How Am I Emptiness?
How is everything emptiness?
Emptiness doesn’t mean having no qualities, for the reason that awareness simply has to be present to acknowledge emptiness.
It’s like this. Before a thing is identified as a thing, and we debate whether we like it or not, there has to be perception present. In the very first instant of perception there is nothing happening: it is pure perception, empty of judgement. Just perception. Look around – we are open … open to suggestion! Evaluation and judgement come in a moment later, when memory – our programming – kicks in.
In that very first instant of perception, there is awareness of perception. If that awareness is not interfered with, it is what is termed ’emptiness’, or ‘shunyata’ in Sanskrit. It is pure consciousness. This is our primal state of being, our essential nature, our essence. All we have to do is look, and in looking we find nothing, but only awareness of awareness. This is our empty nature that does not have to rely on anything. It just is. It is even empty of the idea of emptiness!
We are not our ideas.
Our ideas are not even ours.
They only seem to make us feel real.
We have become so used to this ball and chain
that we don’t notice it.
Human nature abhors a vacuum, so we fill up space. Humans crave stimulation. To experience ourselves as fully alive, humans are subject to various arousal must-haves, whether physical, mental, emotional, social, or spiritual. We are constantly relating to things, giving them a value. And if we feel under-stimulated, we’ll generally complain of being bored, anxious, irritable, lonely, or even depressed, and so we seek out more of the same. Thus we go round and round in circles – in Sanskrit, this is called Samsara, the vicious cycle of sentient existence.
When it comes to the emptiness of things, they too are empty of any real existence, for the reason that all things – including ourselves and our ideas – rely on other things in order to exist. They are made up of parts, and so have no true existence of their own. They are conjured up by circumstances and become our playthings, seeming to be real because of our strong identification with them.
Everything is empty of true reality as everything is impermanent and conditional. An illusion conjured up by our desires and fears, because we ignore our true reality – our un-worldly dimension, our alien side, beyond this and that.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 