Emptiness

To know how to cognize voidness, both conceptually and non-conceptually, and thus how to rid ourselves of the true causes of our true sufferings, we need to know the steps that each Indian Buddhist tenet system explains for the meditative process for realizing voidness.

Yongdzin Ling Rinpoche explains the Gelug Prasangika presentation of appearances being the play of the mind.

The various Tibetan Buddhist traditions differ as to the voidness non-conceptually cognized by each of the three types of practitioners – shravaka, pratyekabuddha and bodhisattva – when becoming an arya.

An analysis of static phenomena, which are validly knowable and unaffected by causes and circumstances, and nonstatic phenomena, which are impermanent, changing from moment to moment.

Kalachakra practice includes a special way of meditating on voidness in which we meditate not just on the actual meaning of voidness, but we also try to simulate doing this with a blissful clear light mind.

The basis of the meditation on voidness is the identification and understanding of what is to be refuted: the truly established existence of persons and of all phenomena.

The Fourth Panchen Lama presents the sutra method of mahamudra meditation for gaining shamatha on the conventional nature of the mind and then joined shamatha and vipashyana on the mind’s deepest nature, its voidness (emptiness).

The Indian Buddhist tenet systems present graded levels of understanding of how things exist like an illusion, which we can use in our daily lives.

Tsongkhapa explains the factors required for effective meditation in both sutra and tantra practice and how both practices are necessary for cognizing voidness (emptiness) with a joined state of shamatha and vipashyana.

The difference between the Gelug presentation of voidness and that shared in common by Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya concern the type of voidness that is cognized non-conceptually and how to attain non-conceptual cognition of it.