly from sin or karma, even truths does not exists. This implies detachment from everything, including one’s own truth values and judgements and passions.

So what is the day to day life of someone with the Emptiness mind? The following poems by Layman Pang taken from this site illustrate how it is to live emptiness and how it is like to live emptiness:

Emptiness Poem
Old P’ang requires nothing in the world:
All is empty with him, even a seat he has not,
For absolute Emptiness reigns in his household;
How empty indeed it is with no treasures!
When the sun is risen, he walks through Emptiness,
When the sun sets, he sleeps in Emptiness;
Sitting in Emptiness he sings his empty songs,
And his empty songs reverberate through Emptiness:
Be not surprised at Emptiness so thoroughly empty,
For Emptiness is the seat of all the Buddhas;
And Emptiness is not understood by the men of the world,
But Emptiness is the real treasure:
If you say there’s no Emptiness,
You commit grave offence against the Buddhas.

Being as Is
Food and clothes sustain body and life;
I advise you to learn Being as is.
When it’s time, I move my hermitage and go,
And there’s nothing to be left behind.

It seems that emptiness is also the motivation for not having possessions or the practice of Aparigraha (non-possession) in Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism but done to the extreme by sadhus, rishis, sannyasis, etc. Having emptiness, one must practice being as is.

And Layman Pang further said that the purpose of buddha’s training is to empty the mind.

Stillness
十方同聚會 The ten directions converging,
個個學無爲 Each learning to do nothing,
此是選佛場 This is the hall of Buddha’s training;
心空及第歸 Mind’s empty, all’s finished.

Mind at Peace
When the mind is at peace, the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality, not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy or wise,
just an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

He seems to advocate being neither holy nor wise to oneself and just being an ordinary fellow, not minding what are real or not real, not minding what are present or absent. This is to pacify the mind.

And lastly:

“When he came to Baso he again said, ‘Who is he that is independent of all things?’ Baso said, ‘When you have drunk all the water in the Yang-tze river, I will tell you.’ At this, Koji underwent his great experience and composed another verse:”

Without Name and Form
Well versed in the Buddha way, I go the non-Way
Without abandoning my Ordinary person’s affairs.
The conditioned and Name-and-form, All are flowers in the sky.
Nameless and formless, I leave birth-and-death.

It is unclear if the Buddha-Way is the same as the Non-Way. Are they different? I don’t know, do you?