Page 26 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

valid — that it is a product of dualistic thinking. We may spend
ten, fifteen, twenty years of our spiritual life working on the

assumption that the conditioned is the conditioned and the
Unconditioned the Unconditioned. But eventually we have to
learn to see the 'emptiness' of the distinction between the two

— have to see that this distinction is to be transcended. We have
to see, — to experience — not just intellectually theorize, not

just speculate, — that rupa and Sunyata, form and Voidness, the
Conditioned and the Unconditioned, ordinary beings and
Buddhas, are ultimately of one• and the same essence, one and

the same ultimate Reality. This is Maha Sunyata, the Great
Emptiness, in which all distinctions, all dualities, are swallowed

up, lost, obliterated. It is this great Void into which people, even
spiritual people, are so afraid of disappearing. They want to cling
on to their dualistic ways of thinking — self and others, this and

that — but eventually they must all be swallowed up. This is the
Tiger's Cave which is remarkable for the fact that many tracks

lead to it, but none come out. That is why one wants to go into
it!

(iv) Sunyata Sunyata, or Emptiness of Emptiness.
Here we see that Emptiness itself is only a concept, only a word,

only a sound. In Maha Sunyata, one is still hanging on to subtle
thoughts, subtle dualistic experiences. Even this ultimately has to
be abandoned. Then one comes to Sunyata Sunyata, and there is

just nothing to be said. All that is left is silence — and, of course,
it is a significant silence, a 'thunderous silence'.

All these doctrinal categories, whether of the Hinayana or of the
Mahayana try to give conceptual expression to a vision of the

nature of existence, but important as they

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