Say What?

By contemplating the dharmas of mundane existence as dependently originated, devoid of self-existence, and hence utterly inapprehensible, one 'enters emptiness from provisionality.' The delusions of view and cultivation that bind one to samsāra are severed, and one achieves the liberation of nirvāna. By applying the same critique to the truth of emptiness itself, one severs biased attachment to emptiness (i.e., the delusion that eclipses the infinite sandlike features of existence) and reaffirms its fundamental identity with provisional existence. In effect, one fearlessly 'reenters' or 'comes forth into' provisional existence from emptiness but this time as the self-sovereign master of samsāric existence rather than its naïve victim.

 

~ Quoted in Richard Bowring, Religious Traditions of Japan: 500-1600, p.122 (emphasis mine).


For some reason, I can't help but imagine a crazed (and masked, naturally) Samsāra hiding out in a sorority house with a knife, lying in wait for a naïve victim in a short skirt and tank-top.  That is, of course, because there is something seriously wrong with me.