So,
Today I'd like to speak to a request from one of the practitioners here in this group.
The request was that I speak about emptiness,
Emptiness.
So,
There's a bit of confusion and curiosity about this topic,
And so I hope to address it in a way that you can experience this,
This emptiness in your daily life.
That's my intention.
Emptiness is a central teaching in Buddhism,
And it gets a lot more attention in the Mahayana tradition that comes out of Japan and Tibet and China.
And in the Mahayana,
In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition,
Emptiness is seen as the central philosophy of the practice,
The goal,
If you will.
And in the Theravada tradition,
The early tradition that I'm teaching here at RFI,
It doesn't get as much emphasis.
And it's because it's actually meant to be a realization.
It's something that gets revealed and understood as practice deepens.
So,
The word itself can have a lot of different meanings,
And Buddhists have taken it in many different directions.
There's not just one teaching,
And some of the teachings that I've been exposed to on emptiness can be contradictory and lead to confusion.
So,
Some people when they hear emptiness,
You know,
That it lays kind of at the heart of this practice,
They get a little turned off because the association is with nihilism.
You know,
It's empty of value,
It's empty of worth.
Or you know,
If you feel empty,
You know,
And many of us feel empty and then we go off to a therapist,
And then the therapist,
You know,
Kind of looks at what you're sharing and kind of diagnoses if you're depressed or not.
But if you go to a Buddhist teacher and you share how empty you are,
They might just say,
You know,
That's wonderful.
So it's confusing,
Right?
I think that the idea of emptiness for some people is frightening,
Because it does have this,
It seems like everything is meaningless.
But in Buddhism,
The teaching is supposed to give us hope.
It's actually a teaching that in some way gives meaning to life.
And hopefully at the end of this teaching this morning,
You'll understand that a bit more.
Yeah.
So what is empty?
That starting with that,
Answering the question does involve some insight.
It involves seeing in a particular way,
And seeing if things are empty,
You know,
It's,
It's easy to fall into the abstraction of this,
Just like the not self teachings can feel really abstract.
Like if I say there's no self,
That's an abstraction.
It needs some explanation.
And it can lead to a feeling of confusion.
And it's the same if I say that everything is empty.
It's kind of an abstraction,
And it needs to be kind of flushed out and explained.
So I'm going to attempt another approach,
Another way that's not abstract,
But what we can experience directly and what we can actually see for ourselves.
So if you look carefully at your life,
And the world around you,
There are certain things that you take as you,
As being I or me,
Or mine.
And this applies to our earlier life,
Like when we were younger,
Maybe in high school,
You cared more about your appearance back then,
Your clothing,
And your identity.
And you kind of organized yourself around this identity.
Like maybe you were preppy,
Or maybe you were a jock,
Or maybe you identified as a hippie,
Or an academic.
So there was this sort of persona that you wore,
And the whole self was organized around this identity.
But now,
Fast forwarding to today,
We can see that that identity is not inherently who you are.
And that grip that it had back then,
All of the building up of this identity,
We can see now that our holding of it is really loose.
We're not really holding it anymore.
We can sort of reflect back,
And that's not who we are at this point.
So it's the same with our thinking.
Our thinking comes and goes.
But sometimes we get really identified with our thoughts,
And our views,
And our opinions,
And they get really locked in.
Many people,
They actually believe that their thoughts are who they are.
And to think about the idea of not actually giving thought as much attention is kind of frightening.
Like if I am who I think I am,
Then I have to keep feeding this,
My thinking machine.
But we're learning that all thoughts come and go.
And after a while with some practice,
We don't identify as strongly with them.
That's part of our growth in the practice.
So what Buddhism is kind of focused on,
What it's saying is,
When we look carefully,
What do we see?
And you'll see as we do that things are actually always changing.
We see this directly.
We certainly see this on the physical level as we wake up in the mirror and look in the mirror and say,
Well,
Who is that old person looking back at me?
We see that change.
And we see that some of our views,
Our views are harder to see that lacking of the grasping.
The grasping,
You know,
We tend to let go slowly around views and concepts and ideas.
But all of our experiences are always changing.
And this is the same thing with emptiness.
If you look at your identity and your thoughts and your views,
These experiences are empty of a permanent abiding self.
No one part of the meaning of emptiness.
So let me reframe that.
I think an understanding,
If you really just look at it from a pithy understanding,
One of the meanings of emptiness is that it's empty,
We're empty of self.
Nothing has a permanent abiding self.
And this is considered a very important insight in Buddhism.
And it's not an insight that you can talk yourself into,
Or somebody else tells you.
But as the mind gets concentrated,
And as mindfulness gets stronger,
You actually see with greater detail that it doesn't make sense to hold on to something that is empty,
That is not my true,
Eternal,
Absolute idea of who I am.
So it can be very helpful to experience emptiness in your practice.
And we do at times.
Not because it makes us a good philosopher or a good Buddhist,
But because the way in which human beings tend to cling to things as being I,
Me,
And mine,
When we release the grip that we have on this identity,
This construct of views and thoughts,
We move towards this emptying.
We become freer and happier because we're not spending so much time propping ourselves up.
And I'm sure if you consider it,
That many of you have had these experiences in your life,
That things that you were really attached to,
Latching onto as yourself,
Like that earlier identity,
For example,
What defined you,
As you grow older,
You no longer hold on to that way.
Sort of like,
You know,
We think back and it was like,
Huh,
What was I thinking back then?
Wow.
And having no real hold on that previous view.
So we come to realize that everything is empty in a particular way.
That there's,
They're empty of a permanent,
Intrinsic self.
Everything,
Absolutely everything is in process.
And because everything is in process,
And it comes together because of causes and conditions,
We can actually get involved in the process and change the flow of the process,
Change the direction it goes.
That's how we can make a difference in our lives.
And one of those differences that we can make is by emptying the mind of all the extra stuff that we add.
So this is what we do in our practice.
We continually come back to our breath,
And we continually come back to our body sitting here,
Putting down what hinders the practice,
Putting down our wanting for the moment,
Putting down our not wanting,
Coming back to the breath,
Putting down restlessness and dullness or boredom,
And coming back to the breath,
Putting down doubt and expectations and coming back to the breath.
This is the process of emptying the mind,
Like emptying,
Emptying,
Emptying.
And when the mind is empty completely,
We're not prone to be operating from greed,
Or aversion,
Or confusion.
What's left when we continually put down and empty is freedom.
So I hope this talk makes some sense to you,
At least in the appreciation that it's an important teaching.
And perhaps as your practice deepens,
You'll experience what I'm talking about.
Or perhaps you already have and now you have a name for it.
So thank you for your attention.
Thank you.
