Emptiness

[Foreigner]

I've been delving more into the concept (and awareness) of Emptiness recently. I realized that, for a time, I was confusing the bliss and emptying of mind during meditation as perception of Emptiness. It was after doing some reading and soul searching that I realized I was confusing a temporary state with that of something that is supposed to be a constant, because once the meditation ends, that state of mind ends.

I've collected some good quotes about Emptiness over the years, but don't ask me where they come from because my record keeping has been spotty... so no plagiarism intended. And I'm sure the original authors wouldn't care anyway.

"Emptiness: the realization that everything and every experience is empty. Each experience is empty of self, it's not an entity in of itself, it comes and goes, arises and ceases, there's no solidity to it, everything is ephemeral and changes without any input from any creator; the mind can intervene and alter the course, but it can't turn things off or leap from one state of being from another. The mind is only able to affect things in terms of its judgments and desires, what we want to be a certain way -- it has a certain power that leads us in a direction. But we see that things like pain we can't control, and the more we try to control the more we suffer. Once you start to see things as coming and going on their own, rising when they want and ceasing when they want, going of their own accord and not according to our wishes, and that the only input we thought we had was really just coming from the projection of mind, that is the realization of Emptiness. There is no self involved, no control involved -- everything is Empty of any being. Every part of reality is Empty of any reason or benefit to cling to it in terms of "this will make me happy when it comes, or this will make me happy when it goes." Otherwise there is dependency on things that are impermanent, unsatisfying and uncontrollable."

"Emptiness points to the fact that reality consists of a single, dual-aspect substance that is recursively defined (self-defined). That means that any specific object/process/law located within reality can't be defined in terms of itself (you can only do this for reality as a whole) . In other words the defining structure of that object, process or law residing in nature is defined in terms of the structure of the whole and thus does not have an independent existence. It exists below the identity and thus below the invariant level of reality.

Noting that these changes aren't fundamental and thus not relevant to long term emotional utility allows one freedom from suffering. In other words the knowledge that change shouldn't bring suffering frees one from suffering when it's deep enough. That's great as far as it goes. However, the insight that reality itself has intrinsic "character" escaped both Buddha and Nagarjuna. This insight wasn't clearly expressed in detail until the late 20th century when Christopher Michael Langan wrote the CTMU where he described reality as sharing the same structure of a new mathematical object called SCSPL (self-configuring, self-processing language)."

As far as I can tell, the Buddha's objective was not to create a road map to enlightenment, but a road map to simply being human. He didn't deal with deities and what comes next, but rather what is happening right now. He was acutely aware that everyone suffers and wanted to find the antidote to that. What he found was the bliss that exists in the present moment, and upon realizing its Empty, impermanent nature, he found peace, compassion and appreciation for all that is.

My assumption is that the Buddha enlightened because his consciousness shifted to a permanent awareness of these natures of reality. But as scriptures say, he appeared as an ordinary man. A lot of the flowery details of the miracles he performed seem to be there to reinforce his mystique, but I'm wondering if perhaps enlightenment is not that grandios from an external perspective. It seems to me that the performance of miracles is an ego driven thing and many scriptures mention such miracles in order to give more weight to the teachings which, in of themselves, should already be sufficient.

There are many people in the world who understand Emptiness and experience it regularly, whether as part of a specific practice or through spontaneous shifts in consciousness. I'm wondering why these people would not be considered "enlightened" for having such awakenings to the interdependent nature of everything?

I'm also wondering if there's any point in pursuing this nebulous idea of enlightenment vs. simply adopting practices that make life more meaningful and happy? I mean, if you enlighten, no one around you will know. You still have this ordinary body. I don't really get the practical distinction between enlightenment and someone who just has an extremely advanced understanding of the true nature of reality. Aside from that, the Buddha still lived and died. Yeah, there's a whole mythos around how he was never reborn and what not, but that's all speculation. The general lesson seems to be that being no-self is better than being self, but is that just a cop out?

 

[herbavore]

I'm also wondering if there's any point in pursuing this nebulous idea of enlightenment vs. simply adopting practices that make life more meaningful and happy?

For me, that is the richness of now. This ability we have in any setting, at any time, while in these human bodies to profoundly feel, all held in the acceptance that these feelings are impermanent, gives me all the meaning and happiness I could ever want. This was not always apparent to me, and therefore unavailable. Any compassion I have gained with a long life has come from remembering how separated I was from this awareness and understanding how terribly painful it can be to live this way.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

"Emptiness is form, form is emptiness"
-- the Heart Sutra (or was it the Lotus Sutra?)

Foreigner, I think you could easily adapt your post into an exegesis of this cryptic and paradoxical-seeming opening line of a spiritual and philosophical classic. It's a line that has given me much pause for thought, right up there with the opening lines of the Daode Jing.

I wonder what the Buddha and Zhuangzi would have thought about the modern idea, popular among some physicists and information scientists, that the universe, including apparently "solid" matter, is made of pure information at the most fundamental level: ons and offs, ones and zeros, which are in and of themselves not "things" at all, but are "empty" concepts, as it were. Mind-blowing stuff to ponder! This probably isn't saying much, but I found this ontological idea easy to accept -- bordering on obvious -- during some of my more recent hole-dose ketamine experiences.

 

[Foreigner]

My understanding of that opening quote is as follows. Emptiness is not about information, it's about the conditions in which objects arise and then cease. They do not do so independently. Any arising is tied to something else. Nothing has its own individual form separate from everything else. Every object is Empty of inherent existence. It does not mean they don't exist (nihilism), it means they are imagined. The forms in front of you are Empty. Form is Emptiness.

There are no forms that are not Empty; likewise, there are no Emptinesses which exist in of themselves, without being the Emptiness of something. i.e. the emptiness of a table, the emptiness of a self, the emptiness of a vase, and so forth. In describing what is Empty you are already employing forms.

The quote refers to the duality of ultimate truth vs. conventional truth. When you can see and hold both simultaneously, you are seeing the truth. If you can do it all the time, then supposedly you are enlightened.

 

[rickolasnice]

I thought the emptiness experienced during mediation was a practise to become more aware.. as in.. sensing the world.. seeing, hearing, tasting, feelings, etc without the noise of thought or an instant perception of it (or something along those lines I'm shit at explaining what i mean)..

I don't know if you guys know this or have seen these but:

TED talks on mediation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzR62JJCMBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8rRzTtP7Tc

The second one I find EXTREMELY interesting and should silence the mediation sceptics out there.