Things Touched

Emptiness Games #1

A child tells you there’s a pterodactyl hiding in a bush. Any sane person would just blow it off. Our challenge is to go examine the bush, again and again, even though we’re certain there’s no pterodactyl.

Is it raining?
Go outside without a jacket
Let each raindrop be a mote of Emptiness
Sooner or later you’ll get wet

Introduction

I’ve been mining for Emptiness gold. Ha!

I’m going to share all the practices and explorations which enabled me to find flakes or a nugget. When I first started mining a few years ago, the gold seemed rare. Now I can find it all over the place. I look at a chair, and boom. I look at my foot, boom. I look around my Sangha, and boom boom boom. I look in the mirror. OMG it’s the mother load.

This is the first post in a series called ‘Emptiness Games’. Each post will outline one or more practices which propel one toward Emptiness. I’m afraid it will be a long series as my list of fruitful practices keeps growing and growing. I’m calling them ‘games’ because we might as well have fun.

I will describe these Emptiness games using ideas developed in the ‘Samsara the Goddess’ essays. I’ve coined some new terms. I’ve built on ideas which are somewhat foreign to traditional Buddhism. So I‘d suggest checking out the eight ‘Samsara the Goddess’ essays (if you haven’t already).

To review, or in case you’re not up for all that reading, very briefly:

1. Every realthing (every thing or situation in the real world) is a story.

2. Our inner Goddess Samsara learned or created these stories, in order to help us meet Basic Human Needs.

3. We cling desperately to these stories. This clinging, is the essence of what it means to be ‘real’. If we say a thing is ‘real’ then we are desperately clinging to its story.

4. We emptify a realthing (in other words, we realize a thing or a situation’s Emptiness) when we accept that the realthing is only a story, and we stop clinging to that story.

Avoiding the G.R.U.N.GE

Before looking at ways to enhance our realization of Emptiness, here are five ways to WRECK our realization of Emptiness.

G-rasping: believing there is a thing called Emptiness, reaching for it, and craving to possess it. Actually you’ve already got Emptiness. It’s just covered up by junk. Name me one single thing in the entire universe that isn’t Emptiness covered up by a bunch of junk.

R-emembering: grasping for a remembered experience or practice, instead of practicing in the present moment. If you’re like me, you will make this mistake10,000 times.

U-nderstanding: understanding a game or practice without actually doing it. If you know and understand a game, or the answer to a question, FORGET-ABOUT-IT! Understanding is useless at this point. You’ve got to LOOK! Again and again and again.

N-egativity: abusing yourself because you’re not feeling successful at a game or practice. Half of Buddhist challenges ARE DESIGNED TO FAIL. You’re supposed to learn from the failure. (When the DHARMA ITSELF is shot full of holes, emptified, and sunk, then you’re Enlightened!) Plus, if you’re dumb as a stump, it takes you 100 tries to do what a smarty-pants does in ten. Except the smarty-pants is too damn egotistical to try even five. So do your 100 tries and kick his butt!

G-igantic E-go: if you’re a brilliant Dharma scholar destined for guruhood, you’re going to have difficulties. These games ARE DESIGNED to shrink your ego down to the size of a grain of sand.

Things Touched

The Game

1. Touch a realthing with your finger. Say a table.

2. Concentrate on your finger touching the table, and the table touching your finger, back and forth.

3. Close your eyes and forget that there’s a table and a finger. Concentrate on the pure sensation.

4. Watch the sensation ebb and flow, burble and buzz, shift and shimmy.

5. Continue watching and examining and probing.

Some Questions

• Does the buzzy burbly stuff change? How so?

• Are there parts or patterns?

• Is this the Emptiness of finger-touching-table? Can you relax into it?

• Being that you’ve temporarily rejected the Goddess Samsara’s finger-touching-table story, can you feel her trying to come up with a new story (a new realthing) for the experience?

• Is the shifty buzzy burbly stuff all there is? Is the entire universe made of it?

• Of course our sense of touch is an entire universe. The body touching this or that. The body touching itself. It’s like an endless song of physical sensation.

• In the midst of all that shifty buzzy business, where did my body go?

• After swimming in the ocean of touch for a while, what are the aftereffects? How does it linger?

We’ve just emptified the realthing finger-touching-table. We stripped it of a permanent solid finger and a permanent solid table. We stripped it of it’s identity (and turned it into mush).

BUT DID ANYTHING ELSE GET STRIPPED AWAY???

The problem with Mindfulness

Let’s suppose that everything is made of shifty buzzy burbley stuff, which is constantly souping and stirring around.

Mindfulness practice is very valuable. Very very valuable. But for god sakes don’t beat the crap out of yourself, if your focus on ‘the breath’ slips away like raw egg sliding through your fingers. We can’t lock our attention onto ‘BREATH’ like it was real and permanent. Because it ain’t.

True?

But we must try and try and try. Mindfulness practice is necessary. We must beat a hole in the brick wall of ignorance by smashing our head against it. I suppose.

A Final Practice

Go back and forth:

realthing,
empty buzzy burbley stuff,
realthing,
empty buzzy burbley stuff,
realthing,
…

Feeling Disoriented

Sometimes Emptiness practice leaves me feeling disoriented, somewhat lifeless, like I’m being washed helplessly over the edge of a waterfall. I feel empty, and not in a nice way.

Other times Emptiness seems hidden and beyond my ability, so I try harder. Suddenly a dam breaks and I find myself drowning in Emptiness.

What to do?

REMEMBER THE MIDDLE WAY! As you go tumbling over the edge, hang on to your nuts and take a step back. Then, see if you can find that sweet spot (equipoise) between reality and Emptiness.

If you’ve gone overboard with Emptiness practice, take a break. Relax, and return to practice after recovering your equanimity.

Always strive for a balance between the real world, and buzzy burbley Emptiness.

Conclusion

The next post will be about emptifying things seen. Surprise! It’s way more difficult than emptifying things touched.

Thanks for reading.