Language of Emptiness

In my previous post "The Deliberately Non-Straight Path" I mentioned the teaching of Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness because that is the most profound teaching of the Buddhist idea of Emptiness (Shunyata) that I know of. The Teaching utilizes the approach of leading the student through a review of the different schools of Buddhism. It leads us on a journey to go beyond our illusion and false views of reality. We realize that over time, scholars of Buddhist philosophy have progressively evolved and refined their understanding of Emptiness. In this way, the student can themselves evolve their own understanding.

The Teaching is at the same time profound and straightforward. Because the subject is so incredibly difficult to put into words, the method of the teaching utilizes a variety of metaphors comparing our experience of reality to dreams. However, this teaching is not for everyone.

When I received the empowerment from the Venerable Khenpo Tsultrum Gyamtso Rinpoche for the Teaching of Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness it was up in Woodstock at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Monastery. I remember Rinpoche holding up a flower, declaring to the students sitting on cushions in the main shrine room, "This flower is an illusion, it is empty of self."

A woman student was visibly shaken by this declaration that the flower is an illusion. She objected. She got up and started arguing with Rinpoche. "How can you say it is an illusion?" she said defiantly. "I can see you holding it in your hand. We can all see it in your hand. It is REAL."

Obviously, she was not ready for the teaching. She was confused and upset. She got up and left the shrine room and did not return. 

In the Heart Sūtra also referred to as the Prajñāpāramitā, or "Perfection of Wisdom," the Buddha teaches:

All conditioned phenomena

Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows;

Like drops of dew, or flashes of lightning;

Thusly should they be contemplated.

The mantra given in the Prajñāpāramitā is:

gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā

"gone gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all hail!"

What do you think "gone beyond" means? Here are some of my thoughts about going beyond.

I have been a student of the physical sciences my entire life. By the time I graduated High School I had exhausted all of the High School math, science, chemistry and physics courses including the Advanced Placement courses and had moved on to Independent Study courses at a college level. My first two years in college I was a physics major and took some pretty serious math, science and engineering courses. I completed 4 semesters of calculus.

I mention this because this because all of this academic experience has all been Grist for the Mill. I can tell you with utmost confidence in my experience that science has discovered no physical objects.

The little swirling whirlpool on the downstream side of a boulder in a stream appears to be a thing. It seems to have an identity; an existence. We might describe it as a system. It has insideness and outsideness. It has structure. However, it does not exist separately from the stream of water. It is empty of self.

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), image from Hubble Space Telescope

Science has powerful instruments that extend our senses into realms of the incredibly small and highly energetic. We have poked and prodded matter and energy and have found no particle, no system, no energy, no fabric of time and space that is indivisible, eternal, unchanging, substantive, or objective. All observed scientific phenomena are empty of self.

Science has "gone beyond," way beyond, and can find no objective reality. So-called solid matter has been found to be composed of molecules. Molecules are composed of atoms. Atoms are broken down into sub-atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles decomposed into quarks. Quarks are made of strings .... ad infinitum. There is no theoretical limit to this reductio ad absurdum search for a fundamental "thing" that makes up physical reality. 

What the heck is a string? No one really knows. A string is mathematical object, it is not an object that can be directly observed, and yet science says this is the stuff that all of reality is made of. Strings are a set of mathematical theories and constructs understood by a handful of people on the planet and they cannot even agree on the mathematics. 

Physical reality is now ruled by mathematicians. Mathematics is imaginary, it exists completely in the realm of abstract mental phenomena. The most fundamental description of physical experience is mathematical, abstract, non-substantive, existing only in the minds of an elite few.

Every time that science has poked and prodded what appears to be a physically solid "thing" it comes apart into ethereal sub-components. As science continues its journey trying to understand and define what matter and energy is, it keeps "going beyond" and discovering that there are no things that independently exist. What appeared to be a thing is an illusion, a temporary holding pattern of yet finer things in orbit about each other, which themselves are holding patterns of even finer things, etc., etc. Science has discovered no-thingness. 

Science has sensed and mathematically described trajectories and orbits, spins and vibration. But science has found no things that move, orbit, spin and vibrate. Because every time that science has tried to describe the things that move, orbit, spin and vibrate, it discovers only more movement, orbits, spins and vibration existing on a smaller, micro-cosmic scale of experience.

Experience is based on information gathered via the senses. Patterns arise in from these experiences and form is perceived, along with other concepts such as symmetry, order and beauty. Abstract thought and language together structure experience. This structuring of experience is a mental activity.

Reality is a mental projection, similar to a movie projection. Individual experiences are projected onto a mental image of what appears to be a continuity of experience. This is similar to the rapidly displayed frames of a movie which the visual sense assembles into the illusion of continuous movement. However, continuity of experience is an illusion. The flow of time is an illusion.

All that is known about reality is what is sensed and conceived and felt and remembered at this very moment. Memories presents the illusion of the past, but the past does not exist "beyond" our memory. The past is an illusion.

The future is a mental construct of imagined events and experience based on projected patterns of memories and feelings and thought. The sun is imagined to rise tomorrow. All sorts of events and activities are projected to occur in the future based on memories and thoughts and concepts that occur only in this moment. However, tomorrow never comes. It is always today. It is always this moment. There is nothing "beyond" this moment that is not an illusion; an imaginary mental construct.

Even though I talk of God, I actually do not believe in God as most people do. I do not differentiate between the Mind of God and a Personal Mind. 

The idea that all experience is mental phenomena (consciousness-only) is the position of the Yogācāra school of Buddhism. This is talked about extensively in Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness. There is no experience that is not a mental event. 

In my view (not necessarily any Buddhist teaching). There is no differentiation between mental realms, other selves, gods, deities, etc. The Mind of God is an illusion; a projection. The minds of deities, gods, and other selves are imaginary as well. All these projections of separately existing minds exist within the discontinuous experience of mind. There is not one mind, there are not many minds, there is only mind.

There is experience. Experience is experience, there is no "going beyond" that. I am that which I am. YHVH. Suchness. Tathagata.

The realization of this simple truth has brought me "beyond" the false belief in imaginary projections. Reality is like a dream that is realized to be a dream only after we wake up. While in the dream, the experience of the dream is very real. However, when we awake from the dream we review the memory of the dream and know it to be an illusion; only existing as a mental phenomena.

Perhaps some day in the future I will awake from this dream. But, there is no future, so I should be awake at this moment. 

Beyond, beyond, beyond that beyond, the great beyond, awaken, rejoice!