It is basic human desire to search for truth underlying any phenomena mankind cannot explain. Religion and Science are no different. Both are in constant search to understand and explain the mysteries of the universe and nature of Reality.

All major civilizations right through the ages tried to do the same in their own different ways. Mesopotamians believed the divine affected every aspect of human life. Mesopotamians were polytheistic and they worshipped several major gods and thousands of minor ones. Each Mesopotamian city, whether Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian or Assyrian, had its own patron god or goddess. Each had a god for rain, god for justice, god of wind just to name a few.

One of the most intriguing aspects of ancient Egypt is its religion. Egyptian metaphysics and its imaginative creation of figurative of gods and goddesses is par excellence. The Egyptians were working on cosmic plane, searching for an understanding of the basic laws that govern the operation of our universe.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. When you look at the vast size of the universe, and how insignificant and accidental human life is in it, the existence of a God seems most implausible –Physicist Stephen Hawking

Simultaneously I also emphatically state that science is definitely not the only irrefutable way of knowing and understanding reality but rather just another way of knowing that differs from other ways, because of its dependence on measurable means. Experience however, keeps reminding us that such a methodology does not always lead us to correct answers. The above mentioned method sometimes act as a constraint on science and stand in the way of achieving the objective of understanding the true nature of reality. Reality may not just be confined to matter or to the known dimensions of time and space.

A grave mistake science is doing is leaving consciousness completely out of its study. For much of the 20th century, there was a great taboo against querying the mysterious inner world of consciousness – it was not taken to be a fitting topic for “serious science”. The problem of consciousness, however is radically unlike any other scientific problem. One reason is that consciousness is unobservable. Scientists are used to dealing with observables, with an existing materialist paradigm most scientists thought it best to leave consciousness alone. However the indisputable irony remains that without consciousness there would be no science.

Vedic and Buddhist philosophers have however been giving a very serious thought to Consciousness past 5000 years or more. Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. Indian Buddhist analyses of the mind span a period of some fifteen centuries, from the earliest discourses of the Buddha (ca. 450 B.C.E.) to the systematic developments of late Mahāyāna Buddhism (500–1000 C.E.). Although philosophical accounts of mind emerge only within the Abhidharma scholastic traditions (roughly 150 B.C.E. to 450 C.E.), their roots are found in the Buddha’s teachings of the not-self doctrine.

Spiritual from my childhood, my interest in the Indian saint Shakyamuni or Gautama Siddartha (563 or 566 B.C.E) was generated during my merchant navy days (1980’s). Still in my teens I used to visit Buddhist Monasteries in Sri Lanka whenever my ship would dock there. I clearly remember buying my first book on shunyata ( शून्यता) in a monastery in Columbo-Sri Lanka. Born a Hindu with staunch Vedic family background I was perplexed the dichotomy between the Hindu concept of an all pervading God – निर्गुण ब्रह्म and shunyata ( शून्यता)- Emptiness concept of Buddhism. It had then troubled my mind for many days.

Study of Buddhism has attracted the western mind tremendously in recent years. Buddhism offers an attractive alternative to the authoritarianism implicit in Christianity’s doctrine of revelation and in its priestly structure. Buddhism seemed to offer a “natural” religion, one based on common sense and teaching truths accessible to everyone. Buddhism attracted the Western mind also because as it was neither really a philosophy nor a religion, but something with elements of both.

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion that has been described as both a philosophy and a science. It is a religion whose founder claimed to be neither a god nor a prophet of God, but a man. It were the people who later called him “The Awakened One” This man, through his own efforts and his own investigations, discovered the most profound principles of the universe, and then compassionately taught them to others.

In his first sermon, he taught what are known as the four noble truths: first, that life is qualified by suffering; second, that suffering has a cause; third, that there can be a permanent cessation to suffering; fourth, that there is a path to the cessation of suffering. The Buddha described a universe that was not created by God but that functioned according to laws of causation. This law of causation is not limited to the material world, but extends also to the moral realm, where virtue leads eventually to happiness and sin to suffering, not through the whims of a capricious God, but through the natural law of karma. The Buddha then extended this analysis to the universe, declaring the universal truth of pratītyasamutpāda or dependent origination, according to which everything is interrelated, each entity connected to something, nothing standing alone, with effects depending on their causes, with wholes depending on their parts, and everything depending for its existence on the consciousness that perceives it.

After the death of Buddha, Buddhism was divided into two sects namely Mahayana and Hinayana. The terms Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle ) and Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) originated in The Prajnaparamita Sutras (the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom Sutras ). Prajñāpāramitā refers to this perfected way of seeing the nature of reality.

These two levels of Buddhist teaching are called ‘vehicles’ because they comprise the teachings and methods that will carry us to enlightenment, in much the same way that vehicles carry us to our destination in everyday life. However Hinayana has been used in a derogatory sense many a times hence the correct word for Hinayana is Theravada. Theravāda is the commonly accepted name of Buddha’s original teachings. Hinayana is the basic level of Buddhist teaching and practice that is common to all traditions. It is called ‘the lower vehicle’, but it is not lower in the sense that it is of lesser value than the Mahayana or Vajrayana vehicles. Instead, it is the foundation level of Buddhism. Just as a house needs a solid foundation in order to be strong, so also do the other Buddhist vehicles or paths need the solid foundation that Hinayana provides.

Emptiness is a central concept in Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. The Madhyamaka assertion that all things are empty means that they are all dependently originating; they lack or are empty of autonomous existence because they are reliant on causes to bring them into and sustain their existence.

• Sautrāntika
• Vaibhāṣika
• Madhyamaka  (དབུ་མ་པ )  Shunyavada (शून्यवाद) – Emptiness School
• Yogachara- Vijñaptivāda- विज्ञानवाद – Mind Only School

• Nagarjuna :   150 –  250 AD (Madhyamaka  (དབུ་མ་པ )  śūnyavāda (शून्यवाद) – Emptiness School)
• Vasubandhu :- 4th to 5th century AD- (Yogachara- Vijñaptivāda- विज्ञानवाद –Mind Only School)                                             
• Dignāga :  480 – 540 AD
• Shantideva :  685- 763 AD
• Dharmakirti : 6th or 7th century AD
• Jñanasrimitra: 975-1025 AD
• Ratnakirti:  990–1050 AD

This school is a very important and sophisticated school of thought in Buddhism and leaves behind it a trail of massive body of in-depth literature with a lot of thinkers and traditions. Modern day Buddhism which is followed by His Holiness The Dalai Lama is synthesis of both Yogacara- Vijñaptivāda- विज्ञानवाद and Madhyamaka ( དབུ་མ་པ ) also called Sūnyavāda – शून्यवाद or Emptiness Theory. This school believes that Mind is the only reality and there is no external reality apart from the mind. Everything exists within the mind. Yogachara School states that there is no subject object reality, everything exists in the mind alone. In other words ‘No external objects exist’, external here mean objects independent of the mind. Even our body too is in the mind. Example: I have a book in my hand. General experience is that there is a book in my hand and also there is a book in my mind. But Yogachara school states that the concept of a book in the hand is false, only the book in the mind exits in reality.

Note : Modern Time reference to Bishop Berkeley theory on Subjective idealism. is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. Stream of Consciousness mentioned here is very different from Advait Vedanta concept an all pervading Consciousness. Here consciousness is described as ‘flashes of consciousness’ compared to One Universal Consciousness of Vedanta. There are many mind streams which are polluted due to their karma. Buddhism purifies these different polluted mind streams and until just One purified mind stream remains which is Buddha Consciousness or Nirvana.

1 – The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta : धर्म चक्र परिवर्तन : record of the first sermon given by Gautama Buddha. – It consists of the 4 noble truths

• दुख- Pain  -The Truth of Suffering
• तृष्णा – Desire- The Truth of the Causes of Suffering
• निर्वाण  – The Truth of Release from Suffering
• अष्टांगवादा –Eight Fold Path- The Truth of the Path Leading to the End of Suffering

2 – Anatma – अनात्मा – : Buddha stated that there is no unchanging, permanent self, soul, or essence in any conscious being.

Note : This was in stark contrast to the prevailing Vedic teachings and later lead to the reduction of Buddhist influence in India.

This turning was proposed by Nagargun and is called Madhyamaka – शून्यवाद. शून्य means Empty and वाद means a school or a view point. This is one of the schools of Mahayana Buddhism, it refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE). This school of thought broadly states that both the self and the world are unreal. सर्वम शुन्यम – Sarvam Shunyam- All existence is nothing but a Void.

Note : This aspect of Bhuddha’s teaching of सर्वम शुन्यम – Sarvam Shunyam was widely misunderstood in India as Nihilism and became a major reason of ouster of Buddhism from India.

Pioneered by Vasubandhu : He states that the only Reality that exists is Consciousness / Mind.

Note:

• All these 3 turnings have always been  a part and parcel  of Buddha’s original teachings. Different aspects of his teachings were emphasized in different periods of time.
• The Hinayana or Theravada Buddhism only accepts the First Turning as the true teachings of Buddha and not the Second & Third Turnings.
• Mahayana Sect accepts all the three turnings.

Madhyamika is perhaps the truest philosophical systematization of the Buddha’s ontology. Madhyamaka -The Middle Doctrine. The foundational text of the mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses on the Middle Way).

This school basically sprung up because of the silence maintained by Buddha on certain important philosophical questions. A monk Malunkyaputta is troubled by Gautama Buddha’s silence on fourteen unanswered questions, which include queries about the nature of the cosmos and life after the death of a Buddha. Malunkyaputta meets the Buddha and asks him for the answers to these questions saying that if Buddha fails to respond, Malunkya will renounce his teachings.

Buddha responds by saying that he never promised to reveal the ultimate metaphysical truths such as those and then uses the story of a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow to illustrate why those questions are irrelevant to his teachings. The Buddha remained silent when asked these fourteen questions.

Is it true that:

• The world is eternal?
• The world is not eternal?
• The world is both eternal and not eternal?
• The world is neither eternal nor not eternal?

Is it true that:

• The world is finite?
• The world is infinite?
• The world is both finite and infinite?
• The world is neither finite or infinite?

Is it true that:

• The soul and the body are the same thing?
• The soul and the body are different things?

Is it true that:

• A Realized One exists after death?
• A Realized One doesn’t exist after death?
• A Realized One both exists and doesn’t exist after death?
• A Realized One neither exists nor doesn’t exist after death?

In Nāgārjuna’s view silence to such questions is the correct answer to them. He believed that no philosophy or answer given for such questions would ever have the correct answers. He was of the opinion the Truth can never be expressed in any worldly language.

He was a Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered as one of the most important Buddhist philosophers, and hailed from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India. He was born about 500 years after Buddha’s birth. His importance and contribution to Buddhist philosophy is so great that he is termed as the ‘Second Buddha’. Moreover the whole of Tibetan Buddhism can be traced back to the works of Nagarjuna. Karl Jaspers, the famous existentialist philosopher, has placed him among the great thinkers of the world.

Among many other texts, two most important ones are : Mulamadhyamakakarika & Vigrahavyāvartanī

Vigrahavyāvartanī – The Dispeller of Disputes is a short work by Nāgārjuna. In this text, which is written in a lively question-and-answer style he addresses a number of objections (coming both from Buddhists and from non-Buddhists) which have been put forward against his theory of emptiness.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.– All classical philosophers of India present Nagarjuna’s philosophy as the doctrine of pure Void. Nagarjuna, they hold, considers the entire world with all its contents to be altogether illusory, and does not accept anything real even as the basis of this illusion. The illusory appearance of the world is, like an embroidery on the Void, absolutely empty, unsubstantial or vacuous at the core; and this Vacuity or Void (Sunyata) itself is, in his view, the ultimate Truth (Tattva) of the universe.

However, what shunyvad means is till date being disputed !!!

For some scholars if Nāgārjuna is an absolutist then to some other a nihilist. Some others will like to argue that the metaphysics is the last thing which concerns Nāgārjuna. Some others will like to say that Nāgārjuna is a spiritualist and his sole purpose is to enlighten the masses and make them aware of their Buddhahood. Some others would like to go farther and would say that the very language of Nāgārjuna is of a mystic. But undeniably he is a thorough analyst !!!!. The aim of Nāgārjuna in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is not to forcefully prove anything. He just analyzes all the positions and finds that all attempts to have a conceptualized grip over reality is doomed to be a failure.

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For some scholars if Nāgārjuna is an absolutist then to some other a nihilist. Some others will like to argue that the metaphysics is the last thing which concerns Nāgārjuna. Some others will like to say that Nāgārjuna is a spiritualist and his sole purpose is to enlighten the masses and make them aware of their Buddhahood. Some others would like to go farther and would say that the very language of Nāgārjuna is of a mystic. But undeniably he is a thorough analyst !!!!. The aim of Nāgārjuna in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is not to forcefully prove anything. He just analyzes all the positions and finds that all attempts to have a conceptualized grip over reality is doomed to be a failure.

• अनिरोधमनुत्पादमनुच्छेदमशाश्वतम् ।
• अनेकार्थमनानार्थमनागममनिर्गमम् ॥
• यः प्रतीत्यसमुत्पादम्प्रपञ्चोपशमं शिवम् ।
• देशयामास सम्बुद्धस्तं वन्दे वदतां वरम् ॥

• Homage to the perfectly awakened one, the best of speakers-
• Who taught dependent arising, which is-
• Without cessation, without arising-
• Without annihilation, not eternal-
• Without one thing, without separate things-
• Without coming, without going-
• It is the pacification of proliferation, ultimate peace

He proclaims all Jivas- Matter- Motion-Body – Mind- Emotions-Impressions- Earth- Water-Fire – Air-Time- Space as empty. He also pronounces all Buddhas, The four Noble Truths, Nirvana, Bondage, Liberation, & Karma, the very basic tenets of all Buddhist philosophy too as Empty. Also that everything comes into existence only with the activity of the Mind hence Consciousness has no separate existence of its own.

Shunyata has been one of the most misunderstood terms in the history of philosophy. It has been conceived sometimes as an Absolute and sometimes as Pure Nothingness. Often it has been identified with truth and most often it has been understood as falsity. Traditionalists insist that it is beyond all the categories. On the other hand the same people would say that shunyata is not a transcendent reality. It is just the relativity of all phenomena, the emptiness of all entities.

Buddhism is not a philosophy of Being. This does not mean that it is a philosophy of Nothingness . A philosophy which is based on the enlightenment of the Buddha and a philosophy which teaches the doctrine of Prajñāpāramitā and Mahākaruṇā can not be called a Nihilistic either. If shunyata is neither Being nor Nothingness, then what it is ? The answer to the above question lies in the silence of Buddha. What we can best say about the shunyata is that it is unspeakable. The whole of Madhyamakaśāstra is an attempt within the purview of speech to show this un-speakability of the unspoken shunyata.

For Nagarjun, those who see shunyata as “nothingness” or “non-existence” fail to know the profound significance of the distinction between worldly and transcendental truths. They assume that there is “only one” universal standpoint from which one should examine all things. But actually the Buddha’s teachings are presented by means of the Twofold Truth. Worldly or relative truth – Paramārtha Satya – has to do with the conditions of this phenomenal world which are causally inter-dependent upon one another. Nagarjun acknowledges that from the standpoint of worldly truth, objects of the conventional truth appear as if they have an existence independent of the perceiver. This truth classifies objects, feelings and emotions as they appear through the mind and to the senses – Paramārtha Satya.

What Nagarjun wants to say is that empirical phenomena ‘is not the only reality’.From the ultimate or absolute standpoint all things are devoid of fixed, determinate and self-existing essence, substance or reality -Samvṛti Satya. To say that nothing is real does not mean that nothing exists. It does not nullify anything in the world. Nagarjun’s Twofold Truth has been considered to represent two fixed sets of truths e.g. “relative reality” and “absolute reality.” The so-called relative or worldly truth and ultimate truth are two ways of looking at the same things but with two different perspectives. For example, when one sees a chair from the relative /sensory/ worldly standpoint, he may be applying a worldly truth that there is a chair and not a table before him. Should the same chair be seen from the higher or absolute standpoint, one will realize that there is no chair there, nor a table but sheer emptiness that exists.

On worldly level, ordinary people believe that what appears to them through their senses and mind is the real and true nature of things. They affirm the reality of all things and hold that all dharmas and all things are real. But saints or the enlightened ones do not accept this naive realism and know that dharmas are empty in nature. Then how come so many philosophers of repute and stature like Kumārila Bhaṭṭa. Adi Shankaracharya, Nyaya philosophers and even the great Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu all called it a theory of Nothingness and Nagarjun a Shunyavadi ?

Now we have reached a point where we all need to leave behind the hair splitting philosophical definitions, their interpretations and logic.

The true meaning of shunyata can only be grasped by sādhanā & meditations which can lead us to that realization par excellence which is called shunyata. But the question is which type of experience is this highest realization ?

Mādhyamikas would unanimously deny that it is a self-conscious experience. They would repeatedly insist that ultimately this experience of shunyata too is shunya.

Vedic scholars would still ask the same pertinent question

• “Who sees the shunya “?
• “Who is the witness of that shunyata?

However, the later Buddhists like Yogācara and the Vedāntin Hindus would say that self-conscious experience of shunyata is the highest truth.

Could it just not be possible in those final moments Realization what a Vedic seer realized as – ‘पूर्ण (Complete) निर्गुण ब्रम्ह’ and what the Buddhist monk realized as shunyata (Emptiness) – शून्यता , BE THE SAME STATES, expressed in language which doesn’t in itself have the capacity to express IT. We need to remember both Advait (Absolutism ) & Buddhists (Emptiness) are trying their best to express something which in reality is a “NO-THING”.

Probably they both had realized the same state of Pure Consciousness which is the very essence of the universe but were viewing it differently through their respective perspectives.