Tag: Emptiness

We chant form is emptiness, emptiness is form, but what is Emptiness?

In English emptiness is quite abstract. In Japanese the ideogram for emptiness is ku, which also means sky. That’s the thing about a pictorial language: the ‘concrete’ and the ‘abstract’ are fused, or, better, one is wearing the face and the other is wearing the mask, and they switch, but they always come together. That’s hard for us to understand. But if we can’t get out of the hidden bias of English and richocet between the concrete and the abstract, it’s impossible for us to understand Buddhism.

Without space, how can the heart open?

In Buddhism, the teachings are often referred to as ‘expedient means‘. One might imagine, wrongly, that you are being told something helpful and partially true today, in order to be told something wholly true tomorrow.

They are expedient because they help us escape from the truth/falsehood dichotomy, which lies atop our alive expression like a collapsed tombstone.

It is as if, in a dream, you picture yourself in a tiny windowless room, alone except for a doll, endlessly repeating the same nonsense. Which do you kill: the doll or the room?

The most common metaphors in Buddhism revolve around space. Enlightenment is compared to space. Likewise the teachings. Likewise the Dharmakaya, the universal body of Buddha. It is important that we understand what is meant by space. For us it implies vacuity, or absence. This is not at all how space is used in Buddhism.

Its use is more akin to brightness, or liberation, and the closest analogy is with water. Just as the fish does not realise he is in the ocean, the bird does not realise he is ‘in’ space. But there is a critical difference. If an object is placed in water, the water is displaced. If an object is placed in space the space is not displaced. Because space is everywhere, there is nowhere for it to be displaced to.

When we come into this room and sit, space is undiminished. And this place where we are sitting now contains both ‘us’ and ‘space’. If we examine our actual experience carefully, we can see this to be true.

So each ‘thing’ is both itself and space, both particular and universal, and one does not obstruct the other. We can in this way understand what Fujita means when he talks about practice as being ‘one piece Zen’.

Each time we sit, we chant the Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form. But what do we mean by Emptiness?

The meaning has changed over time. In the original teachings, the word simply meant absence. If the room was empty of elephants, that just meant there were no elephants there. The concept wasn’t central, because anatta – No Self – was emphasised. The person was ’empty’ of a self.

In due course, in the Mahayana, all things were seen as being empty of a ‘self’ – an immutable essence – and hence the world was empty: interdependent, dynamic, connected, whole.

But the original meaning of absence, voidness, vacuity has always lingered.

So when the Chinese started using the term, they equated it with Suchness. They said that it meant empty of delusion. And Dogen said it was prajna – before thinking. Hence Emptiness is that felt inexpressible wholeness which is there prior to thinking, which is always there, before the mind tries to amputate a self from the body of the world.

The flowers of emptiness have five petals: compassion, expression, gratitude, love and generosity. But where do they open?

My first teacher, Nancy Amphoux, said that zazen was like a huge underground river. I imagined a large river, underneath the desert of the self, pushing up flowers through the bitter earth.

She asked a person, ” Is Bodhidharma here, or not?”. The person said “not”. She struck him. She asked again, “Is Bodhidharma here, or not?”. The person said “he is here”. She struck him.

The cancer in her bones latterly made sitting impossible, so she would do prostrations instead. We traditionally make prostrations to our teacher, whether our teacher is here or there, here or gone. All our teachers. Even though there are mountains and rivers between us. Even if there is life and death between us. Between us.

Alive or dead? Alive or dead? Answer! Answer!

Where do the flowers open? Answer! Answer!

The bodhisattva of compassion practicing Prajñāpāramitā (Zazen) sees the five skandhas as empty and thereby relieves all suffering.

So, the practice is seeing the emptiness of the five skandhas. Not as a preliminary to something else. Not in order to experience emptiness per se, or to experience something else. Not you seeing. The practice is seeing the emptiness of the five skandhas. That’s it.

That’s the practice. The five skandhas are form, sensation, perception, fabrication and consciousness. Form, this is my body. Sensation, my body is feeling something. The feeling is mine. Perception, that something I am feeling is sadness. Fabrication, I am feeling sad because…. Consciousness, ah there I go again.

Seen through emptiness, consciousness becomes compassionate vast space awareness. Fabrication is set aside and in that non doing is nirvana. Perception is set aside and the world is released from our mind. Hence Prajñā appears. This sensation, this body is part of an unbroken whole; the body of the whole world.

The Bodhisattva of Compassion, practising zazen, sees that the five Skandha are empty, and relieves all suffering.

Okumura said that it is not me seeing that the five Skandha are empty, it is the five Skandha seeing that the five Skandha are empty.

That is, the five Skandha are not the property of the self. This body and mind does not belong to me. That being so, I cannot do other than care for it, as it is not mine. Because nothing is mine, I can take care of all beings.

So it is that the Bodhisattva of Compassion appears when Emptiness appears, when the seeing of the five Skandhas appears: everything jumps out at the same time, and always at this time. And he is the whole world.

The foundation sutra for Zen is the Prajñāpāramitā Sutra, the teachings on Emptiness. The Heart Sutra, which we chant after sitting, is a very abbreviated version. In it we say that “form is nothing other than emptiness, emptiness is nothing other than form”.

Emptiness is thus not another world, or something to aspire to. It is a way of describing this world, this experience. It is infinitely faceted. One can say that it is dependent origination; nothing exists separately and independently of anything else. Equally, one can say that because emptiness cannot be grasped – one cannot seize space – it is a way of describing the ineffability of all being.

The world eludes the web of words. And one can say that it is a way of describing our experience when self consciousness drops away. The world is empty of you, and so, is luminous.

The teachings on Emptiness are themselves empty.

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Buddhism is full of metaphors of space.

And space is not conceived in an abstract way, but rather as the absence of obstruction. Hence Buddhism being described as a path, or a way.

We are free, but not lost.

Likewise Emptiness.

In Kuge, Dogen comments on a passage from the Surangama Sutra, where the Buddha says:

It is like a person who has clouded eyes

Seeing flowers in space

If the sickness of clouded eyes is cured,

Flowers vanish in space

In the chapter Dogen sometimes renders “Flowers in space” as “Flowers of Emptiness” and comments:

“When we have seen flowers in space (then) we can also see flowers vanish in space.”

He takes a straightforward passage as delusion and turns it into a profound reflection on Emptiness.

It seems to me…

When we see the Flowers of Emptiness appear

Then we can see them disappear

When we see the Flowers of Emptiness disappear

Then we can see them appear.

‘Then’ is not one thing following another. ‘Then’ is this time. In this time we can see the Emptiness of all things; neither existent, nor non-existent. And this is instantaneous appearing/disappearing.

Disappearing/appearing is one expression of the full dynamic functioning of Emptiness.