Emptiness As a Tool for Liberation
Nagarjuna, the greatest of Buddhist philosophers, argues that all phenomena lack inherent existence, meaning that nothing exists with its own autonomous nature, essence or being. He refers to this absence as emptiness. Since all phenomena are empty of an independent nature, any causal process could not involve independent entities either. Nagarjuna challenges the notion of cause and effect by showing how this would exclude all possibility of change. Instead, he makes the argument that everything arises dependently, without attaining its own nature, thingness, or selfhood. Recognizing that nothing is produced or endures this way, is an altogether different understanding of life. It is a tool for liberating us from our afflictions, be they major or minor.
Viewing Death
To view death as a natural (dare I say: an ordinary) event rather than painful aberration, is a central point of Buddhism.
The Three Dharma Seals
The Buddha speaks of three kinds of illusion or perversions that grip man’s mind. When a man is caught up in these illusions he perceives, thinks, and views incorrectly. He perceives permanence in the impermanent; satisfactoriness in the unsatisfactory; self in what is not self.
–Buddhist scholar monk Nyanaponika Thera
The classical teachings, as Venerable Thera points out, explain that all phenomena share certain characteristics: (1) impermanence, (2) no-self (no autonomous, permanent, inherent nature), and (3) a propensity to be unsatisfactory. These are called the three “Dharma Seals.”
Understanding these means that we understand the basic nature of reality. In a sense, that is what our practice is all about: living in ways that are consistent with things as they really are—most especially impermanent, ever changing, and difficult.
Practicing and realizing this is fundamental to living wisely and rightly, for unless we understand the nature of ourselves and our world, we will remain stuck endlessly in unnecessary, self-created suffering.
Humility and Patience
I think that there is a very close connection between humility and patience.
Humility involves having the capacity to take a more confrontational stance, having the capacity to retaliate if you wish, yet deliberately deciding not to do so. That is what I would call genuine humility.
I think that true patience has a component or element of self-discipline and restraint–the realization that you could have acted otherwise, you could have adopted a more aggressive approach, but decided not to do so.
On the other hand, being forced to adopt a certain passive response out of a feeling of helplessness or incapacitation–that I wouldn’t call genuine humility. That may be a kind of meekness, but it isn’t genuine patience or humility.
–His Holiness, The Dalai Lama
Patience
Patience involves learning to be present and upright with all our experiences, whether we have an affinity or an aversion for them, without turning toward or away from them. It is our capacity to accept things as they really are; and then to act appropriately.
Patience is the capacity to be unmitigatingly open, period.
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Consider This
More is never enough, as Ayya Khema pointed out, but leaving getting is also getting, as Xu Yun pointed out.
Joy
Joy is always present. We’re just so self-absorbed with our artificial relations to externals and what we want from them that we don’t see that presence is joyful.
Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance means practicing with a conscious effort to acknowledge and honor the present situation. Fully accepting things as they are, instead of ignoring, avoiding, or wishing the situation were different, then acting appropriately. It is critical to moving toward a more meaningful life, a more peaceful life.
Self-Compassion
Classically, Buddhism is saying, “The more one acts compassionately, the stronger one’s compassion toward Self will be.” But for some, especially those who have been abused or who have been deeply traumatized in some other way, an explicit, internal compassion practice is needed. Regular self-soothing activities, such as engaging in a favorite hobby, getting a massage, or volunteering, can be a big step towards activating self-compassion.
Focus on process, not outcome.
Osho wrote: The ego is result-oriented; the mind always hankers after results. The mind is never interested in the act itself, its interest is in the result. “What am I going to gain out of it?” The mind, the ego, are all result-oriented. Meditation happens only to those who are not result-oriented. And then there is no need to go anywhere. Deep down, say, “I give up.” These are clear-cut instructions given only to those who are ready to travel, to go on the pilgrimage into the unknown.
Consider This
One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not good enough.
Abandon Hope
Shouldn’t we be hopeful? Don’t we want to hope that tomorrow will be better than today?
No, we shouldn’t be hopeful. Not from a Buddhist perspective.
If we scrutinize hope and the karmic residual it leaves in our mind (in our memories, in our alaya storehouse), we see how counterproductive hope is.
To hope means we are attaching to imaginary outcomes and objects (not to conditions); to hope means to want things to be other than what they are (not insightful or wise), to hope is to reject the experience of this moment (not mindful). In addition, hope creates wishful thinking and its attendant: inactivity.
Best to abandon hope, and wishful thinking too. Instead, look at the conditions and take actions that are of benefit.
The Mind
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” Milton wrote centuries before modern science came to illuminate how the mind renders — the mind, this sole lens we have on what the world is and what we are. The quality of our mind, then — the clarity of it, the composure of it — shapes the quality of our lives. Viktor Frankl knew this when he observed amid the most unimaginable of circumstances — the barbed-wire inside of a concentration camp — that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” That choice, that attitude, comes from our mind, our karma, and it is both trainable and changeable.
The Meditative Mind
People are often surprised to find it’s difficult to meditate and to understand and apply the insights that arise from meditation. The difficulty lies in the fact that our whole being is totally unprepared for stillness, and the insight and peace it brings. But with the support of instruction and a consistent practice, the calm and joy of your meditative mind will deepen and become more stable, not only on the cushion, but also off the cushion in daily life.
Words Are Not Enough
Words! Words! Words!
I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?
–Eliza in My Fair Lady
The answer to Eliza’s question is “Yes, that’s about the only thing anyone does.”
In Buddhist philosophy, however, there is another answer: meditate. For only with meditation can we end our confusion and suffering. If words alone could do it, we would have done it long ago. If some intellectual understandings were all it took, we would have thought our way out of samsara eons ago. The discursive mind, however, is not enough.
The Right Approach
Dogen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen, speaks of “menmitsu no kafu,” taking care of everything we touch in our lives with a gentle and considerate approach. This is the approach of patience and compassion. That’s all we need to know and all we need to do.
Advice to the Kalamas
As Buddha once said:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it, such as, “Broccoli is good for you.”
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many, especially pro-broccoli propaganda, such as, “Eating broccoli will make America great again.”
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books, such as, “And it came to pass that the lord ate all his broccoli before he could have his dessert.”
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders, for example, “Starving children in Africa would gobble up the broccoli on your plate.”
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations: “My grandmother ate the broccoli, my mother ate the broccoli, I ate the broccoli, and now you will eat the broccoli.”
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Please pass the peas.
Emptiness Is
Emptiness is lacking permanence.
Emptiness is the unseen, ultimate nature of all things.
Emptiness is understanding that things have no inherent definition, meaning, value or function.
Emptiness is beyond words.
Emptiness is the solution to all our problems.
Being Authentic
Mindfulness is the extent to which we are aware and accepting of our current moment-to-moment experience. It is awareness that is not preceded by a narrative, a previous understanding of something similar that our mind is using to interpret what is happening. Mindfulness is being fully present, open, curious, and accepting in interpreting and responding to what is happening–be it a person, place, things, process, event, or mindstate.
From this perspective, authentically functioning individuals are those that connect with and behave in accordance with mindfulness. The extent to which we are able to live authentically, then, depends on how much we are able to act from a place of mindfulness. In practice, authenticity is living a life of patience, compassion, and generosity. It is a life that is open-hearted, open-minded, present, caring, joyous, even playful.
Put another way, mindfulness suggests we are authentic when we approach life with willingness and commitment. Willingness refers to an intention to be fully aware of sensations and emotions associated with the present-moment activity. Commitment is the disciplined process of actively choosing behaviors that are directly in pursuit of a mindful life that is open-hearted, open-minded, present, caring, respectful, joyous and, of course, even playful.
Being Well with a Serious Illness
Living in wellness is about your frame of mind; it is living in a way that is aware of what’s happening in your body and allowing yourself to be fully present and peaceful in defining and engaging with it.
Being fully present and engaged with the body means you are responding appropriately to the conditions of your body, but
- without asking it to be other than what it is (it is simply a condition in the body, no more),
- without judging it (or calling yourself sick or a victim)
- without falsely embellishing or evaluating it (it is not animate and attacking you), and
- without wanting it not to be other than what it is (just your body in the moment, not something that is “ill”).
In other words, responding to it mindfully without denying it needs attention and without making it worse with fear and worry and stress and false stories. This can be done with everything from Covid to cancer!
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Consider These
- Being patient means welcoming wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.
- It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be perceived patiently.
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Papañca
The Pali term Papañca is used to describe the tendency of the mind to:
- spread out from and elaborate upon any sense object that arises in experience, smothering it with wave after wave of mental elaboration,
- most of which is illusory, repetitive, even obsessive, and
- which effectively blocks any sort of mental calm or clarity of mind.
Sit down to meditate, close your eyes, and observe your mind. What do you see? Papañca.
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Consider This from Susan Kahn
Quantum physics has described phenomena as nonlocalized rather than reified and reductionist. There are innumerable conditions that conventionally appear to have afforded mobile animals the function of representing life as a collection of distinct entities in the midst of an incomprehensible network of interrelations. This reductionist lens can be practical, but has become mistaken for an objective, overarching view of the way things really are. A reified perspective of cause and effect is an example of this. [Editor: Yes, there’s no cause and effect.]
More teachings from Susan Kahn: emptinessteachings.com
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Fear Defined
Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived future danger. Fear is a reaction to something we imagine may happen in the future. It is never real. It is always uncomfortable. The more we fear, the more increasingly unsettled and fearful we become.
Anger
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
—Mark Twain
They Aren’t. They Really Aren’t.
If we have learned anything from centuries, from millennia of scientific discovery, it’s that things aren’t what they appear to be. Really, they aren’t.
Consider This
Who you are or where you come from is not anywhere near as important as the mind’s intentions and motives for what it is doing right now.
Reincarnation
In her book, On Hinduism, renowned Hindu authority and University of Chicago Professor, Wendy Doniger, writes:
Most scholars of Hinduism and Buddhism tread lightly upon the karma [as retribution or punishment in future lives for past deeds] theory for reasons of inter-cultural tact (or raging relativism, depending upon your point of view): some (including myself) go farther, and grant the theory some degree of useful wisdom, at the very least as a powerful metaphor. But a more critical stance is taken by scholars such as [renowned Berkeley professor] Robert P. Goldman, who has characterized reincarnation as “nonsense”. He asks, “What is going on here? What could possibly induce intelligent and well-educated people to take this nonsense seriously?”
KARMA
In its traditional Buddhist form, rather than current colloquial understanding, karma is the intentional actions of body, speech or mind and the imprints those actions leave in our minds. So the things we say, do and think, and the imprints in our minds left by them determine how we are going to understand the world we live in, and how we are going to act in the future. Karma tells us that there is a relationship between what we do and how we feel that results from the intention behind our actions. This means karmic actions have a moral dimension, with intention being crucial. Unintentional actions, such as a tree falling on a house, do not fall under the doctrine of karma.
Being Here, Now, Period.
Patience is being present and upright with all our experiences, whether we have an affinity or an aversion for them, without turning toward or away from them. It is our capacity to accept things as they really are; and then to act appropriately.
Patience is the capacity to be unmitigatingly here, now, period.