ok boy, I will discuss meow,

buddha nature is much involved with the breath, whereby the breath has become such an entity of its own that we become light like breezes flowing through us, and when we feel so naturally flooded with breath, we can not be otherwise then the epitomy of creativity, and this is most keenly felt as internal pliability and facial sensations that we would typifiy that we have become wholly, a smile, and our mind and our motivations become welcoming to others as if all in existence can abide in us and are as our children, and can come and go and rest within us, and we have no emotion to anything other than a combined sensation of amused welcome and compassionate openess and kindness.

emptiness is more an objective and intellectually based perception that kind of translates as a massive - i don't care - which serves to centre us by straightening us to a path and orienting us to reality. 

buddha nature is beyond emptiness, emptiness is a practice that strengthens us and tills the soil to nurture buddha nature.

Quote: "Quote: "buddha nature is beyond emptiness, emptiness is a practice that strengthens us and tills the soil to nurture buddha nature."
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So, now Buddha nature is akin to a plant?? Which needs soil??
Someone said (I don't know who) that the more you try to describe Buddha nature .. the farther you get from it. And, as far as I know, the practice is not emptiness. It is awareness. But, hey, I'm just a criminal with genocidal tendencies??
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Yes

Quote: ""Be a meditator, not a thinker" ~ Adolf Hitler "
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I hear people say that it would have been good if someone had killed Hitler before he got started.  Are they nuts ?  We would never have won the war without him, which is why his Generals and Admirals kept trying to kill him.

Breathing is central for us in sitting and meditation because we get more oxygen when we think about it. 

I recall a music teacher saying that it was important to breath diaphramatically when singing or playing a musical instrument because this fill the lungs with about 1/3 more air than when we breathe with just the chest muscles.  Ergo 1/3 more oxygen.

He elaborated that breathing diaphramatically is the natural way, as is done by all babies, and that as we grow older and take on the tensions associated with daily living we tend to breathe higher in the chest. 

High breathing, as I call it, is stress related.  Low breathing returns us to relaxation, and our natural state. 

Quote: "I noticed that in spite of the high level of thinking in all the Zen Forums there are still asking: What is Buddha Nature? What is Emptiness? Are they both the same?

Wondering when all the thinkers can solve it....lol
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Zen does not call for higher levels of thinking,

but rather levels of higher thinking.

Buddha nature, just be as you are. Dont try to be something you are not.

Emptiness, *Nothing exists except the energy that everything is made of.* Einstein.

Higher levels of thinking are still in the human range - egocentric.

Levels of higher thinking know no bounds.