As aspirants of the Mind Only dharma on the path of noble beings, one has to have friendliness (maitri) and empathy (karuna) to include ordinary beings who sees a self and a higher self that is not there and be patient with them in order to benefit them.
that was a pen, then you dismantled it into its parts. then you put it back together into a pen. when the parts are asembled properly you made it into a pen. I do not see your point at all you are only playing semantic games you are not really saying anything. Try Explaining it again with an object that cannot be so easily dismantled, try using a solid peice of metal, a knife maybe.
You are kind of missing the point,which is easy to do. Dependent origination/emptiness doesn’t refute that there is not a pen it refutes that there is pen (inherent existence) existing from its own side or inherent existence. There is only a pen by name/conventionally/designation. The so called inherently existing or labeled pen is only conventionally a pen due to the plastic/ink/spring etc not to mention the so called pen requires you to cognise a pen. The so called pen is only there (conventionally) due to dependent origination..the dependence being the ink/plastic/spring/the people who made the parts/the machinery that made the parts etc etc etc, one could go on and on and on. Not to mention you have to mentally cognise a pen. The pen is not saying “I AM A PEN”. So the pen is only a pen via dependent origination not inherently there by itself. This is with anything. There is always conventional/relative reality but it is empty. Matter is emptiness..emptiness is matter. We are not use to cognising things from the concept of dependent origination. We mostly believe things exist from their ownside or inherent existence not dependent existence. Even you typed once the parts were put together it became a pen..but all the parts are still there, the pen is only merely a label or conventionally a pen. If all the parts of the so called PEN could speak they would not say they are a pen so to speak and so on and so on and so on. Understanding the concept of Dependent Origination really reduces one’s ego and concept of self as the more it is realised the more one realises how we exist via dependent origination and how much we all depend on each other and our environment it’s a completely different perspective from monotheism.
Emptiness is the natural state of the cosmos. All things arise through dependence on other things. A tree for example arises in dependence on soil, water, space, sun etc, etc. the concept of a tree is just ignorance of the ordinary mind. Because the ordinary mind is unable to phantom all the causes and conditions that give rise to tree it conceptualizes and names the unfathomable… a tree. in fact the tree does not exist as a separate entity from awareness that cognize it.
