As I look out from the colourless space behind the burst of colours in my field of view, thinking about subjects and objects co-manufacturing each other, pondering the 'meaning' of the stream of phenomena bursting out of the indescribable void of a time before I was born, travelling, as I write, into the void after my death, I am trying to effect a glimpse of what emptiness teaches regarding how this skin bag should best glide through life.
In my best moments, I experience reality directly. It is what I am here for. In my worst moments, what is happening around me absorbs my faculties, and I am dreaming wide awake, gone for all I can report. When I look back, the first is full of potential, the latter is a hopeless state of no agency, I can only rely on the quality of the conditioning of my dream-self vis-à-vis whatever it is blindly handling. It seems then, that the thing which so long seemed to be 'most me' is really 'least me'.
So let's talk emptiness, I'll share how I see it. How do you see it?
Dahui:
The reality body eats food, emptiness consumes emptiness - can you call it nothing?
My body (interbeing with all that makes it, the whole universe) consumes food (interbeing with all that makes it, the whole universe). Both exist, even after the food has been eaten, digested, transformed. Even after my body has died. To call it dead and vanished is not accurate.
Mr. Bao:
As my body is empty, all things are empty. A thousand kinds, myriad categories, are all the same.
Everything is interbeing, one reality. Distinctions are just a concept, concepts are not true reality. Many names for one thing, each water droplet of the spray of the crashing wave has its label, none help them fly or land. None alter what it is or does. Entertaining this, just like you are doing now, is helping the troubleshooting part of our brain troubleshoot. Is there trouble to shoot all the time? What state do I want to be in when trouble needs shooting? Agency or no-agency?
National Teacher Wuye:
All objects are fundamentally empty and quiescent; there is not a single thing that can be grasped.
Things can't be on their own, have no self-nature, as they are empty of a separate existence. How can I grasp something that cannot stand on its own? What does this imply about my precious self?
Layman Pang:
Just aspire to empty all that is, don't solidify what is not.
It sounds like Pang asks us to see the lack of independent existence in all things, do away with wrong perceptions, and only permit a direct encounter with reality.
Foyan:
The light of mind is reflected in emptiness;
its substance void of relative or absolute.
(...)
what has ever arisen and vanished?
Nothing has ever arisen and vanished. With no concepts to either apply or not apply, no thing can be defined to come about or cease to be. Reality trumps labels and concepts. What seems so wrong is true. Cognition over intuition all of our lives - we distort our ability to see clearly.
Yunmen asked Caoshan:
"Why is it that one does not know of the existence of that which is most immediate?"
Caoshan: "Just because it is the most immediate!"
Yunmen: "And how can one become truly intimate with it?"
Caoshan: "By not turning toward it."
Yunmen: "But can one know the most immediate if one does not face it?"
Caoshan: "It's then that one knows it best."
Yunmen consented: "Exactly, exactly!"
What, right now, is most obviously so? I am part of something marvellous. I am in it, it is in me, it is me, I am it. You are me with me, I am you with you. We share this water droplet flight of a crashing wave, right now.
Do you disagree?
Dahui again:
This mind can name everything, but nothing can name this mind. Therefore the Buddhas and the patriarchs have no choice but to assign names according to your confusion, calling it reality as is, Buddha-nature, enlightenment, nirvana - they impose various different names. Because your views in the world of living beings are biased, there are various distinctions; that is why these different terms are set up, to get you to perceive this undifferentiated mind in the midst of distinctions. It is not that this mind has distinctions.
Therefore when a monk asked Mazu, "What is Buddha?" Mazu said, "Mind itself is Buddha."
If you truly realize and truly awaken, what distinctions are there?
Everything is an expression of one reality. Nothing exists on its own. Phenomena are void. One void.
This stands in no opposition to seeing many things, and being able to touch them, name them, throw them around and at each other.
That this exists, in a way I cannot pick apart, or understand, that is the way it is. Why worry about it? Why cling? Is it time to finally let go?
Huangbo:
If ever you should allow yourselves to believe in the more than purely transitory existence of phenomena, you will have fallen into a grave error known as the heretical belief in eternal life; but if, on the contrary, you take the intrinsic voidness of phenomena to imply mere emptiness, then you will have fallen into another error, the heresy of total extinction
Right here, there it is. No eternalism, no nihilism. Suchness.
Xiushan said, "I am just thus--what about you?" Fayan said, "A hairsbreadth's difference is as the distance between heaven and earth."
Xiushan thereupon bowed.
I like to look at Saturn's rings and that storm which has been raging on Jupiter for over 300 years with my telescope when conditions are good, it is my 'visual' of the distance between heaven and earth. It's this breadth of hair that makes zen so elusive, a minor deviation has the power to throw us into the darkness of delusion, just like the faintest shudder on the telescope makes my eyes miss these heavenly bodies by unreasonable distances.
Submitted August 24, 2020 at 03:20PM by Coinionaire https://ift.tt/31oGsMB
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