Connections and Emptiness: Exploring the Affinities between Latour’s Irreductionism and Mahayana Buddhism’s Shunyata

During the pandemic, one afternoon I met up with some friends near an isolated stream surrounded by a forest. We brought along some beers and had a casual chat. It was during this gathering that my friend Dharme explained the concept of Kshunyatha (Emptiness) to me. I was vaguely familiar with the idea from Nawagattegama’s novel, but Dharme’s explanation provided a comprehensive understanding. Later, Dharme shared with me the Sinhala translation of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heart-Understanding-Commentaries-Prajnaparamita-Sutra/dp/1888375922" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘Heart Sutra’</a>, which was the book he had read about the concept. At the time, I was diving into Actor-Network Theory by Bruno Latour as part of my research, and I’m still. As humans, I believe, we tend to compare and contrast new concepts with those we already know. In this blog post, I’d like to explore the affinities between two seemingly different ideas: Kshunyatha and Actor-Network Theory. I won’t be presenting a formal analysis, but rather a personal reflection on how my brain, wired to think in terms of Eastern ontologies, grapples with this Western (but not Western) theory. I’ll draw on my own experiences and intuition to show the affinities I noticed. <a href="https://dilinajanadith.medium.com/connections-and-emptiness-exploring-the-affinities-between-latours-irreductionism-and-mahayana-67933770891">Visit Now</a>