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Podcast: Tristar Gym
Episode: Can Emptiness Be Known Without Fullness? A Dialogue on Reality with Prof. Garfield. AMA 227
Description: In this dialogue, Professor Jay Garfield, a leading scholar and expert on Buddhist philosophy, joins Firas Zahabi to explore a fundamental question: can emptiness be known without prior knowledge of fullness or essence? Professor Garfield presents the Madhyamaka Buddhist account of emptiness as interdependence and convention. Firas challenges this view by pressing an epistemic issue: whether absence, illusion, or failure can be recognized at all without contrast with something given, real, and non-empty. Using thought experiments involving mirages, darkness, pain, constant conditions, agency, and moral responsibility, the discussion examines whether emptiness can be...