The Emptiness of Emptiness
I had a direct and profound experience of emptiness this week, which was triggered by a statement in Heart of Wisdom (by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso):
"Although emptiness itself is an ultimate truth, the generic image of emptiness is a conventional truth."This one sentence reveals many insights about the nature of emptiness and can be considered the heart of all the emptiness teachings. At first glance it may appear self-evident and unimportant but when juxtaposed with other aspects of emptiness, it can lead to deep insight.
This quote seems to indicate that there is a conventional truth (the generic image of emptiness) which refers to an ultimate truth (emptiness itself). This is how we usually understand the relationship between concepts and their objects; the former refers to the latter. For example, we would say that the concept ‘car’ refers to the actual car and the concept ‘space’ refers to an actual space. Likewise, the concept ‘emptiness’ refers to actual emptiness.
However, this ordinary use of referential concepts is not acceptable by someone with experience of emptiness. For a view grounded in emptiness, everything is ‘mere name’, with the implication that names and concepts do not necessarily point to other ‘real’ phenomena. Rather than receiving their meaning from the more substantial objects that they supposedly refer to, names and concepts receive their meaning from their relationships with other names and concepts. Their meaning is therefore simply the result of their unique place in the context of other names and concepts.
This means that, for someone who understands the meaning of emptiness, the concept of emptiness does not refer to an actual emptiness that exists beyond the web of conceptual relationships but that emptiness is also ‘mere name’, lacking any independent, substantial reality. If we apply this insight to the above quote, we will see that our initial interpretation of it is radically altered. Now, ‘emptiness itself’ is seen to be a hypothetical, substantially real emptiness that is referred to by the generic image of emptiness. This ‘real’ emptiness is merely imagined by a mind of self-grasping; it is an inherently existent emptiness. When we realize that this presumed emptiness does not exist, we are left with an experience of the emptiness of emptiness, in which there is no emptiness, no ultimate truth, and phenomena have no ultimate nature. Everything is conventional, including emptiness; there are no ultimate truths. Things just are as they are: suchness.
If this realization is conceptualized it can be called a realization of emptiness but we should not be misled into believing that there is something being realized. It is the realization that there is nothing to realize. How obvious!
7 comments:
intriguing
I was at the summer retreat in the UK and saw Kelsang myself and heard him teach. I am quite happy with the place from where he teaches.
The NKT comes from a tradition that analyses things into oblivion, in particular the way that he teaches emptiness and the meditations towards emptiness is incredibly analytical.
As a suitable analogy lets think of an orgasm. Male or Female, it does not matter. You can read books on it and build a mental model of it and analyse it to completely and reach a full intellectual understanding of it.
After all of this, you would have no actual understanding of an actual orgasm.
Some time spent making love to a partner of your choice would teach you what an orgasm is and it would not fit into words that made sense and it would not match in a meaningful way with all your intellectual understanding.
Emptiness is something that is experienced when you allow yourself to relax into and to stop avoiding it. It is not experienced by thinking about what it might be like.
The whole focus of meditation is in many ways gaining the confidence to stop suppressing emptiness. Something like Vipassana builds the necessary groundwork.
Hi MikeDoe,
I agree that emptiness is essentially an experience that needs to be felt personally and directly, and that the Kadampa tradition can be guilty of over-analyzing the concept of emptiness. However, i also know - through personal experience - that emptiness can be realized by approaching it through conceptual analysis. I understand and respect your belief that emptiness is experienced by allowing our mind to 'relax into' it, but can you appreciate my perspective of understanding emptiness by means of philosophical investigation?
I agree that to fully understand an orgasm one needs to personally experience an orgasm but does that mean that there is no benefit in reading and thinking about orgasms? Surely someone who has experienced an orgasm and can intellectually explain an orgasm is better than someone who has simply experienced an orgasm but who cannot conceptually understand it.
On the path to enlightenment, we need to transcend the intellect but there is no need to reject the intellect.
" but can you appreciate my perspective of understanding emptiness by means of philosophical investigation?"
I can, I just think it is starting from the wrong place.
I think it is better to start with no preconceived notions and then come to an intellectual understanding afterwards rather than risk constructing a false understanding to begin with that may prevent a true understanding.
"On the path to enlightenment, we need to transcend the intellect but there is no need to reject the intellect."
True, but it is a matter of precedence. The intellect can be the way that the Ego prevents you experiencing reality.
For most people the intellect has absolute control and power. The problem is that many things cannot be put meaningfully into words. These things therefore tend to be ignored by the intellect.
I think it's sensible for me to illustrate the point.
Emptiness in the first instance is experienced as an absence of the ego. But these are just words.
For them to make any sense you must first understand that you have an ego, that the ego is not you, that the ego is optional and that the ego is not essential.
Now, if you have just started out on the path then you will not be able to conceive that you are not your ego. If you are further along then you will have realised that you are not your ego.
But, how can you imagine the absence of something when you don't know that it is present or where the boundaries of it might be.
Would it not be simpler to just meditate in a way that the conditions are there for the ego to drop away and then when you experience it you will reach an understanding of it. However, you would find it difficult to turn this into an intellectual understanding initially.
That aside, Kelsang does have some very good descriptions in his books...
"I think it is better to start with no preconceived notions and then come to an intellectual understanding afterwards rather than risk constructing a false understanding to begin with that may prevent a true understanding."
In general, i agree with this. If we perform any kind of philosophical analysis i think we have to attempt to prevent preconceived beliefs from prejudicially influencing our conclusions. This is simply intellectual rigor and it needs to be applied to spiritual beliefs in the same way that it is applied to scientific and mathematical theories. However, we also need to be conscious of the tendency of the Western mind to exaggerate our ability to view anything 'with no preconceived notions'. It is nearly impossible to actually do this. Everything we do and everything we perceive is affected and conditioned by our subconscious preconceived notions. These are precisely what we are trying to discover and eliminate on the path to enlightenment so to actually live without preconceptions is only possible for enlightened beings. However, the main point is valid; it is important to study emptiness with an open mind, free from expectations about where that practice will lead us.
"True, but it is a matter of precedence. The intellect can be the way that the Ego prevents you experiencing reality.
For most people the intellect has absolute control and power. The problem is that many things cannot be put meaningfully into words. These things therefore tend to be ignored by the intellect."
Again, i agree with this but i don’t think it justifies completely rejecting the intellect. It is true that the intellect can be an instrument of the Ego and that there are many things that the intellect just doesn’t 'get', but we also have to be careful not to overestimate the intellect’s role in creating our samsara. We have to find a way to use the intellect without being deluded by it. Otherwise, we will see the intellect as the source of all our problems and attempt to regress to a mental state that does not have the capacity for abstract thinking (like the mind of an animal). This desire to regress to a more 'simple' state of existence is very commonly confused with authentic spiritual development. (Ken Wilber explains this well.) We don’t need a great intellect to make progress on the spiritual path but we do need to avoid condemning the intellectual capacity that we have.
"Again, i agree with this but i don’t think it justifies completely rejecting the intellect. "
I'm not advocating the rejection of the intellect, merely putting it back in it's place as an equal partner.
For many everyday tasks - such as walking down the street, eating, breathing even driving the intellect is just not required. There is no need for abstract thinking because there is nothing abstract to think about - only the concrete immediate present.
However, when it comes to interacting with people and many work situations then the intellect is to be desired and in fact encouraged.
ITRW I earn my living and justify my pricing by being able to use the intellect to out-think and out-perform my competitors. Without the intellect my job would not be possible.
That intellect is enhanced by my ability to draw on the non-intellectual and more intuitive parts of my brain where thinking happens in leaps rather than in logical expression.
There are two extremes which can be seductive. In the first extreme there can be the desire to eliminate the intellect altogether and live an animalistic existence. This is possible for a hermit but it also denies the reality of who we are and so is a false path.
At the other extreme we have Spock or Data or an Aesthetic where there is pure intellect and the body and the immediate experience is denied.
I believe that the true path is somewhere in the middle of these two (on average).
Sometimes a pure intellect is appropriate and sometimes a pure animalistic experience is appropriate. At other times such as socialising then a mixture of the two will be appropriate - using the more primitive parts of the brain to read and experience the situation and the intellect do direct flow and maximise it.
My own past was one where the intellect was paramount and the animalistic denied.
As a counteraction to this I played with how far it is possible to live a fully intuitive non-animalistic life for some aspects of life.
I have settled somewhere in the middle but feel free to move in either direction as I feel approriate. I neither fear nor venerate either extreme. Both are part of who I am. To permanently choose one over the other would be as silly as deciding that feet are better than hands.
I fully agree. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your experience.
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