In Rob’s groundbreaking way of teaching emptiness, a phenomenological approach is emphasized. Beginning with the experiences (the sensations, sights, sounds, thoughts, etc.) that one has as a human being, a meditator plays with different ways of looking and notices the effects they have on what is actually perceived and felt. Engaging the classical Buddhist ways of looking of anicca (impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), and anattā (not-self), skill gradually develops in dissolving suffering and softening or ‘unfabricating’ the sense of self, bringing senses of relief and release both on and off the cushion.
As insights into emptiness are absorbed and consolidated, they form stepping-stones to deeper and deeper understanding – all available to and possible for a dedicated practitioner, and all to be seen for oneself. Not a nihilistic or life-denying teaching, emptiness opens out into profound beauty, joy, and freedom. Exploring it in its depths, one ultimately goes beyond any notion of ‘the way things really are’ or ‘what is.’ As the most basic elements of experience, including space, time and awareness, are dissolved in meditation, the realization forms, not just intellectually but firmly in the being, that nothing has inherent existence, that everything is dependently arisen - neither 'real' nor 'unreal'. This understanding is a profound undermining of fundamental avijja, and opens the door to the deepest freedom.
