Very clear, especially the distinction between understanding emptiness as a concept vs as an illuminated Recognition.

I wonder if you have heard of Douglas Giles, a philosopher who recently posted "Buddhism is Wrong" on Medium. He insists that Buddhism is wrong about the nature of the self, about emptiness and also insists he has solved the problem of free will.

In the course of questioning, I suggested looking at the challenge of letting go of thoughts to the point of having a completely silent mind, or trying to maintain awareness as the mind shifts from waking, to dreaming, and then to deep sleep - to look at this and question, given the certainty of failure for most people, whether or not this might give him pause as to the notion that the idea of free will is so simple.

He responded rather curtly, simply saying it was obvious I didn't understand him, and added as an aside that the various challenges I offered were completely irrelevant to the question of free will, and besides, any beginning meditator could easily do all those things.

Surprised to hear I had spent years practicing to do what most beginning meditators could do quite easily, I asked him specifically what made him think those were easy things to do.

Without answering directly, he said he had already answered all my questions and refused to answer any more.

I thought you might be interested in his writings as they seem to be almost paradigmatic in terms of many fundamental misunderstandings of Buddhism.

https://medium.com/inserting-philosophy/buddhism-is-wrong-86e261646dfb