Emptiness (part 1)
Essay #7 of Samsara the Goddess
Samsara is not a place, she is a Goddess and you are her!
This post builds on ideas from: Essay #1, The Two Natures Essay #2, The Superpowers of Samsara Essay #3, The Tragedy of Samsara Essay #4, Obscuration and Blindness Essay #5, Brambles, Traps and Obstacles Essay #6, The Vampire Goddess
.Can you look directly into the eyes of Samsara the Goddess and watch her creating the real world?
Introduction
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Emptiness is a difficult subject Though it points Nothing is there Either It’s long gone Or It was never there in the first place
Throughout these essays I’ve taken an unconventional approach to Dharma. ‘Samsara’ is typically treated as a thing, a reality, or a delusional reality. I, however, consider ‘Samsara’ to be an activity, something we do, or more precisely, something our inner Goddess Samsara does. It’s the activity of creating our delusional real world, in order to meet Basic Human Needs.
Now I’m going extend this same shift in perspective to Emptiness. Emptiness is not a mental state, or any sort of noun, or a characteristic that one can perceive. Emptiness is something one does; it’s an activity and a skill. It’s the act of subduing or minimizing the delusional real world created by our inner Goddess Samsara.
Samsara creates delusions, and we Dharma students empty them.
Boiler plate stuff →→
These essays present an understanding of Dharma tailored to Westerners and smartphone addicts. While this perspective does not contradict a traditional understanding, it omits two ideas that often mystify Westerners: reincarnation and karma. Instead, it approaches the Buddhist path through a framework of Basic Human Needs, inspired by Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications.
There are many understandings. This is just another one. Any understanding of Dharma that’s worth it’s salt leaves one calmly, firmly, on the doorstep of Practice. I hope to achieve that goal.
The Story of the Real World
Our inner Goddess creates stories. She discovers them in the void, she learns them from others, and she creates her own.
The Goddess uses these stories to help us survive and prosper.
Each story appears to us as thing or a form*.*
We are EXTREMELY attached to these things and forms. Thus we call them ‘REAL’ .
Our (REAL) world of things and forms is troublesome. It helps us survive, but creates an ocean of suffering. :(
In order to remind ourselves that things and forms are only stories written by the Goddess, and to loosen our extreme attachment to these stories, we call things and forms, ‘Empty’.
Pitfalls
Here are some missteps and misunderstandings that can hinder our progress toward realizing Emptiness.
Proving instead of Practicing
Most texts and lectures on Emptiness (that I have encountered) consist of a proof of Emptiness. The proofs are difficult to comprehend, and not very useful, except to persuade us that Emptiness might possibly be the case. Understanding the proof does not bring about a realization of Emptiness.
Consider when learning algebra: each lesson begins by proving a new rule, and then we practice using that rule. Once the practice starts, we completely forget about the proof. It’s the practice that propels us forward.
Emptiness is a SKILL, like reading or riding a bike. Mastering this skill takes years of practice! Luckily, practicing Emptiness is enjoyable and useful right from the beginning. Very useful.
‘Emptiness’ is the wrong word
The word ‘emptiness’ usually refers to an empty container, say a water glass that doesn’t have any water in it. For Buddhists, ‘Emptiness’ has a slightly different definition. It means that some quality or characteristic is missing, like a water glass with the bottom sawed off.
It’s easy to confuse the two definitions. When Westerners and smartphone addicts learn about Buddhist Emptiness, they learn the Buddhist definition, and then, without realizing it, they start looking around for empty containers. It’s like we can’t help it. It took me years to figure out what was going haywire.
Here is an example of Buddhist ‘Emptiness’, and common English ‘emptiness’, both applied to an apple.
Buddhist ‘Emptiness’:
Apple’ is a story (we learned as children). It is a REAL thing.
Like all REAL things, it’s only a story. Apples do not inherently exist (or exist from their own side, or exist by their own nature).
In other words, apples are Empty, or we might say, apples are Empty of inherent existence.
Common English ‘emptiness’:
‘Apple’ IS a container.
The container is NOT empty. It’s full of luminosity from the luminous void.
Grasping for Emptiness
Many Buddhists believe that realizing Emptiness (or the Direct Perception of Emptiness) will be like winning the lottery. Prizes will rain down: ecstasy, unshakable equanimity, Shamatha, omniscience, the gateway to ultimate Bodhicitta… I want it!
Grasping for Emptiness is an oxymoron, like clutching an armload of air. Emptiness isn’t graspable. The word means ‘less’. Some quality or characteristic is missing; it’s gone. It’s like forgetting your own name. You can practice it, but you can’t own it. Emptiness is not a thing; it’s an action; but it’s less than an action; it’s the ceasing of action.
Let go Give up Less and less and less Humble and more humble and more humble Like a black hole shrinking To an infinitely small singularity Mu Zilch
Direct Perception of Emptiness
Buddhist ‘Emptiness’ implies that the quality of ‘inherent existence’ is missing from a thing or form. If it’s missing, it’s not there. If it’s not there, you can’t directly perceive it.
An apple with inherent existence is identical to an apple without inherent existence. The apple looks the same whether you’re awake or in a dream. (Causes and conditions determine what the apple looks like.)
Looking around, everything has weight, temperature, and texture, but you can’t directly perceive these qualities. it’s the same with Emptiness.
But here’s the big problem. Chasing after The Direct Perception of Emptiness can waste a ton of time and energy. It causes seekers to search endlessly for visible clues to a lack of inherent existence. There aren’t any. I made this mistake for years.
(What one can directly perceive, and perhaps mistake for Emptiness, is the glow of the luminous void. The glow becomes more apparent when we lessen our focus on delusion.)
Emptification, to Emptify (a new verb)
Emptiness isn’t something you know or perceive. It’s something that you do, an activity, a practice. Let’s call that practice Emptification!
To ‘emptify’ a thing or form means you intentionally realize it’s Emptiness.
You can emptify things in shades of grey. You can breathe a touch of Emptiness on a thing, or you can slosh the thing with Emptiness, or you can drown it.
You can emptify a thing temporarily or permanently.
You can emptify the thing you’re looking at, or emptify your self, or both, or you can go full-nihilism and emptify the whole universe. (You won’t die; it just feels yucky, like like a mouthful of dusty pebbles.)
There are many possibilities!
Realthings
We’re going to start realizing the emptiness of stuff. But what exactly do we mean by ‘stuff’?
In previous essays I’ve described Samsara’s real world as a collection of things and forms. There’s a problem with that phrase, ‘things and forms’. It doesn’t express the wondrous variety and complexity of Samsara’s creations.
So I’m going to invent ANOTHER word. Instead of ‘things and forms’, let’s use the term ‘realthings’. Realthings refers to anything that gives rise to a story about the real world. This would include things, forms, impressions, social situations, collections of things, and parts of things.
For example: a random cloud or tree, a person you know, the last phone call you had with a friend, your relative’s medical condition, the relationship you’re chasing or fleeing, something smelly in the air, or your work environment.
Realthings can be born and die in a flash, or last a lifetime. They can be complicated or simple. They blossom in little chunks of understanding. They may not have names or labels. BUT THEY CAN (AND MUST) BE EMPTIFIED!!!
Realthings without words
Say you’re a toddler. You dump your juice on the carpet. Your exhausted parent has a tantrum. Samsara creates a realthing whose story is: ‘My source of life can explode in a life-threatening rage without warning or reason.’ That story is REAL. The child may live with this realthing for life. But the child can barely speak, so the story has no words.
Some stories are a gift of our DNA. Others may be from past lives.
The Flashlight Approach
As you may have guessed, I’m not into waiting lifetimes for Enlightenment. If there’s a direct path that I can follow, like NOW, that’s where I’m going. And there IS such a path to realizing Emptiness.
Imagine that our ‘intention to emptify is like a flashlight. We pick a realthing (from the millions that surround us, that fill us, that ARE us) and we emptify it. Then we light up another realthing and emptify it. Then another. And another. Emptifying one realthing at a time is way easier than trying to emptify the entire universe in one gulp.
The nice things about the flashlight approach are:
You can turn the flashlight on and off.
You can point it toward ANY damn realthing, internal or external.
Your skills grow and grow each time you emptify a realthing.
There is a small, or maybe a BIG payoff each time you emptify a realthing.
Shine your emptification flashlight on a realthing and taste it’s Empty nature. The more you shine, the more skilled you get. Shine it 100,000 times and you’ll be ‘gone, gone, gone beyond…’ Ha!
The Nuts and Bolts of Emptification
So, we shine our emptification flashlight on a realthing. What happens?
A realthing means:
We’ve got a story and
We’re clinging to that story. (The ‘real’ part of ‘realthing’ is a measure of the strength of that clinging. This story is REAL.)
The strength of our clinging casts the story in concrete. We can’t let go of it. The story can’t change with impermanence. We can’t correct Samsara’s mistakes (see essay #3). We are prisoners of the story.
If we could just we loosen up that clinging, it would be like saying, “OMG maybe my inner Goddess made a mistake(s). Maybe this story isn’t as REAL as I thought. I BETTER TAKE A SECOND LOOK.”
The second look is magic. It will (for an instant) strip the realthing of grasping, aversion, judgments, karmic history, associations, emotional baggage... And with all that junk gone, we’re free!
We can lighten up the realthing by letting go of some, but not all of it’s story.
We can keep the story as-is, but change our response.
We can keep the story as-is, and laugh at the suffering and madness of Samsara’s creations.
We can create an entirely NEW story for the realthing.
We strip the realthing naked, reborn and beautiful, in order to uncover it’s ecstatic essence.
We strip OUR SELF empty, naked, reborn and beautiful.
We might even forgive the Goddess. She created this realthing to meet some important Basic Human Need.
Taking that second look can be an adventure. It might take a second or it might take a month. The longer it takes, the more gigantic the payoff.
The question remains, what’s left of a realthing after you emptify its story? HA! Furrow your brow, crank up your concentration and answer that question.
Is emptification a path to Nirvana? We subdue the Goddess by emptifying her stories. The more we strip away, the more clear-light can shine through our obscurations.
This all takes time and practice. It’s like we’re trapped in thick mud. We must make one strenuous effort after another to break free.
Emptiness Practices
FORGET EVERYTHING I SAID IN THE LAST SECTION! For these practices, just try and stop clinging to the story. The rest will take care of itself.
Concentrate
Concentrate on the realthing. If we look long and hard enough, we WILL see through a realthing’s story, all the way to it’s Emptiness. Concentration is the best Emptiness practice.
If the realthing involves suffering, concentrate on the painful sensations. This is a fabulous Emptiness practice, in COUNTLESS ways.
Practice concentration on purpose, or by accident, till your eyeballs fall out and your butt falls off. It doesn’t matter what you concentrate on. It may take months or years but the payoff is worth it. I swear it.
The Present Moment
The present moment is like acid to stories. The screaming impermanence of the present moment tilts everything toward Emptiness. It’s like strapping on Emptiness rocket boots.
Pretend
Just f**king PRETEND the realthing is a made-up story. Is this a joke? Are you saying that if one walks around all day pretending realthings are Empty, pretty soon they WILL be? — Yes.
Imagine you’re Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Starship Enterprise, and command the realthing to let go of it’s story. “Make it not so!”
Imagine you’re a witch. You can cast a spell to instantly strip things, people or situations (or even yourself) of their story. Great for uncomfortable social situations!
Realthings ARE empty. It’s a done deal. So why not just blink or wiggle your nose, and make delusions un-happen.
Examine the Story
Examine the realthing’s story, forwards and backwards. Explore every element.
The Goddess’ stories have a purpose: to survive and prosper. Acknowledge the purpose of the realthing’s story.
Lots of times the story is about your traumatic past. You may spend weeks reviewing a hideous story, feeling the pain. Then suddenly the story fades, temporarily or permanently.
English Mantras
(my favorite) “I am not me. I am not me. This is a dream.”
If the clinging to the realthing’s story is causing anxiety, “I’m destroying my health. I’m destroying my peace.”
“This is not real, it’s a story. I made it up.”
Sometimes, you might emptify a realthing’s story 20 or 30 times. And nothing happens. The story stays as REAL as ever. Well don’t be too sure. You’re sending weird forces out into the universe. The result might show up when you least expect it, and be a total surprise. I kid you not.
There are infinite emptification practices. Make up new ones and share them with me. We’ll dig deeper into different practices when we explore which practices work best for which realthings.
Wander in the incredible labyrinth of life
You can actually watch the Goddess Samsara spinning her stories. (You are her, so why not?) Keep concentrating on your own perception. Watch yourself watching. You may see her dredging up old stories, spinning new ones, and applying one after another to see what’s needed or works.
Conclusion
For me, writing about Emptiness is like riding a rollercoaster. On the peaks I can see it all working. On the dips, when shit is hitting the fan, it collapses like a house of cards. Darn!
Over the long haul though, it works, but it makes me dizzy. One minute the real world is solid as a rock. The next minute it’s full of holes. Then it’s gone. Then it’s back. I just wish it would all hold still. I think it will, eventually. Perhaps the key is Shamatha (concentration skills).
The subject of Emptiness is vast. In Emptiness (part 2), we’ll peek at topics like repetition, Renunciation, the Middle Way, Nirvana, blowback from the Goddess, delayed reactions, and other good stuff.
As I rewrite draft after draft these essays they get better and better, because they teach me as I write. But when brain goo starts dribbling out of my ears I have to stop, which is now. I hope it all helps.
Thanks for reading.