[continuing previous kusen]
Dream, illusion and shadow all occupy a curious position. You can’t say they exist, but you can’t say they don’t exist either, as they can be experienced. And because everything can be experienced, we don’t slice up that experience into true and false, right and wrong.
At its inception, Buddhism occupied a middle position in Indian thought. It wasn’t eternalist. It wasn’t nihilist. But it’s not called The Middle Position, it’s called The Middle Way, because it isn’t fixed, like a position, it’s dynamic, like a person.
And this dynamic quality led from the prajnaparamita sutras, of which the Diamond and Heart Sutras form part, into the full flowering of Chinese buddhism: The Lotus Sutra, The Flower Garland Sutra, where the world of experience, rather than being taken as a given which requires to be navigated, is completely liberated into its own creative potential, through devotional, expressive, feeling language. As it were, the endlessly reconfiguring world bursts out of the heart.