Transcription
Today, along with the meditation practice we're doing, sitting and walking, we're going to be going into this theme called 'emptiness,' which, some of you may know, is actually a very profound subject. You don't get much deeper than that in the realm of the teachings. It's also enormous. It's very wide. So not only is it very deep, it's very wide. So it's a little bit foolish of me to choose it as the topic for a day, but it's good to be foolish sometimes. So that's what we're going to do.
It's also a subject that can be approached from many different angles, many avenues, ways in. And there are many practices that are involved with exploring it. So we can only really touch on it a little bit and give a suggestion of something. But I hope it will seed further exploration for you, because I'm also aware, of course, you get a room -- any time you get more than two or three people, there's a whole range of histories, in terms of practice and what you've read or listened to, in terms of your backgrounds, etc., and inclinations.
So I'm going to try today, over the course of the day, to offer something for everyone. No matter what your background is, how long or how not long you've been meditating, etc., there should be something for everyone. And if we get to the end of the day and the questions, and there isn't, and you really feel, "Hey, what about me?" [laughs] Please say, because there should be something for everyone here. That's my intention.
And along with that, how many do feel they're really, really new to meditation, or feel very much a beginner, and ...? Yeah? Great. So sometime later this morning, in the period before lunch, I think -- I'll announce it -- I'll do a group, probably next door in the little room here, for anyone who wants to ask any questions or check in about meditation. So particularly if you're a beginner, please feel very welcome to come to that. But anyone else can come too. But even if you're a beginner, there should be something today for you, absolutely. That's my intention.
And like I said, we can really only touch a little bit on this topic, and what I want to do today, over the course of the day, in a few different periods of teaching, is introduce, I think, maybe three or four practices that you can take with you, and you can take for a ride, basically, and begin to explore on your own. And they're what you might call 'emptiness practices' that you can develop. And I want to go into them, but weave them together, because actually, as important as the practices for me is that there's a principle here. There's a common principle running through everything that I'm going to talk about today, even though it might seem a little disparate. There's actually a common principle weaving it all together, and weaving those three practices together. So hopefully, again, that becomes clear as we talk.
So I just want to talk a little bit right now, generally, just by way of introduction. This bit of the day, the next ten minutes or whatever, might seem a little abstract. I hope not, but if it does, you know, I hope that's okay. And we're going to fill it in very, very specifically in terms of practices, and ground it in experience.
So as much as emptiness is a profound subject and a wide subject, it's also actually a very fundamental subject in the Dharma, in the teachings of the Buddha. Oftentimes, my experience is, people have heard very little about this subject -- depending on which your background tradition is -- might have heard very little about this theme, and have this sense, "Oh, it's kind of something optional, sort of tacked-on extra bit for advanced people." But actually not, and again, it's my intention that by the end of the day, you have a sense of why it's actually, if you like, the most fundamental principle in the Dharma. It could be seen that way -- something very, very basic about it.
[4:30] But again, depending on your background, it's likely that you may have heard very, very little about this. If your background is Insight Meditation -- and I don't know how many people here feel that that's really what you do. Yeah? Quite a lot. One of the real strengths of Insight Meditation is that we teach and help people to 'be with' their experience. So rather than starting off the sense of the path with big abstractions and this and that, we sort of sit people down, be with the breath a little bit, and then be with experience, be with what's happening. So really, you could say, the approach we take in Insight Meditation is learning to meet and to be with, and to tolerate, and to embrace, and to handle what's coming up in the moment. And what happens for most people, being on retreat, this sort of intense box that you're put in, which, if you like, your job is just to meet what's going on, meet what's going on, moment to moment. Are you familiar with that? Yeah?
Now, that's great. That's really one of the strengths of Insight Meditation. Funnily enough, it's also its weakness, one of its great weaknesses, because it may be that with this 'being with' and 'being with' and 'being with' the next thing, and being mindful of this and then being mindful of that, something gets missed. Something that's actually quite fundamental gets missed. So we talk about 'being with what is,' 'opening to what is,' and 'loving what is,' etc. -- 'what is' meaning the experience that's arising. But in that process of 'being with' and 'opening to,' the nature of what is, the nature of experience, is not actually questioned too deeply, so that the whole sense of the path can become, very easily, one is just [being with]. So many people have told me -- I say, "So, what do you think you're doing?" "Well, I'm being with experience. I'm kind of being aware, and trying to be in my body with it, and being with this experience, and then the next experience, and then the next experience. And that is the path. That's it."
So that mindfulness and 'being with' kind of becomes a sort of goal. One is just learning to roll with experience, with awareness, and be there. Of course it's all impermanent. It's flowing. But one needs to just show up and show up and show up. The nature of what is, of experience, is not questioned, and the reality of it is somewhat given. In other words, one doesn't question the reality of what's going on: "This is just what's going on."
[7:25] Now, it might sound, "So what?" But if I say, now, okay, this business of emptiness, the emptiness teachings are saying, understanding emptiness is just that. It's understanding something quite radical -- fundamental, radical, profound -- about the nature of all experience, of all things, of all phenomena. Understanding something; not just 'being with' something and something else and something, but understanding something more than impermanence. Understanding something about experience that brings a radical level of freedom, a whole other level of freedom. So there's a difference in 'level,' if you like, if you want to use that language. And so it's a little bit curious, in the history of Dharma, that nowadays we have this tradition that sort of attacks things topsy-turvy, a little bit -- big strength, but also a big weakness.
So you may have heard very little about this emptiness business, and maybe you haven't even heard the word before. And it's an unfortunate word, because in English we say, "I'm feeling empty," or "a sense of emptiness," and we tend to think "depressed" or "bleak" or "barren." It has that connotation in English, right? Now, actually, completely the opposite, completely the opposite: there's something about this journey into emptiness that opens love, opens a tremendous sense of beauty and wonder. It's the opposite of depression, bleakness, barrenness, and all that. In fact, Nāgārjuna -- who's probably the second most important teacher, if you like, in the whole history of Buddhist teaching, lived a few hundred years after the Buddha -- talking about this, said:
Without doubt, when meditators, when practitioners have developed their understanding or their realization of emptiness, their hearts and their minds will be devoted to the welfare of others.[1]
[9:27] So there's something here that's understanding something fundamental about existence, about phenomena, about experience, that brings radical freedom and radical love. And what is it? What is it? That's what I want to go into.
As I'm saying this next bit, see if you can just watch what your reactions are, what goes on inside you as you hear some of this, and what the emotions are, etc. So when it's said that something is empty, or this or that is empty, what it's really saying is it's not really real. It seems real, but it's not really real, not really real in the way that we typically tend to feel and think that it is. And I'll explain. I'll try to explain. In technical language that comes in the tradition, they say some thing, this or that, this self or some object or some experience is 'empty of inherent existence.' It's a technical phrase. What it really means is that we tend to think -- I see John, or I see a bottle of water, or this or that, or an emotion of sadness or fear -- and we tend to think that's just what it is. It is that, in and of itself, independently of how I'm thinking of it or seeing it, independently of other things. It just is that. It is what it is, 'from its own side,' as it were; has nothing to do with how I'm looking at it or how I'm relating to it. Does that make sense if I say that?
"So what?" But this is how we move through life. We tend to assume a world of objective, independent existence -- which is not a big, intellectual decision that we make. It's just what we feel in our bones, in our blood. That's how we sense existence. This self, other selves, and the world -- independent, objective existence, independent of other things. Maybe they're connected, we feel, but they're not really -- we feel they're different. Things are different from each other, and independent, and particularly, independent of the way that I am looking at them, the way that the mind is seeing, perceiving, and conceiving of them. Okay? Maybe sounds a little abstract.
The Buddha talks about this, and he says everything, everything you perceive, is a mirage, is like a mirage, he says. That's a strong image. You know what a mirage is, in the desert? Everything you perceive, he says, is like a mirage. Everything. And he says everything that we're conscious of, and that whole process of consciousness, is like a magician making an illusion. This is strong imagery. He's not leaving anything out. He's saying it's all like that. It's all a "mirage" and a "conjurer's trick," in his words.[2]
But there's some nuance here, and actually to understand this takes practice. It's not something that one can really explain in a short way, or even just totally understand intellectually. It's really through practice that one understands. There's subtlety here, because the Buddha says, when someone asked him, a monk called Kaccāyana, and he says:
That things exist, Kaccāyana, is one extreme. [It's one extreme of view: that things exist.] That they do not exist is another extreme [of view]. But I, the [Buddha], accept neither 'is' nor 'is not,' and I [proclaim] the truth of the Middle [Way].[3]
[13:19] So he's not just saying it doesn't exist at all. But he's not agreeing that everything exists. Something quite subtle, quite profound, is being pointed to, and quite fundamental.
Now, you might be listening and thinking, "Well, okay, but so what? What difference does it make? Why on earth is that significant? And why would one -- why would the Buddha go on and on about it, and 2,500 years of teachings go on about it? Why would we give a whole day to it?" If things are not really real, and I know that, when I know that, I can't really suffer in relationship to them or over them in the same way as when I think they're real. Do you get that? When I know that something is [not] real, I can't suffer over it. It's like, it cuts the suffering at the most, much more fundamental level than just 'being with' this.
Let's say those doors burst open, and we hear this enormous growling. And it's a bear or a lion or something coming up the stairs! Now, if we think that's real, there's going to be, obviously, a lot of suffering. If we think -- this is a very, very poor analogy, but just to give you a sense of why it makes a difference -- if it's just a recording, and then a little holographic image or something, it's like, "Huh! Someone's playing a joke." It cuts the suffering. So when we see something's not real, when we understand that deeply, it's the deepest possible cutting of suffering, the deepest possible release and freedom from suffering that there could possibly be. And that's why all this is so significant.
Now, some of you, depending on your experience, will have heard a lot about the self being empty. They talk about the self-sense or the ego-sense as illusory. And there's a lot of talk about that in different spiritual traditions, actually. So we say the self is empty. It's illusory. But more than that, more comprehensively than that, what the Dharma is teaching is that not just the self, but all things, all phenomena are empty. That means objects like jugs and water and phones and cushions. It means the things that constitute 'me': the body and the body parts, and the perceptions and the feelings and the emotions and the consciousness -- all this is also illusory. It means things like time: past and future, but also the present. We tend to think, "Oh, just the Now is real." Actually, that's illusory too. Space -- these are fundamental things that we just think, "Well, they're just obviously true." Time, space, awareness -- also empty, illusory. That's where all this is going eventually. It's really, really profoundly upturning, shattering our conception, our felt sense of what's real.
[16:31] How on earth are we going to get to that level of understanding? Because that's, you know, to even say time and awareness and space are not really real -- remember, the deeper you see this, the more deeply one cuts suffering. So it's really not abstract. How would we get there? How possibly could we arrive at such a profound understanding, such a mystical understanding, such a revolutionary understanding?
Like I said, there are many possibilities, and one approach -- and it's probably the one that I feel the Buddha goes for in his original teachings -- is taking this word 'illusion' and seeing if you can expose the illusion of something by seeing how experience gets constructed or built, or to use a technical word, 'fabricated,' 'concocted.' I'll give you an example. Have you ever had the experience of being in a certain mood that's difficult, and somehow in that mood, the mind latches onto something and starts obsessing about that thing, whatever it is? It might be an issue, it might be another person, it might be something in yourself, it might be something in the situation. Hones in on that, and starts obsessing about it, getting upset, spinning around that in a little vortex, and the whole thing gets amplified. Have you had this experience? Yeah? It's pretty ... not nice. [laughs] There's a word for it. It's called papañca in Pali. And basically, the mind grasps hold of something and starts inflating energy into that thing, whatever it is: "Why is that person looking at me like that?", or whatever just happened, or something about myself. In that process, this thing that I'm obsessing about gets inflated, gets pumped up with energy and bigger. It looms bigger in consciousness.
At the same time, in that vortex, in that inflation, at the same time, the self-sense is also pumped up, is also constructed, concocted, built, fabricated more. The self and the object together are built. That self-sense might be a very negative self-sense: "I hate myself. I'm worthless." I mean, that's quite extreme. "I'm no good. I'm a total failure." It seems like "Oh, there's no self there." That's actually a very constructed sense of self. There's a lot of solidity there. There's a lot of separateness between this self and everything else -- very substantial, very solid, very contracted, very separate. Do you get what I'm saying? The self is constructed. Do you understand?
[19:17] All kinds of self-views are part of that. They get constructed, and the self-sense itself gets constructed. And then what happens? A little time goes by -- hopefully a little time -- and we start to realize, "Oh. Pfff." Things start to clear, and we start to realize, "It was just a fabrication. I got my knickers in a twist, and it was a fabrication." Something was getting pumped up. The whole thing -- it wasn't quite real. It was blown up and constructed. Have you been through all this? Yeah?
That's emptiness. Right there is a level of emptiness. Very, very basic, very simple, right there. What was empty? That thing, that issue, that perception of that issue and the reality of it, and the way the self felt in that time as being 'the real way I am' -- all that we see afterwards is empty. It was a fabrication. Get it? Yeah? So that's a very, very basic level of emptiness. So it's not anything that mysterious at that level, yeah? But through papañca, this self-sense is fabricated more, we could say, than a normal state of consciousness, where we just feel relatively normal.
Okay, very simple, very easy. Everyone's had that experience, and you don't need to be a meditator to see that, to understand that. It doesn't take any depth of meditation. But what if we start pulling on that thread, this idea that we fabricate things, that things and the sense of things is fabricated? What if we just start pulling on that, and taking it deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper? Inquiring into this whole notion of fabrication -- that's our path of insight. And we just have a question: what are we able to see is fabricated? So we can see that whole mood and the object in that mood, or the issue, and the self there -- that was fabricated. What else? So rather than saying, "Yes, I know that's fabricated, but everything else is real," what if we just kept an open question? What else is fabricated? Just curious.
And that's where you need the meditation to come in, to go deeper. It's fabricated, therefore illusory, therefore empty. And maybe I can see that it's fabricated, and deconstruct -- built up all this solidity, and maybe I can deconstruct it. [21:45] So we start very, very simple, very easy, and follow something deeper and deeper.
Doing it this way also helps with fear. So I don't know. How was it ten minutes ago or whatever, when I said that time is empty and space is empty, and awareness is empty? How did that feel? What did you notice in your response? Nothing? [laughter] Didn't ...
Yogi: Relief.
Rob: A relief, lovely, yeah, beautiful. Did anyone have the opposite reaction?
Yogi 2: Yeah, uneasy.
Rob: Yeah. My experience teaching all this is that there's a whole range of reactions. The same person can have different reactions. But yeah, relief, because it is a relief, and also uneasy, fearful, etc., disbelief, all kinds of things. But particularly with that kind of uneasiness and fear that can arise for us when we get, even just to hear about this -- this going very simply, and starting at a very simple level, it reassures the being. It's like, "If that's okay ..." So if I say to you that whole papañca thing of creating this kind of nonsense -- you see that's empty, then presumably there's relative easiness with that, yeah? You see, "I can trust that." And then maybe it gives me a little bit more confidence to take a little extra step, you know? And then, I realize, "Oh, that feels good. I can take another one." Yeah? So that's actually really important, and that's one of the reasons why this is a helpful way of doing it.
But behind all this is an open question, which is: "What is fabricated?" Rather than deciding, "Only that stuff is fabricated, and this all is real," it's just open, open. And step by step, trusting, trusting and being reassured by the very freedom it brings, we can go deeper. That make sense as a principle?
This is Rob's rendering of a passage from Nāgārjuna's Bodhicittavivaraṇa. Cf. Chr. Lindtner*, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of Nāgārjuna* (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982), 207. ↩︎
At SN 22:95, the Buddha compares perception to a mirage and consciousness to a magician's illusion. ↩︎
Cf. Padmakara Translation Group, tr., Introduction to the Middle Way: Chandrakirti's Madhyamakavatara with Commentary by Jamgön Mipham (Boston: Shambhala, 2004), 10. Also see SN 12:15. ↩︎
