Hokai, Florian, thank you so much, I found your posts extremely helpful.

My query stemmed from reading an exchange between a couple of people on another forum, where whether the Buddha had taught Emptiness seemed to be in dispute. One person (A) cited "The Shorter Discourse on Emptiness" to demonstrate that the Buddha had indeed taught on Emptiness -- but it transpired that the other person (B) had really been referring to Emptiness as explained in the Heart Sutra, seeming to be of the opinion that Nagarjuna rather than the Buddha may have been the originator of the Sunyata doctrine, and then went on to chastise person A for his style of posting, not demonstrating the provenance of what he was citing etc. So I was intrigued, and thought I'd ask the scholars on this forum!

Florian, I found listening to Thanissaro Bikkhu very helpful -- I listened to his "Emptiness Revisited" talk and got clear (at least at the time!) on what was empty of what, if you see what I mean. I liked the way he talked about refining the perception further and further to be able to perceive subtler and subtler disturbances. And the first part of his "When you know for yourselves ... " gets to the heart of the issue of provenance and authenticity, so thanks for providing a link to that.

Hokai, thanks for the links you provided. I had already skimmed through Thanissaro Bikkhu's translation of "The Shorter Discourse ...", but hadn't really picked up on the way suññata is understood differently in Theravada, as opposed to the sunyata of Madhyamaka. After reading you saying that differences ".. may be apparent from the text itself.", a closer reading brought that home to me, and Thanissaro Bikkhu's talk further clarified that. The other article re. Transcendental Arising will have to wait probably until Sunday when I'll have some more time.

Once again, thanks to you both.

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