Hi Mat,
I must point out that your understanding of the Mahayana’s ‘emptiness’ is misconceived. For the Mahayana adepts, emptiness does not relate to ‘awareness of the infinity of space’, but rather to the state of ‘that which is beyond Nothingness’. Please look into the ten oxherding pictures for a clarification of this matter.
In many passages of the EBT’s, the Buddha declares his realisation of enlightenment as transcending the state of Nothingness, going beyond both perception-and-non-perception, until arriving at the stopping of feeling.
When the state of Nothingness is realised, then the following two states become synonymous, or at any rate, within readily accessible reach. For when it is seen that ‘there is Nothing’, then all perceptions which yet remain are truthfully neither perception nor non-perception, and if there remain any feelings, then those clearly are no-feelings.
It is indeed for this very point that the Mahayana sutras were composed in the first place. Their contention is that the majority of seekers cling to notions of form, to progress on a path, to ‘self’, and even to the Buddha himself. But when perfect Emptiness is realised, then what form is there to cling to, and what ‘self’? That which is called ‘perception’ is empty, and that which is called ‘feeling’ is empty, too.
Read the Hridaya-Prajnaparamita sutra for a quite comprehensive list of what the Mahayanists deem to be empty. There is nothing which is not Empty, including the infinity of space. Thus, emptiness equates more correctly with Nothingness.
