Emptiness

Not Really Empty Empty

Letting go of existence does not lead to non-existence

When it comes to capital-E Emptiness, that elusive final station on the Buddhist path, I believe that one of the hardest things to fully grasp about it is that it is a misnomer: Emptiness is not entirely empty. Yes, it is empty of things, things like matter and energy, it’s also empty of space and of time. By all physical standards, it is very, very empty indeed. Space-lessly so.

However, and this is huge “however”, contrary to all appearances, or shall we say non-appearances, Emptiness is not content-less, for it contains potential, it contains will. For all practical purposes, it is alive.

It can imagine things, and it can perceive what it imagines.

Hence our (ultimately imaginary) universe.

But here’s the rub: to experience the capital-T Truth that is the only truth there is, which is unknowable by ego and its intellect, we have to let go of all that we know (and so cherish). This takes an incredible act of faith.

It is not unlike the old confidence test of closing your eyes and straight as a stick fall backward for I’ll catch you. And you do (as promised) catch him or her unless you’re just plain evil.

This takes faith, for you cannot be one hundred percent sure that you’ll be caught. Letting go of what all you know to let Emptiness in is another (gargantuan) act of faith, you’re jumping off the top of a skyscraper on the promise that you won’t hurt yourself landing — you’re emptying yourself out completely to let Emptiness in (an emptiness that has been there all along, it turns out).

The Tibetan arms of Buddhism don’t quite agree with this and are much in favor of working (mastering) the intellect and its logic to first refute emptiness analytically, and some, Je Tsong-Kha-Pa among others, even go so far as to ridicule those (poor bastards) who believe that all one has to do to realize Emptiness is to no longer think — to in essence let go of logic.

This brief extract from Guy Newland’s book “Introduction to Emptiness, as taught in Tsong-Kha-Pa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path” illustrates the point:

“As the suffering world has no independent, objective reality but is only an empty convention, we might suppose that stopping conventional thought (my emphasis) in a meditative state would be the most liberating move.

“The Chinese Buddhist master Ha-shang Mahayana, Tsong-Kha-pa reports, regarded any sort of conceptualization whatsoever to be a distorting reification. Throughout the Great Treatise, Ha-shang functions as a stock character (my emphasis) representing the [obviously misguided, my add] perspective that we should dispense with all thought and meditate on reality by not bringing anything to mind.

“Tsong-Kha-pa argues repeatedly and passionately that meditative thoughtlessness is never going to get us any closer to freedom.

“Understanding born of careful analysis is at the very heart of what is distinctive about the Buddhist path.”

Now I am not by any stretch a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, but this does not prevent me from having a very strong view on this point.

For one, I do not think that understanding born of careful analysis is at the very heart of what is distinctive about the Buddhist path.

And for two, I come down on the side of Ha-shang Mahayana and believe that if you indeed can let go of all thought, analytical as well as reactive, you will find yourself in a stillness which is not only akin to Emptiness, but which is Emptiness, and I believe Tsong-Kha-Pa has most likely realized this by now — he’s had hundreds of years to chew on this.

“Letting go of all thought” is a phrase consisting of five easily and quickly typed words describing an act that can take a lifetime or two or three to truly accomplish.

Ha-shang Mahayana regarded any sort of conceptualization whatsoever to be a distorting reification, and I could not agree more. For as that final thought gives up the ghost and slinks away into stillness, you find yourself alone in Emptiness, you find yourself being Emptiness, and there is no knowing quite as deep as being.

How best to know the air that crosses your nostrils on its way in and then on its way back out as you breathe in Anapanasati: be that air: now you Know it.

There is no knowing as deep and as full as being.

And being Emptiness is to know Emptiness, logic be damned.

Hence the Wolfku above, letting go of existence (wholly) does not lead to non-existence, it leads to Emptiness, that beautiful potential that you are and that creates and experiences (ongoingly) this universe of ours.

© Wolfstuff

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