The Buddhist philosphy of existentialism.
"Existence is non existence & yet non-existence is existence."
To explain why non-existence can become existence, there is the saying of "Cause & Effect". Everything that we see, hear, touch, taste, smell & think are due to a "cause" & the experience of our senses & mind the "effect" of this "cause" hence the "existence" of this "world" as we know it.
This is more to the Theravada school of thought. (I hope I got the school correct, am reading off from a chinese text. )

I don't really understand this, which is a shame since I subscirbe to the belief that Nothing equates to Everything, which would on the face of it appears to be a related concept.

Your interpretation of it sounds more Yogacaran to me. If you read it from a Chinese text, I seriously doubt that it will be Theravadan. As far as I know, all Chinese Buddhism was in fact Mahayana, including Ch'an, Hwa Yen and Zen.

Existence is non-existence? Well yes and no!

Everything is in a state of flux. It's useless to talk about things that are never quite the same form one instant to the next as having concrete existence. Based upon this recognition, accepting this premise one might conclude that all phenomena are empty of self nature. Nothing has substantial essence, the suchness of any object is merely the totality of its details, nothing more.

Emptiness of self nature, of substantiality means that nothing is fixed, concrete or permanent and thus, everything being mutable, new things always arise, causes and conditions are efficient in the production of phenomena, flux happens, like creation as an ongoing event.

If things were full of self nature, fixed, concrete, abiding, permanent, obviously they could never change in any way, never create anything new, thesis and antithesis could never interpenetrate to form a new synthesis and basically the universe would never have happened to begin with.

Thus Emptiness is Form. There is no distinction or separation between them. Impermanence is the manifestation of emptiness and change is the visible marker of impermanence.

Emptiness is not a thing, it's simply the name of the process of impermanence, of universal flux.

Hopefully that works! If you don't understand then please blame me, not Buddhism!

Not really. There are 2 main paths where Buddhism is passed into China. One is mainly Mahayana while the other is Therevada.
Therevada got thru to the Ethnic minorities down towards SE Asia while Mahayana went to Tibet & main part of China thru the Silk Route (Road).
The above is not really Therevadan or Mahayanan as both embrace the concept only differing in its full intrepretation.
(Which there are also differing views in Therevada & Mahayana themselves giving rise to 18 - 20 different "sections" of Buddhism thoughts. I'm still trying to get an English text on this.)

BTW Your explaination hits the nail right on the head. What do you think of the concept of Existentialism from the point of the Buddhist view ?

[This message has been edited by KCTAN (edited June 13, 2001).]

WMC wrote: Hopefully that works! If you don't understand then please blame me, not Buddhism!

What makes you think I can't blame both?

I fail to see how flux and impermanence (legitimate ideas) yield the non-existence of existence, as if existence requires permanence. At best, the idea of flux simply points out errors in some philosophical understandings of existence.

It's not so much the non-existence of existence, it's more the non-existence of substantiality, abidingness, self-nature, own-being. If you pull the legs off a table, do you have a table? By conventional imputation, yes you do, it's just a bit disassembled at the moment. Take away the legs and do you have a table? You have something that you can use as a tabletop if you attach legs to it but where is the tableness? Where is the actual, substantial, self-existence, permanent, thingyness of the table? It doesn't exist, it's just the totality of its details, i.e. a surface and four nicely shaped sticks.

Buddhism isn't saying that nothing exists. Indeed, the process of impermanence, of universal flux definitely exists and transient phenomena do exist....for a while.

How does flux as a concept equate with errors in the philosophical understanding of existence? I can't see how there might be mistakes, but then perhaps I'm just a wee tad biased.

That's interesting about the Theravadan lineages in China. I really didn't know that although it should be pretty obvious considering the fact that it got to South-East Asia which is only a stone's throw away.

Existentialism! The truth is I don't know much about it at all, in fact I'm pretty sure I know next to nothing. I wouldn't mind a few examples of Existentialist philosophers. There are definite gaps in my philosophical education.

BTW Have you heard of Herbert Guenther? A rather wonderful if verbose translator. I have a feeling that he translates more from a Phenomenological paradigm. Phenomenology is another one I must delve into one day.