July 2009

The title of this post, Living With Emptiness, is a pun. For many people, the feeling of emptiness in their lives is a reality that they live with, but I am referring to the Buddhist meaning of “emptiness.” In my post, Nothing is Created, I quoted from the Heart Sutra, “…Form is emptiness, emptiness is form….The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.” Emptiness, as I explained in that previous post, means an absence of separate identity from the source of all life.

Life is a holographic experience. Looking deeper into any manifestation in life, we  can trace its contents to that which originated in other forms in space and time, like the leaf that lives on as the tree after it has completed its cycle as a leaf through the seasons of its lifetime.  Life expresses itself through all of manifestation, as a leaf, as a tree, as you and me. We are made of the same building blocks of life, the same pulsing energy of  the creative life force.  In the words of William Blake: “To see a World in a grain of sand, and a Heaven in a wild flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand…” Emptiness is fullness in potential, it contains any possibility. So also, fullness in space and time is impermanent, always changing, so we can say, fullness is emptiness. It is this perspective that will transform the feeling of emptiness that many people in our society experience as a result of not knowing and sensing that they are infinitely connected to the source of life.

How do we put this sublime teaching into practice, so we can make this our own experience? In an earlier post, Being Awareness, I mentioned an exercise in which we can see ourselves in all our interactions as a way of witnessing our interconnectedness. We normally see ourselves as separate beings, acting in isolation, manipulating the environment,  people and experiences to make things happen. In this exercise, if we mentally step back in a stance of watching our world, seeing the parts of our body that are visible in our peripheral vision, we can more easefully have the experience of being the witness.  We put ourselves in the picture of life. We are more aware of life expressing through us,  rather than the feeling that we are powerless beings struggling to survive in a loveless world.

With a perspective of being the witness of our experience, we can be more detached from the emotions  and  mental formations that we wrestle with. We are able to name our experience, create some space to release ourselves from the  grasp of our emotions, and can work with the feeling states that threaten to undermine our own inner peace.  When difficult emotions such as fear, feeling unworthy, and shame rear their ugly heads, we can create some distance by being a witness to them. We can choose to believe that these emotions are only a part of our experience, that they are not the totality of our beingness, that there are also the parts of us that are courageous, deeply lovable and honorable. We will begin to understand that emotions are fleeting in nature, due to contraction in the mind. We can say that emotions are empty or impermanent, and emptiness is full of the potential for the emotions we choose to indulge.

Living with emptiness is a profound Buddhist teaching. It is the basic understanding of the nature of reality and the web of illusion that is created by the limitations experienced in the mind. If we can work with this one teaching, integrating this perspective into our everyday experiences, we will  become established in the truth. Emptiness is only one concept, but it can be applied to everything we experience through our senses. In every situation in which we are seeking to understand, the remembrance of this one concept will set us free.

The Heart Sutra continues:“…the bodhisattvas(compassionate beings), supported by the Perfection of Understanding, find no obstacles for their minds. Having no obstacles, they overcome fear, liberating themselves forever from illusion and realizing perfect Nirvana(infinite peace).”

In my previous post, Everyday Creation, I looked at  how we are constantly creating, whether it is in our thoughts, words or actions.  In this post, I will be exploring the aspect of creation,  where nothing is really ever created or destroyed. This is the core teaching of the Buddhist Heart Sutra.

Here is an excerpt from this sutra: …form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form.  The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness…all dharmas (things) are marked with emptiness; they are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor immaculate, neither increasing nor decreasing…

The teachings in this sutra are very subtle and difficult to grasp. How can things be empty of form and how can emptiness be filled with form? In The Heart Of Understanding, Thich Nhat Hanh approaches the profound wisdom of this sutra with a  simplicity and beauty that brings clarity to the meaning of this esoteric teaching. In one story he relates, we can begin to understand this obscure phrase, form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Thich Nhat Hanh recalls an experience he had in a park one autumn day. He was absorbed in contemplation of a small, beautiful heart-shaped leaf.  It was barely hanging on the branch, nearly ready to fall down. He spent a long time asking questions of the leaf. He found out that the leaf was a mother to the tree; the leaf was responsible for transforming sap with the help of the sun, to nourish the tree. The leaf was connected to the tree, and they both depended on the clouds and the sun for nourishment. He asked the leaf if it was afraid because it was Autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told him, “…I worked hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the tree. Please do not say that I am just this form, because the form of leaf is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am already inside the tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree. That’s why I do not worry. As I leave this branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, I will see you again very soon.”

Thich Nhat Hanh continues, ” Suddenly I saw a kind of wisdom very much like the wisdom contained in the Heart sutra. You have to see life. You should not say, life of the leaf, you should only speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree…I bowed my head, and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid—it knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die.”

This story clearly defines our interdependence of each other and everything in existence. Nothing and no one can stand alone, we need each other and the elements in order to exist. The elements have become a part of the tree, and the tree will return to the elements. It is easy to understand then, that form is empty of independent existence and emptiness contains the possibility of  all form. Nothing comes from nothing, all matter has had its existence in the elements. So nothing is ever created, in that all matter can be traced to a pre-existing form, just as we each carry the genes of our ancestors. We existed in another form before we were born.  So also, nothing is ever destroyed but transmuted back to the elements. Then we can say that there is no birth and  no death. There is nothing to be scared of, if we see all this creation as the dance of Consciousness, sometimes taking form, sometimes formless.

We can enjoy this dance of Consciousness as we enter and exit the stage of existence. Just wave, say to all others, “I will see you again very soon.”

In my post, The Dance Of Consciousness , I mentioned the five acts of Consciousness that we reenact every moment, in every thought and action. When we look deeply into the process of thinking and doing,  we see that these same five acts of Consciousness are replicated in every act of creation that we undertake, from making the grocery list, to writing a blog post, to craving our favorite desert.

To recap, there is a fivefold process that is described as the dance of Consciousness or Tandava in Hindu mythology. These are: creation, maintenance, concealment, grace and destruction. This fivefold process happens in every act of creation, on the cosmic level, as well as on a personal level. It may last eons or a nanosecond.

Let us look at how the dance of Consciousness takes place on a personal level. The mind can go through many thoughts in a moment, looping from one subject to another, creating a phantasmagorical landscape of endless fantasy, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and mostly worrisome and frightening. These thoughts are created and destroyed in the blink of an eye, nevertheless, the fivefold acts of creation can be traced.

A simple thought: It is hot today; this is followed by another: I must get some ice-cream; then: maybe coffee ice-cream with chocolate sauce..mmm! When we analyze this thought process we see how a thought slips into consciousness, it is created, sustained, we make a judgment on it, which produces an emotion. It is in the judgment of what is, where the aspect of concealment and grace arises. Every thing in manifestation whether it is material or immaterial, is Consciousness. It is with the gift of grace that we have this perspective, otherwise we are fooled by the illusion of appearance. Then when our thoughts subside, the fivefold process of creation ends with destruction or re-absorption into Consciousness. We can follow this same dance of Consciousness in any manifestation on a cosmic level.

What is the advantage of knowing about the dance of Consciousness? It is a great tool to work with, to align with Awareness and to bring peace to our lives. We can make use of the spaces between the destruction and creation of thoughts to come back to the present moment and witness the dance of Consciousness. It is in these grace filled breaks in the cycle of the dance, that we can witness the illusion of the dance and connect with Consciousness itself. In this space, without thoughts, we experience the freedom and joy of beingness.  At first, these are experienced as blips of bliss consciousness and as we practice we become established in larger expanses of this connection to our source and come to identify with this aspect of our true nature, filled with awareness, peace and joy. We identify with the Witness of the dance of Consciousness. It doesn’t matter what is happening in our minds or in the world around us, we see the web of illusion that is created by this dance of Consciousness. Life then becomes more easeful, we can see with clarity and connect to Love and keep transforming illusion into Love.

This life can be more playful with the knowledge of the dance of Consciousness. We can make it our life’s purpose to witness the dance. In reality, there is no other way to navigate this path to the return journey to Consciousness. We have to see the illusion of the Play of Consciousness,  enjoy the ride and make it our own. Then we come to know what the fifth sutra of the ancient text on The Secret of Self- recognition says: Consciousness herself, having descended from the expanded state, becomes the mind, contracted by the objects of perception.

image credit: alicepopkorn

When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first
splendor, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang
“Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!”

But one cried of a sudden—
“It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light and
one of the stars has been lost.”

The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped,
and they cried in dismay—
“Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory of all heavens!”

From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry
goes on from one to the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!

Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile
and whisper among, themselves—
“Vain is the seeking! Unbroken perfection is over all

from Poems from Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore

image credit: eddi07

I have been writing on the theme of Consciousness and this post further elucidates the subject of the last two posts, Nothing Is Real. Around the end of the eighth century in Kashmir, India, the sage Vasugupta had a dream in which he was told by Lord Shiva to go to a nearby rock where a great secret would be revealed to him. The sage went to the river at the base of the Mahadeva mountain and there he touched a rock which immediately turned towards him and revealed what  later became known as the Shiva Sutras.

On the face of the rock, which still exists, were inscribed the profound aphorisms that became the foundation of  Kashmir Shavism. The sutras that appeal to me, are the basics of this scripture: The Self is the dancer; The inner Self is the stage; The senses are the spectators. This scripture teaches that the universe is nothing but the play or dance of Shiva, the supreme Consciousness. Consciousness for its own pleasure became the physical manifestation of everything and everyone that we perceive with our senses. The nature of Consciousness is of absolute freedom and joy. Inherent within all physical manifestation, this exuberance leaps into Consciousness  as a pulsing that is the true nature of reality, a dance of atoms and molecules if you will, based in the energy of Love. The Shiva Sutras teaches us to view our world with this perspective and to reclaim the legacy of our divine nature.

How do we hold on to the perspective that this world is nothing but Consciousness,  when everywhere we see pain and suffering?  How can this too, be part of God’s nature? According to Kashmir Shavism it is all the manifestation of the cosmic actor, just as in theater, where we have drama, tragedy, comedy, satire and pathos.  We can say that nothing in this world is real. It is all the play of Consciousness. Consciousness becomes lost in its own illusion for its own pleasure in the game of hide and seek. Enough already of the hiding, many of us are now on the path of the seeking! The greatness of this scripture is that it teaches us that we are already that Consciousness. There is no real seeking, but an awakening; for we do not have to find that which we have never lost. We simply have to realize the truth of our divine nature and claim it. Then the illusion of this world crumbles and we align with the truth of reality where we think and act from our divine nature.

The image of the Self as the dancer is made famous by the statue of Shiva, which originated in the south of India, called  Nataraj. His cosmic dance called Tandava is celebrated in myths and poems and enacted in plays. In the Nataraj statues, each limb and gesture portrays one of the five creative powers of Consciousness. In the Tandava dance, the whole cosmos comes into manifestation by the powerful movements of the shaking of his locks and gestures of the Lord’s arms and hands. In his upper right hand, Shiva carries a drum shaped like an hourglass that marks the passage of time and from which,  the sound of human speech emerged. In his upper left hand, Shiva carries a flame signifying the fire that will destroy the world at the close of this cycle to prepare for another new world of creation. In the lower right hand, the palm is raised to face forward in the gesture that says, “have no fear.” This symbol is the promise of support that our needs are being taken care of. The right foot is dancing on a dwarf demon which represents our forgetfulness, our spiritual blindness. This is the delusional function of Consciousness which is represented by Shiva’s right foot holding down our true nature. The lower left hand points to the raised left foot signifying spiritual refuge,  the power of grace and the offering of blessings to dispel illusion, the root of all suffering and pain and awakening to our divine inheritance.

This Tandava dance is enacted in every thought and action, in every moment of our lives; the creative powers of creation, support, illusion, grace and destruction are inherent within all of our mind constructs, all the worlds we weave in our inner and outer experience.

To see this world as nothing but the spectacular dance of Consciousness that is played out in our hearts, our minds and our physical reality is to live with joy and the awareness that all this is not real. It is simply Consciousness sporting within its own being in all its myriad of forms, in colorful beauty, sadness, and joy, for its sheer delight. That Consciousness is you and me and everything you see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Welcome to the play of Consciousness, take a front row seat and enjoy!