“Teacher, earlier when teaching the dharma to the townsfolk and when explaining the emptiness of form and the other aggravates you said, “A thing that is not can be understood as that which is not, and that which is.” This is confusing to me. Could you explain it’s meaning?”
“Indeed. Conceptually, a thing that is not can be understood as that which it is not and that which it is. Likewise, that which is can be known by both what it is and by what it is not. Glass that was full, when emptied, would you say that it is not full or empty?”
”One could say either, but I would say it is empty.”
The student then pulls out a copper coin from his mendicant bowl, studies it from side to side, and after a brief pause says, “Other side of heads, not heads or tails.”
Good. Good. Very good. You have understood.