William Kong
Yin Ling I’m still trying to avoid FB as much as possible 🙂
Made a note to come back to this, and rereading this, I have no idea why you would want my opinion 😅 You clearly have read more about emptiness than I have, and I have more to learn from you than vice versa 😂
I have not read the Vigrahavyāvartanī, so cannot comment on the text, only speak from my current understanding and experience.
But just looking at your notes, every point makes total sense. I especially like the note about referencing or labelling of a non-referent - since I had no words to describe that before.
Referring to point 1), my immediate intuitive grasp of the emptiness of cause-effect is that when inherent objects are seen through and known to be incoherent, then any causal powers assigned to those objects also become incoherent.
The “normal” way of seeing things of actual objects with causal attributes falls apart like other mental constructs. Objects are empty of causal powers, and the objects themselves are empty and non-arisen.
This is important, because cause-effect (of objects that are assumed to exist independently) is typically how we explain reality - especially in the sciences. But if we assume this to be the case, then it really seems like there are objects or persons that is causing us to behave this way or that and vice versa - there’s this push-pull against what-is. (In direct experience, thoughts of cause-effect are only experienced as thoughts, but until deconstructed, they seem “solid”.)
Emptiness does not invalidate the conventional way of perceiving reality, nor our conventional explanations for them (as they are conventionally useful). Simply that if we take reality as it appears conventionally, then upon analysis, it must be empty. Empty cars still appear, empty fuel still powers them, empty people still ride in them and so on.
So … vivid appearances continue to appear! Thoughts of causality continue to appear and so on! With no solidity whatsoever. It’s just seen to be all one intertwined, inter-connected empty flow dependently arising.

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Yin LingAdmin
William Kong
Thanks. I like this. The 6th paragraph in ur comment is excellent.
We push and pull thinking those things harm us or is good to us, when it is only conditions, many many conditions coming together putting on an illusory display. Who to push pull? What do we push or pull against?
Yet in the most wonderful illusory display, conditions mature according to the most precise law of karma, right on the mark, not random.
Hence we hold the highest view of emptiness to liberate us but not forgetting to adhere to the precepts , to cultivating virtues.
How wonderful 🙂
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