Buddhist Emptiness Quotes

#1. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.

Eckhart Tolle

#2. Those who awaken never rest in one place. Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. On the air they rise and fly an invisible course. Their food is knowledge. They live on emptiness. They have seen how to break free. Who can follow them?

Gautama Buddha

#3. Buddhist Barbie"
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.

Denise Duhamel

#4. There is no emptiness without appearance, and there is no appearance without emptiness. That is what we call the interdependent nature.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

#5. I almost try to explain another untranslatable word--sunyata--to Jonas. The idea has Buddhist roots and several meanings, depending on context. I think emptiness is the closest word, but, in English, we infer emptiness as a void, a lack. Sunyata is open with possibility, a meditative space.

Emery Lord

#6. Know emptiness, Be compassionate.

Milarepa

#7. The victorious ones have said
That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.
For whomever emptiness is a view,
That one has achieved nothing.

Nagarjuna

#8. From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters.

Sharon Salzberg

#9. If on the quantum level, matter is revealed to be less solid and definable than it appears, then it seems to me that science is coming closer to the Buddhist contemplative insights of emptiness and interdependence.

Dalai Lama XIV