Flower Shower
Suharti was Buddha's disciple. He grasped the potency of Śūnyatā, or emptiness, the viewpoint that no thing exists except in its relationship to other objects - there is no self encoded there.
One day, Suharti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.
"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.
"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Suharti.
"You have not spoken of emptiness and we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is the true emptiness." And flowers rained upon Suharti.
dcj commentary: Emptiness is the English translation, but it is not intended to be nothingness or oblivion; a better translation (though wordier) is the not-self nature of form, sensation, perception, mental activity, and consciousness; self being the unchanging eternal self.
I've heard it said that inner silence is not simply the absence of thoughts. Rather it is a positive (but ineffable) state that puts you in touch with something that was always there but never noticed. Once touched, that silence automatically takes over -- one no longer needs to fight to quiet the mind. Instead, one is inexorably drawn in ever deeper.
(I only wish that I were saying this from the point of view of personal experience, LOL.)
Oops, I had a typo there for not-self vs self!.
Similar to your point, "emptiness" is more of a short-hand than a really good translation. I think it evokes more renunciation than it should.
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