Today we have a blue sky, with a few little clouds. Yesterday we had plenty of clouds but not so much blue sky. Weather changes. Clouds slide around in the sky. Of course the sky is always blue, but we can’t always see the blue because of the clouds. How do we understand the cloud? A fluffy object floating in the sky; if we know what it’s made of we think of it as water drops. Sometimes it sinks down to the ground and creates a mist or rain. Some of us know different names for different types of clouds.
We all have a general idea of what the object we call a cloud is. But, like most things, it’s not quite as simple as that. If you were to get a nice long ladder and I asked you to climb up to where the cloud begins, would you know where to stop climbing? Where is the edge of a cloud? If you’re pointing, you’d say it’s just there, between the white and the blue. But as you get closer, I don’t think you’re going to find a border. You’re going to find a bit of the sky where there are some drops floating. If you move one way there are more drops, but if you move the other way there are fewer drops. Maybe you get to where there’s only one drop every three inches, or every six inches, or one drop every foot. Are you still in the cloud? Or are you outside the cloud? How many drops do you have to have, to count as “inside” the cloud? It’s not as though we’ve got a thing which stops. If we’ve got a piece of cable, we can follow it to the end. But what about a cloud? There isn’t an edge, is there?
This seemingly discrete object floating in the sky doesn’t quite fit that rule in our mind that something will have an edge. What we call the edge of the cloud is when it’s dense enough to stop the sky looking blue. When it’s not dense enough to do that, we say it’s not the cloud. Then there are the in-between bits where we say it’s just a bit of haze. It is really determined by our vision, and maybe by the brightness of the light, as well as by the density of the drops. It is completely arbitrary.
Density of Water Drops
You might think I’m being a bit fussy and silly, but there is a genuine point here. The idea of a cloud as an object that we can manipulate in our weather forecasts, and in our paintings and poems – it’s really just a construction of mind, based on rather arbitrary criteria of the density of water drops being enough to make the sky look white or grey. The idea of the cloud is a creation of the mind.
There are water droplets in the sky, even in a blue sky. We know that scientifically. Sometimes there’s a greater density of water drops, and for convenience we label that phenomenon as “cloud.” We’re easily tricked into thinking there’s something we can label, especially with a noun, as an object that has its own existence. Actually, it’s simply a name for a particular phenomenon which happens to be manifesting at this moment. The so-called cloud only has to thin itself out and it’s no longer a cloud. All the water droplets can still be there; they’re just spread out wider. Where did your cloud go?
Or, indeed, clouds can appear in a clear blue sky. Warm air rises, water vapour condenses, and suddenly a cloud is there in the middle of nowhere. Where did your cloud come from?
We tend to fix this phenomenon of “cloud” in our mind by applying convenient labels. These labels are useful for making weather forecasts and assessing air turbulence for flights. I’m not saying the word “cloud” doesn’t apply to some phenomenon that’s out there in the sky. But our understanding of a cloud as an object goes a bit too far. It makes an assumption that there’s a thing there. In relation to clouds, this might not seem very important. But this is just an example of where we’re heading with this Buddhist word “emptiness.”
Arbitrary Labels
Emptiness doesn’t mean “vanished” or “nothing there.” You could expand the phrase (because it’s really a shortcut); the full meaning is “empty of inherent or independent existence.” There isn’t a cloud “thing” there which stands alone and carries its cloud “nature” around with it. It’s an arbitrary label that we apply to a certain density of water drops, without even knowing that’s what we’re doing.
It’s rather like how the Inuit have many words for snow, more than most other cultures. Snow is a big part of their lives, so they distinguish more finely between different types of snow. Having labels for different types of snow is useful to the Inuit, and having words for different types of clouds is useful to us in practical ways such as forecasting weather and turbulence.
It helps us in understanding or manipulating our environment if we can apply labels, because behind the labels there are recognizable processes which can be useful for us to know. But the label doesn’t point, as we tend to assume, to the nature of the object that we’ve created through our mental processes. These labels are functional.
A common example for an object when talking about emptiness is a table. Here’s a table sitting in front of me. It’s a bit small, a bit different from some tables which have longer legs, but I’ve got my notes on it, and my recorder. We have an object which I’m using as a table. I use the word “table” and you recognize it. But what if I wanted to reach a high shelf? If I put my foot on it and stand – is it still a table? Or is it a step? Is it a table that I’m using as a step? Or is it a step that I’m using as a table?
We all have a common-sense idea of a table sitting here, and it works, it fits. But it’s not so clear cut. The nature of “table” turns out to be the nature of “step.” We take it as a table, we use it as a table – no problem, it works. But it is not inherently a table. This is the point, it’s really in the eye of the beholder, the function you want to apply to it. The name relates more to the function and to our manipulation of the object than it does to any intrinsic quality of the object. This table is empty of being a table. It has no inherent “table-ness” in it, nor any “step-ness.”
A Virtual World
We use examples of objects like this to show how, naturally in everyday usage, we slip into dividing the world into objects so we can manipulate them in the mind. We’re not relating directly to the nature of what’s behind the so-called object. We’re creating a mental model. You could say we’re inhabiting a virtual world, manipulating raw sense data into discernible objects so we can make use of them. But these are not really the objects they appear to be. They’re illusions on the ‘computer screen’ of our vision. A white blob on your computer screen could be a cloud. An object with a flat surface and some legs could be a chair, or it could be a table, or it could be a step.
I’m labouring this because it’s not always easy to get, but it’s quite important in understanding this rather tricky concept we call emptiness. Emptiness is not a very good word, but we have not found a better one. The original Sanskrit word, sunyata, isn’t a very good word either, according to those who understand Sanskrit. There isn’t an everyday word for this concept because it’s not one we deal with every day. We bypass it and go directly to getting by in our lives in this world of objects that we have some understanding of and can manipulate. It’s useful. It’s expedient; we just get on with it. But, like all expediency, it can lead to problems. It can lead to a quick solution, but it can also lead to confusion. This is why it’s important for us to try and have some understanding of the Buddhist teaching of emptiness. That teaching is trying to release us from that misunderstanding called “ignorance” which leads to confusion and mistakes.
The Edge of “You”
The prime object of emptiness for us to consider is ourselves, but we resist this. You’re willing to go along with me when I’m saying the table is empty and the cloud is empty. But what about you? Or me? Does the same thing apply? There is particularly strong objectification and identification with “me,” with “I.” Ultimately, materially, we’re not so different from a cloud or a table, are we?
We might imagine we have a definite edge, the so-called skin bag – outside that is not me, and inside that is me. But even physically it’s not as simple as that because this skin bag has holes in it! Air gets into our lungs, crosses past the skin bag and gets into the bloodstream. That bit of oxygen, that’s come in through your mouth or nose and dissolved into your bloodstream, is that “you” now? Or is it not you until it becomes part of a cell? At what point does that oxygen that’s come from the air into your lung, into your bloodstream as dissolved gas, and later gets incorporated into a cell, at what point does that molecule of oxygen become “you”? That boundary is not quite so clear after all. It’s a bit like the cloud – where’s the edge of you?
Carbon dioxide takes the reverse route. Chemicals in your body become carbon dioxide, which becomes dissolved in the blood, which crosses the lungs and gets breathed out. There’s a flowing process here. The same with food particles that take a different route down and get into the intestines and get absorbed, travel down the bloodstream, and get incorporated into the body.
I’ve been talking about us as a physical object. This boundary of ours that we imagine as clearly saying “this is me,” is really quite fuzzy and literally porous. But It’s also not so clear what we are as a mental object. Again, we assume it is clear; we have a sense of identity and we might assert it if people question it. But through your meditation practice you might be starting to doubt that as well.
We commonly get identified with our particular personality qualities, our habitual tendencies, our style of being: “This is my value, this is what I believe.” And we find ourselves, perhaps unexpectedly, questioning these fixed factors when they arise in meditation – perhaps a value you picked up from parents or schoolteachers, and that you internalized and live from – perhaps awareness of that arises in the clarity of meditation and it seems a bit alien. We might find ourselves saying, “Well, this was my value, but it doesn’t seem to work for me anymore.” By this means a value slips away, a value that you had thought you’d defined yourself by.
Nothing is Fixed
A way of your being in the world that may be a defensive, self-protective way of being, may come to be seen through the lens of meditation as unhelpful. Around that attitude of self-protection, there’s a whole cluster of behaviours developed and fossilized. But the underlying motivation for behaving that way now seems a little bit less solid, a bit less appropriate than it did.
These behaviours may be what you’re known by; your friends recognize you as someone who behaves this sort of way. This is edging towards the emptiness of “you” – what you assumed was fixed, definable, identifiable, turns out to be in flux just as much as the cloud that can expand and contract, that can fall out of the sky and turn into snow. Just as much as the water that can be swallowed by you and become part of your body, and then be expelled and go into a river, and eventually evaporate and become a cloud again. You’re part of a big cycle that’s moving both physically and mentally, as flow, as change. Is there anything that’s fixed in there? Have you found anything yet that’s fixed? This is part of the purpose of meditation – to reveal to you that though you have assumed certain things are fixed, they are not fixed. And then to reveal to you: there’s nothing fixed.
At this point people sometimes get scared. It challenges our fundamental sense of existence, of “me” being the centre of this universe. Does anyone doubt that they are the centre of the universe? Everything refers to “me”; that’s how we work our way through the world. It’s not so surprising that we have different ideas of certain things, because we’re looking at them from different reference points. This is how we can get into clashes and confusions. Two people can experience the same event and come away with very different perceptions of it. It wasn’t what happened at the event, it’s how it relates to their view of themselves and their world, and what use it is to them, and what threat, and they will perceive it differently. Also, they can change their perceptions because they’re not fixed. It’s all very fluid.
Our sense of our self largely hinges on these patterns of behaviour and thought that we’ve identified with. But when you see through these patterns as no longer being appropriate or useful, there’s this challenge to your sense of “you.” Are you willing to change that view of you?
Fossilized Behaviours
There can be a tendency to hold on to these thoughts and behaviours, even when you have seen them as no longer appropriate, because there can be a fear of feeling lost if you don’t hold on. It can be difficult to shake these things off. It’s rather like long-term prisoners who finally get out of jail and they find the world outside confusing and difficult. Some will commit another crime so that they can go back to the place that feels like home, the only place they feel they can really fit. That happens. There is a sense in which we do that too, when we discover something which is binding us, but can’t bring ourselves to let it go.
Are you holding on to something? Probably many things, through fear of not having them to lean on, not knowing what to replace them with. If you’ve done a certain behaviour all your life, it’s filled a lot of gaps where you might not have known what else to do. What will you do, next time that particular situation arises, if not to follow your usual potentially unhelpful response?
You might find the presence of mind to respond in a more appropriate way next time. In some situations you might do the same behaviour as you always did, because on some occasions it is appropriate, but now you do it in awareness and by choice rather than as a habit. Disidentifying from a particular behaviour or attitude doesn’t mean it is taken away from you as such; it means you become more skilful in making use of it, or not making use of it when it’s not appropriate.
The emptiness behind this highlights the way we get stuck in patterns of behaviour which become objects of identity; they become fossilized. The technical word is “reified”; they get turned into things. There is no inherent you there – there’s a collection of behaviours and attitudes and experiences and sensations, rather like a cloud is a collection of water droplets. To go further than that is to trap yourself into a fixed way of thinking. It’s quite challenging to un-think your way out of this.
I’ve been talking about insight into emptiness arising through your practice in relation to mental phenomena, attitudes, habits – it can also arise through your sensations. One person on this retreat commented to me that he’s been trying really hard to find his body awareness. He can find the sensation, say, of the leg, but he can’t find the body that’s having the sensation. Yes, that’s correct! No body to be found! But, don’t we automatically add one? We jump from a sensory contact with the environment into a whole structure of me being a body sitting here meditating. Really, there’s just the sensation.
You Should Train Yourself Thus
I’ve brought with me the Bahiya Sutta, one of the short suttas from the Pali collection. Bahiya was a seeker; it sounds like he wasn’t a Buddhist seeker at the time the sutta starts, but he had a sense of “Am I getting anywhere? Am I already there? Where am I?” In the sutta a devata, a heavenly being, said to him “No, you’re not getting anywhere. But if you travel and see the Buddha, he can teach you, because he knows.”
Bahiya went and found the Buddha. The Buddha was out on his alms rounds, so Bahiya interrupted the Buddha and said, “Oh blessed one, teach me the Dharma! For my long-term welfare and bliss.” And the Buddha said, “Not now, Bahiya, we’re doing our alms rounds.”
A second time Bahiya said, “It’s hard to know what dangers there may be for the blessed one’s life, or what dangers there may be for mine.” (Meaning, you might not live until the end of the alms rounds; you’d better tell me now!) And a second time the Buddha said, “This is not the time. We have entered the town for alms.”
A third time (Bahiya was quite persistent) he said, “It is hard to know what dangers there may be for the blessed one’s life, or what dangers there may be for mine. Teach me, oh blessed one, teach me, teach me!” The Buddha gave in and taught him, in a very direct teaching, which bears on what I was saying just now.
The Buddha said, “Okay then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: in reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself.”
‘In reference to the sensed, only the sensed,’ there is the sensation of the leg. That’s all there is; there is no need to add the idea of a body. If something is heard, there’s no need to add a story about it. But we so easily jump into making a story that creates a mental object which explains a sound for us.
If we hear a particular sound then instantly, within a second, the whole process occurs: we recognize a sound as the bark of a dog; we assume there’s a dog there; then we might start a story in the mind about “I wonder who’s walking a dog past here? I wonder where they’re going? What sort of dog is it?” And then there’s the attitude of “I don’t like dogs, I’m scared of them.” Or “I like dogs. I’d like to see it and stroke it.”
This all develops within less than a second. If you’re watching your mind you can see this happening. But the whole story may be a complete fantasy; perhaps I hid an electric dog-barking machine outside the door earlier! We like the sound to be identified and labelled and have a place in our mental model, because then we know how to react. We know whether to move towards the sound because we like dogs, or to move away because we don’t. We have to have a response ready to deal even with sounds like that.
The Buddha is saying, drop out of that. In reference to the heard, only the heard. If a sound is heard – there’s only a sound. Any more than that is a fabrication. Statistically, you’ll get it right quite a bit of the time. But not all the time, because we make misidentifications, or because people like me will try and trick you with electronic dog-barking machines. We tend to feel safer having a story and knowing which way to move, but I’m saying “there was a sound; no need to create a story to explain the sound.”
Awareness Operating
The Buddha is saying, “You should train yourself thus: in reference to the seen, there will only be the seen; in reference to the heard, only the heard; in reference to the sensed, only the sensed; and in reference to the cognized, only the cognized.” If there is a thought, leave it at that – don’t develop it into a train of thoughts. That is how you should train yourself. A very simple direct instruction, and very close to what we’ve been doing here. In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen – “only” means silence, not adding anything, and “the seen” means illumination. Awareness is operating. Likewise for the other senses.
The sutta goes on: “When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, and only the heard in reference to the heard, and so on, then Bahiya, there is no ‘you’ in connection with that.”
If there’s a sound out there which is not yet identified as “dog,” and there’s a sensation somewhere down here in the position of “leg”, then the senses are operating, but nothing is developing beyond that – no “you” is developing either. “You” are a construction of the mind, and the idea of a body behind senses is a construction of the mind. The idea of “your” cognizance, “your” thinking, “your” mental processes, which you so quickly identify as “your” thoughts – take out the word “your” and they’re all just ideas presenting themselves to awareness.
It’s no different from a bird that flies in front of you when you’re sitting outside, and flies away again. An idea flies into awareness, and flies away again. A sensation, which wasn’t there before, is there now, and then is no longer there. There is just this passing flow. Where’s the “you” in that? It’s only there when you put it there. Until you put it there, there’s just the flow of experience. The habit is to refer this flow of experience to “me,” to create a model of the world in which I’m in the centre and everything is judged in its importance in relation to me.
But now, practising like this, it’s different – there is just what there is. Form is Emptiness. There are indeed various mental phenomena. “Emptiness” isn’t saying there’s nothing there. It’s saying the way we understand what is there, the way we manipulate it and use it and respond to it, is misled. It’s ignorant. We’re deceiving ourselves.
This isn’t to deny the material world. It’s not to deny the phenomenon of a body. Form, of course, is one of the five skandhas, and we recognize form. But form (the body) is empty of inherent separate existence; the Heart Sutra repeatedly tells us this. It’s a creation of the mind. Still, there’s the phenomenon of the body which the mind creates. A sound becomes a dog bark, and then the volition, the impulse to react a certain way to the perceived presence of a dog. That whole process can be dropped, and, if there’s a sense phenomenon, we needn’t create a sense of form out of it.
We could create a sense of form out of it, and that would be “emptiness is form.” But just now we’re doing “form is emptiness.” At this moment, no, we don’t create a form. It’s not wrong that we sometimes create a form. Emptiness IS form, these are the same thing. This is another case where it’s not split into two. Reality has these two aspects of form and emptiness, emptiness and form. And sensation and emptiness, and emptiness and sensation, and volition, and so on.
The five skandhas are empty of inherent existence. But still there are phenomena we call “form” (or “sensation”, “perception”, “volition” or “mental cognition.”) These phenomena really occur, but not in the way we’ve tended to treat them.
Getting this conceptually is tricky, but this is what it’s pointing at. Through practice there can be a realization of it. These little things I’ve been pointing out, that you could experience in your practice, could point you that way. But this is not something you should be trying to do from now on. That would be a huge mistake. If you’ve started to think, “Okay, my task is to not be here. I’ll have the body awareness of not having a body,” Don’t do that. No, your task is to practice.
Notice Your Tendencies
The main purpose here is to notice your tendency to create a mental world. You may, every now and again, catch yourself out doing that. You can catch it when you hear a sound that you don’t immediately recognize, and then there’s a certain anxiety – “what was that sound?” Something in the environment unknown? That’s uncomfortable for us, and we’re listening really sharply, to see if it comes again and we get a second chance to identify it. This is an example of you trying to fit something into the model you’ve built up in your mind of what’s around you. And if it’s something we don’t recognize – we focus on it, don’t we? If there’s a coiled shape on the road; we don’t just walk past it. We inspect it, trying to work out, is it a snake? We have this strong urge to fix things in our minds, so that we know what they are. We reify them. We can’t rest until there’s an explanation. We have to make one up, if there isn’t one.
Again, this is a way of getting by. It enables us to put that thing on one side and move on to the next thing which needs attention. We’re creating a story the whole day long. The story is empty of true reality. Our nature is emptiness, which is shorthand for saying we’re empty of inherent existence, we’re not fixed objects in the way we tend to assume.
Impermanence
We accept impermanence. We know the body changes, ages, dies. But the nature of impermanence means that our attempt to fix things is doomed to failure. The cloud spreads out across the sky and is no longer a cloud. There never was a cloud thing, there was a temporary phenomenon of water droplet density, and it dispersed or evaporated or it fell to the ground.
There is a temporary density of various chemicals and molecules sitting in front of you here, gurgling and making some noises into a microphone. I’m quite interested in this particular phenomenon, it’s quite special to me, but it’s still just a temporary phenomenon, which will pass. It has already changed from when it first sat down, breakfast being digested, various body cells being renewed, chemicals transported around the body. This body has changed while I’m sitting here, and so have all of yours.
And this mind has changed; various phenomena have passed through it, diverse thoughts and ideas and mental constructions have been created, or seen through, or both. This is an ongoing process. We can give the name “me” or “self” to this process. It’s something just rolling along in its own way, and we can witness it through sitting, watching the mind. We can experience it.
But can we do that without then taking the next step of creating a story about it? Can we just simply sit and watch the show, without being a critic reviewing the show and trying to improve it? We find that harder to do because we’ve invested a lifetime in this particular show. It’s really special to us and we can’t just leave it alone. But maybe we can at least entertain the possibility of that. And maybe, as the mind settles, there can be some moments when we don’t automatically leap to a story, but just allow something to be as it is.
See if you can trust yourself to just sit here, whatever comes. In that way the mind can become very deeply silent. The narrator, the raconteur, goes off-duty and takes a break, and there’s only bare perception. Of course still there’s a habit to build on the perception, and you may witness that happening. In the spotting of it, it can release itself.
Thoughts Arise and Disappear
There was a very interesting article by Master Sheng Yen in the Chan Magazine a few years ago. It’s not his own teaching, it’s one that’s been used throughout the history of Chan. The earliest I have found it dates back to the 12th century but it's been used since then in various poems and so on. It’s simply the observation: whenever a thought arises (thought here means any mental phenomenon – memory, feeling, perception, etc.), just be aware of it and by itself it will disappear. You don’t need to make it go away. You don’t need to develop it. If you simply genuinely allow it to be seen, are clearly aware of it – that is the whole of the practice. The rest looks after itself.
If we deflect ourselves from seeing it clearly by immediately launching into a story, a categorization, and a reaction, then it’s not seen clearly. It’s sort of glimpsed, and then we go into automatic pilot mode and do something with it. But if you just allow yourself to clearly experience it, by itself it will disappear.
If the phenomenon arises and by itself it disappears, there isn’t that in-between step that we tend to do of creating the self and working out how it relates to us. If, in relation to the sensed, there is only the sensed, and there isn’t a story added, then there is no “you” there! It’s not as though you’ve slipped away or gone off to one side, no, you’re not there. Because the “you” is just one of your stories, albeit a very persistent pervasive story, and in this case you haven’t developed the bare sensation into a sensation woven into a story of you. Yet there is still this phenomenon of you; again, this is not denying that. It’s more a way of expressing our understanding the nature of you.
Another way to put this is: it’s more like the sense of self that’s under investigation here. We’re not doubting the processes of self, such as your having the intention of walking to the dining hall and your body getting up to do that. It’s the sense of ownership of the process, the identification with it, the sense of “me” in it, which is confusing us. If a sound unrecognized creates a sense of danger, but on investigation it turns out there is no danger – then the sense of danger doesn’t mean there is danger. Having a sense of self doesn’t mean there is self.
The Release of Suffering
We tend to slip from a sense of self into an assumption of self, into operating from self. But these teachings are pointing out to us that that’s going a step too far. You know that saying of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” That’s a rather big leap. He might have just said “I think, therefore there seems to be thought.” Better still, he should have stopped at “There seems to be thought.” Because the rest is just a story that we create to explain it. The sense of self that arises strengthens it for us and traps us into believing it.
There are the phenomena of physiology and biology, chemistry, feelings, memories; all this stuff is in motion and we dip into the experience of it, catch a sensation and tell ourselves a story. We build up a story and we believe it. It creates a sense of self. This fiction is quite a long novel we’ve been writing during our lives.
The reason why this is important is because it’s the key to releasing our suffering. We can refer back to the second noble truth, craving and aversion. Craving and aversion are largely anchored around defending this sensed self. Our prime objective in life is to defend and support and develop the self that we sense. We’ve been tricked, by evolution, by biology, into putting ourselves as number one. That creates a certain survival instinct, which is how evolution works, but it also creates tension, unhappiness: “I’m not getting what I want, oh dear, I won’t survive.” Or, “I’m getting too much of this, I don’t like it.” Suffering, dissatisfaction, virtually all in relation to “me.”
Of course, we have some sense of the suffering of those around us. I’m not saying we’re completely selfish; only about ninety-five percent selfish! You may think about somebody else’s suffering, but even then, how much of that is related to your part in their suffering, or your wanting to feel good for having helped them? It all gets tangled up. We could say the centre of our self-concern is ourselves, and that’s perfectly reasonable from the biological point of view. However, most of us are fairly well-assured of biological survival, for a few more years at least, yet we create so much fuss around unnecessary things like food preferences or minor aspects of our social identity; our concerns about them are excessive.
A lot of our mental fussing is totally unnecessary when we realize that our basic needs are already largely fulfilled. We can just simply sit here and find peace, freedom from craving and aversion and from the ignorance of assuming a self to be what it is not.
Don’t Get in the Way
I’ve been presenting it theoretically here to try and give you some conceptual understanding that practice has the potential to give you a personal realization of this – those moments when the sense of self isn’t even there to be found because you’re not creating it at that moment. As the mind settles into practice, and as your attention sharpens and becomes more continuous, you stumble over these moments – these “gaps in the matrix”, shall I say. Something is experienced differently from your usual mode of being. Usually you just gloss over it or are too busy to notice. But when the mind is settled, you can come across these moments where you realize that the identification with a certain value system is not intrinsic to you. It’s been created through a thought process, an impregnation of the mind, but it’s not you. There’s that sudden gap which can be sensed as a vulnerability, a risk. It can feel uncomfortable, but it can also be sensed as an openness, an opportunity, freedom. It can slip by you because it can be brief. Or it can be clearer and bring with it implications that other things are also not intrinsic to you. We’ve built a whole superstructure, a belief system, around this sense of self and the urge to protect it.
Again this has some biological value – I’m not dismissing it entirely - but hasn’t it got way out of hand? Almost entirely our twenty-four hours are taken up fussing about this particular story of “me.” Take a break from it and you’ll be surprised: the world continues to work okay without you interfering. Actually, you are totally unnecessary, even to yourself. Bit of a shock, but with that shock is an understanding of the depth of how far this goes. It really is that radical, it really does cut to the root. The root of our suffering is this fossilization of a sensed self into something to be protected at all costs. All energy, all time and attention are used in that direction. But we can cut ourselves free from this painful and pernicious habit.
The sharpness of your practice, the sharpness of your attention, the silence of the mind, allow things to be noticed which are usually overshadowed by mental activity. Keep practising with attention, with a mind that’s as still as you can find it to be, using the method, watching the show without writing the review or creating a script and, maybe, the emptiness of the show will become apparent.
But don’t try and force it. Just sit there with what comes. The practice looks after itself. You can get in the way of it. You cannot speed it up. Your task is simply not to get in the way.
Reprinted with kind permission from Chan Magazine, Winter 2018
