Emptiness is a word we use in Buddhism to help people to see more clearly what the true nature of reality is. The realization or “direct seeing” of this “emptiness” is an experience that is beyond description but not out of reach for any person. It is also one of the fundamental parts of the Buddhist Way, which is a way of being that arises from having these realizations.
Saying “emptiness”, and describing this experience, is a “concept” or mental idea, much like describing the taste of an orange. Until you have the realization yourself or taste the orange you won’t really get it all the way.
So, when I talk about emptiness just know that I’m using this as a concept to start out because most of us are only familiar with understanding things as concepts. I’ll talk more about this later.
With me so far? Good!
First, why is it important to see the true nature of reality? For me, and I think for most people, I feel more comfortable and can make better decisions if I know the truth about things. It’s terribly difficult to operate smoothly in the world if my knowledge and understanding of how things really are is shallow and full of misunderstandings and misconceptions. This leads to mistakes in decision making, which leads to bad results and suffering. Sound familiar?
The Buddha’s first teaching, called the First Noble Truth, directly calls out this problem. All the rest of Buddhist teaching to this day is directed toward solving this issue.
Since the Buddha’s time, all Buddhist teachers have agreed on one thing. You must have personal experiences and realizations of a few fundamental truths. One is Emptiness, one is Dependent Arising, and another is Cause & Effect, sometimes called Karma.
There have been all kinds of methods put forward about how to do this. There are only two that everyone agrees on and they are Meditation and Study.
The first part of this essay is concerned with Study. Even reading this is a kind of study.
I think the problem for many of us in the West has been confusion and misunderstandings about the word “Enlightenment” (Big E). Too much emphasis has been put on this word and it has become a big confusing concept for most people.
Forget about Enlightenment. If you have the realizations I’m talking about then you will be well on your way to “enlightenment”. Enlightenment just means you’ve had the realizations.
So, first things first. What is Emptiness in the way Buddhists want you to see it? As I said earlier we’ll study it as a concept so that you can get a bit of grounding. It’s in your meditation that you will see it for real, like actually taking a bite of the orange. You’ll know it for yourself.
Think of Emptiness as the underlying or pre-existing condition of the universe and everything in it. We don’t know where all the empty space came from or where all the stuff floating around in the universe came from. It doesn’t matter really where it all started or came from. What matters is that it all exists and we are a part of it. It also matters how it works, but I’ll take that up when I get to the other two realizations I mentioned above, Dependent Arising and Cause & Effect.
For now just think about and meditate about the fact that it’s all there, and so are you.
Then, and this is key, realize that it’s all there regardless of what I, or you, or anybody thinks about it. It was all there before there were humans, before the dinosaurs, before there was even an Earth. This is the true nature of reality. We can also see, and realize, that it’s all in constant movement, continually changing from one form to another. Once there were dinosaurs and now there aren’t. Where did they go? They changed from one form to another, from live dinosaurs that lasted millions of years, to now they are oil and gas or whatever. They never left the Earth, they just changed into something else. This is true of anything you can think of. Nothing has ever left the universe, it all just changes into different forms over time.
Emptiness, in the Buddhist way, means that all these things that seem to exist are just different forms of matter and energy and do not have any permanent or fixed character.
Put another way, there are no unchanging, independent or permanent selves, souls, or essences in the phenomenal world.
Most importantly, this applies to humans as well, to you and me and anyone who has ever walked the Earth.
Whoa! What?
So, emptiness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of reality. Everything is in constant motion due to cause & effect, so therefore nothing has inherent existence.
One student asked how much of my day is spent in emptiness? 24/7 because emptiness is a fact of reality not a state of mind. How much time is spent being aware of this? Whenever I happen to notice or think about it. It’s like asking how much time is spent breathing air or pumping heart.
They are all permeating, pre-existing conditions of reality. The realization of this fact and its implications seems stunning and profound because we somehow believe that everything isn’t empty that things have a fixed existence or eternal essence or soul. Especially we think this of ourselves. That’s a mistaken view.
What’s helpful about knowing this is that since the fact of emptiness (also Buddha nature, karma, dependent origination, impermanence, oneness, etc) are always true, we can tap into the truth of them whenever we want, wherever we want. We can rest in that knowledge of deep truth and what it means for our lives.
Enlightenment just means that you have a deep and personal experience and understanding of these truths. That is realization. Actualization is when you put this to work in your life day to day to help you see clearly what to do when you are stressed or when you are relaxed and peaceful, too.
Emptiness doesn’t mean we (and all sentient beings) are empty of thoughts and feelings. On the contrary, we are full of those. But everything is empty of a permanent self, inherent existence, or essence.
We think this is profound because it’s so different from how we have believed things but it’s just an ordinary fact of life.
An acorn is fully an acorn, a tree is fully a tree, firewood is fully firewood. But each is empty of inherent existence. You are fully you but aways changing.
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