Forms Are Empty, Emptiness Is Form

This dialog is about one of the most disconcerting meditative experiences that can occur during your daily practice, and it is almost a sure thing that you will—sooner or later—find yourself suddenly and directly experiencing it, if you seriously meditate long enough, both in frequency and duration. The source of a common misunderstanding about this direct meditative experience, and the misuse, and misapplication of the derived concept is explained.

Transcript

Forms are empty? Emptiness is form this dialogue is about one of the most disconcerting and possibly debilitating meditative experiences that can occur during your daily practice and it is almost a sure thing that you will sooner or later find yourself suddenly and directly experiencing the lack of a real self in anything if you seriously meditate long enough both in frequency and duration in a secular mindfulness setting in which the teacher invariably has no exposure to this advanced meditative experience you may find yourself unsupported and abandoned neither knowing how to make sense of the experience nor how to move forward in your life and stopping your meditation practice permanently at this point may even make it worse in such a context in a spiritual setting such as that of buddhism in a traditional context you are not vulnerable in that way having access to competent teachers and millennia of accumulated experience with such advanced meditative experiences the purpose of this essay however is not to teach you anything about emptiness the buddhist concept of the universal absence of any intrinsic self it is simply a pointing out of the source of our common misunderstanding about this direct meditative experience and the misuse and misapplication of the derived concept children quickly learn that they have a mind this is the name that we give to the source from which and the venue in which our thoughts occur later children learn that this mind is where perceptions and feelings occur too and they begin to call it myself when the self is seen to have no place no identity and no enduring qualities at all this mind is sometimes elevated to mind capitalized to show it is a greater mind than our own in order to escape the orphanage of parentless thought and the error of a greater self with a capital s occurs because if the self has no true reality how can it be a place or thing from which and in which thoughts perceptions and feelings occur yet even though we may understand this intellectually we still call it mind or mind with a capital m because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold on to we simply cannot understand what we cannot grasp hold of so even just a name suffices and so we keep referring to mind or mind with a capital m as if it is something tenaciously holding on to it similarly when all things are seen to lack an intrinsic self reality we say they are empty of or lack an intrinsic self as well quote it is said that the world is empty the world is empty lord in what respect is it said that the world is empty the buddha replied insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self thus it is said ananda that the world is empty that's from the sunyasuta unfortunately we call this lack of self emptiness because again the discerning faculty of reason needs something positive to hold on to even if it is only a name because an absence named is just such a positive thing look closely at this we notice that something we thought was there is not there and rather than say nothing or like the buddha just saying it is not there we extract this quality of being absent from the thing neither of which is truly possible and make it a thing in itself marking this fact with a word that ends in hyphen n e s s our faculty of reason then has something positive to think about emptiness but if something is not there it really can't be said to have a quality and even worse we are in the process of noting that the thing really isn't a thing at all so how can it even be imagined to have a quality yet even though there is no mind thing your thoughts perceptions and feelings still occur we can call their occurrence whatever we like we can still call it mind as many do but we should realize we are no longer talking about a thing or a place but rather just activity an activity is understood to not have a self as verbs are not considered to be nouns or names even so we are taught early in life that all actions have an actor that is responsible for them because we need to place our praise or blame on someone for everything that occurs pay attention here because this error carries over into our predilection to overthink the lack of an intrinsic self by applying it to activities that occur such as naturings saying that they too are empty of an intrinsic self as we do in the case of all our phenomenal experiences but and in the vernacular even in a physicalist understanding of reality actions do not have an intrinsic self instead they have an actor that is the cause of the activity but we've already done away with that erroneous construction once we realize that there is nothing with an intrinsic self right our faculty of reason is well trained to always hold an actor responsible for activities that occur but there is no actor no ground no nature no source that's what the insight of no intrinsic self reminds us of and that is all it means yet our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold on to and emptiness the concept is like a super weapon obliterating everything in its path besides we're kids and love our toys so emptiness becomes not just the destroyer of all things thinghood actually but the source of all things too the absence of something is not the presence of something else emptiness is a placeholder for what we used to assume was there but isn't and nothing more but notice that thoughts feelings and perceptions still occur amazing it is as if words have no sway over them this activity thoughts arising feelings manifesting and perceptions arriving should be called something other than emptiness though because that word marks the absence of an intrinsic self not the presence of activity it is however used because it is a pedagogical tool to make you remember that nothing has an intrinsic self but all too many of us think once again that emptiness is something that creates all these manifesting things it is called suchness by others in order to mark this presencing arising manifesting arriving appearing showing up et cetera of these things thoughts perceptions and feelings but suchness is a noun and specifically one created by abstracting some aspect or characteristic from something it's the hyphen n-e-s-s suffix that gives that away again it therefore still suffers from our habit of needing to point our fingers at things even if they aren't there if we are attentive we quickly realize that there is no mind thing no perceiver thing and no other things yet even so we still call these occurrences mind although technically they should be called minding i prefer to use the verb naturing myself to indicate nature in an active sense much like spinoza's natura naturan but dropping the nature thing because there is nothing with an intrinsic self but most people just stare blankly at me when i do that so give it some thought all too many of us fall into the trap of immediately forgetting what we recently knew and see suchness as some things and reactively apply the secret weapon emptiness to suchness in order to make the things go away but there are no things and no need to bring out the big gun anymore our old habits of mentation or leading us astray suchness has no positive source nor even an absence of source there is no ground no place in no time for suchness and no need for any of that suchness is completely alien to such ideas there is no emptiness for suchness either because it doesn't apply doing so is a category error in philosophical parlance it is saying that something that isn't there in any case isn't there in this specific case the present king of france doesn't exist right because there isn't a kingdom of france anymore they had a revolution to get rid of kings permanently this groundless spaceless reality just left alone is utterly awesome this unmoving pure presence with no destination is utterly awesome this immediate availability awareness of the now irrepressible is utterly awesome that is a quote from the heap of jewels it's unfortunate that we had to make a noun out of this activity calling it suchness just because our faculty of reason needs something positive to hold on to and something to praise or blame since suchness or naturing is not a thing and not even a collection of things it can only be activity which is more truly called presencing remember what was done here where would it occur where does that which shows up appear when we talk about the space-like expanse of appearances we are not affirming the existence of space go sit by a buddhist stupa and learn the lesson it presents in the form of the bindu nada that is placed atop it the bindu is the non-dimensional point from which all appearances manifest note its specific denial of spatial characteristics non-dimensionality it isn't anything at all the spontaneous sound or vibrations the nada are the appearances emanating from that non-manifest point i call it an event horizon you can say what you will about the appearances but say nothing about how they show up how could you possibly know so please note that emptiness is not suchness and is not the nature of anything because then suchness wouldn't be empty of an intrinsic self we can say that emptiness is the essence of suchness elevating the absence of what we thought was there in the appearances to the stature of the absolute source of all but that is just overkill and so wrong it's useful for a while but it has the nasty effect of retarding our progress quote know that pointing out appearances as mind and mind's nature as emptiness thus making the duality of appearances and emptiness into a unity is not the method of neantic pith instruction such instruction may be given occasionally but only as a provisional means to elevate the mind of an individual initiate certainly not as a definitive truth neither existence nor non-existence nor space-time is to be found here appearances and emptiness are indistinguishable so that neither eternity nor the void are anywhere perceptible a quote attributed to long champa in the yeshilama by vidradhara jimmy lingpa suchness is the presencing of forms otherwise there would be no distinguishing anything and forms are empty of any intrinsic self yet we can discern the inherent essence of each form a photon a dog a tree humans like you and me where we get lost is in confusing the nature inherent essence of a form which sets it apart from other forms with an intrinsic self our problem lies in the confusing multiplicity of meanings for the word nature if we just thought of it as intrinsic naturing versus essential character then we'd be on our way to lessening our confusion thus emptiness with a capital e note the capitalization is a form also it is a thought form called a concept so repeat after me forms are empty emptiness is form this will remind us that emptiness is just an idea that took hold when we noticed we were originally wrong about everything the essential character suchness is pure spontaneous presencing and i feel the need to again remind you that suchness is not a thing it's the name we give to this activity presenting as form and the nature of this is not something else it is the activity so pure spontaneous presencing is not a thing it's simply a description of the salient characteristics of the activity that is our phenomenal existence of suchness thus it defines nothing because there is nothing to define as garab dojae said transcending all discrimination in its arising transcending all discrimination in its release end quote and as jimmy lingpa said quote while safeguarding the continuity of the wonderful intrinsic perfection of our existential presence if the thought the nature of pure presence is empty springs up in the rational mind by ascribing an objective focus of emptiness to pure presence buddha is precluded end quote forms are empty emptiness is form thank you

Reviews

I’ve come to recognize the form/emptiness conundrum as a reflection of the nested set of consequences of all that is. That’s why it’s all okay.

Wonderful, beautiful and stimulating. One almost cannot say anything about it because forms are empty, and emptiness is form, but thank you. When I had this experience some years ago it was for “me” what Christians call “comfort and joy.” One thing though, I can’t see why anyone would be disconcerted upon discovering this. Or bothered. It is such a great release & a great liberation. Thank you. This meditation ( talk) should be heard by as many people as possible. Hi Marla!

Suchness is Presence! Thank you for this presentation ☺️ I will listen to it again.