The History of Buddhist Thought c25.23

c25.23

It is clear that a term which has to be interpreted in such an apparently arbitrary way as by Suzuki and Stcherbatsky is not self-evident. The choice of the term was due to the practice of the early Mahāyānists of adopting certain established terms in a new sense.⁴ They were thus enabled to find evidence in the Scriptures for their own doctrines. The term Void in the literal sense of emptiness is often found. There are two suttas on emptiness in the Majjhima (121, 122). The monk first meditates on the emptiness of an empty place, and then on the eight stages of concentration, each of which is empty with regard to the former, until he rests in signless (*animitta*) concentration of mind. Here the Void is purely psychological. The universe (*loka*) is also said to be void of a self or of anything belonging to a self,¹ and there is the same standpoint in *Sutta-nipāta*, 1119: