What is meant by Emptiness?? Especially in meditation??

[Keith108]

3 minutes ago, doc benway said:

 

There are many different teachings on emptiness. One error commonly encountered when taking a conceptual approach is to view or conflate emptiness with nihilism. To think emptiness means our lives are an illusion or not real. This is an error of nihilism.

 

This is where meditation practice is so important. When we think about emptiness, there is a tendency to focus on the word’s connotation of absence, of nothingness, of a void. When we meditate we can feel the openness of calmly resting the mind and body. When that experience is not filled with a sense of me - thinking, worrying, judging; when there is just the naked experience of this present moment, this is what emptiness is indicating; and yet the experience of that moment, the vividness of NOW is certainly not nothingness - absolutely everything is there - all the senses and visions and sounds and feelings and infinite potential, and the experience is full and complete, just as it is. You really can’t add or subtract anything.

 

That is the wholeness, the fullness of being and it is ever present when we are clear enough to notice. So I often interject a mention of the fullness of emptiness when it’s being discussed. Emptiness is fullness, eg form is emptiness and emptiness is form (Heart sutra). 

 

That part of Tommy's reply struck me, as well. I think your initial response, and this one really hit the mark.

 

_/|\_

[forestofclarity]

3 hours ago, old3bob said:

 

sounds greek to me,

 

anyway  "there is" as said by the Buddha is not of negation but of affirmation, which seems to be a four letter word to some Buddhists who sound like they would even negate the life force as it also being a "delusion"?

 

So you didn't bother to read any of the Buddhist's posts in this thread? And your revolutionary (non-Buddhist) reinterpretation of Buddhism comes down to "there is"? 

 

 

[old3bob]

1 hour ago, forestofclarity said:

 

So you didn't bother to read any of the Buddhist's posts in this thread? And your revolutionary (non-Buddhist) reinterpretation of Buddhism comes down to "there is"? 

 

 

 

"there is", is the beginning of the Buddha's quote on the major point of Buddhism is it not or did you skip that or are you saying that's not good enough for your expert sounding self?  Btw one should not assume what one may have read or not.  Also what is non-Buddhist? (some Buddhists say we are all Buddhas but some just don't know it yet and the Buddha also said, "wonder of wonders all beings are truly enlightened" thus he didn't exclude old3bob)  Also in your opinion which sect is the truest or poorest out of others when it comes to being Buddhist or non-Buddhist?   Also did not the Buddha warn about laying down the raft of Buddhism in certain ways instead of unending attachment to it?  

Edited April 30 by old3bob

[old3bob]

sounds like warm, warmer, hot...

[Mark Foote]

 

 

 

…And again, Ananda, [an individual], not attending to the perception of the plane of no-thing, not attending to the perception of the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, attends to the solitude of mind that is signless. [Their] mind is satisfied with, pleased with, set on and freed in the concentration of mind that is signless. [They] comprehends thus, ‘This concentration of mind that is signless is effected and thought out. But whatever is effected and thought out, that is impermanent, it is liable to stopping.’ When [the individual] knows this thus, sees this thus, [their] mind is freed from the canker of sense-pleasures and [their] mind is freed from the canker of becoming and [their] mind is freed from the canker of ignorance. In freedom is the knowledge that [one] is freed and [one] comprehends: “Destroyed is birth, brought to a close the (holy)-faring, done is what was to be done, there is no more of being such or so’. [They] comprehend thus: “The disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of sense-pleasures do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of becoming do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of ignorance do not exist here. And there is only this degree of disturbance, that is to say the six sensory fields that, conditioned by life, are grounded on this body itself. [One] regards that which is not there as empty of it. But in regard to what remains [one] comprehends:  'That being, this is.' Thus, Ananda, this comes to be for [such a one] s true, not mistaken, utterly purified and incomparably highest realisation of emptiness.

 

("Lesser Discourse on Emptiness", Culasunnatasutta, tr. Pali Text Society MN III 121 vol III p 151-2; emphasis added)

 

 

 

Edited May 1 by Mark Foote

[forestofclarity]

54 minutes ago, old3bob said:

Also in your opinion which sect is the truest or poorest out of others when it comes to being Buddhist or non-Buddhist?   

 

There is no inherent Buddhism-- no abiding, permanent, unchanging teaching. IMO, stirling, doc, and Keith are all expressing the dharma in particular ways, from different traditions learned from living masters, but it isn't really three different dharmas. There's a certain family resemblance. 

 

All exists’: this is one extreme.‘                                                  Sabbamatthī’ti kho, kaccāna, ayameko anto.

‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme.                      ‘Sabbaṁ natthī’ti ayaṁ dutiyo anto.

Avoiding these two extremes,                                                    Ete te, kaccāna, ubho ante anupagamma

the Realized One teaches by the middle way:                         majjhena tathāgato dhammaṁ deseti

 

You can see here the Buddha is using atthi (the same as in the Nibbana quote) and natthi (nonexistence) is an explicit way. 

 

 

[stirling]

56 minutes ago, forestofclarity said:

There is no inherent Buddhism-- no abiding, permanent, unchanging teaching. IMO, stirling, doc, and Keith are all expressing the dharma in particular ways, from different traditions learned from living masters, but it isn't really three different dharmas. There's a certain family resemblance. 

 

Absolutely! It is so wonderful to have so many perspectives of what the implications of emptiness is. Emptiness itself has no dimensions, or qualities itself, but is obviously visible and persistent in myriad ways.

 

Emptiness is in the poems of Rumi and Hafiz, the Upanishads, the words of the Buddha, the sage statements of Ramana Maharshi, Nirsagadatta Maharaj, and the Advaita Vedanta teachers, as well as the words Lao Tzu and the early Daoists, just as it is in countless living teachers that are mere conduits for the deeper reality of how things are. Each expression will resonate for some, but possibly not others. That doesn't make them wrong. The message is absolutely the same, when you understand what you are looking at. 

[old3bob]

7 hours ago, forestofclarity said:

 

There is no inherent Buddhism-- no abiding, permanent, unchanging teaching. IMO, stirling, doc, and Keith are all expressing the dharma in particular ways, from different traditions learned from living masters, but it isn't really three different dharmas. There's a certain family resemblance. 

 

All exists’: this is one extreme.‘                                                  Sabbamatthī’ti kho, kaccāna, ayameko anto.

‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme.                      ‘Sabbaṁ natthī’ti ayaṁ dutiyo anto.

Avoiding these two extremes,                                                    Ete te, kaccāna, ubho ante anupagamma

the Realized One teaches by the middle way:                         majjhena tathāgato dhammaṁ deseti

 

You can see here the Buddha is using atthi (the same as in the Nibbana quote) and natthi (nonexistence) is an explicit way. 

 

 

that sounds kind of like a contradiction of your earlier verdict of:  "And your revolutionary (non-Buddhist) reinterpretation of Buddhism comes down to "there is"?    

 

Btw, one might see some parallels or "family resemblance" with that in the Isha Upanishad,  it can be found in English thus one doesn't need to know Sanskrit or Pali for it.

[old3bob]

12 hours ago, Keith108 said:

 

 

Still not clear about what a life force is, but it sounds like a nice idea!

 

 

Live Words and Dead Words

 

During a Dharma speech, Zen Master Hyo Bong said, "In our practice there are live words and dead words. If you attain live words, you are the same as the Buddha and eminent teachers. If you are attached to dead words, you never get out of the ocean of suffering. Live words and dead words are the same as dust in your eyes. So I ask you, how do you get the dust out of your eyes? Tell me! Tell me!" Hyo Bong was silent for a few moments, and then hit his Zen stick on the table three times and descended from the high stand.

 

1. Live words and dead words: are they the same or different?

2. How do you get the dust out of your eyes?

3. Which are live words: silence or three hits of the Zen stick?

 

COMMENTARY: Who can save Hyo Bong? If you want to save him, you must use a hammer with no handle.

 

Seung Sahn, Whole World is a Single Flower: 365 Kong-ans for Everyday Life with Questions and Commentary by Zen Master Seung Sahn and a Forword by Stephen Mitchell (pp. 332-333). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

 

 

"Still not clear about..."  don't worry (although it doesn't sound like you are)  for medical science doesn't really know what causes the heart to beat but they have figured out how to zap with it electricity to get it beating again...

 

[forestofclarity]

12 hours ago, old3bob said:

And your revolutionary (non-Buddhist) reinterpretation of Buddhism comes down to "there is"?    

 

Well, it is not anything goes. The Middle Way is tricky. There are the four dharma seals, for example. 

 

12 hours ago, old3bob said:

 "family resemblance" with that in the Isha Upanishad,

 

Depends on what interpretation one is taking. Arguably, the closest would be Advaita as opposed to Vishishtadvaita or Dvaita schools. 

 

Swami S has one of the better presentations/arguments here by approaching Buddhism more or less on its terms: 

 

 

[old3bob]

 

yea, there is "the be true to your school aspect"  although many of the "eastern" schools (thus their teachers) don't agree on certain basic or central stuff yet many tend to proclaim self-realization as being central. Such is similar with many religions, for instance Christianity, Islam and the Jews all proclaiming the same God yet they are often at deadly war with one another.

 

Edited May 1 by old3bob

[old3bob]

 

in a nutshell "no thing" is empty of things including not being a thing, (yet is not nothing) there really is no need for years of suffering over the  revealing fact of that, although such has to be passed through before the apparent quandary of it can be set down.

 

Edited May 3 by old3bob

[Tommy]

I have read somewhere on these forums where one's awareness can change its location such as being at the nose to follow breath in and out. Or, awareness is at the belly below the navel. So, I just wanted to mention that I have had the feeling of my awareness shift from one side of the brain to the other side. At sone time, sitting in meditation, I will feel that I am looking thru my right eye and not my left. I do not do anything to encourage or discourage this. And mostly it is just a feeling as I do have my eyes closed. Just like this emptiness one feels during sittings happens for some. I experience this shift sometimes after the moment gone quiet. It can be due to hearing sounds in my left ear and the right ear has gone quiet. I do try to do anything. It just happens. I do assume that it is just another distraction my mind is putting up. Oh well, it is an interesting journey.

Edited May 21 by Tommy

[Cobie]

15 minutes ago, Tommy said:

… I have had the feeling of my awareness shift from one side of the brain to the other side …

This is part of my normal everyday awareness. 

 

Quote

 I do assume that it is just another distraction my mind is putting up. 

 

I think it’s a very important ability to have. It is the exchange between my two brain-halves that enables me to change myself.

 

 

Edited May 21 by Cobie

[Tommy]

6 hours ago, Cobie said:

This is part of my normal everyday awareness. 

 

I think it’s a very important ability to have. It is the exchange between my two brain-halves that enables me to change myself.

Having the feelings that my awareness can go from being whole to going to one side of my brain or the other is a bit disconcerting as I believe myself to be this whole person. Now, I find myself being not this but awareness that can change its location? Or maybe I am just fooling myself. That I am just paying more attention to one side of my head than the other?? 

 

My practice never really had the feeling of emptiness as explained by others. Cuz there was always a sense of me being aware of what was happening around me. Concentration left my mind working on the task. And sometimes, I felt that much of the five senses had dropped out. But now, it feels like going from one of the five senses to another one of the five senses. Guess I must be doing something wrong. Fooling myself.

 

I am glad you can make sense of such things. It baffles me.

[Cobie]

6 hours ago, Tommy said:

Having the feelings that my awareness can go from being whole to going to one side of my brain or the other is a bit disconcerting as I believe myself to be this whole person. Now, I find myself being not this but awareness that can change its location?  …

Yes. I went through the same experience,  “disconcerting as I believe myself to be this whole person”.  Now, I have two legs to walk and two brain-halves to think - these are all part of my body. ‘ I ‘ am the  awareness. 
 

 

Edited May 22 by Cobie

[idiot_stimpy]

Non-conceptual clarity. 

[stirling]

13 hours ago, Tommy said:

Having the feelings that my awareness can go from being whole to going to one side of my brain or the other is a bit disconcerting as I believe myself to be this whole person. Now, I find myself being not this but awareness that can change its location? Or maybe I am just fooling myself. That I am just paying more attention to one side of my head than the other??

 

This is not a misperception. We have cobbled together a certain set of sensate phenomena and identified those elements as belonging to a "self", but, as you seem to have noticed, whether they are always present, and what they might include changes all the time. Those elements we call "self" are most often where we find our awareness. So, what if we have awareness of a bird chirping in the nearby forest, or of the shadows on the floor moving, or our cat rubbing our leg as it walks by? They are also where awareness finds itself. What we ARE is awareness, not the arbitrary collection of places we create that awareness seems to locate. Awareness is the fabric of all things.

 

Quote

“You are not a person having an experience of awareness, you are awareness having the experience of a person.” - Timothy Freke, Urban Guru Cafe, Podcast #45

 

13 hours ago, Tommy said:

My practice never really had the feeling of emptiness as explained by others. 

 

Everyone has had the experience of emptiness. It happens naturally all the time, we just need someone to point out what it is. What you describe in the first paragraph above IS emptiness of "self". It is one of many ways to be aware of "emptiness". Another common feeling of "emptiness" is experiencing a sort of WHOLENESS - a loss of feeling separate from the phenomena that surrounds you... finding that "I" is what EVERYTHING is. Awareness is obviously part of everything that is experienced, or you wouldn't experience it. Awareness is what is always present. Pure, clean, silent and still awareness is Buddha Nature, Rigpa, Nirvana, Nirodha, god, etc. etc., and it is ALWAYS right here, underneath your mental story of the world.

 

13 hours ago, Tommy said:

I am glad you can make sense of such things. It baffles me.

 

Does it?

 

Quote

Now, I find myself being not this but awareness that can change its location? 

 

I don't think it does. You see that what you are is awareness. You get the intellectual point, but you are still missing the insight... the EXPERIENCE of "being" awareness. 

 

When you notice that you are awareness in your practice, rest in that stillness. Do this as often as possible without trying to make or contrive it into happening. Don't grasp at the experience, only patiently notice it when it arises and it will come more and more often. Eventually you will notice that it happens all of the time on its own. Eventually you will see it for what it is.

 

[Tommy]

35 minutes ago, stirling said:

When you notice that you are awareness in your practice, rest in that stillness. Do this as often as possible without trying to make or contrive it into happening. Don't grasp at the experience, only patiently notice it when it arises and it will come more and more often. Eventually you will notice that it happens all of the time on its own. Eventually you will see it for what it is.

 

Thanks for the reply. You have given me plenty to chew upon. Guess understanding will come later with experience. Thanks.

Edited May 22 by Tommy

[thelerner]

I heard Tommy's story, as a Zen fable, where it wasn't the Buddha but a samurai who came upon the monks meditating and gave them the can't polish a rock into a mirror analogy.  The book explained the samurai was wrong.  Meditation is part of enlightenment but he was correct that it's not the only part.  You shouldn't stink of Zen, it's a living practice not a sitting one, though sitting is a part of it.  

 

If you don't bring the practice into your life, sitting will not bring enlightenment.  But sit daily and bring the insights and practice into everything you do.  

 

I forget his name, he was the founder of Aikido's nephew(or was it uncle?) also was of a mystical bend, never famous but an amazing martial artist.  After giving a dharma talk a listener asked 'So we should strive for emptiness?'  The man surprised the asker and audience by stating emphatically 'NO, not emptiness, you want Fullness.  Awareness of everything and understand that emptiness is a part of the Fullness.'  <I believe its from the book Pre-World War II Aikido Masters.>

 

After like, ten years in Ki-Aikido being told 'keep One Point' ie a focus on the Hara, one is finally taught- When you're aware of everything you are also keeping One Point.  A defused focus, clear mind, the ears- see, the feet-listen, the senses spread.. is a higher level of One Point, then a clear mind focused on one's center. Certainly more useful in a martial sense.  

 

It's also a whole world harder.  Just keeping a quiet mind all day is very hard.  Meditation has lots of benefits but achieving a quiet mind is much easier when you're just sitting (or just walking).  From there you can focus on Hara or breath, and finally get the focus on the Fullness around you- the one that has your thoughts flowing like a river, your body sensations and the swirl of the 5 elements happening all around you.

 

Rawn Clark has a fun but difficult guided meditation- Center of Stillness Meditation where you put your  7 senses (he includes thought & emotion as senses) into separate orbits around you.  Not too far from Taoist practice of Sealing the Senses.   It has you sitting in emptiness, like a planet aware of your senses orbiting, aware of the other peoples orbits and has you focus on the web of life connecting all.   Worthwhile but not easy and even to bring into 'normal' life.  

[Tommy]

4 hours ago, thelerner said:

I heard Tommy's story, as a Zen fable, where it wasn't the Buddha but a samurai who came upon the monks meditating and gave them the can't polish a rock into a mirror analogy.  The book explained the samurai was wrong.  Meditation is part of enlightenment but he was correct that it's not the only part.  You shouldn't stink of Zen, it's a living practice not a sitting one, though sitting is a part of it.  

 

If you don't bring the practice into your life, sitting will not bring enlightenment.  But sit daily and bring the insights and practice into everything you do.  

Yes, you bring up a good point. And, it is good to be reminded of something so simple and integral of practice. And yet, it affects me to the point of being an itch that I can not scratch. The person doing the practice will not be the person who experiences the truth of Buddha nature. So, polishing the roof tile will never become the mirror. Bringing the practice into your life and/or sitting will not bring enlightenment. Because one is trying to change one thing into something else. It will never happen. If it were not already a part of the person then it will not ever be. The truth is already there.

 

Yeah, stink of Zen. I do not know enough Zen or Zen Buddhism to stink of it. But, I am like you, the learner. I listen and see for myself what is truth. Thanks for the reply.

[Mark Foote]

Here are some lines from the Stanford project (at zazenshin--unfortunately permission is now required to access the project), translating Dogen's words:

 

Daji said, "How can you produce a mirror by polishing a tile?"

Nanyue replied, "How can you make a buddha by sitting in meditation (zazen)?"

Daji asked, "Then, what is right?"

Nanyue replied, "When someone is driving a cart, if the cart doesn't go, should he beat the cart or beat the ox?"

Daji had no response.

 

(That's all from here:  https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/13341-soto-zen-buddhism-and-the-afterllife/?page=2)
 

 

Here's my summary of Gautama's approach to mindfulness in everyday life:

 

1) Relax the activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation;

2) Find a feeling of ease and calm the senses connected with balance, in inhalation and exhalation;

3) Appreciate and detach from thought, in inhalation and exhalation;

4) Look to the free location of consciousness for the automatic activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation.

 

(Applying the Pali Instructions, edited)

 

 

The trick is in the feeling of ease that I'm looking for:

 

I would now have to say that the feeling of ease associated with concentration is the feeling of ease that arises from activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness. Activity of the body can follow automatically as the location of consciousness leads the balance of the body. Automatic activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness has a feeling of ease, and initially a feeling of energy (or “zest”) as well.

 

Gautama spoke of the extension of the feeling of ease, an extension such that “there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this… ease”. He used the words “steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses” to describe how the feeling of ease pervades the body, indicating that the feeling is accompanied by a fluid sense of gravity.

 

The extension Gautama described maintains an openness of the body to the placement of consciousness at any point, and to ease through automatic activity of the body by virtue of the location of consciousness at that point.

(The Diamond Trap, the Thicket of Thorns)

 

 

The effort for me, the "beating of the ox" if you will, is in finding ease in the free location of consciousness.  

Nevertheless, I need practice with some very physical elements of posture and carriage, apparently--my free consciousness keeps coming back to them, and they have taken me decades to comprehend in a way that abets the ease of concentration. They're in the post I quote from above.